Christmas 2005

I have finally posted some pictures at http://members2.clubphoto.com/hal219370/guest-1.phtml For those that I haven't filled in on my newest additions to my extended family here is the introductions:
Mary Hannigan is a wonderful, sweet lady who now attends the Bible Study on Tuesdays with us and she loves to knit socks and is single and 49.

Jared Garth is a single 39 year old who works as the head of security at our Church and has become good friends with all of us after Jennifer invited him to watch one of her triathlons this summer. He is finding himself doing a lot of things he has never done before like picking out a live Christmas tree.

Patrick (13), Cassie (9) and Cadler (10 mos) are the children of Marie Augustin (originally from Jamaica/Haiti). Marie works weekends, Friday - Sunday, in 12+ hour shifts as an in-home care giver and she has had to work Thanksgiving, Christmas eve, Christmas and of course will be working this next weekend on New Years too. God keeps blessing us with extended family to enrich our lives. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Danae

Merry Christmas!

I can’t believe how quickly the years go by the older in years I get… I went sledding the other day with the kids and thought how much fun we had sledding last year in Alaska. It seemed like just a few months to me and yet Jennifer and Jordan were sure that it was more than just one year ago.
The kids and our friend Mary decorated a beautiful gingerbread house last night during our Bible Study and it turned out so adorable, they had such fun making it and it was a wonderful way to demonstrate the importance of building our foundation on Christ the Solid Rock. I have decided that I will try to let them do one every year from here on out just to see the improvements over the years. I hope you like the pictures.

I took the kids on a field trip to downtown Chicago today. We went to go get their airline tickets for January when they go visit Grandpa and Grandma Lincoln and to go to the Federal Building to get my Passport application turned in. It was not as much fun as I had hoped due to the cold, wind and wet slushy sleet, but it was great spending time with them and looking at the cool buildings, neat window decorations, and as Jordan puts it..”all the crazy looking people”. Once again we are starting the weekend with more things on our 'to-do-list' than we can possible hope to accomplish but as always we will give it our best shot. We will be making several Birthday cakes for Jesus' Birthday next Sunday and we will also be making fudge, cookies, and Rice Krispy Treats. We are going to be volunteering at the ROPE house on Saturday all day and night and hopefully getting in a sledding trip during the day with the residents. Sunday is worship and then we are having a few families over afterward for fellowship and food. I am so blessed!

In Everything Give Thanks

Thanksgiving was truly a blessed time for me with a house full of friends and my children (13 people in all) I was completely happy and content to cook and serve. I am definitely planning on starting my preparations much earlier next year though. I need to start at the beginning of October just like my Christmas list.
Thank you to all my friends, family and most importantly, My Heavenly Father, for all the many blessings, encouragements, support and love throughout this past year. I am BLESSED!!!

Our basement is nearly finished finally. The walls are being painted and the shower and toilet have been reinstalled. The floors need to be finished and a few small finishing touches before we can really start using it again. It is my prayer that we will get it all done before the 1st of the new year. For those of you who may not know the situation, our basement flooded the first spring after we moved in and all the carpet, paneling and the entire bathroom and laundry had to be taken out. It was a MESS! There was no sump pump at the time and so I had one installed as well as an interior drain tile system. We also found major foundational cracks in the walls once the paneling was removed. I waited an entire year to make sure that the basement would not leak, or flood again before beginning the project of refinishing. It has been a long, costly and painful experience and definitely NOT one that I would ever wish on a single mother ever! I had estimates ranging up to $42,000!! The idea of pouring that much money into my basement after spending over $7000 just to get the water problem fixed was quite overwhelming and I often thought it would be different if I were a man.

Through this entire ordeal I kept reminding myself and my Lord that it is HIS house and I am just taking care of it for Him and He needed to show me how and when to fix it because I didn't know the first thing about such matters. : ) God is faithful and finally a gentleman was referred to me who charged me only $2,500 plus materials which means that the basement will finally be usable very soon. Not that I didn't remind the Lord many times that it sure was a waste to have the space unusable but I waited on His timing and praise Him that it is almost here. The total cost should still be under $6000. The kids and I are so excited to have a play room once again. It will also serve as a school room while I am home schooling.

So I thank God for everything that He has blessed me with this year and even those things which the world would think was a curse I can honestly say "thank You Lord for allowing me to trust you in this too!"

Back from Branson

Well, I survived yet another week of 'vacation' and live to tell about it. The week was spent in Branson, Mo. where we were met with a cold front on our second day there. The condos were nice and clean and the setting perfect for me. ( I have a couple of pictures to post this weekend. ) We didn't do the touristy things keeping true to form, but we did check out the fish hatchery (our second one to visit this year!) and Jordan and Jennifer went fishing three times during the week. Jordan even brought home some trout for me to cook. (Too bad we didn't have anyone who wanted to try it.) They have hills there in Missouri and so I had some great runs and some sore runs too. I think I will have to go back for some training time in the future. Probably the most exciting part of our vacation was the family of kittens living under the brush near our condo. They nearly scared us to death before we realized that they were just strays. The kids thought they were raccoons, skunks or mountain lions.. They only showed up at night though and so when we walked between the two condos the kids kept seeing 'animals with longish tail and dark' which led to more investigation. We needed the time together and the area is a gorgeous example of God's creative beauty.

We arrived back in town around 2:00 am on Sunday the 20th and were at Church by 8:00 am. I learned Sunday that I was being requested to make the Mission trip to Uganda this coming January 22 thru February 4, 2006. I had been praying about it and hadn't really gotten a yea or nay and told my pastor that I was available as far as willingness to go, time off from work, and all the other physical and mental preparations went. I have always felt that God has called me to Missions but had settled in my mind that my Mission field is in my 'backyard' and that it didn't necessarily mean far away places. Anyway, the associate pastor in charge of the trip spoke with my senior pastor and he sent me this note: "Danae, I spoke with Pastor Harry and we do need you on this trip. You are a strong intercessor and can deliver words of encouragement to the woman in Africa." So, I am now praying that God opens the doors to fund the trip which will cost $2000 for each member of the team. The good thing is that I have total peace about it the bad thing is that I am horrible about asking people for support and fundraising. I am trusting God TOTALLY in this. : ) Isn't that what I am supposed to do anyway, in all things?? Boy am I slow sometimes!
More details to follow...

In Christ Alone!
Danae

Happy Birthday U.S. Marine Corps!

Happy 230th Birthday Marines!

We are headed to Branson, MO for a week to use our new timeshare at Silverleaf’s Holiday Hills Resort. I will post again after we get back. These past few days (week) have been extremely hectic and yet very productive. Basement is framed, insulated and dry walled. Bathroom has some plumbing hold ups but will be fixed soon. Need to start painting and pick out some carpeting. Praise God!!

Kids are doing alright in school but I will be using my vacation to get their lesson plans up-to-date. I am going to take my laptop and the new switched on schoolhouse program to get it figured out. We are so blessed that we don’t have to worry about what our kids are getting filled with or not getting filled with when we home school. The headlines on Fox News is totally depressing as more and more legal actions are being filed to keep God out of our schools, homes and yes, even our Churches!

2Ch 7:14 "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. "

Semper Fi!

Danae

Day by Day

Well, as usual, I haven't been very good at updating this blog or anything else. We have been busy with life. Val's birthday was Wednesday the 19th and we had a lovely time with family and a few friends. I made her a German chocolate cake from scratch and she was very happy.

Kids are doing good and getting extremely lazy so I have come up with a solution. (Kendra, I have gone out to dougs blog and love the principles he supports) Work, work and more work. Christmas is just 63 days away and as we prepare our hearts to celebrate Jesus' birth I have determined that before they leave home my children will understand the significance of His gift to us as it relates to Christmas. My children will learn to give without expectation. The return on their investment is in the joy of doing the will of God. I know it should be easy to teach this lesson but the influence of the world is so powerful that it is more a spiritual battle than anything else. Last year they found joy and peace in just giving out candy canes to those who looked like they had no joy. That was a huge success in showing them in a tangible way how we affect others. I will update on this as the days count down.

We worked at the R.O.P.E. house last night/this morning where we volunteer as a family to support the men coming out of incarceration. Our Church began this ministry last year and unfortunately the men in the body of Christ haven't stepped up to the plate yet to fill the necessary hours needed to staff it. I love it. What a way to show the love of Jesus! Today we are hoping to get some much needed things done around the house in preparation for winter. We are so blessed!!!
In Christ,

Danae

Photos from IMCDA

Some of the few photos from Ironman Coeur d'Alene that I have. I was too busy to stop and take pictures. : )

The Adventure Rage in Boyne, Michigan

Well, since my last blog so much has happened that I guess I will just highlight some of the excitement we had. We went to Boyne, MI the 23rd through the 25th for the Infiterra's
Salomon/Moosejaw Adventure Rage. I was supposed to race but caught a bad case of bronchitis the weekend before and so I didn't race but did crew for the team. It was so much fun, work and excitement! The kids and Val helped me as well as a friend from Church. We stayed at the resort at Boyne Mtn. and drove a gazillion miles to support the team. Next time I am racing and not standing by although the support crew gets a lot of the dirty work too. I was really blessed by the great team that I was a part of and know that there will be long term contact with them. We got back into town and then got a call from our favorite local get-away, Fox River Resort, that they had availability if we were interested in coming down for 4 days. So we left Friday and came back on Monday and finally got some 'down time'. Well, except for my trying to burn the whole place down when I left the chicken noodle soup on the stove while we went out shopping... Uh, lets just leave it at that... Anyway, we finally spent our first weekend at home this past weekend. We decided that we love to go stay in hotels but we like coming home too.
This weekend we are going back to Fox River (did I mention it is our favorite get-away?) and then it is time to get ready for Val's birthday. She will be 28 on the 19th.

First Official Adventure Race

Well here is the race report: (Note: I came down with Bronchitis and by Friday night it was in full swing.) The weekend started with the drive out to Rockford Friday night. Darrick rode with us and I offered to let him drive since he has the longest legs. : ) We all stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott and Darrick drove me to the race site at 5am on Saturday and then drove back to stay with the kiddos and Val. They went swimming, shopping at Target, lunch at Appleby's and then met me back at the race site at 4:15ish.

The Race (Team Unknowns):
Started at 6:20 with "Boot Camp" warm up. We all did group callestinics and hill repeats with walking lunges X 3, then it was a mile sprint to the beginning of the raft race where each team had to carry the makings of a raft and then assemble it at the entry point into the water. The catch - all tools, materials etc. had to be carried the entire way. We were the fourth team into the water and the last out of it. (Our raft was too bouyant and we couldn't stay on it. Wouldn't have been so bad if Bob could swim a bit better. Shannon and I pulled Bob through the mile long river route. Once on dry land it was a free for all, each team could decided what section they wanted to tackle next and plan the rest of the race themselves.

We hopped on our mountain bikes and rode to the local ice-skating rink where we each completed 10 laps on the quarter mile rink. Wet/cold and very sore shins! From the ice rink we rode about 6 miles to the 'mystery event' which turned out to be a team building task of getting a golf ball from one pole to another while each of us held ends of string holding a metal cirle the ball rested in. Fairly easy if you relax and we made it on the first attempt. Next we biked about 4 miles to the Bushwhacking course where we had to get off our bikes and head into the woods to find markers (10) we found all ten which doubled our points. We did get pretty scratched up though. Thank goodness we didn't run into poison ivy or worse. Back on the bikes and we decided to tackle the climbing event next since it had a fairly good amount of points. We got a little lost trying to find it but eventually asked a local police officer. (yes it is legal!) We wouldn't have gotten lost if Bob wasn't so POSITIVE that he knew "IT HAS TO BE AT THE COLLEGE I have never heard of an indoor climbing wall except there." Shannon and I both told him that it sure didn't look like the address or directions on the map... Uh, we were right and for the second time Bob felt bad but the time was already lost. I sorta wish Shannon had been more assertive since she was our 'captain'. She was also the youngest though and Bob was the oldest and has lived in the town for 10 years. (Obviously not rock climbing though!) We all climbed to the top and then it was back on the bikes headed to the TA (transition area) where we left our bikes and headed out on foot to enter the orienteering section which was done in the downtown area visiting museums, a church, parks, and various other landmarks. Once again, a certain team mate was sure it had to be this or that place and knew it couldn't be the spot we plotted on the map... Sure enough, Bob was wrong and after running way longer than we needed to he finally conceded that the coordinates we plotted were right and we backtracked and found our clues/checkpoints... I took it all pretty good and didn't get bent out of shape. I had a hard time with the running and had to use the inhaler a lot more than I had hoped to. We finally left 4 checkpoints out on the course and decided to head back since we were getting close to the cutoff for time and we hadn't done the canoe section yet. We ran back to the TA and got in the canoe and were able to find one checkpoint before we had to finish up the race it ended at 4:20 and we turned our score sheet in at 4:15. All in all it was a great day and excellent race and I learned a lot of things that I would do differently next time.

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