Extra in The Ordinary

This last week was memorable in a lot of ways, but the thing I remember and treasure the most was gazing on the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen. It was an especially meaningful rainbow because of the events that surrounded it.  This special rainbow appeared in the early evening sky, seemingly magically, on our way to Wednesday night Bible class on one of the saddest days I've had in a long time . Earlier that day I got a call from my husband at about 2pm. I knew something was wrong. I had just seen him on his lunch break, and he wouldn't call unless something was wrong. He told me that our friend at church, Emily, had died unexpectedly. She was only 32 and left behind a husband that loved her dearly and 3 precious small boys. She was also beautiful, super smart, successful, and loving and caring. She was the type of person you want to get to know better, and I had fully intended on getting to know her better. But I never got the chance. I waited too long. The w...

My husband has been wanting a German Short Haired Pointer for YEARS. He backpacks and wanted a dog that could take the long hikes in stride. He waited. We saved. We planned secretly, and then here she is. Meet Zelda.  He texted me mid morning with a super cute series of pictures of GSP female pups. He said he MIGHT go look at puppies after work, even though we were pretty sure we still wanted to wait a couple of months to bring a new puppy home. I said I was fine with it. We were just looking. However, I knew that once he saw these pups he'd be in love, and I was ok with that. There's just something about a new puppy suprise. Kids need them at least a few times in their lives. Moms need them. Dads need them. Yes, dad needed one. He was running super late coming home from work so I called to check on him. He says, "we are having trouble getting her to come into the car". Yep, he bought a pup. "She" is definitely the new GSP baby. What was my reaction? ...

If you live in Houston and have a fourth grader in homeschool, you need to read this. Taste of Texas (the restaurant) gives a tour and history lesson free to fourth graders. Mostly it's private schools that take advantage, but they also open it up to home schoolers. It was well worth our time and very inspirational for us. Nina and Edd Hendee are the owners of Taste of Texas, and they hosted the tour. I love that they do the tour themselves and they don't delegate it to one of their managers. We went of February 15, and both owners were at the restaurant bright and early the next morning with stories of a very busy Valentines night the evening before. Nina says she comes every morning at 7:30 to walk around the building and pray over it. She also kissed her husband in front of all the kids. They were super sweet to each other despite being busy and stressed.  Nina Hendee is a Texas history relic collector. The Taste of Texas restaurant is basically a museum; I don't...

After years of living with the usual debts (school loans, car loans, credit cards, etc), but working towards paying them off..... for the past 7 years....we finally paid them off. We are debt free!! Yes, Dave Ramsey was our initial inspiration (we read the book and listened to the radio show). And then the others that have worked towards being debt free became our inspiration. Especially stories of people being able to pay all of their debts despite hardships like being a single mom, cancer, loss of jobs, etc. They thing they all had in common was focus and determination. We knew that if they could do it, we could do it too!  I'm not sure why it took so long, other than we decided to do it our own way and parts of it took longer than they should have, but what matters is that we did it. We did it even though it wasn't easy, and it wasn't convenient. It wasn't fun and it wasn't fashionable, but it DID bring us closer together as a couple and has reduced our s...

I've always been a "career woman". I love working and love business. This was good for our family to help us get to a certain point financially because I needed to be a co-provider.... But then.... The girls were getting older (9 and 12), and we had just paid off most of our bills (all but the house). I got a text from my husband in the middle of the work day letting me know that we had reached our goal and could operate with a single income pretty easily if we wanted to. Wow, then I had a decision to make.  The first decision was  going part time or staying home completely? I decided to only stay home completely if I homeschooled . Otherwise I'd rather have a part time job to stay productive.  The only thing I can say is that I had a sense that these girls were going to be out of the house before we knew it, and my memories with them would be limited to 6-9pm on weekdays and the weekends. I just felt like we needed more time together. I also have a pretty clea...

Punkin' prayed for snow. Her homeschool lesson mentioned snow in Africa, on Mount Kenya (which was unheard of), so that gave her hope.  She watched White Christmas (twice) and decided to stay positive. When the weather mentioned a 10% chance, she just KNEW it would happen. And it did!! Friday December 8th...snow in Houston! She stayed up until 11pm watching it fall then woke up at 3am to look at the blanket of white. She was in it making snow balls and playing with IPK (big sister) by 5am. I helped them make a snow man AFTER I had a full cup of coffee in me. Geez- these kids wake up early when they are excited!! This is the 6am shot...just to show that there really was a slight blanket of white! :)

My family and I live in Houston and we just went through one of the most traumatic events of our lives: Hurricane Harvey. After such a historic, stressful natural disaster, it's common to experience adrenal fatigue and post storm stress disorder (anger, depression, nightmares, jumpiness, anxiety, tiredness). Yes, the levels to which we are effected will vary, but EVERYONE in Houston was/is effected in some way. I'm a trained nutritionist and vitamin expert, so I need to share with you a few things you can do this week for you and your family as you recover: 1) Hydrate. Go for about 1 gallon of water per day per adult.  Our beverages of choice for the past week have been coffee, coffee, and....energy drinks? This is one of the reasons we are at risk for adrenal fatigue right now. It's time to let our adrenals recover. Hydrate first thing in the morning. If you need to have 1-2 cups of coffee, try half cafe or decaf. Later in the day if you feel tired and want more caffe...