Service Spotlight and Announcement!!!

Sorry I didn't post last week. We have had the huge Cedar Fire burning in our background. We went to the valley to visit family and take a break from our home that was full of smoke! Talk about a great test run for my emergency preparedness!

Did anyone make cards or go visit the nursing homes in your area? Have you had any great experiences with service? Drop me a note, I would love to hear what you've been up to!



Announcement

 I am going to start a humanitarian group here in our home!! It will be so great to have women get together and make care kits, sew blankets and skirts, collect donations, and pull together to help those in need. I'm super excited. If you don't live near me in Northern AZ, but still would like to be a part of the group, check back on the blog for the weekly service spotlight to see how you can help!! If you would like to do service as a family and be involved in my group, awesome! There is always something to do!

Service Spotlight

Service doesn't have to be huge, take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, or be stressful or difficult. If it is feeling that way then take a step back, downsize, and just do what you can. We are not expected to save the world or fix everything. Write a card this week to someone who seems sad, or make friends with a new family in your neighborhood. Search online to find organizations that you would be able to help with. Setting aside time for research is huge. I sometimes expect that service opportunities will fall in my lap, sometimes they do, but more often than not I have to search them out. Opportunities of diverse service are out there, they just need to be found!



Nervous to Serve?

I've been thinking a lot about service lately and how blessed we are to live in the United States of America with all of our freedoms, opportunities, and blessings. I think it is very important to share the great blessings that we receive with others, even though we may not have a lot to give.

You see, something is more than nothing. People love to be thought of, to have others go out of their way to share kindness, and to be a part of something. When was the last time someone did something really nice for you and you thought, " man I hate that they thought of me. Why do they keep giving me blessings?" Exactly. That would never happen!

Sometimes we feel that people will be offended or not like us if we give them service because they don't like to receive "Charity". Usually they don't like it because people have made a big deal out of it, or the service they received was presented in a rude and hurtful way. When we give service, it is best to be kind, humble, and not to draw attention to what the person or family is deficient in. When we treat one another with dignity, respect, and love then they will feel those things. There will still be some people who look for things to be offended over. If that happens, just move on.



Let's get started!

Talk with your family, pray for opportunities and inspiration, and start researching!! Comment, email, message, or text me your info and I will make sure you get updates on what is happening in the group!
Know any organizations or opportunities that you would like to pursue? Let me know and we can check it out!!

Happy Service Sunday!

I'm back from my incredibly long break settling in to our new house.

I'm going to be doing a new thing on Sundays all about service. Check out the tab at the top of my blog for more info.

Father's Day is next week, as I'm sure you know. I was thinking about ways my husband and I could bring some happiness to the fathers who may be lonely. Mothers Day was actually pretty hard for me this year. Loss is very difficult to deal with, especially on days where you are constantly reminded. This made me think maybe others will experience the same sadness on Father's Day.

My husband and I live in the country, but there are still a couple of nursing homes here. I'm sure there is a nursing home in your town, or at least in your closest city where you get groceries. There are lots of men in nursing homes, and presumably a lot of them are fathers.

Even if they aren't fathers, everyone enjoys being shown love and respect. If you have children at home you could help them make Father's Day cards to pass out to the men at the nursing home. You can call the home and ask how many men they have, or if that is too many, maybe ask them for the number of men who do not have families close, or how many are in one wing. Once you have the number, get crafting! Then next Sunday deliver the cards with your family!

You don't need to visit with each gentleman, just saying "Happy Father's Day" will be perfect! Although people really love looking at children's drawings, you could always make cards yourself. I'm sure they would appreciate a lovely and more sophisticated card too.

Call and ask if you could come and sing a few songs, or go room to room on a specific wing and have a short visit with the members. Or you could ask when their common room time is and see if you can go play games, or help serve one of the meals.

Everyone likes to be remembered and thought of. Have any other great Father's Day ideas to serve the nursing homes in your community?

Bionic Woman!

I am totally a bionic woman now :)

So I have chronic illnesses that cause my nerves to over fire and create a lot of pain. I don't want to be on pain medication, so we went to see an amazing pain management specialist. And what she did was awesome!

So, I have a spinal cord stimulator in my back made by the company Medtronic. We had to have a surgery trial in the office to see if the stimulator would help with the over firing of the nerves before they put a permanent one in.

On our way for the trial surgery. I'm very nervous, and sad to have to transition a foster child.

I had back surgery while I was awake. And it was awful. They put 2 leads up the side of my spine, and tried to get to the right nerve bundle to target my trunk/belly area where a lot of the pain is from due to endometriosis and pelvic venous congestion syndrome etc. This test surgery took 2 hours, way longer that it should have.

So, I told my husband when we left I would never do that again, I didn't want the permanent stimulator, and I cried. A lot. It hurt wicked bad. And because they had to poke around so much more than normal my body tried to protect itself by sending lots of fluid to the site, so the left side lead didn't even end up working. I'm sure you can imagine how many prayers we said and how hard we tried. That day was also difficult because we had to transition one of our foster children, which feels like having your child die. It's awful and so heartbreaking.

Crying more that we had to transition a child than from the pain of the awful surgery.

But, after the first 24 hours, I noticed a significant change. My left side didn't work due to the fluid build up, but the right side did, I had 90% relief in my right side, and the swelling in my legs went down, as well as my belly! It was a miracle. For the trial they have you keep the lead out to change the settings, so I had a tail, as you can see in the picture.

Then, about 5 days later they pulled the leads out and booked the real surgery. I wouldn't be awake this time and it was at the hospital. They stitched the leads into the myofascial tissue around m spinal cord, and I have a battery in my back. I have to recharge it, and it lasts for 9 years. I shouldn't ever need the leads taken out, just every 9 years the battery in my body will need to be removed and replaced.

Happy with the trial, that's what the tail connected to, it allowed me to change the settings. Also I have multiple pairs of this shirt so don't think I kept wearing the same shirt over and over, I just really like this one so I bought multiples of the same one :)

So we got the permanent surgery, and I have this thing where I put the receptor over the battery and change the setting of the stimulator. It's like a gentle tingling sensation and helps my joints and whole body function amazingly better! It's a miracle! Then I have another receptor that goes over the batter that I recharge the battery with. So the battery in my back serves 2 purposes, it allows me to change the settings of the stimulator and it allows me to recharge the battery.

Cool stitches huh? The vertical tape covers where the leads went in, and the horizontal one is where the battery is. After they took off the tape we took a picture and the scar at first made it look like I had a huge plumber bum, so I didn't include that picture. Sweet bruises right on the first day! My Doctor is amazing, but rather rough. The bruises got way worse before they got better. But I would do it all over again.

The left black think goes over the battery, and the screen turns on allowing me to change the settings.

 

This is what re-charges the battery in my back. It's getting good reception and fastest charge when all those little black boxes are full!

My scars are healing nicely, and I had to be very careful to not twist, bend or lift anything, otherwise the leads could have moved at the top of my spine and it would have all been for nothing. The leads are only stitched into the base of the spine, not the top, because that requires a bunch of surgery specialists, so the best way is to just be careful and let your body scar in the top of the leads.

Here I am, a bit swollen and tired after surgery but excited about the potential for what might come!

 

Sometimes I turn it down where it's still on but I can't feel it. Other times when my endometriosis is causing a lot of pain I will turn the stimulator up and it helps block the pain signals and I feel the gentle tingle. The swelling in my legs has gone down, and I'm feeling great!

We did have some complications after the surgery, so thank you to everyone for your love, support and prayers. The hospital didn't follow my doctors protocols so I developed a fluid pocket around the battery which made changing the levels and charging very difficult, and for the first little while the stimulator didn't work correctly because of the fluid build up, just like in the test. So my amazing hero Ken went and bought this therapeutic girdle thingy that's this elastic thing you wear that puts pressure over the area, so we are now in the clear, and the fluid pocket is gone.


If my leads shift slightly it's ok, because the company can change the settings by putting their machine over my battery and they can change where it stimulates and so we had it adjusted last week and now that the fluid pocket is gone it's working amazingly well! We are so happy to not have to need pain medicine and have a wonderful treatment plan that I have control of that really is helping make a huge difference.

We have been so blessed by the Lord to live in a wonderful new area with amazing Latter Day Saints (Mormons) who love the gospel of Jesus Christ and have been so welcoming and making us feel so loved. We have had miracle after miracle to get my stimulator to work, to move to this new home, to be able to have Ken's business start to grow, and so many other special and sacred things I can't mention there are just too many!

I know Jesus is our Savior, and if we turn to Him and pray for help and guidance, we can overcome the obstacles in our way, like fluid packs that cause complications. I know that if you are struggling and in need of comfort, all you need to do is pray. I'm so grateful for modern medicine to help me live a healthy and fulfilling life. And I'm grateful that soon we will be able to begin with a new agency and adopt a family of our own.

Our House!!! and what the Prophet has taught!!

Yay! We are in our new home!! It's amazing! We love it here. We are getting our old house ready to sell, so if anyone is looking for a lovely house, we have one ready!

Our new home is big enough for however many children the Lord wants us to adopt! We are so thrilled! We have to wait for our license renewal then get this home inspected and switch to an agency up here that has contracts with 5 different tribes up here!

We are so thrilled and pray that we will be able to adopt soon! Please donate to our adoption fund, and share our story! We want to have everything the children and our family may need. We have the space now, which was the most important step to get going, now we just have to be patient.

So, here are some lovely pictures of our new house! it's painted a tan and green in EVERY room, so eventually we will repaint, but for now, we don't mind ;) We love our new ward and our new stake. The people in our church up here are so excited to learn and to try and do better. We had Elder Pina from the 70 come and speak to us on what the Prophet assigned him. The topic is about returning the Sabbath day to the Lord. Ken and I are very careful about keeping the Sabbath day holy, but we have some new ideas and traditions that we are putting into place to help us grow closer to the Lord and for our children to feel of the Lord's love.

Here are some things we are going to do after church each Sunday, whether we have children or not. Go over the Gospel Doctrine lesson for that week, listen to a conference talk, if we have children go over the lesson they learned at church that day, sing a few songs from the hymn book, pray to know who may need our help or prayers that week. Those are just a few things. I am so blessed to have a husband who has been sensitive to the Spirit and we have already set the Sabbath day as a holy day, and now we have added ideas to make the day a Holy and special one. What are some ways you keep the Sabbath day holy?

We know that Sunday is a day set apart that is special and for the Lord. If we take the time to rest and serve the Lord and grow closer to Him that our faith will be strengthened, and we will be ready for all the trials that come. And they do come. But having this sacred day to help us prepare for the coming week is a huge blessing, and we are so grateful to have been taught by many wonderful people, and on this topic assigned by our beloved Prophet.

So, here is our magical home where we are learning and growing, and can't wait for what lies ahead!

                                                                                                 First Batch of Cookies in the New House

 lookout window upstairs in the loft room                                         back porch

Our First Day!!!

 So HAPPY!!!! and we have a sweet Spiral staircase! And a cool loft that's open waiting for me to find some sweet fancy sitting chairs!

See that cool little knob on the door above the handle?                                                                                    It Rings this bell. Coolest Doorbell Ever!!!

Yes, in a storage closet is this little beauty. Because everyone needs to sharpen pencils in the closet.....

 This was our water filter..... we are blessed that Ken knew what to do!!

We are so happy here. It feels like home already, even though we aren't really that unpacked, as you can see in some pictures. But it feels like we were meant to be here. We are so blessed!!!

First Craft Fair!

We went to Show Low to do a craft fair! We are so excited to move there, it was wonderful!!! But it turned out the fair was originally a farmers market that began allowing craft vendors. It was great because we learned what sells well at that kind of event, and we spoke to the woman who organizes community craft fairs and she said our tutus and headbands and earrings will be super popular there! Here's to raising money for the adoption fund!!

So I'm taking down the Etsy site because I've gotten a lot of window shoppers, so I'll be selling things off my blog! There is a new tab I'm posting a page called Tutu's and Accessories! You can place a custom order by emailing me or if you see something you want, let me know!!

Here are some pictures of us at the fair, I took them after we made sales, it was a great day!! We also met some wonderful people and are so excited to move into this amazing and welcoming community!! We also stopped by our house to see it again, it was lovely!! We are so blessed!

Best little café we can't wait to go to again!!!

Front Porch Kisses!