The following is copied from an email that was forwarded to me.  It was titled “Paying it Forward”, it’s a nice read.

“THE SIMPLE WHITE ENVELOPE

It’s just a small white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas –oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it — the overspending, the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma –the gifts given in desperation because you couldn’t think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties, and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way. Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended.

Shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against another team sponsored by an inner-city church. These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes. As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler’s ears. It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford.

Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn’t acknowledge defeat. Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, “I wish just one of them could have won,” he said. “They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them.” Mike loved kids — all kids — and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball, and lacrosse.

That’s when the idea for his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church. On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years. For each Christmas, I followed the tradition –one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on. The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning, and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.

As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn’t end there. You see, we lost Mike last year due to cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning it was joined by three more.  Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad. The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing around the tree with wide-eyed anticipation watching as their fathers take down the envelope.

Mike’s spirit, like the Christmas spirit, will always be with us.

May we all remember Christ, who is the reason for the season, and the true Christmas spirit this year and always. God Bless! — pass this along to those friends and loved ones who you know are the givers who understand the true meaning of Christmas.”

This is an inspirational email I received this Christmas Season.  Hope you enjoy it.

I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke
and splutter and die – I barely managed to coast, cursing, into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking
traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow truck. It wouldn’t even turn over. Before I could make
the call, I saw a woman walking out of the quickie mart building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell
into a gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay.

When I got there, it looked more like she had been overcome by sobs than that she had fallen; she was a young woman who
looked really haggard with dark circles under her eyes. She dropped something as I helped her up, and I picked it up to
give it to her. It was a nickel.

At that moment, everything came into focus for me: the crying woman, the ancient Suburban crammed full of stuff with 3
kids in the back (1 in a car seat), and the gas pump reading $4.95.

I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help, and she just kept saying ‘I don’t want my kids to see me crying!’ so
we stood on the other side of the pump from her car. She said she was driving to California and that things were very
hard for her right now. So I asked, ‘And you were praying?’ That made her back away from me a little, but I assured her
I was not a crazy person and said, ‘He heard you, and He sent me.’

I took out my card and swiped it through the card reader on the pump so she could fill up her car completely, and while
it was fueling, walked to the next door McDonald’s and bought 2 big bags of food, some gift certificates for more, and a
big cup of coffee. She gave the food to the kids in the car, who attacked it like wolves, and we stood by the pump
eating fries and talking a little.

She told me her name, and that she lived in Kansas City . Her boyfriend left 2 months ago and she had not been able to
make ends meet. She knew she wouldn’t have money to pay rent Jan. 1, and finally, in desperation, had called her
parents
, with whom she had not spoken in about 5 years. They lived in California and said she could come live with them and try
to get on her feet there.

So she packed up everything she owned in the car. She told the kids they were going to California for Christmas, but not
that they were going to live there.

I gave her my gloves, a little hug and said a quick prayer with her for safety on the road. As I was walking over to my
car, she said, ‘So, are you like an angel or something?’

This definitely made me cry. I said, ‘Sweetie, at this time of year angels are really busy, so sometimes God uses
regular people.’

It was so incredible to be a part of someone else’s miracle. And of course, you guessed it, when I got in my car it
started right away and got me home with no problem. I’ll put it in the shop tomorrow to check, but I suspect the
mechanic won’t find anything wrong.

Sometimes the angels fly close enough to you that you can hear the flutter of their wings…

Psalms 55:22 ‘ Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be
moved.’

Here is the prayer:

‘Father, I ask You to bless my children, grandchildren, friends, relatives and email buddies reading this right now.
Show them a new revelation of your love and power. Holy Spirit, I ask You to minister to their spirit this very moment.
Where there is pain, give them Your peace and mercy. Where there is self doubt, release a renewed confidence through
Your grace, In Jesus’ precious name. Amen.’

Cloth Diapers

I choose to use cloth diapers for a few reasons, first of all it’s better for the environment and I find disposable so wasteful. We also live in the country without garbage pick-up. We have to haul our garbage to the local landfill for disposal and being as it inconvenient we usually store our garbage until we have a truck load. So the other reason I choose cloth diapers was the smell factor of storing our garbage until we make a trip to the land fill.

Cloth diapering really isn’t all that different from disposables. There is a little bit more work when it comes to washing diapers. But really, you have to do laundry anyway so an extra load or two a week isn’t really a big deal. For those who live in an urban area have access to a diaper service, which in that case, cloth diapering is just like disposables because someone else cleans the diapers for you.

If you’re thinking, ‘What about the smell of cloth diapers?’, well there is a solution for that as well. I use a ceramic rock thing called “deodarock” that I bought at Home Depot. It absorbs all of the smell and once a month I set the rock outside for a day to “clean” the smell out. It works great, I very rarely smell the diapers. When I do use disposables, I find that they are quite a bit more smelly than cloth anyway.

Before my first child was born I was advised to buy cloth diapers and covers and to not use the all-in-one diapers because the all-in-one diapers don’t wash as well as having separate cloth diapers and covers. So I went ahead and bought diapers & covers.

Before my second child was born I ordered a couple of all-in-one diapers and I love them. I didn’t buy any more, simply because I have all of these diapers & covers that are still in good shape.

There are many different types of cloth diapers such as prefolds, all-in-ones, diapers & covers. And there are many different companies that sell cloth diapers and everything that you may need for cloth diapering. I just did a google search on cloth diapers and found everything that I needed.

For a diaper pail use a large kitchen garbage can that has a lid. It’s larger and cheaper than most traditional diaper pails and it works just as good. I use a dry diaper pail method, which means that I just throw the diapers in the pail. A wet diaper pail is filled with a solution to soak the diapers prior to washing. I’ve never tried a wet diaper pail so I don’t know if it’s better or not, but I know that a dry pail works just fine.

When it comes to poop in the diaper, I clean the diaper before putting it in the pail. Basically all I do to clean the poop out of a diaper is I scrape the poop off of the diaper into the toilet, then I give it a quick scrub in the bathroom sink with a cleaning brush. I use a small paint scraper to scrape the poop into the toilet and just a regular cleaning brush. Then I just throw the diaper in the pail until wash day.

When I wash the diapers I use a regular laundry detergent and I put in about ¼ cup of vinegar in where the fabric softener would normally go. The vinegar acts as a disinfectant in the wash. I also have an extra rinse cycle on my washing machine to make extra sure that the diapers are clean.

During the spring, summer & fall I hang the diapers & covers on the clothes line outside. The sun also helps to disinfect and clean as they dry. In the winter you could hang them on the line as well but I find that my fingers get too cold hanging them on the line so I don’t bother with it.

I do use disposable diapers when we are away from home, as it’s easier than carrying dirty cloth diapers around, and disposables do take up less room in the diaper bag. I also use disposable diapers when the baby has a diaper rash – which with cloth diapers is rare. Disposables do a better job of keeping urine away from the affected area.

Cloth diapering really isn’t that much more difficult than disposable diapering. If you think you would like to try cloth diapering, I would advise trying a few different kinds, the pre folds, all-in-ones, and the cloth diapers & covers. There are some companies that offer starter packages with a variety of different kinds of cloth diapers.  It’s an easy way to can determine which is going to work best for you.

Lastly, instead of traditional store bought baby wipes, I use the inserts that I had bought with my first set of cloth diapers (Inserts are supposed to be used inside the diaper for better absorption – I’ve never needed them) as well as some reusable wipes that I had purchased as well.  The reusable wipes are just like a regular terry face cloth.  When I first purchased the reusable wipes was told that I would have to get a wipe warmer and every morning wet down all the wipes that I thought I would need throughout the day.  Well, I just thought that would be too much of a hassle so for the first year I used traditional store bought wipes.

Then I decided that I would just moisten the wipes as I need them.  As I walk past the bathroom to change a diaper, I just run some wipes under hot water and go and change the diaper.  This way the wipes are nice and warm, where as with traditional store bought wipes, which stay cool unless you have them in a wipe warmer.  And being as I’m already washing dirty diapers, I just throw the dirty wipes in with the dirty diapers and wash everything all at once.  Saves the environment, saves money and is easier on baby’s bottom.

How Crazy am I??!!

Recently I’ve decided to start a couple of new projects.  It’s not like I don’t already have enough to do!  And I really don’t like starting something and then not be able to finish it.  Like this website for example, I’ve been wanting to find the time to actually sit down and get it to look the way I want it to look but can’t seem to get the time to do it with the kids around – it’s sort of driving me crazy!

Anyway, back to my projects.  I decided that I wanted to go through all of the pictures that I’ve taken over the past three years and get them into photo albums.  The reason I decided to do this is because I was showing my mother-in-law how to do some editing of pictures on the computer and I was using one of my daughters pictures as an example.  She mistook my daughter for my son.  So I figured I better get the pictures, printed, labelled and in photo albums before the next child is born.  By then I think I’ll have a really hard time trying to figure out who’s in the picture – especially if the third one is another carbon copy of my husband!

So my pictures is my project number one (with over 400 pictures to go through – it’ll take me a while).  The next project I took on was scanning all of my mom’s pictures into my computer (again over 400 pictures!) and labelling them, putting them on flash drives to send to my sisters.  This project is now completed, finally!  It was actually quite interesting going through the pictures, trying to figure out who every one is in the pictures.  Most of the pictures were taken before my mom & dad got married, it was fun to see my mom so youthful!  There was actually two pictures that I came accross of my Aunt’s wedding – the maid of honor looks a lot like me about 10 years ago!  Interesting – I have no idea who this person is.

My last project is going through my cook books and typing up the recipies that I use and putting them into a binder.  Once I’ve gone through a cook book then I’ll get rid of it.  I’m hoping to narrow my cook books down to two or three – the rest I want to get rid of.

So some big projects to get through but I think if I can work at them each a little each week, I’ll get them done before baby number 3 arrives!

I love fall.  The leaves are so pretty with all the different colors, I love the crunching sound it makes when you walk on them.

Fall also means harvest.  Chase just loves to watch the tractors & grain trucks going up & down our road and working in the fields.  I think fall & spring are his favorite times of year.  He can see an abundance of farm machinery working in our area.