After Masi & I were married, we knew right away that we were at a point in our life, when starting a family became a priority, rather than the distant future!  We we’re financially, mentally, & physically able, yet we knew that our families future was in God’s hands!  After two months of wedding bliss we were  one month into our pregnancy!  If God thinks we are ready, that means we are completely prepared RIGHT?  WRONG, way way WRONG!

It’s funny because no matter how ready we think we are to have kids, (or in our case……. MORE KIDS) there’s always something left unanticipated!  I seemed to have overlooked the fact that I will be extremely tired (while pregnant) all the time, & with a 10 month old practically walking all over the place it’s a lot more difficult than I thought it would be!  Now I am beginning to realize with an infant, & a one year old, I’m in for long days, & extremely long nights! I think those parental instincts kick in with just about everyone, but there is so much more that comes with being a parent!  I’m not even thinking of the physical changes your body endures, but more so the things that no one ever warns you about!  The realization that your life has become so much more valuable, the world so much crueler, & your child so vulnerable!  Becoming a parent, adds so much more responsibility on your day to day routines.  Jumping in your car, going to the store & being home to prepare dinner could have taken you half an hour pre-child.  With child:  Now after I’m ready, I make sure my son’s bag is ready just need extra diapers, clothes, or bottles.  I have to make sure Noah’s car seat is in safely, he’s buckled in tight (but not to tight)  & I have his blanket, & little things to keep him busy while running this (what use to be half an hour) arron.  Now I have a second child on the way I double that time, & double the diaper changes, double the tantrums; but what I can not dare leave out, you double the hugs, the smiles, & laughter!  Masi & I will never be prepared no matter how many kids we have, but I know where READY, for the challenges, & every obstacle that we have yet to face, we will conquer together!

Despite people telling us we’re crazy, Masi & I are ready for it!  I think we’ve come to realize that people will always find ways to put us down, or attempt to make us doubt ourselves but if God brings us to it, He’ll bring us through it!”   He has blessed us abundantly with our growing family!  I understand that at 25 years of age, I don’t know everything about life, about  love, & barley anything about raising children, we have to rely on the simple fact, that God has his plans for us, & with God on our side, our GROWING FAMILY will continue to be abundantly blessed!

Since I was 14 years old I’ve been designing houses for fun.  It all started when my dad was working for a log home building company and I fell in love with log houses.  The first house I designed had a huge prow-front and massive kitchen with the fridge on one side and the sink at the other side, with an island in between.  Lots of walking.  It had two lofts.  One was the master bedroom and one was a whatever room.  With a bridge between them and a spiral staircase in the middle.  They were both open to the floor below which meant you could see across from one to the other.  Hmm.  There was one other bedroom and no bathroom on the main floor.  And did I mention this house was about 2300 square feet?  LOTS of open floor space. LOTS of wasted space.  Cathedral ceilings.  Yeah, ridiculous.

I have since gotten a little better at designing houses for families instead of basketball teams, I hope.  I’ve amassed a binder full of sketches on graph paper and spanish and chemistry notes, most of which are trash, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of them since they’re a chronicle of my progress as a designer and I like to look back at how amazingly awful they were and what terrible rooms I visualized in my head while I was daydreaming in math class.

Sometimes in my dreams (at night) there’s a house that’s really cool and I try to look around at all the rooms while I’m there so I can remember it when I wake up.  I usually have to go through the house at least twice, but I start to wake up near the end of the second tour and then I have to make up the rest as I draw it out the next day.  They usually end up being mansions.

It is so much fun designing houses for people that if anybody asks me to draw one for them, I start asking them a zillion questions about what they like and what they visualize in their heads and put all the pieces together in my head, then fill in all the blanks as I draw it out, and I feel complete again.

Sometimes people ask me if I’ve drawn up my dream house.  I have to say no because there’s no way to design a house without seeing where it’s going first, unless you just want want to plunk a box down on the ground and call it home with no thought for views or sunlight or privacy or prevailing winds or landscaping.  I will design my dream house once I see where it’s going to be built.  Until then, I practice.

I’m not in too much of a hurry because I still can’t decide if I want round or square logs, and I have to resolve the chinking problem (to chink or not to chink…Darryl says no, I say maybe yes).  Then I see how cool straw bale houses look and I want to build one with round walls in some places and little surprise stairways and gardens.  And then I don’t know what to do.  So I practice designing strawbale houses too.  My MIL wants to build one in Saskatchewan so now I’m playing with designs for her.  Here’s a couple I did yesterday.

They are not to scale or anything but they’re designed for passive solar heating and protection from the cold north winds in Saskatchewan.  That nifty stone wall in the master bedroom (in both plans) would have hot water pipes from the stove or whatever other heating option is used so that the wall gives off heat.  Perfect for cold winter nights.  Both houses also have wraparound porches and roof overhangs to protect the walls from driving rain.

One thing I love about strawbale is its versatility.  You can make a curved wall wherever you want, and put a little diamond-shaped window in it, or embed some colourful glass bottles into it.  Walls can be fluid and irregular.  There doesn’t have to be any harsh corners or angles and you can create something that’s fun to live in as well as being functional.  I think having curved walls makes it feel like you’re living with nature instead of away from it since nature abhors a straight line and curves feel more soothing to the eye.  There’s nothing new age about it.  It just feels better to be in a house with curved walls.

There’s not many curves in these two houses because they’re designed to be easy to build, though I don’t know how easy the curved window walls would be, and I’m still practicing.  I’ll get bolder with house shapes as I play with more plans.

So there ya go.  If you’re wanting a beautiful home (or gymnasium) designed, write me with your wish list and I’ll see what I can do.  Don’t be surprised if I e-mail you back with an exhaustive list of questions.  It’s all part of the process.

There are two looming problems with arguing with people who hold or deny certain beliefs.  The first is that they misplace the burden of proof, not recognising their belief to be the one lacking in evidence as compared to one with overwhelming amounts of evidence.  The second stems from this, and I am frightened to see so much of it.  It is that science itself, as a rigorous method of inquiry, is treated as nothing more than a belief system, floating about, grounded on a guess.

Christianity and atheism are often represented as dichotomous belief structures.  If you are not a Christian, you are then some form of atheist, in the sense that you are a-theistic, though of course you may be agnostic or undecided.  Christians acknowledge that their belief structure was given to them in one handy volume, and accept certain fundamental beliefs such as the existence of God.  Their beliefs are a rigid structure, a skyrise, built on this foundation.  Christians peer out the windows of their mighty fortress and see an equally solid construction by the way–Atheism (with a capital A).  This is where you live if you don’t live in Christianity Tower.  Your beliefs are likewise built up on a foundation, most likely science, and you arbitrarily adhere to this set rather than the opposing set.

But atheism is not a tower.  Atheism is simply a handy name for the unwieldy phrase, ‘I do not accept your outlandish claims of theism.’  There is no second tower, only one tower or the absence of it.  Atheism does not make rigorous, dogmatic demands of those who borrow its name.  It is not a coherent system of beliefs which must be defended in the face of Christianity.  Those who call themselves atheists simply reject the claims of Christians (or theists in general).

Science is all about testing things repeatedly in order to get the most reliable and untainted evidence.  However, those who think that science is just the God of Atheism are inclined to think that any failing of science to do what it sets out to means that it is a failed belief system and must be rejected.  An inherent difference between science and religion is that science sets out to correct itself.  Though there may be underlying invariants in the world, science cannot always accurately account for them, but it never claimed to be anything other than a process for trying to determine such patterns.  Religion dictates patterns which ought never, by its own prescription, change.  And yet Christianity has been much revised in its two thousand years.

The Big Apple 30+ years ago! According to Wikipedia the history of New York City has seen a modest boom and a bust in the 1980s, followed by a major boom in the 1990s. So, we can now see the pictures of the city before its modern ‘golden era’.

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Everyone has their story about being evacuated during a forest fire.  Here’s mine.

This past summer, a forest fire started near our house.  The hot weather had set the forest fire hazard to “high”, though it should have been “extreme”.  Two kids had built a fire pit on their rural, treed property while their parents were out.  They were trying to play safe and put rocks around the fire, but it was windy and the fire blew to a nearby bush.  The fire department came and while they were there, the forest caught fire.

My husband and I were at home that day puttering (it was a saturday) when two or three people called saying they could see smoke on the hill near us.  We had heard that there was a fire near the mill (about 5 minutes away) that morning and that it was taken care of, but after the third call, Darryl and the neighbour hopped in the truck to go take a look.  We couldn’t even see smoke from our house.

Before he had even gotten back home yet, Darryl called and told me to start packing.  While he drove home and started loading the camper onto the truck, I packed our important papers, a duffel bag for Sadie and one for us, then started hauling everything else I thought we should keep to the door.  I also got a hold of a friend who came and picked up my horse just in case we were evacuated.  Before Darryl was finished loading the camper, I was loading the 4-runner with everything I could carry.  Darryl topped up the water tank and threw a bunch of smaller tools on the bed in the camper.  We managed to get one of his knack boxes and the bulkier tools like the compressor and chop saw and my saddle onto an old, homebuilt, unlicensed trailer hitched to the 4-runner.

We knew we’d be evacuated just because of our location and our proximity to the fire; it was only a matter of time.  We live on ten treed acres surrounded by other treed acreges and near crown land.  We felt hopeful though because the wind was blowing away from us down the hill towards town, and the wind never blows that way.

After two hours of packing, the police showed up to let us know he was risking his life to be there and he waited while we were putting the finishing touches on packing.  I packed some canned food into a tote and loaded Sadie into the truck, and then he left.  We spent another 20 minutes on the finishing touches.  After all, we couldn’t leave the chickens with no water or drive away without tying down tools.

We had 23 broiler chickens in an apple box on the porch, so we topped up their food and water, and let the laying hens out with lots of water.  I think I gave the garden a quick soak.  It was hot that day.

It was almost exciting because we both function well in emergency situations, and we weren’t worried about our house being burned.  We were running on a bit of adrenaline but we were still fairly calm.

There were two ways out of our area.  One was the direct route into town through five minutes of suburbs, and the other was a long roundabout route through the mountains on gravel forestry roads that would have taken at least an hour.  We chose the first partly because we didn’t realize how choked up it would get and partly because we didn’t have a lot of gas in the 4-runner or spare tires for either vehicle.

That may not have been the best choice.  Traffic was quite light and moving well until we were about a minute from the highway that took us into town, when we were turned around by a roadblock that had just been set up.  The fire was almost to the main road out of there.  We were forced to follow the flock through winding back roads stopped up with traffic the whole way.  We idled past several homes where the inhabitants were standing in the driveway taking pictures of the fire only a kilometre upwind of them!  Others were playing with their kids in the driveway.  Some were casually loading a few things in their cars.  Maybe they thought it was only the houses above them that were on evac, even though it was all over the radio.

What should have taken maybe ten minutes took 45.  And that was after the police opened up both sides of the street to head out.  We leapfrogged down the road with a family riding and leading out 5 or 6 horses.   I would have handed them water if other people hadn’t already.  They looked HOT!  I felt so bad for the people who had to lead horses out because they couldn’t take anything else with them.  It was either their horses or their junk.  Okay, it’s important junk.  But any horse owner would take the horse before junk.  What I didn’t understand was why they didn’t put the tack on their horses.  A lot of them were riding bareback.  If they had a saddle they could at least tie stuff to it.  It only takes a couple minutes to put a saddle on when you’re in a hurry.  The horse doesn’t have to be shined up for a show.  Anyway, that’s my little rabbit trail.  I would have tied Banner to the bumper if he didn’t have a ride out.

We were planning to stop at the gas station on the way through town, but traffic was being directed around town.  The gas stations were all evacuated.  We passed my friend who hauled my horse away heading back the way we came (they hauled lots of horses that day), but I think they were stuck in town since the highway to their place was closed.  We met up at my parent’s house near the lake, but the wind was blowing smoke from the fire right through the neighbourhood.  The doors and windows were all open and fans were going so there was smoke all through the house.  Darryl mentioned that he’d repainted a lot of houses that were smoke damaged after another forest fire, so the house was shut up after that even though it was stifling hot.  We didn’t stay long and were headed to my sister’s house when my parents got the word that they had to leave.  They had already packed a bunch of stuff, but my dad had to go to work at the hospital so my brother helped mom pack up the van.  Luke packed almost everything he owned into his truck.  He didn’t own very much.

We left the 4-runner at my sister’s house and went to register.  The line up went over halfway around the arena but we found that we moved along pretty quick.  We snagged a flat of bottled water on the way out.

My memory of everything that happened after that is starting to blur.  We met up with a family from church that was staying in their nice camping trailer.  We camped in the church parking lot overnight and were still late for church the next morning.  The bunch of us were invited to people’s houses for meals so we didn’t have to try to cook anything in our camper.  That was nice cause there was so much stuff that we had to keep moving it around whenever we had to drive somewhere.  We managed to get a police escort up to the house that afternoon so we could water our chickens, but it was the only time that happened.

The next night our friends stayed at a (very expensive) campground down by the lake and we parked at a friend’s house overnight so we could plug the camper in.  We also left our trailer there where it would be safe.  Darryl found out they were handing out vouchers so he went to get some.  We ended up with about $450 for clothing and incidentals and another $150 for food.  Mom gave us what was left of their food voucher and we piled a cart with $250 worth of non-perishable food that we used to stock the camper in case we were evacuated again.  We ate a little bit of it.  We spent a few hours in Walmart buying clothing that we’d been needing anyway.  And some that we didn’t need.  The racks were pretty bare by then though.  The SPCA was allowed up past the police lines to look after animals that were left behind, so they watered the chickens for us with water we sent up for them cause the power was off.

The radio was saying that some people may be allowed back home early the next morning, but we followed our friends out to Winfield to stay with one of their friends.  Darryl thought it was nice to be away from all the fire talk and smoke, but I would have rather stayed in town as long as we didn’t have to move again.  Nobody watered or fed our chickens.  No one was allowed.

Sure enough, the next morning our friends were allowed back home but we weren’t, so we stayed at their house.  For the next two days.  The poor chickens did get watered and fed again but I’m not at liberty to say how.

We finally got home after 5 days of traipsing all over town and staying at different places every night like squatters.  It was kind of like an impromptu camping trip without the lazy, do-nothing-all-day-except-eat part.  It was nice to be back.  Except not.  The “gate” to my garden had somehow gotten knocked over and kept the laying hens happy while we were gone.  My turnips, peppers, and beans were almost completely wiped out, and the onions were so trampled I hardly had any survive.  Everything was in dire need of watering.  Somehow everything came back and I got a big pile of turnips, only then I realized what I really wanted was rutabagas.  These turnips tasted like radishes.  I think that little stint of no water finished the corn.  The one cob that didn’t go mouldy was about two inches long and almost two inches across.  Short and stubby.

Unpacking wasn’t so fun either.

But that fire only took three homes.  If the wind had been blowing the direction it normally does, I think there would have been more homes lost.  And it was good that it started on a saturday when most people were home.  Even still, there were a few that couldn’t get home in time and had only the clothes on their backs.

Another fire started at the other end of town but in a more remote location.  It threatened a few homes but didn’t take any.  Then another one started a ways from town and ended up being a tough one to put out because of the terrain.  There were no roads out there and it was windy.  That one took the longest to put out.

What we learned:

-Keep gas tanks topped up (not always possible but a good idea)

-Keep extra fuel in jerry cans

-Keep non-perishable food in the camper

-Keep important papers together

-Have a backup plan for getting out

-Know where you’re going

-Think twice about following the crowd (we heard from a friend that some guy was telling everyone stuck in traffic to abandon their vehicles and run cause they were all going to get burned.  That kind of thing inspires panic…something you don’t want to be caught in the middle of)

-Keep spare tires in the vehicles

-Handheld radios would come in handy (they were at home)

-The police lines are NOT effective at night

-God can turn any situation into something good (we needed clothing and food and dog food and gas money before the evacuation and we wouldn’t have gotten it if we hadn’t been evacuated)

Hello again!  No, our internet is still down.  I’m writing this from my parent’s computer with no furniture in the room.  They’re packing up the moving truck today and they’re leaving tomorrow for Prince Edward Island.

I’m supposed to be helping them pack right now.

But Sadie is stirring so I might have to look after her instead.  Oh darn.

We should be getting our new Macbooks today.  My dad bought one for each of us so we can keep in touch with webcams.  The first thing I’ll be doing is cracking open the manual.  These things are complicated when you’re used to PC’s.  I think I’ll miss having a right click button.  So easy to find stuff that way.  I always spend ten minutes trying to figure out how to unplug my camera when I download photos on a mac.  Still haven’t figured out how to compress pictures for the internet.

Sigh.

We got a good frost last night and the snow line has dropped to a couple hundred meters above us.  I’m so glad we decided not to raise a third batch of chickens.  It was cold enough last weekend when we processed the second batch.  We had some friends come up to help us so it only took 5 hours instead of 10.

We got our second horse last week.  My aunt gave him to us!  I will be posting pictures when I can, and when the mud covering his white coat has dried off enough for me to scrape it off.

We haven’t seen the cat since he hid under the porch couch the first day we put him outside.  We gave away the rest of the cat food.

Well, I suppose I should get back to work.  I’ll update you again soon, I hope.

Oh I don’t feel all that well, so much for being a ‘healthy’ fat girl… huh? I have come down with strep, a realization that hit me when I was standing outside in the cold and the rain at school. I am going to the ER or Urgent Care today to get this fixed. Don’t feel so good.

Anyhow, why did I start this blog? To ’stick it to the man’ really. After all, how many of us girlie girl types have spent hours preparing for a date with a really cute guy only to be turned away because we aren’t ‘healthy’ I won’t lie, I L-O-V-E my burgers, but what are burgers? Food. And more lasting that a friggin salad I would wager. It never ceases to amaze me to see my little sister slip into her size 00 jeans after downing a big mac and chugging some beer with that. I would be so drooling over the fact that she can do that. Except I’m coming to understand what true health is. It’s actually kind of funny to me that men find her ‘healthy’ . But, I suppose it just goes to show that we live in a world focused on what you present to it visually.

This is not a man bashing site, sorry, didn’t mean to get off on a foot that makes it look like it is. I mean, I recently went out with a guy that sounded just like ‘moto/moto’ from the 2nd instalment of magagascar. Seriously when I asked him what made him decide to ask me out, the response was ‘Your big, I find big girls so hot!’ SHALLOW! Am I impossible to please? No, I suppose it’s better to have a man that loves you for who you are… even if he’s singing ‘I like em shunky!’ when he goes out with you. I suppose if you are skinny you should enjoy that many men thrive on this look. And if you aren’t enjoy the ones that like you for who you are.

But this isn’t about the people around us. This is about us. Because your man could say ‘I like you big dear’ and if you don’t like yourself that way, then who cares? Really who cares?

So, over the course of time in this blog, I’m going to share my journey to self acceptance… that is the kind of health I’m really focusing on here. I hope that I will inspire others to do accept themselves too. Even if I have to shake and shimee horribly in a video and practice a little Carmen Electra Strip arobics for you as well. “Put your finger in your mouth because that’s sexy!” I took a couple of pictures of that one, didn’t look too sexy to me. I looked like I was going to gag! This is going to be a great journey. I look forward to sharing it with you!

Mwaa, Kimmi!

Today @ 5:11pm Noah turned 6months old! I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be home & watch my son grow.  He’s rolling all over the place.  He can say Mama, Dadee, & Amma! He loves his vegetables (well everything except broccoli)!

Today Noah got his swine flu shot, I have been stressing over this supposed epidemic for months now!  Masi had to work so Me, Noah, Mom, Dad, & Nee stood in line from 11:00am-about 3p! NeeNee was amazing, he got the swine flu shot with Noah!  He wanted to make sure he was healthy so he can play with Noah!  He was such a big boy today!  I am so lucky he’s such an amazing little brother!   Noah did great considering, he was laughing until the poke, then cried for just a few seconds & started laughing again!  I went to Borders & bought him a bunch of books for his 1/2 birthday today! I still can’t believe he is half a year old!

My favorite thing he does is when he’s tired: he lays his head on my shoulders & grabs my fingers! So precious!  When Masi got home today he ate, played with Noah, and cleaned our messy room! I have such an AMAZING Husband! Noah’s taking a nap now, but later I think I’ll make a cake for him! Probably carrot, & who knows maybe I’ll let him even taste it today!

Masi & I thank GOD: for his continued blessings on our family!

This is what you need to be a driver: a license, registration, inspection, insurance. If you are pulled over and you lack one of these, you may be in trouble.

I have at various times not had all of those. I have had my license suspended, have had no insurance, have had improper plates, have not had a valid inspection sticker. I have been ticketed, been to court, been arrested.

Tomorrow morning I am going to bring my car to be inspected. I am not certain that it will pass. This will cost money. I have money saved, but there were so many things I may have wanted to do with it.

It never ends. It never ends.

Today the Yankees win game number 3 against the Angels and get one game closer to the world series. I met with the lakewood school district and had a great presentation. the students of Lakewood will benefit greatly from Vacamas programming. I sat in class with my wife and 30 other people while discussing social service policies that will some day serve the elderly and their families. i got the opportunity to role play a Social Worker attempting to help an older women with her problems after loosing her husband. My son spent the day at York college and played on my Laptop while waiting 2 1/2 hours for my wife and I to finish class. I felt my new baby to be kick for the first time. The last sonogram revealed that it will be a baby girl . these are just a few of the things that made me happy today. let’s see happens tomorow.