BLESSINGS ABOUND!!!

"A house is built by wisdom, and it is established by understanding; by knowledge the rooms are filled with every precious and beautiful treasure" Proverbs 24:3-4 "Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may have wisdom in our hearts"Psalm 90:12 "The plans of the diligent certainly lead to profit" Proverbs 21:5 These are my verses to meditate on this weekend as I try to get my house in order and come up with a routine since Kevin will going back to work full time next week and work atleast 60 hrs a week. Thank God for the opprotunity for him to work and God bless me as I come up with a loose routine for our days. Please pray for us during this time of transition also. I have never been very organized so routines are tough for me. Something God is odviously dealing with me about. Oh not to mention my photography site will be going live this weekend, my photography class on Saturday, birthday shopping and party planning for Zane (finally), and ofcourse Church on Sunday!!! LOL! :) All blessings but a tiny bit overwhelming! Now I am off to clean the kitchen and start on the bookshelf!

Oh my poor neglected blog!!! I keep promising I will get better at this but it's just not happening. Maybe in 2010 I will be better about it.

I must say even though we had many trials in 2008 and 2009, we definitely ended 2009 in a great way!! That ofcourse gave us a wonderful start to 2010! Kevin keeps saying that he really believes 2010 is our year. I have to admit that things definitely feel different. Either way I know that we are truly blessed. We love each other and our 4 children. We have a place to live, food to eat, and clothes on our back. We have great family and friends and a wonderful church family. Most of all we have a God who cares about us and everything that's going on in our life. What more could we ask for????

This Christmas was one of the best yet. Zoe, Justice, and Zane all got bikes from Santa. The girls were ecstatic about it but Zane is a little weary of his. All of the kids got tons of clothes. I do mean tons!! LOL! To the point that I have had to make 2 trips to Wal-Mart for new hangers. The girls received nail polish and lip gloss. They all got bubble bath. Zane got a new bedding set. Zane and Zoe both got decorations for their room. Justice got lots of Princess stuff, books, flash cards, a clock, dress up outfits, and so on. Zoe got a few dress up outfits to. Most of Zoe's gifts were games. She got connect four, gator golf, Noodleboro learning to share, noodleboro learning to listen, and so on. The majority of Zane's gifts were cars. His two favorites were an 18 wheeler to store the cars in and a Thomas the train set. When he saw the Thomas the train set he said that Santa could come get the rest of his gifts. LOL! That boy loves Thomas. I think we know what to do for his birthday! He also got a Good night Bible which I absolutely love! There was also a really cool Dinosaur game that when you touch the dinosaurs it tells you the facts about that dinosaur. Jett got a tool set, lots of teethers and links, a few movies, a talking phone, and the other normal baby stuff. All of the kids got puzzles, bubbles, mega blocks, sidewalk chalk and the aforementinoed clothes. The girls also got a new Leapster game. And ofcourse Grandparents always give the best gifts. Granny gave them handmade Snuggie's. She also made handmade necklaces for the girls. They gave me and Kevin a new Dvd player which was perfect timing as ours was starting to die. We also got lots of good stuff that we can use for homeschooling. :) Kevin got a new Bible and some new cologne. I got picture frames(very much needed and loved!), make up, and new perfume. Some of my favorite things were the more practical gifts, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and diapers! Yes, I am serious. For that hard to buy for person in your life, always go practical, get them something you know that they will use a lot. Then they will have free money to get what they like or they can save it. We also got a very decent amount of gift cards. I am sure that I have forgotten some of the wonderful things we received because there were just so many things. I guess to sum it up we really racked up! LOL! We probably looked like we lived out of our van on the way home! LOL! It was so packed that the kids could barely get in and out and there were the bikes on top of the van which were on top of two large trash bags of stuff. We really didn't think it would all fit. Now I have to figure out where to put all of it in the house. Most of it is still in the van because I have no clue where to put it. I plan on cleaning out the toy boxes tomorrow and re arranging some stuff to make room for it.

Although the gifts were wonderful and very much appreciated the time we got to spend with everyone meant far more. The kids enjoyed playing outside, riding their bikes, and riding the fourwheelers. We also took a trip to the Musuem of Aviation with our friends Tara and Randy and their baby Sean. All of the kids really enjoyed themselves! I enjoyed visiting with Tara and Randy and the planes were pretty cool to. :) Terri and Jordan came over to visit to. We didn't get to spend nearly enough time with anyone but we never do. There were even a few people that I wanted to visit that I never made it to. We will be back in July and hopefully we can visit them then. We spent a fair amount of time with Aunt Suzanne, Mrs. Trina and Drew and Makayla, and Granny and Grandpa. Even with them it was not nearly enough time and in some ways I wish I was still there. However I like being home and needed the rest. LOL! Although with the cleaning, laundry, and rearranging, I haven't had much time to rest.

As for ringing in the new year, we started off by going to the watch night service at church and had some great snacks. We wanted to stay for the second part of the service but I was worried that the kids wouldn't make it through the service and we didn't want to disrupt it. So we came home and had a family movie night! We ate popcorn and watched one of the kids new movie's. All four of the babies made it to midnight but just barely! :) It was a great night. As for resolutions I don't really have any resolutions. I prefer to call them goals and most of mine are ongoing. :) LOL! My number one goal is to grow in my relationship with God each and every day. My second goal is to always be the best mother and wife that I can possibly be. I suppose I should add teacher to that list to now. I pray that God will lead me in my homeschool journey with the kids and that we will be able to teach them everything they need to know. My third goal is to eventually start my own photography studio. The first thing I have to do to reach that goal is to get another proffesional camera since I had to sell it when I was on medical leave for so long in 2008. Then I will start portofolio building and taking classes again. So anyone who wants to model for some family portraits, teen sessions, or kids portraits, let me know! I plan to get my camera back around March. My fourth goal is to get financially stable and be able to buy another house within the next two years. I really want the kids to be able to come home when they are grown and have childhood memories around our house. However if that never happens I know they will always have our family memories in their hearts. Well in their hearts and the literally thousands of photo's that I take! LOL!

I can honestly say that even through our many trials we have been very blessed. God has seen us through each and every one of our trials. There have been times that we really shouldn't have been able to make ends meet financially but some how we always made it through. There have been times that my life was seriously threatened due to my medical condition and yet I am healthy. Sure I have to take medication and alter my diet somewhat but it doesn't interfere with my daily life. I can still do all of the things that I want to. Also three of the kids were preemies and yet none of them had serious medical issues like most preemies do. We have moved to areas that we didn't know anything about only to find love and compassion, lots of things to do and loads of friendly faces. Not to mention that we feel more like we belong here than we ever have anywhere else. We would have never had North Carolina on our list of places we wanted to live so it was definitely God who led us here. Now that we are here I doubt that we will ever leave. We truly love it. We have 4 wonderful children who bless us in different ways each and every day. I hope that we are as much of a blessing to each of them as they are to us. We have been blessed to be able to homeschool the kids and I pray that we will continue to be able to. We have made some financial sacrifices to be able to homeschool the kids but I am okay with that. I would rather them learn the way that they need to than to have a lot of stuff. We have even faced trials in our marriage and somehow God used those trials to make our marriage stronger. I am sure that we have many many more trials to face and tons more lessons to learn but that is okay. I know that God will always be right there with us. I know that he has a plan for me and for my husband and for my family. I have my goals and I am praying that God will help me to meet them but he has goals for me that I may not even know about yet. Ultimately I want to fulfill God's purpose for me and for my family. There are things in my life that are changing every day and I believe that God has his hand in it and is just trying to show me the things he wants me to do. My prayer for each and every one of my friends and family is that you will also have a wonderfully blessed 2010 and that if you haven't already found God's purpose for you that you will continue to search for it and God will show you the way. I pray that each one of you will see God and feel closer to him with each one of your trials if you have any and always know that there is a reason for it. I love all of you and I hope that I am as much of a blessing to you as you all are to me and my family. So with love....have the best 2010 that you can!!!

PS look for Christmas pictures on facebook soon! :)

September 2009 My cup runneth over!

Okay so we can officially add September 27th, 2009 to one of the happiest days of my life. I am absolutely thrilled to announce that Kevin got saved that day!! I can not even being to tell you how much of a Blessing this was to our whole family. He was baptized on October 4th. The girls also sang in the choir that night so they got to see him be baptized which I thought was wonderful!!! :) They kept saying they saw Daddy in the water. We have been doing bible studies together since then. We also just ordered our first family devotional today. It should be in next week. We have always taken the kids to church and said night time prayers. I have talked to them about Jesus and what they have learned in church but we have never really done daily devotionals. I am very excited about continuing the devotionals that myself and Kevin are doing now and about adding daily devotionals for the kids. I have truly seen such a change in Kevin. I have always loved him and knew that he was a wonderful man. However now he is so much kinder, happier, and more understanding. We don't argue as much as we use to and we seem to work together much better. Our lives and goals seem to be the same now. I am so excited to what God has for us next. As I mentioned in a status a few days ago, God already has something brewing for us that we would like everyone to pray about. I would prefer not to say exactly what until Sun. We have another meeting there to discuss some more specific details about it.

Another exciting thing for me and the girls was the Mother/Daughter event at church. The girls absolutely loved it. Ofcourse it was a little complicated with 2 girls with opposite personalities. LOL! Zoe wanted to do scavenger hunts and all of the active stuff and Justice wanted to do all of the girly stuff. I tried to get a good balance for both of them. The girls had their hair fixed and their nails painted. We colored, painted, decorated angels, t-shirts, and flip flops. We did a devotional and ate lots of yummy food. Their was pizza, some sort of cashew pasta salad, brownies, cookies, and ice cream! They also got to play in the gym and had a lot of fun. I can't wait to go to this even again next year and I am sure they will enjoy it just as much the next time around to! Here are a few pictures of the event. Please don't mind me, I had been at work all day so most of my make up was gone!! LOL! This was before I started selling Avon.

I also started selling Avon in September which has been a great blessing to me. It has made me step outside of my comfort zone and that's always a good thing. Now after adding all of the pictures of the girls I feel a little guilty because there aren't any of the handsome Huggler boys. Zane is his normal adorable self. He loves going to church to play with Thomas. LOL! Literally every time we pull into the church parking lot he starts yelling, Mommy, Daddy, go get Thomas. It's really cute. So I guess we know what is on his Christmas list this year! Jett is practicing getting up on all fours. He's not crawling yet, just rocking back and forth but it won't be long now. It's kind of bitter sweet since he is my last baby. I just want to savor every minute and it just seems to be whizzing by! So just for good measure here is a picture of Jett and of Zane. :)

Great news!!!!

Well Monday was a great day and a bad day at the same time. First and foremost I want to share the good news. On Monday I had another veinous scan and the blood clot is gone!!!! So praise God I am officially blood clot free for the first time in almost a year!!! I do have to continue taking the cuomadin for about another 2 months. Then they are going to try aspirin therapy and see how I do with that. They did however have to up my dosage of cuomadin again. Apparently I have very thick blood. At first they thought my diet was inhibiting the cuomadin so I was put on a limited vitamin K diet. It is a very hard diet to stick to. You would be amazed at the amount of foods with vitamin K in them. Even once I go on the aspirin therapy I am suppose to stick to my diet. BLAH!!! I am praying that the aspirin therapy will work but I do have my doubts since I developed a new clot within 24 hours of being off the blood thinners the last time and also because they keep having to increase the cuomadin because it isn't theraputic. Like I said though I am going to continue to pray that it will work. I know God works in mysterious ways and he has a plan. The bad part of the day was that we spent a few hours at the mechanics who fixed our air conditioner in the van the last time. They originally told us since it went out so quickly after they fixed it that they would do it this time for free. Well after we sat there for three hours they came and handed us a bill for another $180. I was furious. We argued and nothing was solved so they drained all of the freon out of it so that it would not work. We were going to call the home office but they were closed for the day already. So after wasting most of my last day off for the next two weeks we still had no air conditioner. Kevin temporarily fixed it so currently it is working but we know it won't last long. We did call the home office of the mechanics yesterday. They were very nice and apologized repeatedly. When we go back home they are going to send us to another office and have it repaired for free like they should have done in the first place. So even though I was annoyed it worked out. Jett and Zane had dr's appts a few weeks ago that I have not updated everyone about. I am horrible at blogging! LOL! Zane is doing great. He had his 2 year shots but he really did pretty well with them. He only cried a little. Ofcourse you know at the 2 year appointment they try to get them to talk to make sure they can say 20 words clearly. Well Mr. Talkative would not say one word!!! He just stared at the dr. like he was crazy. So the Dr. took our word for it. Trust me he can say a lot more than 20 words!!! Little stinker! Jett is healthy but they are not happy with his weight. He dropped from the 23rd percentile to the 10th. He weighed only 12 lbs but he had atleast gained weight from his last appt, just not as much as they would want him to. So they told us to go ahead and give him rice cereal and Juice even though normally they don't get them until 6 months. Ofcourse Jett is very happy about that. He loves the Juice. Who can blame him, that formula doesn't look or smell to appetizing. He is such a good baby. He sleeps through the night and has been for quite some time now. He loves to watch his older siblings play and smiles at anyone who pays him any attention or if he even thinks they are talking to him. The girls are still the girls. Justice is still my girly girl and Zoe is as active as ever. They are enjoying learning their shapes, letters, and colors. We have also studied animals and minerals. We plan to work on some social studies soon so that they can learn their new address and so on. Kevin is also doing well. He is starting online classes to be a physical therapist assistant and then he will eventually go to school to be a physical therapist. Not sure how that is going to work with my job but we have always made everything else work out so this will to. I don't want to keep him from following his dreams either. So that is about all that is going on with us currently. Hope everyone is doing well. Big hugs!!

Memorial Day

Well our day didn't get off to a great start but it end up pretty good anyway. I had talked to the kids about what Memorial day meant and that we were going to a parade today so they were all excited. Well we got there just in time to see the end of the parade even though we were early. They had moved it up due to a chance of rain without telling anyone. I was a little irritated. But then we went to the stadium and got to see the memorial service for the families of fallen soldiers, see the airborne paratroopers, see a blackhawk take off, and the pass of colors. I tried to explain the meaning of Memorial day to the girls on a level they would understand. They did understand some of what was going on but I am not sure how much. Atleast I planted a seed though. It was hard to explain without crying but I managed to do it. All to many times it could have been one of my family members who had fallen. Luckily this year I didn't have any family members in a war zone but I have plenty of friends that are over there or friends whose family is over there. I did think of you all today and will be saying a prayer for you tonight. I am also doing a study on Memorial day with the kids this week as part of their "school" lessons. I don't make it seem like school because I want them to enjoy learning and have fun and not really realize they are doing "school". :) It is really important to me that they realize what Memorial day really is. I think to much of society has forgotten. They just think "hey 3 day weekend with some parade and other fun stuff". That was more than evident when the parade and helicopter and paratroopers were done because very few stayed for the actual memorial service after the pass of colors. I want my children to stop and think about the fallen soldiers and appreciate what they have done for not only us but everyone in the US even those who don't appreciate it. Our bed time story tonight was on Memorial Day. I think it did them a lot of good to talk about it beforehand because they asked questions during the whole program and were quiet when they were suppose to be. Then tonight they went through the events of the day for me. I have realized through my very short time homeschooling that we really do underestimate our children sometimes. In addition to that I think I am learning as much as they are. There are lots of things I didn't know about Memorial day. Like where Taps originated from, or that it used to be called Decoration day, or that the flower for Memorial day is Poppies. Over all though I just wanted to write this blog to remind people that today is about our fallen soldiers. Sure you should have fun and bar-b-que and all of that but please at the end of the day stop and say a little prayer for the fallen soldiers and their family members. Also if you know any Veterans tell them thank you or maybe take them some of that good bar-b-que if they live near you. Just remember what the day really is about. I hope you had an honorable Memorial day!

P.S.Pictures to follow tomorrow as it's late now.

Very inspiring day!!!

Okay, so I have not been using blogger much. I am a horrible blogger! :) Promise to do better in the future. Yesterday was one of the most inspiring days I have had in a long time. It was my first day of the homeschool conference. The mayor of Winston-Salem was even there. Considering we are about to move to that area it was a major encouragement. I learned a lot today. There were things about curriculms, learning styles, and so on. The main thing I got out of today though was a christian aspect on love and marriage. Bet you didn't expect that hu? LOL! Neither did I. It was very insightful and useful. God really does work in mysterious ways. I know I can not explain this as well as the speaker did but I will try. Basically worldly love is a form of Idolatry. We all love people when they are doing good things but maybe we care a little less when they aren't doing what we want. We blame other people for making us unhappy and really no one can make us unhappy unless we let them. We marry people or have relationships with people because we think they can make us happy but they can't. We are using them but actually thinking what we are doing is loving them. We are nice to get something out of them and when that stops working we have a tendancy to be mean to get our way. The people who give us the biggest trials are the people we should be the most thankful for because God has put them there to give us an opprotunity to love. It is his way of teaching us to love like him. We can not love to get something (which we do a lot of times not even realizing it). I mean if you really stop and think about it the times you are most focused on God are the times that you are having hard tiems. However we are usually praying for him to fix it instead of thinking him for the opprotunity to show his love and grace. Basically we can only get full from God to go out and give to someone else with no expectation of return. Ofcourse this was much more interesting when the speaker said it. LOL! But hopefully the message got across. Maybe it was just so moving to me because it was a message I needed to hear. Here are some passages that go along with it: Matthew 22:36-40, 1 Cor. 13: 1-3, 1 Cor. 13: 7-8, 1 Jo. 4: 7-8,Gal. 5:14, Deut. 5:7-9. Also to be honest I had been wondering if Homeschooling was the best thing for my children or not ever since I started. I have always wanted to but now I was doing out of neccessity to keep them with me when I traveled. Well God gave me the opprotunity to figure that out yesterday on the way home from the conference. The shuttle driver who was taking me back to the hotel asked me what we did at the conferences. So I told her that we basically go to learn about curriculm and learning styles but mostly for encouragement and to know other people are going through the same kinds of things. Then she asked if homeschoolers start homeschooling their children from infancy. I explained that some do that, and some start from pre-k age, and others actually pull their children out of public school. Then she asked why I homeschool. I had not been asked that question yet really. I had people tell me they thought it was great and ask how I do it but never why. So I really had to think about it. Would I have homeschooled my kids even if I was not traveling? Probably so if I didn't have to work a normal job in an office. Why? Well ofcourse their is the family togetherness because of my traveling. Other than that though, I really do believe they will get a better education. I mean as for socialization....I don't really want my children learning certain things from their peers. I mean they can pick up some very negative things at school and their are a lot of distractions. Other than that for some reason most public school kids hate learning because they get burnt out. It''s not made very fun. It's very regimented. They teach the way that MOST people learn. But what about the kids who don't learn that way? I mean the schools just don't have the time or money to evaluate every kid and adapt to them. Well I do have that opprotunity. I want my kids to grow up loving to learn and realizing how much fun it can be. I want them to grow up learning how to think for themselves, not just knowing a bunch of facts. I am definitely not saying homeschooling is for everyone or that public school kids are not going to thrive. It may be the best choice for other people but it just isn't for my family. So now I realize I am doing what is best for my family. I really believe that God had that shuttle driver ask me that question so that I could realize that. Also I would like to ask everyone to pray for Jessica Hulcy. She is the creator of the konos in a box curriculm. It is not the curriculm that we use but she has been such a blessing to so many people who homeschool their children and touched so many lives. She was on her way to speak at a conference in Fla on Mon when she was hit by a fire truck en route to an emergency. She is still in critical condition. So please pray that God will give her Dr's the knowledge to heal her. Also pray for the firemen that hit her as I imagine they may feel guilty. It was not their fault. They were trying to get somewhere to save other lives. Also a fellow church member has a baby girl Klaire in the hospital. If you could please pray for Baby Klaire's lungs so that she can come home soon. She has been in the hospital a few weeks now. They say when her lungs clear up that she can come home. I hope that this blog has touched some one and given them as much insight as my day yesterday gave me. I also need to repent for all the people I have carved on (unintentionally) and it is a very long list. I will list just a few here.
Kevin Huggler
Susan Taylor
Charles Roberson
Thomas Taylor
Matthew Ingram
Suzanne Hall
Stacey Richards
Various teachers
Kyle
Stephen
Jeremy Toney
Miller Brown
Ferozkhan mudupully
Nasko Dimitrov
Robert Davis (and believe me it takes a lot for me to put him on here!)
Heather
Terri Karchella
Jonathan Ingram
Frankie Terrell
Laura Brailey (takes even more to put her on here!)
Tiffany
Nikki Watson
Marie Stout
Christal Vilchis
Jennifer Wilson
Brandy
Christy
Stacey
Crystal
Zane Huggler
Justice Huggler
Zoe Huggler
All of my pets
Kim Kline
Christina
Joyce Ingram
Will dowling
Jeff Veneman
Mark Jacobs
My customers (past and future)
Terri Coleman
Steve Coleman
Tim Coleman
Jamie Coleman
Jamie Olson
Rachelle Roberts

HMMMM>>>I am sure there are hundreds of others but these are the only ones I can think of. Also please do not be offended if you see your name here. I didn't realize I was doing this. I do consider you all friends and would never intentionally do anything to hurt you.

Wishing there was enough time for everything!

So I am still trying to work hard on my photography business but it just seems I never really have the time to. I am still getting shadows on my babies eyes and I am still having some issues with lighting to. :( I am taking classes but since I have so much other stuff to do it is taking me forever. Ofcourse photo shop is the last course but I guess they do that so they can truly judge your work. I did upload some new photos of the babies on my myspace page so please check it out. Myspace.com/mycaptivatingimages