My Trip to the Republican National Convention

My friend Lyndi at the opening night party.

  As many of you know I have been pretty involved in politics over the years. I believe in this country of ours that since things are set up for the people to have a voice that I as a Christian need to take advantage of this opportunity and do what I can to help our country be a good one.

Ken and I have never been to the national convention before though Ken did try once (a lot of people want to be elected delegate so the competition can be pretty good). This year had looked to be an interesting year as there seemed to be a chance that there would be a contested convention and the stakes were high as we had candidates that were for limited government and following the constitution and another candidate that could care less about those issues and was not a person of character either. However Ken decided that it really wasn't the year for him to go and I didn't truly feel like running for delegate either. My friend Lyndi though with whom we had many good visits about politics and why people should be involved decided not only to go to county convention but then to also run for district and state convention and then decided to try for national delegate too. It was through much prayer that she came to this decision and believed that God wanted her to try to go and then she was elected to National Delegate Alternate. After Ted Cruz dropped out it was a time of mourning for all of us and she wondered for a bit whether she should still go but decided that if God had made the way in the first place that there must be a reason for it.

   So Lyndi prepared to go and then asked if I would come along as her guest. So without sharing all the details of making the decision, I went.

  We drove down to the cities on July 16th and stayed the night at my sister Anna's and she took us to the airport early the next morning (I had to miss church that day which I very much dislike but we didn't know how else to make the schedule work).

   There were so many feelings and reactions that this trip caused. I felt very.... safe (policemen everywhere!), excited, disappointed, sad, happy, excited, frustrated, tired, educated and more. If I go into detail about every part of this trip this will get super long so I think I will share some pictures and explain a few highlights (both bad and good).

Sunday night when we arrived there was a big welcome party on the shore of Lake Erie which included the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center.

Some interesting dancers at the party.

There were food booths all over offering many different types of things to eat. Most of them only had one thing like the BBQ booth that we went to first that just gave us a little plate of barbecued meat (Yummy!). The photo is a guy giving me some icecream. They did have a selection and I had thought that I would pick the salted caramel but as I listened to the line ahead of me that is what everyone was ordering and I thought the the icecream guys needed some variety in what they served. I had wondered about the cornbread and honey icecream anyway so that is what I got. It was good. The cornbread made a unique texture but it wasn't bad. All of the food and drink at the booths was free to us. Some of the interesting things that we got were: Fried tacos, eggplant fries with a pesto dip, shrimp cavechi (or something like that), street corn on the cob, cold pressed watermelon and mint juice and homemade icecream cookie sandwiches.

Out in the bay there were 5 or so boats like this patrolling to keep us all safe at the opening night party.

This is a picture of me in the science center.

In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (which mostly was really not my style - I do not care for rock and roll nor the lifestyle that many of the artists lived) there was a recording studio that Lyndi and I found rather fun.

At the end of the party they put on a fantastic display of fireworks. I did not get any pictures to do it justice.

Squinting in the sun as I get ready to go through security to get into the convention on Monday afternoon.

Each morning at our hotel the MN delegation (with sometimes the Hawaii delegation joining us) had a breakfast with speakers. Then it wasn't until later in the day that we would be bused down to the convention. They checked our credentials as we boarded the bus and then the bus would drive into a secure area to drop us off and then we would walk a little ways and have to go through security (like airport TSA) to get into the actual convention area.

 The first day of the convention was pretty disappointing in many ways. Those in leadership steam rolled through the electing of Mitch McConnell as temporary chair even though the majority voted "No". It wasn't really a big deal as Mitch McConnell hardly did anything anyway but still it was a horrid way to start off a convention by saying to all the people there "We don't care what you think you are just here to make us look good not to voice an opinion". There was more shady politics done over the passing of the rules. And then the platform was passed without anyone (at least of those that had just arrived - those on the platform committee had discussed it the week before) seeing it or discussing it in any way. Just that quick (though there was a long period of a break while Trump Whips did some major arm twisting to get people to back down over the rules debate - they threatened that their state wouldn't receive any money from the RNC) the majority of the business was done for the convention with still 3 days to go. So now we could focus the majority of the rest of the time to Trump "worship" including in many of the prayers.

Me in the mini oval office that was at the convention.

The first night when we got back to the hotel at nearly midnight we were hungry. My pregnant friend decided she needed cereal. There was a really sweet waitress at our hotel the gave her some free of charge.

On Tuesday we met up with Kelly a lovely lady from New Mexico who had been our seatmate in the second airplane on the way out. She had decorated a special hat for the convention.

On Wednesday afternoon we went to a party put on by Ted Cruz. It was refreshing to be there with people who did seem to still care about character, the constitution and the values in our platform. He said the event was the thank his supporters and so after his speech he came down into the crowd to say hi, take pictures, etc. Lyndi and I were right up front so we were some of the first to meet him. That is he and Lyndi above - we had trouble getting a good picture of me with him.

Lyndi and Ted's dad Rafael.

That evening some delegates let us use their floor passes (that is perfectly allowable I guess) to go down on the floor for a bit and get some pictures.

 Ted Cruz gave a great and controversial speech that night. I was so happy that he simply asked people to vote their conscience and choose candidates that follow the constitution. Mike Pence also spoke. I guess I wasn't as impressed with him this time as I had been when I heard him at a Tea Party Event - the March on Washington that we went to in DC some years ago. I was really impressed with him then and excited to get to meet him.

Thursday morning they took pictures of the MN delegation. There were a bunch of us there with the MN delegation that were homeschoolers so we thought it would be fun to get a picture of the homeschoolers. Some are done homeschooling as their children have grown and some of us are still in the midst of it.

We had just a little bit of extra time that afternoon so we drove (we had rented a car for the week) to historic Kirkland and Mormon village. It was a free museum/village to see.

I love the wooden shovels.

We three homeschool moms had fun seeing the sawmill and the other stuff and I wished me kids could have been with me.

That afternoon A,T & T hosted a party for the Minnesotans. We were bused over to another hotel to go to it. It was a rather fancy event. The food was interesting but pretty good.

On the bus coming back to go to the convention for some reason they couldn't come into the secure area with the bus, so they were going to drop us off in the green zone. There were some protesters in the street so they didn't get to go as close as they hoped so we had to walk a few blocks. We were kind of excited about it as we had been in such a protective bubble we hadn't gotten to see any of the excitement of protesters. We found it humorous as we were told that for safety's sake in this area we should not have our credentials out where they could be seen so we carefully put them away and then had a good laugh as we realized that 30 some people all dressed in business dress walking together with our clear plastic bags (given to us to care stuff into the convention in) were quite obviously a part of the convention not just normal folks from Cleveland out for a stroll.

  We walked through the building above which is I believe one of the oldest malls in our nation.

There were many interesting people on the streets.

This is the busy street that we had to walk through. There were some protesters (but none that seemed dangerous or mean) but there were far more policemen. Notice all the ones behind me in tan.

Lyndi, Marge and I got to pose with one group of policemen. They were all super friendly and nice. They had come from 15 states to take care of us.

A reporter from a Danish newspaper stopped and asked us some questions. Getting interviewed was pretty common at the convention. Marge (a delegate) got interviewed a bunch, Lyndi was quoted extensively in the Star Tribune and even I, a guest,  participated in several interviews.

Speaking of reporters we found out that there was a media row up in the parking garage that we could go visit. There were a hundred or so booths for various media outlets. It was a crazy but rather fun place. Above Alex Jones was doing an interview. Marge was interviewed while we were up there and so Lyndi and I sat down to wait on some comfortable chairs and ended up have a fun conversation with a political annalist and a Conservative pod caster (I think).

There was a 3-D video thing that you could try out at the convention.

Thursday night was of course the climax of the convention. A very sad day for the Republican party.
Trump's speech went on forever (okay - just 90 minutes!) and we didn't end up getting back to the hotel until I think after 1 am. Exhausted!

The next day we had free to do whatever as we weren't flying out until Saturday. We went to explore the James A Garfield House. It was great fun. Above is his Bible.

This is his house above.

The living room.

Around the fireplace in the living room are tiles that were painted by the members of the family. They were so pretty and I think that is such a cool idea.

The China was also painted by Lucretia Garfield. She said she wasn't an artist but she obviously was.

Another building on the grounds.

President Garfield sounded like an extremely interesting man who was basically thrust into the presidency without a desire to be there (He was at a contested convention not as a candidate but I believe he was chairing the convention - but the people wanted him).

 On Friday after going to the Garfield house we took a drive south east to West Virginia. We went on back roads through Amish Country.

This was at one of the oldest general stores (I think actually THE oldest) in Ohio. Much of it was in Amish style and there were many Amish working and shopping there too.

Buckets of candy.

Another view of the store.

The hitching post for the store.

"My" horse and buggy.

Then we drove further on to the oldest continuously running soda fountain. They also had thousands of used books which gave the place an interesting smell. :-)

We had a coupon to get 50 cent icecream cones there.

In West Virginia.

While Lyndi and I were out driving she got a call from Marge who we had shared a room with during the convention. She had gotten bumped from her flight (Friday was crazy at the airport with all the people leaving the convention) and could she join us. We were switching to a cheaper hotel closer to the airport and so we told her how to check in a that we wouldn't be back for a while but that we would love to have her hang out with us the next day. So when we got back to the hotel there was Marge ready to join us for our next adventures.

Our first stop Saturday morning was to go to the Garfield Memorial in the Lakeview Cemetery.

It was a pretty neat looking place and it was fun because there were people working there that told us a bunch more history about him.

The top of the memorial - a great view of the city of Cleveland (It is basically the highest point).

Some rifle balls from the 1800's.

We visited Little Italy, a section of Cleveland. It was cute and I imagine it had some yummy restaurants (we didn't come at the right time to eat) but unless you want to eat I wouldn't bother taking the time to go there.

We went to the Art Museum. When we visited with locals about what we should see they all thought the Art Museum was the place to go. I admit - even though I love the Charlotte Mason style of teaching I still have yet to get excited about going to an art museum. But it was free, it was highly recommended and so we went. When we got there the parking cost $10 but if you were there less than 1/2 hour it was free. We didn't have much time anyway as we had other places we wanted to go so we decided to just set a timer and be sure to be out within the 1/2 hour. It was a very nice looking place and we enjoyed our time there. I could have easily spend quite a bit more time but we did want to do other things too.

   The armor above for both the knight and horse were made in the 15 hundreds. Isn't that cool!

We went to the early american section (we asked for advice on where to go as we didn't care for modern art). The painting above is of Yosemite.

This one depicts the love of music that all people have.

  Next stop was the Great Lakes Science Center (which we could get in free to with our credentials) and I also went to see the Steamship the William G. Mather which cost $9.

This boat was made in the 1920's and used until the 1980's.

This was the captain's dining room.

Next stop was to actually go to the beach of Lake Erie and dip our toes in. :-)

Then to drop off our rental car and fly back home. We took the scenic route and went to Maryland too. This sunset was from the Baltimore airport.

 My sister Anna picked us up from the airport at around 11 pm. She had just picked up Mara 1/2 hour before us when she flew in from Honduras (I may have her write a post about her trip there later). It was nice to be back. We went to church with my sister the next day and then drove home.



  

Daily Bible Reading Challenge

Life has been moving fast lately but it is always nice to slow down for a little while each day with some time in God's word.

 Here are some of the treasures that I have found....

What caused me to worship God more?
"But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Ephesians 2:13

What an amazing gift! I am so thankful to have been brought near and no longer do I have this big separation between my God and Father and I. What a wonderful reason to worship!

What scripture touched me?
"Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions. For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, "The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him." So we fasted and sought our God concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty." 
Ezra 8:21-23

I just find it touching to see the humanity of Ezra in how he would have liked to ask the king to provide protection to them as they journeyed but felt embarrassed to do so as he had already told the king how God would protect them. That left him in the place where we should turn to in the first place but we often struggle with it just as Ezra did - that we completely put ourselves in God's hands and ask for His help. And He listened to them and helped them just as He does with us.

What scripture prompted me to Action?
"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

I think this verse is so cool how it explains that we were created to do good works. God planned things before we were ever born to give us good and wonderful things to do. So often people are scared off from the whole idea of doing good works because there have been/are people who have the misconception that we do good works in order to be saved. Verse 9 of Ephesians 2 (just before this verse) explains clearly that it is not our good works that save us - we are saved through Christ's gift - but the verse above still clearly shows that we are to do good works. So what are you doing? How are you pleasing God in what you do? How are you helping others? What special gifts were you created with in order to do good works?

What fact did I read?
"And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:22 & 23

Jesus Christ is the head of the church (not the Pope or any elected or appointed group of men). He is the one that we should listen to. It is His word we need to follow.

What blessings have your received from reading God's word lately?

Daily Bible Reading

I thought I would share some verses from Philippians with you today. We are working to memorize Philippians right now so we go over it (so far just the first 2 chapters) about every day. It is neat when you go over a passage a bunch of times the new things you will notice about it. Here are some of the verses that I have especially been enjoying:

What has caused me to worship God more?

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on the cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil. 2:5-11

What Jesus was willing to go through for us is far beyond amazing! He is certainly worthy of all our worship and praise.

What scripture touched me?

"Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly." Phil. 1:12-14

That really touches me that when the other Christians saw the persecution that Paul was going through it didn't make them run away and hide, instead the were more courageous. That is pretty cool! I hope that I can be like that too.

What prompted me to action?

"Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life - in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing." Phil. 2:14-16

Do you ever complain? Oh dear, I have done that. Do you ever argue? Guilty again. We need to seek the Holy Spirit's help and use self control so that isn't part of our life anymore.

What interesting fact did I find?

We have enjoyed becoming more familiar with Epaphroditus who was a worker for the Lord. Verses 25-30 tell of his service and how he almost died in the work of Christ. He risked his life to help Paul. He is one of those rather unknown heros and it is fun to learn more about him.

What treasures did you find in God's word lately?

Our Country's Birthday and some Scripture from my Reading Last Week

My parents cut the many yummy desserts that we had at our party.
We made a bunch of pies and others also brought some super yummy desserts.

I had meant to post on Sunday, then Monday and so on... here I'm finally getting this written on Friday. Oh well - such is life!

I want to share with you some of the verses that I appreciated in my reading last week and then also a bunch of pictures from our Independence day party.

 A scripture that caused me to worship God more was: "As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever." 1 Chronicles 28:9 The realization that God truly cares about what is on our heart and He knows everything and every motive behind what we do is something that should make us pause and think and also worship. He wants us to know Him.

 This verse also ties in with my reflection on our country. We have a country that was founded on Godly principles. Men and Women sought to know God's will and to follow His leading as the Constitution was written and our country was formed. Certainly the weren't perfect people but study on many of them will show that they generally respected and honored God. We have a country now though that has for the most part forsaken God. As a whole our country allows and promotes the killing of babies. Our country encourages the Homosexual lifestyle that God very clearly says is wrong. The leadership in our country has ceased to believe in absolute truth. Our public schools teach a doctrine that is apposed to God and the Bible. I am so thankful for those who still stand strong for the truth and for our Constitution and other founding documents that honor our Creator but I do realize that over all our country has forsaken God. 

The table was rather over flowing with food.
You can see our party schedule and our guestbook at the table on the right.

  Independence day is a holiday that I have loved but does now leave me feeling somewhat torn. I continue to celebrate our roots and the freedoms that we do still have and I pray with sorrow but in hope and faith for our country and the direction it is headed.

  We did invite quite a few friends over to celebrate our country's birthday with us. We are so blessed to have wonderful friends and family.

Thinking of our blessings reminds me of a verse that touched me this past week in my reading: "But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer as generously as this? For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given You." 1 Chronicles 29:14

We have so very much. Why are we so blessed? Everything has come from God and to Him I give thanks!

Supper was a pretty easy thing to pull off as Ken grilled Hamburgers, Brats and Hotdogs. I had made potato salad, baked beans and pies ahead of time and our guests also brought a side dish (chips, salads, desserts, fruit, etc) to share. We had far more than enough! We also made Mint Iced Tea and Lemonade.

Before supper my Dad prayed for our meal and also took time to pray for our country. Our country needs a lot of prayer right now. Are you praying? That reminds me of another verse that was in my reading last week: "If my people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14 That was true for the Isrealites. I believe it will also hold true for us. If we want healing then we need to turn to God. This is a call to action: Pray for our Country and her people. Let's go beyond that and pray that people everywhere will humble themselves and pray and seek God's forgiveness!

Some of the excitement of the evening came from rescuing a baby bunny from Kitchi (our dog). Kitchi has been good at finding rabbits nests this Spring. He had this one in his mouth but hadn't really harmed it. The kids got it away from him and Megan and her cousin Jaten gave him a good scolding.

My sister-in-law Holly is great at any animal rescues that are needed (Baby goats that need extra attention, baby pigs, turtles, chicks, you name it) and so she volunteered to care for this baby too. They went to work at feeding it right away. I believe it is named either Romeo or Juliet.

Megan and Ephraim (my nephew) were happy party attendees. You might notice that Megan's face looks a little different. She was dealing with allergies for a couple of days and her face got rather swollen. Poor girl!

   Our party schedule included Supper, Float decorating (getting people that came to decorate our canoes and a Johnboat), A Parade, a Canoe Race and Music with a little bit of visiting and horseshoes thrown in.

Here are some of the floats in the process of getting decorated.

Some riders for the floats getting ready.

Molly Bea, Katy and crew (Katy's little girl) had a float decorated with pinwheels and balloons.

Aaron and Kitchi had a boat with sparklers, flags and a couple of balloons. Unfortunately the sparklers wouldn't stay lit.

 A passing boat really enjoyed our little (disorganized) parade.

Unfortunately these two pictures are rather blurry but they show some of the shape and detail put into some of the floats.

Mara dressed up in a gown and they had flower wreaths for their hair and Keren paddled while Mara played her Ocarina. Megan and Jaten waved at the audience.

Truett and I had a float decorated with balloons. It could have been much fancier but the balloons kept popping on me and I ran out of time. We had made balloon hats too (after much popping) but mine ended up to small and blew away mid parade.

We had judges for our parade. A couple of our neighbors (who came to the party too) Dennis and Merle were in charge of judging. We had some truffles for the winning float which was done by the Kliensasser family.

After the parade we had a canoe race.

Here they were getting lined up. Mara's canoe with herself and Megan in it were the only females that participated.

Here come JJ and Jonathan in for the win!

The fastest canoe is my blue canoe - the Bonnie Mae. Because it is the fastest we decided it needed a handicap. After going canoeing one evening last week with Ken and Kitchi in that canoe I decided that Kitchi would make a perfect handicap. That canoe is already tippy and with Kitchi in it it becomes even more so. He loves to go from side to side and doesn't like to sit down. In the middle of the race he decided to more from his position in the middle to a better vantage point in the front so he had to climb over Aaron to do so. Aaron and Peter took that canoe figuring that Kitchi would be no big deal but they found out differently. Even with Kitchi they did come in second.

We had requested that people bring along musical instruments if they had them. We played and sang some patriotic songs and a few hymns. It was fun.

I am so thankful for music!

My love of music made me find 2 Chronicles 5:12 -14 pretty interesting in my reading. It says: "And all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and Kinsmen, clothed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps and lyres, standing east of the alter, and twenty priests blowing trumpets in unison when the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to glorify the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and when they praised the Lord saying, He indeed is good for His lovingkindness is everlasting, then the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God."

May our music always glorify God as well!

We completed our day by going into town and sitting on the edge of the lake and watching the fireworks display. It was a fun day.

Did you have a fun 4th of July? What did you do?

Frugal Activities Lately

 I have gone shopping quite a few times lately and we have eaten at a restaurant in the last week too so party of me wants to say - we haven't been frugal lately. I least I don't feel very frugal. But even during times where some money is spent there is still a lot of money saving that goes on. Here are a few of those that we have done lately.

• Mara and I needed good shoes for our backpacking trip. The shoes that we had simply were not going to work (getting tight for Mara, wearing out for me). So a lot of our shopping lately involved going to shoe stores. We went to almost every place in our town (and the places we missed I had good reason to believe wouldn't have worked either. We needing hiking shoes/boots and we want them to be good quality. We never did find any shoes that fit Mara (she is a size 10 1/2 and I guess that is just not commonly sold) and most places didn't have hiking shoes that fit me either (size 9 1/2 ).  But we were able to try on some that were close in size at some stores and figure out what brand/style we liked then we were able to order some that were in our size (and were cheaper than the stores- We saved around 70 dollars between the 2 pairs.) on Amazon. We both ended up getting Keen shoes and are pretty happy with them so far. We ended up only getting them the day before we left on our hiking trip but we didn't have any problems and they are pretty comfortable.
• I bought food for our hiking trips. I bought packages of pasta dishes and rice dishes. It is something that I wouldn't normally buy as it isn't as healthy as cooking from scratch - also it is more expensive with the packages (serving 4 - so we use 2 of them) costing around $3 each to make food for our family like that normally but when I compared them with typical backpacking food (the meals where you just add boiling water - which is the same as the stuff I was buying) we saved a lot of money by buying these packages at Mernards and the Bread store. The backpacking packages generally come in single servings and the ones I was looking at were around $7 each. That gets pretty expensive when you are going on a week longing backpacking trip with a family of 6. I also bought some summer sausage for our backpacking trip. I was able to get it for $3 a pound which is pretty decent price on meat anyway and since this can go without refrigeration that works well.
• At the day old bread store I was able to use a $5 coupon of as I stocked up on sandwich bread and the food for our camping trip.
• When I went into Sports Authority to check on shoes I discovered that they were going out of business. They didn't have any shoes in our size (at least not hiking shoes) but I got the fuel we needed for our backpacking stove for 20% off which made it a very good deal. I stocked up since it was 1/2 the price of what Ken had found it for on Amazon. I also got Jerky for 20% off and they gave my a nice cloth shopping bag to take my purchases home in.
• We did end up having to buy new sleeping bags for most of us as we had issues with most of ours being way to bulky and heavy for backpacking or not warm enough. We did have one mummy sleeping bag on hand thought that would work - it just needed mended. Megan liked it and claimed it (it was one that belonged to my parents when they were first married!) and she helped me to mend it. $50 saved!
• We only had to buy one backpack for the trip - Ken already had one, a friend that was moving had given us one which worked fine for Mara, My brother-in-law loaned us one that worked for Jonathan, I was able to use my dads, We found a good deal on one for Aaron and I fixed up one for Megan. 
• We avoided having to buy any new tents by instead buying waterproofing spray and I sprayed the tent the had been mine as a teenager. It is a nice light tent and worked well for the girls. I was also able to use the spray on Jonathan and my raincoats to make sure that they would work and on the backpack that I was using.

 Jonathan was able to get the rabbit hutch to usable conditions (it does still need to be finished) before we left on our trip. He was able to do it using only things that we had on hand already.

 One side is also a temporary home for the chicks.

 The purslane is growing like a weed in our garden. Oh wait, it is a weed! But it happens to be a weed that I like so it very rarely gets weeded out. We use it in salad and stir-fries. It has such a nice mild flavor. I have been mulching most of my pathways in the garden but there is one area of the pathway (partly pictured above) that is growing thickly with purslane and so I will let it be and not mulch it.

Speaking of mulch... that is a nice frugal activity that makes my garden look nicer and saves me a ton of work in the long run. I lay cardboard done in my paths and then I am covering it with leaves that the kids raked and put on our drain field this past fall. It is a fun and satisfying job I think.

This is what the pathways look like after adding the leaves. We just till this whole pathway in come next Spring. We have not had any trouble doing that and it helps our soil out.

 I have still been working at doing landscaping around our house. I did by one plant for $6 this week but otherwise I am just using things that I have been able to think out of our neighbors flower beds. That has blessed us so much in being able to landscape economically. This Astilbe from my neighbor is looking very lovely blooming. I moved a bunch of hostas, some iris and some more Astilbe today.

 This past week I was invited to a surprise birthday party for a friend. I was able to put together a handmade gift of notecards and potholders. She liked it and I enjoyed being able to give something that was hand-made.

I have been teaching Wednesday evening class at church. It is always a fun challenge for me to see if I can have a fun craft using things that I already have on hand. We were talking about binding wisdom around our neck, etc. and I thought it would be fun to make necklaces. I wanted to put the word wisdom on it so I decided we would make our own shrinky beads.

It is pretty easy to do (though it gets more challenging when you are preparing for a large class full of ages 2-7). You simply take containers made from #6 plastic. I had a bunch as I had been saving them whenever I notice something like that going in the trash after a potluck or something. It is very rare for our family to buy anything in #6 plastic but other people we know do.

 Then cut them into shapes (don't have any pointy edges) and then color with permanent marker. I let the kids do that. That was a little scary turning them loose with permanent markers but they did pretty good.

Then your put them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven at 350 degrees for around 2 minutes. They shrink up fast. You should do this with your windows open. We had used the paper punch to put holes in them before we shrunk them. They are so cute and tiny after they get shrunk.

  I know there are other ways that we have been frugal but this post is plenty long and it is really time for me to go to bed.

Goodnight!

p.s. I would love to hear how you have been frugal lately!