Bullets

-New stuff added to the shop!! Go order now to get it in time for Mother's Day!!

-So far, The Mama Sheep (my Etsy shop, reference above) is doing well and I am excited to see what God is doing with my jewelry sales to fund my trip to Ethiopia this summer!

-There is a small chance I may get to see my favorite Dawn in the world, also known as Thing 4's mother in law, in 10 days-please Lord, make it so!

-We have a new shower, after some MAJOR run-arounds with our plumber and although it is still unusable b/c we have no walls around it nor any door/curtain or shower head, we HAVE the shower installed and a new handle for it, and it is SHINY!!

-We have drywall guys coming either tomorrow or Wednesday-woohoo! I may have a functioning house before Summer!!

-The toilet is still in my bed room.





(it can't ALL be good news, right??)

One Year Anniversay of This...

"...I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west." Isaiah 43:5b.

And He did. God is GOOD.

The Mama Sheep

Come check out my new Etsy shop, The Mama Sheep!!

I am SOOOOO excited that I finally have it up and running! (And I sold 2 of my first 4 listings in less than 12 hours of opening the shop-woohoo!!!) I am using the proceeds as a fundraiser for my mission trip to Ethiopia this summer visiting orphanages. After that, I plan to keep the shop stocked and going strong to raise funds for our church's adoption and foster care ministry. I am so excited to use a passion of mine to bring life, love and hope to children without forever families (YET!!) In case someone you know is in need of the perfect Mother's Day gift, I have just listed a personalized hand-stamped pendant for which you can select your child/children's birthstone crystal beads to be added as a charm. Wouldn't that be a sweet gift to celebrate the blessing of motherhood?? (yes, hubbies who might be reading this, it WOULD. Go. Order NOW!) For adoptive families, I am also going to be adding "Expecting from...." hand-stamped pendants where you can specify the country, a tasteful pink or blue glass bead if you know which gender little one is going to be joining your family or you can select a different beaded charm if you'd rather! I am HAPPY to do custom work as I love to do one of a kind pieces-not a big fan of mass producing stuff, takes the fun right out of it :) So c'mon over to the sheep pen and enjoy the view!!

ps-the plumber did NOT come Wednesday. Big surprise. However, we are not giving him a hard time about it because he had a good reason. His van broke down the day before and when his helper worker guy got under it to fix it, it somehow rolled onto him and they ended up at the ER. Fortunately he was not killed, praise the Lord!!, but was pretty badly hurt sooooo, I guess we will let this one slide. No, I am not making it up, it is just one more of the kind of crazy ridiculous things that always seem to happen in our world! We will never have that toilet out of our bedroom-maybe I should just use it as my background for my Etsy photos.....

Just Some Things

We have had a weirdly busy 2 weeks and so I have just not gotten to write anything here. But I did in my mind a lot, ha! I am super sleepy so I will just make this a quick one to answer some questions!

Thing 4's hair-yes, it is humongous. I currently do this with it: I use coconut oil on it either before or after a bath to give it some moisture and keep it healthy. I used to only do that after her bath but I read on Happy Girl Hair about doing it BEFORE the bath and how it helps the water not be as damaging/drying and so I tried it and it made combing out so much easier! We only wash her hair with shampoo about 1x a week, sometimes even 10 days. I use some random drugstore type shampoo (I think it is "Just for Me" brand? obviously I don't have a great closeness with it but it has a green bottle and orange lid and a smiley little cute brown girl on the bottle-does that help any :)? ) that is a conditioner/'poo combo and then we also use conditioner, again cheapy Pantene for Women of Color (lame name!). When we do not wash with shampoo, we do use the conditioner to 'wash' it (called "cowashing"). After her bath, she gets coconut oil if we didn't do it before the tub b/c it helps her scalp, too. She tends to get dry on her scalp so that helps. Then, I comb it out with a wide, fat toothed comb. She is not a fan. It is loud. And struggle-y. And there are tears. And maybe some swearing. From both of us. But, if I do not do this step, it is even worse when I finally do it and it is NOT. GOOD. At all. So, after I am done torturing, I mean, combing, her, then she goes to bed. Yeah, we have tried the satin sleep cap. It caused some trauma. Trauma that presented as hysterical screaming in the middle of the night and when checked on by us, looked like a tiny pink-jammie clad bank robber with no eyeholes in her mask had taken up residence in the crib-and was angry about it. So, we will need to wait a little longer on being able to use that. Same with the satin pillowcase. I just felt too panicky on the nights we tried it b/c of the SIDS thing with pillows, etc in cribs. Just wasn't worth it to me for her to suffocate in order to keep her hair looking decent, you know? Call me crazy... Anyhoo, this means she wakes up with a little bit of bed head (read:her hair had a wild party all night long and looks like a frat house the morning after) I keep a spray bottle filled with water and a couple squirts of her regular conditioner (the Pantene stuff) and just shake it up. She gets a spray down with this, which she likes and thinks is funny, then a hopefully quick comb through since the night before she got a through one (which she does not think is funny-she still hates it-it is still loud and possibly sweary, but slightly less so overall). Then, the magic goo I use is a cheapo one (sense a theme?) that I got one night when her hair was just huge and I knew coconut oil alone would no longer cut it but I didn't want to wait for something I ordered online or whatever. I needed it NOW and just went to the store and I bought this stuff and it works remarkably well-BB Hair Oil Moisturizer. (pictured below in a terribly blurry pic from the innerwebs) It is a creamy lotion with some good healthy natural oils in it that do a decent job of defining and managing her curls. I do think that I am going to need to change it soon b/c her hair is getting VERY long and I just have to use a TON to have it work these days and it is just not ideal. It is really hard to get it to cover it all evenly. But, for boys or shorter hair, I think this would be super. And it is like $3 and you can get it at most "Marts" and/or grocery stores. It does have a weird smell at first but it does fade quickly-not a super strong smell but it is one of the ingredients that make it smell a little odd-urea. Yeah, sounds gross to the max, but it is used in many many moisturizing things and does do well. So there is our hair routine-still a work in progress but that is what we are currently doing. Hoping to try something else soon for her giant amount of hair...

Speaking of a work in progress, our house. STILL a mess. NOT one bit of work done yet. Waiting on counter tops to come in. Waiting on the shower to come in. Waiting for pigs to fly... Well, look up for swine tomorrow, friends, because the PLUMBER IS COMING! To do WORK! And get this party started-yahoo!!!! It is a miracle! I am not saying we are suffering, but 6 of us using one tiny bathroom is getting a little old. As is the toilet that has been sitting next to my bed for 2 months...but, whatever, the plumber is coming!!!! And supposedly, once he gets his stuff done, everything will all get started and the skies will part and birds will sing and the toilet will leave my boudoir and go where it belongs. I can't wait.

Ok, this was not quick at all-and I had some other things to discuss, but I am even more super-sleepy than I was before this long diatribe so off I go to spend time with my nice soft bed and fall asleep gazing upon....that dumb toilet.