I was shocked to see so many of my dear friends leaving me messages during my absence! Thank you to all of you that checked in on me.

All I can say is that we have so much going on around here… and I’m having a hard time keeping up with “real” life, therefore…. I couldn’t justify trying to keep up with “cyberlife”!

We have started school and are now in full swing… Our homeschool support group Co-op has also started… I have FINALLY finished up our support groups 07-08 yearbook! (see that shows how far behind I am!) and have now taken on the responsibility of the monthly newsletter for our group…

On the household front, they have FINALLY ordered the shingles for the new roof… our siding is still hanging off, the window still broken, the front door still broken and the huge blue tarp is still draped on our roof waiting for the construction guys to get to us… We are not the only ones still in the position though…. if you ride through town you still see blue tarps on alot of houses! Brittany moved back in and brought all of her “things” with nowhere to put them because all of downstairs is still gutted due to the mold removal.  Might I add that DH has still not found a job and severance is slowly slipping away!  As if you haven’t guessed by now, MY HOUSE IS A COMPLETE DISASTER and we are all trying to move around in it and function properly! I will be so glad when some of this is finished so that I can get back to our normal (or what I thought was normal) life!

In the midst of all of this chaos, Amber & Robby will be coming home to visit so we can all see our baby Aiden!! While they are here, my Mom and Larry’s Mom will be coming up too so they can see everyone! I am so hoping to have the rooms downstairs liveable again before then!

Now to share some of the blessings that I’ve enjoyed over the past month~

This is the Stanley plum tree we planted many years ago… we’ve never had a “good” crop from it, but this year it was covered… as you can see they have a beautiful blue color! So far I have canned 3 batches of Plum Jelly! YUMMY!!

And after a struggle through the long, hot summer, my Morning Glories have finally taken off!

Isn’t she beautiful!!

And last, but not least, the wonderful sunsets we’ve been having!

I will try to make it a point to get back to my blogging! Thanks to all of my wonderful friends~ I’m truly blessed!

My goodness I do not know where July went!! I blinked and it was over~ well…. another month gone and another year older today~

I’m not sure what we will do for my birthday today, but I think I’m claiming a lazy day!

Things are happening around here… but I am still playing catch up!

The insurance adjuster has been out… the contractors have been out for their estimates, the FEMA inspector came up for his inspection…. now we wait to see what kind of help we can get…. We’re still waiting for the heating element for the oven, and the parts to the refrigerator…

The most pressing issue I have right now is getting our homeschool support group yearbook finished and to the printer! I was hoping to have it ready for our kick-off monthly meeting Aug. 5~ obviously, that is NOT going to happen! I am so disappointed…. but alot of our circumstances the past two months were out of my control… We will definately be done within a couple of weeks and have it ready by our first day of Co-op!

I have been shelling purple hull peas like a mad woman! My fingers are all purple~ I have a huge pot of purple hull peas with a ham bone cooking on the stove right now! My oven does not work so I guess I will not be making cornbread to go with them like I first thought… maybe some fried hoecakes?!? Better than nothin’!

I have no idea where June and July went! Full of storms, damage, and woes… it was certainly highlighted with the birth of our first grandchild! I’ve got to get busy because I am not nearly prepared for our upcoming school year! Just checking things off as we go along~ that’s all I can do at this point!

Thank You Lord for our garden! 

Our harvest has begun! The Lord has truly blessed us during all of this CHAOS through our garden! Everything except the corn weathered the storm unharmed! We are just going to leave the corn lying because it still looks good and try to harvest what we can~ Here is what we got yesterday… do I smell fried corn and okra/corn succotash?!?

And here is the rest: YUMMY

The kids harvested so many baby carrots! And they are yummy! I have purple fingers from shelling purplehull peas…. but it is so nice to have them all winter long!

So, I am praising God today for blessing and protecting our garden!

We have been powerless in more ways than one for the past 2-1/2 days!! We lost our power around 1am on Tuesday due to a “terrible” storm that rolled through central Indiana! Storms do not bother me, on the contrary, I usually really enjoy storms… but I was shaken from my sleep by a storm that really did have me SCARED! By the time it was over, we could see with our flashlight that trees were down everywhere… one right next to our neighbors bedroom so we ventured out in the lightening and aftermath with flashlights to make sure it had not hit their house and have them trapped.

After we got outside, we discovered that most of our neighbors were out donned with flashlights to survey the damage… all of the power lines on our street were twisted and mangled in a mass of trees so thick that you couldn’t see through them… We saw more neighbors that night than we’ve seen in months! Everyone working together to try and clear what could be cleared from the road… since we were blocked in from both ends of our street… according to the authorities some of the gusts were clocked at 86 miles per hour!!

Tuesday morning we got up to survey the damage without the strobe light effects from the lightening the night before! We found a broken window, siding off of the house, shingles/leaking in our bedroom, trees down, trampoline mangled, dog run damaged, corn in the garden flattened, and debris everywhere!!

The trampoline had been thrown north into our fence and bent it… then tossed back south into the yard, twisted and some of the legs were off.

***Sigh***

Thank God no one was hurt… none of the animals were hurt… but alot of us around here are still trying to recover from flood damage/mold problems…. and well…. you know what they say, when it rains, it POURS! For the first time in my life, my patience is really being tried… I’ve ALWAYS been a positive person… but I’m beginning to reel from all of the problems we’ve had since May… and they still seem to continue. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m suppose to stay here and stay positive or if God is wondering how many times he has to continue before we get the message and pack up to leave?!?

In the end, I still feel powerless with all of the ups and downs we have experienced… Larry still has no leads jobwise… we FINALLY got the central A/C fixed, but the refrigerator is still not working properly, the heating element in the oven quit working, now all of this damage on top of the fact that we still do not have all of the mold out of the basement! Also, there is no way we can get the paint that has just disappeared off of the hood of our van, just a couple of weeks after we payed it off fixed. (and I do mean like 1/4 of the hood!) Oh~ please pray that I find peace in this situation and learn to be patient for everything is in God’s timing… I know this already… but everything just keeps piling up and I’m at a loss.