WELCOME BACK

to our

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK UP

Hey there everyone, welcome back to our Good Morning Mondays Link Up.

How has your week been?? I’m watching my northern hemisphere friends and their summer gardening and activities. It is cold and damp here and the last few days have been somewhat dreary and misty. The good side is that everything is lovely and green and just beautiful.

After I wrote  last week our no 1 daughter rang us and asked us to look after the children for a night as they wanted to finish cleaning up and finally be done moving. We were thrilled to have the children and it’s always great fun. It got rather chaotic around tea and bath time but we managed and the team of grandparents and uncle and aunt worked well.

They had a great time outside helping granddad with the animals and the fencing.

This week has been good and my husband got back to work for a few days. He is very tired and still getting himself back to where he was before his chest pains. He is still having pains on and off and we have an appointment this week with the heart specialist.

I think I may have told you we were doing a marriage course through our church and we’ve completed 2 weeks now. It’s always good to sit down and work on things even when they are going well. We’re being reminded about communication and what our spouses needs are and we get homework to do as well. There’s a range of couples in the group, some only married 6 months and some like us nearly 30 years.

I had our book group meeting this week and it was so nice to get back together with the ladies again. We are up to Strategy 4 – Our Family and this was an excellent chapter. My friends it’s all about SPECIFIC – FERVENT PRAYER. We are learning to move on from the basic “bless my husband/family” prayers to recognising specific needs and problems and addressing them and taking them to the Lord. If you haven’t read Fervent I would really encourage you to do so. Our next chapter is “Our Past” and we all groaned over that one, but it’ll be good, maybe painful but always good to change and grow.

On the farm our Saddleback sow had her piglets and delivered 10 little cuties. They came overnight and she didn’t need any assistance from us (they never do – God’s got that sorted). These little ones will be grown to weaning stage and then sold or maybe a couple might hit our freezer as well.We have also been blessed with some fish for our aquaponics system so the men have been working on getting that back on stream after a fire in the sump. It was a blessing that we didn’t lose the shed – thank you Lord.

We are waiting on cows to calve as well and we are really missing our fresh milk and I’m getting sick of buying it at the moment but they’ll come when they are ready.

We had the graduation of one of my husband’s Good 2 Great Father’s Course on Sunday and it is always good to see Fathers improving themselves and wanting to become better husbands and fathers and it’s wonderful to see the families grow closer together. We had the graduation during church and then shared a meal together. It was nice to meet some of the families as I didn’t know a couple of them before this.

Okay my friends onto our link up…

Our top three this week were…“What’s Wrong with Living Together?” – May 15 by Soul Survival a toast to the duke and duchess of sussex – the royal wedding we all needed by Magnolia Darjeeling Alabama Pot Roast – Slow & Pressure Cooker by The Bearded Hiker

Thank you everyone for stopping by and linking up, it’s always a blessing to me.

This coming week is a bit quieter and I’ve got a couple more days at home. We’ve got our Marriage Course and then a whole day out on Wednesday with Doctors and then singing and piano lessons. The eisteddfod is only a week away now so it’s full on practicing for that.

Our no 1 daughter is going to accompany the children in their singing so we’ll get to see her and the children on Wednesday when they get together for a practice.

I’ve still got apples to bottle so I’ll be working on that when I’m home and I’m hoping to get my garlic planted this week and get on top of some weeding in the vegetable garden. The winter veg are growing nicely but I’d like to get some more seeds in this week.

A reminder to us all to be strategic and fervent in our prayer life.

Okay my friends that’s it for this week and I’m looking forward to hearing how you have all been.

Have a great week!!!

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings my friends xxxx

WELCOME BACK

to our

GOOD MORNING MONDAYS LINK UP

Hey there my friends, it’s good to be back and I hope you are all doing well.

Sorry about not being around last week but we had a rather full on week to deal with and by the weekend I just couldn’t get my head around doing the link up.

Last Monday morning my husband was driving to work and had to stop because he was having crushing chest pains. Thankfully he was only 10 kms from home so he rang me and then rang an ambulance and the children and I went to wait with him.

He’s never had this pain before and it was pretty full on so the ambulance took him to our local hospital and checked him out. Thankfully nothing was showing up on his blood tests or the ECG’s which meant that no damage was being done to his heart. The pains and shortness of breath continued throughout the next couple of days and finally on Wednesday they decided to send him to a bigger hospital a couple of hours away where they would give him an angiogram to see what was going on.The angiogram was carried out first thing on Thursday morning and came back clear – there is nothing wrong with his heart.  Praise God all was clear and he was home that night.

That of course is the shortened version, let’s just say that my husband came to the point where he didn’t think he would ever come home, see our younger two grow up or see our no 1 son married. He thought that he wouldn’t see our no 1 daughter and son-in-law and their children again or meet the new one due in August either.

I guess he gave everything that is important to him up, he was at a place where he realised that all he had was Jesus  and nothing else. There was nothing he could do to stop or help what was happening – he was helpless.

There were many prayers prayed and many prayers answered and I personally feel like I have been given an amazing gift and never want to lose the feeling of gratefulness that I have now.

Grateful to God that He has left my husband here with us, grateful that our wonderful family pulled together in a very difficult situation. Grateful that our older daughter and our wonderful son-in-law care so much for their younger siblings that they could look after them for us. Grateful to our no 1 son who cared for me and drove me to Geelong and picked up the slack here at home whilst we were away. Grateful for an amazing church family that surrounded us with love, prayers and support and still continue to do so.

I have so many things to be grateful for and I guess I am extremely grateful that God brought my husband to a place where he could only rely on Him, and it has made him even more committed to leading his family in God’s ways and teaching them to totally rely on Him.

There has been talk of the heart issue being a spiritual attack and of the outcome being a mighty healing – God only knows but I know that He was definitely in charge of the whole situation and was working it out to our better good and my husband has come out stronger and closer to God – what an outcome.

I must admit I had my times during the week, especially when I had taken the children home for a rest and I got called back in urgently because my husband was having another attack and wanted me there. That was the toughest trip in I’ve ever had and I am suffering separation anxiety but that is improving. I have a great desire to spend every moment with my husband holding his hand, but each day it is getting easier.

He is still tired and is working on building up his strength again. He is having more tests and they have now found that he has gallstones so he has done a flush and passed quite a few, and he amazed the doctor that you could even do that. He will do another one in a couple of weeks and get another scan.

They still aren’t ruling out his heart due to the pain that he had on the Monday – that definitely wasn’t gallstones, but both of us don’t want to discount what God did for him that week with giving him a clear angiogram.

We are taking each day at a time and loving each other even more than what we did two weeks ago and getting back to doing what we were before all this happened but with a greater appreciation of God’s plan for our lives, for each other and our family.

I won’t do a top three this week but it’ll be back next week.

This coming week we’ll be trying to get back to normal, with work and school.

The eisteddfod is only 2 weeks away now so it’s all on practicing for that. The children are working hard with their piano and their singing.

My husband and I are doing a marriage course and we’ve got the 2nd session this week. I think it’ll be a really good one and we even get homework to do, and we need to do “marriage time”.

The children have music lessons and we’ve got book group later in the week. We’re up to strategy 4 – our family and it’s a good section. I’m looking forward to meeting up with the girls again to see what they took from it.

Okay my friends that’s it for this week and I’m looking forward to hearing how you have all been.

Have a great week!!!

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings my friends xxxx

We are always on the lookout for roadside apples that have some characteristic that we like so that we can use them to graft onto root stock. This tree is a very late season one and the apples were very tasty so it gets a tick all round.

We got to spend some time with our son-in-law, no 1 daughter and their children this week and we were able to help them move a couple of loads to their new home. This coming week will be the big move but it was nice to get some stuff gone for them, and it was also great to see the children and have heaps of cuddles.
This is our grandson and he is almost 3 and a real wag, such a joy to have around. He’s really started to interact with us lately and sat with me for ages the other day just putting his cold little hands on my cheeks and then laughing his head off when I reacted – so cute.

I managed to get my seedlings in the ground too and we had some rain which has been lovely. The air is definitely cooler and it won’t be long and we’ll be starting the wood stove to keep us warm. I’ve got broccoli, cauliflowers, cabbages, lettuces and beetroots in the ground now and snow peas and garlic to get in next week.

I really like the winter vegetable garden because we all like the brassicas that we can grow this time of year. We can’t grow them in summer because the cabbage moth love them and just about destroy them, so we don’t bother now.

The children had their Bible class and I was able to meet up with my friend to read and study our Bible together. We were in 1st Corinthians this week and it led to a very interesting discussion.

Saturday was piano lessons and my husband bought me a new chair for the lounge room. It’s sort of like a club chair and it’s very comfy and my feet actually touch the ground. We brought it home in the boot of the car, it was an interesting load but my husband is most amazing so it made it home in good condition.

Our local wool shop was having it’s final closing down sale and I managed to grab a bit more wool for sock making. I’ve never seen so many people in that store at one time, it was amazing and everyone was out for a bargain and we definitely got one.

Sunday there was a luncheon at our church which is always the first Sunday of the month. We always enjoy these Sundays as we get time to fellowship with our friends and church family.

Okay onto our link up…

Our top three this week were…Backyard Blooms by Penny’s Vintage Home What I Wish I Knew Before I Became A Work At Home Mom by Mama Finds Her Way
Living in the Light by Dr Michelle Bengtson, Hope Prevails

Thank you everyone for stopping by and linking up, I hope you enjoyed your visit and learnt something new.

This week is going to be equally as busy as the last one, actually all of May is kinda crazy, so I’m hanging on until after the Eisteddfod. Really I should be enjoying every moment, and I am, I’m just more of a homebody than an outbody but I’ll get there.

We’ve got the usual singing lessons this week due to cancelling last week. Wednesday is big moving day for our daughter so we’ll be up helping them. I’m so excited that they are moving closer to us and I’m looking forward to spending more time with them and the children.

We’ve also got our book club this week and were up to Strategy 4 – our family, it should be a good get together. The children also have their usual Bible study and I’m meeting with my friend again.

We’ve got a steer to hang up at the end of the week for our bi-annual butchery day the following week. We worked it really well last time and I’m almost out of meat and I’ve been scrounging off our daughter as they had more left. It’s such a great system for us.

Our no 2 daughter and myself have a market next Saturday morning, so that should be good and there’ll be heaps of friends to catch up with during that, and then it’s chill out time and next Sunday is Mother’s Day, so I’m looking forward to being pampered and lavished upon ;-).

I can’t remember if I’ve told you but I’m doing a Koinonia Institute course at the moment and we’re up to Revelation. I’m finding it very interesting and understanding more and more of the end times, though I’ll never get it all. Dr Charles Missler passed away this week and our family has been blessed by his teaching and I always liked that he said “don’t just listen to what I say but search the scriptures for yourself”, such sound advice.

Have a great week!!!