Our Anniversary

May 10th is not only Mother's day, but also our anniversary!

Douglas and I have been married for 23 wonderful and exciting years.
I thought you would all enjoy a "portrait" of the past 23 years.


Douglas and I were married on May 10th 1986.
Even though we were both unsaved at the time it is amazing and wonderful how the Lord brought us together.

Our first anniversary!

I love you!!!!!

Enjoy the rest of the pictures!

And They Two Shall be One Flesh

This past Monday I was asked to write a guest post for a dear blogging friend who has a great burden for married couples. Michelle from By His Grace and for His Glory has done a month long series on the subject of Marriage and I would like to encourage all of you to visit her blog and to read the other three posts. They were a great blessing and I am sure will greatly bless and encourage you.

I asked Michelle if it was okay to post here what I had written for her and she said that would be great

And They Two Shall be One Flesh

My name is Kathy and I am wife to my wonderful husband Doug. We will soon be celebrating our 23rd wedding Anniversary We have been blessed with eight children ages 20- 2years old. We are a home schooling family and have home schooled for the past 13 years.

My husband and I were saved in 1992. Since then our lives have changed miraculously.

The Lord has done a great work in our marriage so I thought I would share a few things that I have learned along the way.

In the book of Genesis we read that God created Adam and Eve. We read that Eve was taken from Adams rib and Adam states that she is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.

Do you know that we are also created for our husbands? God prepared us for the exact man that he has chosen for us

Ephesians Chapter 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh..

We are no longer single before God but we become one with our spouse.

In Ephesians 5:21-32 the bible compares marriage between a man and a women as a picture of the lord Jesus marrying His Bride the church and the type of relationship that we are to have with our husbands.

When we unite in matrimony, when we say those vows before God we promise that this union is for life.

Ecclesiastes Chapter 5 * 4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. * 5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

When we make a vow before God we are to stand by that vow. Todays view of marriage is “If I do not like how things are going I can just throw in the towel and quit”. This is not Gods plan at all. When I finally realized this in my marriage it was a great turning point.

I thought I would share a little testimony from my life since my daughter said that this might be a blessing to someone out there who might be struggling in their marriage.

****************

Before my husband and I were saved our marriage was very different. We followed the philosophy of the world. I should say that I did. My husband was from a divorced home and this was something that he had decided that he never wanted for his own life. I on the other hand had come from a home where my parents remained married.

I must say I was young and so foolish. I did not love my husband as I should and I was very selfish. I wanted things my way and I was difficult to please. If my husband and I got into an argument I foolishly thought that the best thing was for us to just separate and get a divorce. The way of thinking by most people in todays world.

After we were saved for a couple of years the Lord really began working in my heart and life and in my husband’s. I started to learn what a God Honoring marriage was suppose to be like and I knew that I had to make some changes in my life.

One afternoon my husband and I had a disagreement. I was upset and my emotions finally took over. I was ready to say those terrible words again “if you do not like it here you can just leave” Instead the Holy Spirit got a hold my heart and I realized what I was about to say. I quickly changed my words to this - “If you do not like it here that is just too bad. The Bible says that you are stuck with me ” My husband just looked at me, I think in shock. This is when I finally realized that I made this commitment and it was for life

As I share this testimony it is in hopes of encouraging anyone who is struggling to see that God has a greater plan and that through His grace we can have a marriage that is heaven here on earth.

In our church we have a yearly couples retreat I love attending these. My husband and I have learned a lot about having a God honoring marriage. I would encourage all of you to take advantage of such retreats it will strengthen your marriage and your home.

Did you know that marriage can be a part of heaven here on earth?

Here are a few things that I have learned that have really been a great blessing to our marriage.

Share terms of endearments, My husband loves to call me his Sweet Gal :)

Love your man- We need to stop looking through dark color glasses and start looking for the good.

Pray for your Husband! ( I daily pray that the Lord will use my husband in a mighty way to bring Glory to His Holy Name!) (I added this one here. I forgot to write this in my post for Michelle:) this one is the most important !

Be his helpmeet- There can be great satisfaction in helping your man :)

Make him his favorite meal.

When he comes home give him a great big hug and a big smooch and tell him how much you missed him
(Just as a side note our children love to see Daddy and Mommy being affectionate with each other)

Listen to him and make him feel important to you.

Talk some love talk. You know, tell him how handsome he is, tell him how strong he is and what a good provider he is. When I look at my husband in this way things really sweeten up in our relationship. How very blessed we are to have that special someone in our lives to share life with.

As I began to allow the Lord to work in my life he also began working in my husbands life.

Through these past 23 years together things have grown sweeter as we grew closer in our walk with the Lord.

May you all be blessed as you walk together with your spouse in the newness of life.

God Bless, Kathy

I hope that you will hope on over to Michelle's Blog I am sure you will truly enjoy the other posts.

I Need Thee Every Hour

 I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord;
no tender voice like thine can peace afford.

 I need thee every hour; stay thou nearby;
temptations lose their power when thou art nigh.


I need thee every hour, in joy or pain;
come quickly and abide, or life is vain.

I need thee every hour; teach me thy will;
and thy rich promises in me fulfill.

I need thee every hour, most Holy One;
O make me thine indeed, thou blessed Son.

****

I need thee, O I need thee;every hour I need thee;
O bless me now, my Savior, I come to thee.

Garden Time!

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day so my son Brandon helped out and tilled the garden for us to get our summer vegetable garden started!

This year we have decided to make the garden a lot bigger. We will have to till some more when the rain stops.

Sunday night we placed our peas in a bowl of water and soaked them over night. Monday morning my husband and I were able to plant 5 rows of peas. I am planning on planting 5 more when the rain stops hopefully in a few days!

I have never planted peas before so I am excited and I am praying that they will do really well this year.

Other things we will be planting this year are lettuce, summer squash, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, yellow stringbeans, butternut squash. We are even going to try some herbs basil, parsley, thyme, oregano.

I think we will need to really enlarge the garden! :)

I get so excited in Spring time. I love to see all of the fresh new growth of the leaves and flowers.

(Last years garden!)

If you have never planted a garden before I would encourage you to give it a try.
This really is frugality at its best!

God Bless, Kathy

Trusting in My God!

Psalm 9:9-10
The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.

During my devotions this morning I came upon this passage of scripture that was a great comfort to me.

Last week on Thursday afternoon I received a phone call from my husband telling me that he had just been laid off from his job. As the feeling of panic gripped my heart I tried to say words of comfort to my husband.

As the weekend came the Lord had calmed my soul and reminded me that I was to trust in him.

We have heard a lot on the news about so many people being laid off. We have heard about the recession that we have been going through. We have heard about how the government was going to try to fix all of these problems. But you know I always knew down deep inside that our God is in control.

This is not a new thing for us that we are going through. In 1993 when I was eight months pregnant with my 3rd child my husband was laid off. We were new Christians. Saved not even a year. We did fear and wonder how we would ever be able to go through such a great trial.

God did some miraculous things during that time. We never missed a mortgage payment. We never missed a meal. All of our bills were paid and on the very week that I was due to deliver the Lord provided my husband with a job that put us on the insurance the day he walked into the shop and I gave birth to our beautiful son Collin. All bills paid.

We serve a wonderful God.

It is easy to go back to our flesh and to try to figure out what are we going to do to get through this but this time I want to see what my great God will do to get us through this!

I want to give him all of the Praise!

This week our church is having a revival meeting. I had determined last week even before we knew that my husband had been laid off that I was going to go to every meeting at the night services. It is running from Sunday through Thursday. Having little ones makes this a great challenge but I knew that I needed to be there.

Last night the message really spoke to my heart. It spoke about being separate. The Lord has been speaking to my heart about this for a while now and I really want to please him. I am looking forward to the next few precious evenings of some good preaching and some words from my God.

I think of that song often "Count Your Blessings Name Them One By One" How we have so much to thank our God for!

I want to encourage all of you that are maybe having the same struggles that we are having or maybe some other type of struggle and right now you are going through the valley. Keep your eyes on the Lord! He promises to never leave us or forsake us!

May God richly bless you all! Kathy

Proverbs 3:5&6
Trust in the Lord with all of thine heart; and
learn not unto thine own understanding.
In all of thy ways acknowledge him,
and He shall direct thy Paths!

Frugal Friday!

Here is my Frugal Idea this week.

Spring is in the air and I am looking forward to hanging clothes on the clothes line again.

Of course hanging them out does save on the electricity but what if you do not like how the clothes feel when they come off the line?

Well a dear friend of mine gave me a great tip.

If you want your clothes to feel softer when you take them off the line especially the towels :)
just throw them in the dryer for about 10- 15 mins than put them out on the line. This works wonderful. The towels are softer from the drying time in the dryer and they smell spring fresh from being on the line.




Have a great day and enjoy the Spring weather ! :)

God Bless, Kathy
Check out some other Frugal ideas at Life as Mom Frugal Friday

Super Saving Saturday!

Well last week I shopped for two weeks again so this week I only needed to get the deals!

I have read a lot about stockpiling so I have been trying to do this a little at a time.

So here is how I did this week.

I shopped at our local Shoprite. I do not do my majority of grocery shopping here but I usually pickup the items that are at a great buy especially if there are some great coupons to go with them! :)

Red Bliss Potatoes 5lbs reg price $2.49 ,on sale for &1.99

4-Secret Flawless Deodorant reg price $4.29 each, sale price $3.99 each
used 4/2.00 mfg coupons and received $6.00 in store coupons for next shopping order

6- Boxes of Kellogg's Cereal 2.99 each on sale for 3/$4.00
used 3 $1.00/2 mfg coupons

2- Reynolds foil reg. price $3.49 each on sale for $2.49 each
used 2 $1.00 mfg coupons

4- Shoprite Zip Freezer Bags 15 Ct reg price $ 1.84 each sale price $.92 each

2-Scotch Brite Scrub Sponge 3 ct $3.29 each on sale for $1.99 each
used 1.00/2 mfg coupon

1-Chock Full o' nuts coffee reg 2.99 on sale for 1.99 ( my sweet husband needed this :)

3-Dannon Lite and Fit yogurt 6 pack reg $3.29 each on sale for $1.69 each (I had a rain check for these) used 3 - 1.00 mfg coupons (these came out to .69 cents each making each yogurt only .12 cents each :)

I also had $5.96 in store coupons

Grand total before sale and coupons : $71.37
Total after coupons and sale : $ 23.75
I saved $ 47.62 dollars !!!

And I have $6.00 store coupons for the next trip!

I am still learning the ropes but I am enjoying the savings !