Delicious, easy, vegan pumpkin pie!

Getting ready for thanksgiving tonight and had to find a new recipe for my vegan pumpkin pie, as the tofu based recipe I have been using the last few years just never does the trick. Thankfully, each year I bake this pie I am a little more experienced with vegan baking- so this year I knew it was the tofu I really needed to do without and to seek a better binding ingredient. I based this recipe off of an almost identical one I found on a Mothering.com message board. I doubled it and my hubby and I dug into the first pie tonight. WE LOVED IT. This is one for our family cook book.

1 14oz can pumpkin
1/2 cup "milk" - soy or whatever
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp vanilla extract

9" pie crust

Preheat oven to 375.Put all filling ingredients in food processor. Blend until smooth. Dump filling into crust. Bake 40-45 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Caring for a recovering husband- how domestic!

This week has been a blur!! Not entirely what one would recognize as being terribly domestic if they came and looked at my home! On the contrary, the house is a wreck, there are dishes sitting needing to be done and laundry waiting to be washed. I would actually be mortified if somebody could see my bathroom right now!

That said, By goodness have I been busy at work being a loving wife this week. I mentioned my husband had to have major ear surgery. Praise God that went well! It ended up being less invasive than they thought. However, the recovery has been MUCH harder than they had anticipated and much harder than we had prepared for! My poor husband has been completely incapable of self care this past week. He has needed help with EVERYTHING. Obviously changing his dressing and such but also ever time he needed a drink, to get food, etc. The first several nights we were up every 2-4 hours. I was EXHAUSTED!!! I guess that is what it will be like to have a baby! He needed medicine, comfort, water, you name it. He has basically be bed-bound, he hasn't even been able to shower yet.

Today was the first time he left the house and that was only because I had to take him to the hospital because we were concerned he had an infection (he doesn't!) We went to the VA hospital and they gave him a cane, because he is having a hard time walking due to the balance issues caused by working on his ear.

I've really felt for my poor baby. He is normally so strong and independent. Its sad to see him so weak and DEPENDENT. I've been really stretched thin this week, but you know what? I would not trade the opportunity to take care of my husband when he is ill for ANYTHING. It is such a blessing to be able to be here with him and to *know* he is being taken care of. He finally seems to be getting better today and that is a huge blessing too. :-) 

If you pray please!

So, my husband has to have major ear surgery on Thursday. They are going to basically disconnect the back of his ear and pull it forward and drill into the skull behind the ear in order to reach his middle ear. They will probably replace the three tiny bones inside the ear and they are also going to take a graph from his earlobe and turn it into a new eardrum. :-( We are both really nervous. If he doesn't have the surgery he will most likely go deaf. He already has substantial hearing loss and that is hard to cope with sometimes. He will also continue to get really terrible double ear infections throughout the winter, as he did last winter. So please pray for that. Thank you!

Sushi on the Cheap

Picking the fillings, the fun part!

You know what I LOVE about summer? The tons and tons of fresh veggies!!! You know how I love to eat my veggies besides a delectable salad? As sushi! So, sushi is so easy to make its not even funny. It's also extremely thrifty if you buy the ingredients at the right place. I buy the sheets of nori at the local Asian grocery store, if you don't need to read labels to check for milk (or if you speak whatever language is printed on the packaging) you can also buy your wasabi paste or powder there. I got 50 sheets of nori for about 5 bucks which was much, much cheaper than Whole Foods Market or the regular grocery store and it stores well enough that I can keep those sheets for a long time to use them all up. Oh, if you don't already have soy sauce and brown rice vinegar you might pick them up at the Asian market too as they will be much cheaper. If you don't care about organic- feel free to buy your rice and or veggies at the Asian market too. I prefer organic so I get mine form the garden, the farmers market or a grocery store that sells organic (obviously the last option is the most expensive.)

Carefully rolling the sushi into logs first. Leave each roll
as a log for several minutes before cutting into bite size pieces.

I prefer brown rice- but a lot of people like sushi rice. Sushi rice is stickier but I also think it taste way too sweet for my pallet. I invite you to use a recipe off line but basically all I did was cook my brown rice in the rice cooker with a little more water than usual. I was making two servings so I needed to have at least two cups prepared (plan one cup per person.) I'm notoriously atrocious at exercising the self discipline necessary to follow real directions and instead read several recipes and then adjust them to what I have in my pantry. So I mixed the two cups of prepared brown rice with 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Tossed it and let it sit in the fridge while I sliced up the veggies. This particular day I stuffed them with lettuce, julienne sliced carrots, cucumber, avocado and mango. Hubby also put some sumari (fake crab) in his that we picked up very cheap in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. And I marinated and pan tossed some tofu for mine. I recommend watching a video on youtube about how to stuff and roll the sushi. Its not an easy thing to describe and much easier to show. I really liked this girls video, had all the details I needed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgw0ODfWSOs

My knife was really not sharp enough to make clean cuts...
and I cant figure out how to flip this picture!

My husband loved these- but he enjoyed watching me make them almost as much! We served them with the wasabi and soy sauce, it was great and so so much cheaper then buying them out. Perfect for a hot day and a good finger food for parties- just plan on making it a few times for yourself before you attempt to make a party debut as there is a learning curve to rolling and slicing them. I'd recommend a sharp knife!

What do large families do "in case..." ?

So, my hearts desire is to have a large family one day....maybe 6-8 kids. I wouldn't be unhappy if I ended up with 11!! But Mike says "no, absolutely not" and argues with 6 being too many...well, we already agreed BEFORE we got married to plan for six and then renegotiate to see if we think we can handle more once the first six are here...

So I am a planner and even though we don't have a single child YET, I'd like to know what our plan is if we ever  passed on while the majority of our children are still minors. My parents had 4 children and the plan was for us to either go and live with my (then single, no children) aunt or possibly a family friend who already had many children and would probably be capable of parenting us...however they never PREPARED for that so its a darn good thing nothing ever happened.

So I have thought about this and I know it will likely change over the years as our family grows and as our needs change and as my potential named guardians lives change... All biological parents (grand parents) are out for various reasons. There is a sibling or two between the two of us that I would consider placing my children with, but I know none of those siblings want to parent a lot of children....I want our children to be raised by an active Protestant with similar values. That leaves like one person. I have a dear friend who I would consider, but not sure her husband would ever agree to it...

We plan on taking out substantial life insurance once we have children, "just in case." And I know that nay adoption subsidies we had would be transferred to the other family/person. Also any money/resources we had would be left to that family or a trust for the children or whatever...But Im wondering if its even practical to think 6+ children could all be placed with a single family, So my question, do other large families prepare for this? And if so, HOW? Is there a plan to separate the children, and if so how (biological, birth order or roles played by each child, genders, etc.?) Its very hard for me to consider that it would EVER be beneficial  to separate children, especially after they have gone through a traumatic loss (like their parents dying.) The whole reason I first started WANTING to do foster care was to keep sibling groups together. But I realize there comes a time when whats ideal and whats possible sometimes divorce. :-(

Ultimately, solving this issue is not essential for us to start and keep building our family. I trust that God is in control and he WILL provide answers as they are needed. (Its going to take several years before we have that many kids and if we died when we only had 2 or something there are tons of people I would consider...) So we may meet "the perfect" family one day for that role. And I hope and pray my husband and I will get to parent our children until they are adults (minimally.) But, just because we are "on Gods team" doesn't mean things CANNOT happen to us. I heard a of a Christian family with 12 children where the mother and father passed. Unfortunately they HAD NOT named a guardian or gotten insurance because they were "trusting God." So their children were split up into a number of different homes of relatives/friends some of whom DID NOT share their same beliefs. I think that is sad.

"I could never love a child I could lose"

Well, I wasn't sure what to title this, and I may well change it before I publish this- but yes, it’s true...all our children are just temporarily here.

I have known I wanted to be a foster parent for as long as I can remember- I suppose as soon as I realized that one could adopt a child that wasn’t a baby; that there were not-yet-grown boys and girls in the world who needed a mommy to love them for a while, either until their own mommy could get things together or until forever, if need be. I’ve been increasingly vocal about my goal since Jr. High and over and over again I have heard:

“Oh I could never love a child I knew I could lose.”

I’ve heard this line from many well-meaning people. People who have adopted all their children and who would love nothing more than to be able to adopt more but cannot afford another international adoption. People who claim to want “as many children as the Lord provides,” yet somehow overlook the charge in James 1:27 that says “pure and simple religion is to look after orphans.” People who have raised wonderful, caring children but can’t consider even one more. And of course people like myself who haven’t parented any children yet- biological or otherwise. It’s a really common belief- that one couldn’t love a child knowing they could lose him or her.

Today as I was driving home from work in my mini-van I glanced up in my rearview mirror and for a moment got an excited flutter in my tummy as I imagine, for a split second, the day (in the hopefully not-too-distant future) that I would glance back there and see a precious foster child or two (okay, I may have automatically imagine as many as three or four) sleeping in their car seats and boosters. As I focused my attention back on the road my mind wandered to what I would say when I’m out in public with my batch of kids (some foster, some adopted, some biological) to the question I’ve heard so many foster parents bring up on message boards “Are they all yours?” My first thought is usually “Yes- at least for today” because I already know that even my “temporary” children will be loved fiercely by me- and I know I will want to claim them as my own. But something else about my knee-jerk response caught my attention tonight…

If I am blessed with biological children- that answer of “Yes, at least for today,” could just as easily indicate that one of THEM will not be with me the next day. A child can be called home to Jesus at any time in their lives. As a matter of fact- a more appropriate answer to the question, “Are they all yours?” would be “No, they are all God’s.” Even the biological ones are only here on “loan.”

A friend of mine died when she was just 16. She was killed in random gang violence on her way home from church. Becky’s parents placed a poem in the memorial program handed out at her funeral. It read:


I'll Lend You a Child
by Edgar Guest

"I'll lend you for a little time a child of mine,"  He said.
For you to love - while he lives
And mourn for when he's dead.
It may be six or seven years
Or twenty-two or three,
But will you, till I call him back,
Take care or him for Me?
He'll bring his smiles to gladden you,
And should this stay be brief
You'll have his lovely memories as solace for your grief.
I cannot promise he will stay,
Since all from earth return,
But there are lessons taught down there
I want this child to learn.
I've looked this world over
In search for teachers true,
And from the throngs that crowd
Life's lanes, I have selected you.
Now will you give him all your love,
Nor count the labor vain,
Nor hate Me when I come to call to
Take him back again?"
I fancied that I heard then say,
"Dear Lord, Thy will be done,
For all the joy Thy child shall bring,
The risk of grief we'll run.
We'll shelter him with tenderness,
We'll love him while we may,
And for the happiness we've known
Forever grateful stay.
But should the angels call for him
Much sooner than we've planned,
We'll brave the bitter grief that come
And try to understand."

You see, Becky’s parents didn’t KNOW they were going to lose her when she was just 16, but they recognized that she- like their other children were only promised to them on a moment to moment basis. Another friend of mine, Natalie, passed when she was in her early teens after a battle with bone marrow cancer. Her parents didn’t stop loving her the day they learned that there was a very real possibility that they would lose her. My friend B.D. has Cystic Fibrosis- her mother knew from the time she was an infant that her time with her daughter was going to be much shorter than she would like. But the option of not loving B.D. was never an option- it was really pretty automatic. If you asked her now, as B.D. is about to give her a first grandchild, if it was worth the risk- I bet you she would say yes a thousand times over. Another precious woman- whose blog I find so moving- only got to have her precious baby, Samuel, with her here on earth for the 9 months she carried him in her womb before he was called home unexpectedly. Her love for him is FIERCE, even though she only got to have him for just so long. Anyone who reads her blog knows that she is thankful she had those nine months with Samuel- I don’t believe she would have avoided loving him if she knew that’s all the time she would share with him here on earth and I would go so far as to assume that if she knew ahead of time what would happen in the end she would still have elected to spend at least that little bit of time with him.

My point in bringing all these VERY sad stories up is not to depress you. It’s to challenge the all-too-common idea that one could never love a child they might lose. If you love a child- then you ALREADY loving a child you could lose. By God's grace, everyone who is reading this blog entry will go on to glory BEFORE all their children here on earth. But loving somebody is ALWAYS taking a risk. And I believe it is one that is always worth taking when it concerns a child.

I recognize that foster care and adoption is NOT for everyone. I don’t assume that everyone who says that they know they cannot foster parent is wrong and/or selfish. There are sometimes valid reasons a person cannot  or should not foster. That’s okay and I am supportive of people who know that its not for them and respect them for knowing their limits. I just want to challenge anyone who thinks that they could never foster simply because they could never love a child they knew they could lose to rethink that idea. Could they? Could you?

One year Anniversary

Our one year anniversary was June 28th, only, I'm just now getting the chance to write about it! In short, It was amazing and I LOVE my husband!

A few days before the grand event, I knew DH had something special planned, only, he wouldn't tell me what it was!!! It didn't matter how I tried to guess or bribe, he was not letting any clues slip. So the morning of, we exchanged little gifts with each other. Since we had decided to buy a canoe as out "official first anniversary present" we limited it to 10 bucks....we both ended up getting each other a coffee cup of some sort. Hehe. He'd spotted a batman mug a while back that he mentioned he liked and I wanted a travel thermos cup (the sort that look disposable but aren't And we just hung out at the apartment for a while, taking a slow morning, having fun together.

It wasn't time to go to the surprise date yet, so we went to the book store, which is our favorite hang-out and looked at books (this is because we are insanely cool and interesting people!) and drank coffee. I had this excited giddy feeling in my tummy. Its so fun to just hang out with my hubby and so fun also to think "a year ago today..." sort of thoughts.

Finally DH told me it was time to go to the surprise date! We got in the car and started driving...we got on the highway...and after a few minutes, I saw a familiar bridge! I knew where this man was taking me, why to the best Vegan Restaurant in the world of course! Not just any vegan restaurant, BUT the restaurant where we had our first date :-D It turns out, that he had even made reservations for us!!! It was so special. We hardly ever go out to eat and when we do, we usually split a meal to cut down on costs (strangely enough, that is usually plenty of food!) but today we decided to go all out and not only each get our own meal, but an appetizer too. The food was sooo good! We sat either at or near the table we had for our first date there. We couldn't remember for sure because we hadn't been back there since cus its kinda pricey...anyways, it was fun to remissness about our dating months while we enjoyed our first anniversary meal together. :)

After that, we went and walked along the side of the lake, which was nice because we had the PERFECT weather, We were also enjoying planning what we were going to do with our canoe, where we were going to take it.

In the days that followed, we got our canoe and I made carrot cake because thats what we had at our reception, but were not able to save any for our first anniversary. It was kinda special! I don't know how we forgot to take any pictures for the event, but we did totally forget. haha. Here is a picture though of our new boat!  

Crazy-eager to start our family!!!

I have the WORST baby fever right now!!! I want to be pregnant, I want to have children, I want to cloth diaper their little bottoms and homeschool them and play with them all summer long. Sigh.

We are officially NOT trying- and trying to NOT. I know we are not ready for a baby right now. And we are not in the position to foster right now either. Neither of us have our degrees. We live in a one bedroom apartment with a commitment to remaining debt-free (That means we don't want to buy a house till we can pay for it.) We are not what I would describe as struggling, but money is tight and I don't even have health insurance right now and haven't for a year.

I used to get bad baby fever sometimes before I was married and it was relatively easy to ignore, or so far from a possibility that I felt content to just day-dream...but it is soooo hard now that I have a husband to ignore it!!! I find myself looking at the photo listing of waiting children on adoptuskids.org and wanting to pick up tons of kid/baby stuff to start our stash (which I have so far not done as we have very little space and it would probably get ruined before it was used anyways)

It does NOT help that like  6 of my close friends are expecting this fall/winter. Grrr!!

Okay, BUT, I am trying to appreciate all the things I can do right now in this season of my life that i will not be able to do in that season. I'm trying to focus on growing closer with my husband and with God so I can be the mother I one day hope to be. Im really TRYING to be patient. Its just so hard!

Thank God that REALLY eating healthy is so cheap!

My husband's income is tied directly to his school enrollment so the summer is a lean time for us. Unfortunately, this year we were hit with several maintenance costs on BOTH of our new (used) vehicles that we were not really anticipating. Breaks needed replacing in my van, all tires and break/similes and wheel assembly on the car needed to be rebuilt. Thankfully, my very skilled hubby was able to do most of the repairs, saving us HUNDREDS, maybe even as much as a grand. But the costs of parts and tires and tools etc still set us back well over 1k which not only depleted all of our emergency fund but also ate into the money we had squirled away knowing that summer would bring a drop in income. My husband is still taking very intense summer courses, so he really cannot work. My summer load is not intense, plus I'm used to the stress of full-time school and full-time work anyways so I am continuing to work while I take summer courses.

But with having suddenly such a small sum in our bank account we are feeling slightly nervous and reevaluating which costs can be cut. We are both rather frugal people (how else would we be able to save up for the months of summer, and pay off our debt all during the school year?) but there are still some areas we can tweak. One of those areas is groceries.

Thankfully eating healthy is rather cheap when you are fond of cooking (which I am.)  Unfortunately a few factors combined to get us in the habit of eating certain convenience foods which I am normally not accustomed to (Including adapting my menus to my hubby's palette during our first year of marriage and my suffering a bout with my chronic health issues from about January-May.) But this new situation is stretching me to dig deep and get back in the (tiny) kitchen!

When people first hear that I am vegan, invariably one of the first responses is "I could never afford to eat that way!" Which would probably be true of most people if they bought all the commercially vegan products on the market! One way I'm stretching out our budget by going back to making meals based around the dozens of dried beans and lentils I can buy in bulk for less than a dollar a pound at the grocery store. There are endless possibilities with these: black bean burgers, lentil loaf, lentil pot pie, chili,  hummus, jambalaya, pasta-bean salads, "meatballs" made of beans and seasonings, and my husbands favorite- Bean Burritos!  I also like to keep some made up in the refrigerator  to throw on salads and stuff. Plus I have dozens more recipes I am dying to try.

Aside from that we always do grains from scratch (which we mostly buy in the bulk section) including:brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, oatmeal and barley...I haven't been too creative with this yet an mostly just serve them as sides or for the quinoa make a salad.

For fruits and vegetables, I have  that BJs has really inexpensive organic apples and oranges.And I am hoping to make it to the farmers market this week. We don't do 100% organic due to costs, but we do consistently buy certain things organically such as greens and other things highly affected by chemical pesticides. I attempted to garden this year and was sadly disappointed. There seems to be a learning curve to gardening in pots as I now have to do living in an apartment. but I'm not willing to give up on that yet as I both love to garden and know it will save us money. Although we steer clear of canned veggies for the most part, i like to buy large packages of frozen fruits and veggies at BJs and incorporate those into dishes that wont be hurt much by not using fresh. It saves us money on produce for sure. We're also gonna try to start making our own organic soy milk and bread. Those things fell to the way-side while I was sick.

One thing I am very weary of is that I don't want to go crazy with saving money on food and stuff and end up eating boring stuff or get sick again (Its very easy for me to become malnourished due to my health condition) For example, I HATE buying fruit juices!!! It seems like such a waste of money. My parents didn't buy them while I was growing up for the same reason. However, my dietitian has asked me to drink juices throughout the day because it is a way to both sneak extra calories into my diet and keep me hydrated. I have a really bizarre and random fear of drinking things- including water which leads to chronic dehydration. I'm working hard to get over that phobia, but its not easy and for some reason some of these juices go down easy. Thankfully, I can buy a 40 pack of 100% juice individual servings at BJs for less than $10.00 so that is what I am using for now.

Anyways, so that's the deal! This week my NOT eat breakfast cereal for breakfast but to instead opt for something like oatmeal or make a big batch of muffins and soy-yogurt to eat for breakfast. It will be healthier and cheaper!

Whats your best tip for saving money on groceries???

A bleeding heart

Sorry, my spellcheck isnt working! Good luck!

Ive been badly negecting this blog, which is unfortunate. I think in part I ignore it because I dont think it is ever read and in part because I dont know what the dirrection of the blog should be. The former has never stopped me from writing before. Ive been writing since before I knew how form my letters and its only been in recent years that I have had an oppertunity to put that suff where people can see it. LOL. I used to keep a blog about a health condition that I struggle with. I did that for four years and built an incredible support system that way, but in the past year or so everybody has migrated away from that site My health is also much better right now and I dont identify myself as much by my illness anymore. Anyways, not knowig the dirrection of this blog IS a problem. Initailly I started it as a way of doing homework assignmetns for a sociology class...I had to find things around me that reminded me of problems in society and give my opinion of it. (Yeah that was an easy class!) But then I wanted to kinda continue that but put in more about my personal life/intersets and aspirations. I also want this to be a possitive blog, which is sometimes hard because I have a hard time always being positive (dirrectly related to my health issues.)

Well, today I am just going to write soemthing that has been on my heart. Im currently in pre-Nursing school. Its a long story why Im not in Nursing School yet, and Im not going to tell it now. I have my pre-requisites done for the most part, but amd gonna retake a few of them becasue I got some Cs in the anatomy and physiology classes and I need higher grades to get into other schools (I have all As besides theose A&P classes and math classes.) So, sicne it has taken me so long to get this far, I have also been working on my associates in social work. So here is the deal, I want to be a missionary. Thats all Ive ever wanted to do, but Ive always felt lead to do medical missions and have been trying to get my nursing degree since I was 18. Im actaully a pretty good student but finances and my health has made this a slow road.

My husband, who was once very open to missions is now- not really into it at all. He wants to make money and have nice cars and live in the suburbs. There's actually nothing wrong with this. Lots of American's feel this way, but its not at all how I am oriented. As I began to discover these things I was gripped with a crushing depression. Its litterally been since before Kindergarden that I knew I felt called to missions. I selected my husband VERY carefully with this goal in mind. I actually turned down marriage proposals from nice, godly gentlemen simply becasue I wasnt willing to pass on what I felt was my God-given calling. Before we were married, my husband spoke of wanting to be involved in the ministry but that he didn't know in what capacity. He said when he met me, he felt like it was Gods way of dirrecting him to the ministry he had planned for him. He siad that he felt called to marry me, and that  becasue I already had a calling in my life, then he knew that was also Gods calling on his life (since God was bringing our lives together.) Ministry was a HUGE focus of our premarital counseling. We also were in a Missions class together before the wedding that concluded a few weeks after the wedding last summer. When that class ended, so did my husbadns interest in missions. He no longer likes for me to talk about missions. Sometimes when he starts talking about all the material goods he wants and I ask when missions will fit into the plan and he seems exasperated with me. Like I say, as this stuff started unfolding, I really was over come by depression.

In recent weeks I have been doing better, depression wise. I guess for a while I felt really confused. I felt like maybe I had msunderstood God, either about Missions or about Marriage. But the more I think about it, the less I believe I got that wrong. I know Im supposed to be my husbands wife. I prayed a lot about it and really felt it was the right decision. And I love my husband. What I am now trying to do is figure out what I want to do with my life- what Gods dirrection form my life is. I want my life to be something that will bring glory to God, something that will call those who have been astranged from their heavenly father to a knowlege of his saving grace. Nursing was always my prefered means of doing that. I knew that with nursing, i could minister to somebodies physcial needs and it would nto matter if I could speak their language. I longed to provide medical care to those who had no earthly hope to access such care. Thats where my heart as ALWAYS been.

I LOVE people. Ive been accused of being a bleeding heart more than once or twice. Do you ever just drive by somebody random on the street and just start thinking about how wholey and completely they are loved by God? That Christ DIED for them to have a realtionship with them. This happens to me A LOT. I've been known to just become overwhelmed by emotion at this thought that i sttart to cry and pray for that person. i cannot watch the news because its really too heavey for me. I feel like I sometimes feel the actual pain of the people described. As a write, I have to a be a good empathizer. As somebody who has suffered much pain and loss in this life, its not hard for me to tap into these feelings when I see soembody hurting. I beleive God designed me this way on purpose. I belive he WANTS  me to do soemthing with it. The truth is, if I am going to be stuck here in the US, I do NOT want to be a shift nurse. I see ZERO point to it. I have no passion for it.

Ive considered pushing and pushing my hsuband, manipulating him into agreeing to do Missions, like he did before we were married, but I dont think that would be God-honoring. I have to find a way to honor God in this situation. So I am asking myself, what do I want to do? What tallents has God give me? How can I make an impact here? I dont think missions had to be to far away lands (although I always THOUGHT I was called to serve over seas) Maybe God has a plan for me to be a missionary right here? I long to do foster care and adoption. Ive always wanted a huge family and adoption is how I want to make that happen.In particular, I want to be able to foster/adopt sibling groups.That will certainly impact lives, but I think I can do more than that. I want to homeschool- my vision was always homeschooling on the missions feild, but I've also considered teaching. I know in public schools you are very limited to what you are allowed to talk about so that could be limiting too. So, Ive considered somehthing like a private  Chrisitan montisori school, but I dont really want to minister only to kids from Christian homes. I am close to having my associates in social work- I've thought about working with DCYF- but if I do get the chance to do missions in the future, well, thats not really a transferable skill. Ive wondered if my husbadn could ever be pursuaded to be house parents to a childrens home. I saw some on missions websites before down in the south. But i dont know- that might also interfere with our ability to have children that we get to "keep." I've also though about doing somehting in therapy and working with children recovering from trauma and those with attachment issues, the mom I nanny for (who has her masters in Psychology and three adopted children from fostercare) said that is a hopeless career and the therapists who work in that feild are not able to fix the children or do much to make them better. But what if God was involved in the therapy? .... What else? I love agriculture, but again, mostlty envision that being useful to missions. I could see practicle applications for it in the inner city, but my husband doesnt want me to work in the inner city because he is afraid Ill get hurt. Ive considered pursing the nursing and planning to work in a not-for-profit but agan, with the inner city issue. I cannot imagine doing anything with my life that would not be working to make other peoples lives more bareable.

So in short, I have lots of ideas and Im excited to figure out how I want to make this work. Of course Im never going to give up praying for God to turn my husband's heart back to Missions, Im never going to stop praying that my hsuband's heart will be softened towards the people God loves. But I also need to figure out who I can serve God here, where I am. I need to have the best attitude about this possible, as if I was doing EVERYTHING as if unto the Lord. So, trying to figure this all out has been kinda stressful, if you happen to have read this, please pray as I decide what to do. Ask God to revel his will for my life-- or at least the next steps he wants me to take. And pray for my attitude all the while!

Wanting to try vegan Once a Month Cooking

Ive been toying with the idea of doing Once a Month Cooking. Of course, since we are pretty much a vegan household (hubby does eggs and heese, butdoesnt cook, so he eats mostly vegan) we will have to do things slightly differently..google searches have yeilded several good results for freezable vegan meals.

Im not sure when I will try this as we have some medical stuff going on that needs addressing and my interest in coking is like sometimes a negative 10...other days its a plus 10. IDK...it just takes a lot of planning and prepping and doing and I have so little energy these days.

Has anyone tried OAMC, especially as a vegetarian or vegan? How did it work for you if you did?