Thanksgiving

We had another fun-filled, food-filled and family-filled Thanksgiving this year. Thanksgiving has it’s traditions and we definitely have ours.   Years ago we started taking the kids to the Thanksgiving Day parade in uptown Charlotte.   I tried to get out of going this year, but Faith said, “It is a tradition!  We have to go!”. So, I took her and Gabriel uptown to the parade.  The kids pretty much go to the parade for the candy that is thrown at them, and the bands and floats come in a close second.  The parade, and the weather, was nice this year and I ended up enjoying myself.  We got to the parade late, which was a huge blessing, and were able to wriggle our way up to the front and sit on the curb.  The secret to being warm and comfortable at the parade is bringing a blanket to cover you and a few towels to sit on.  :)

After the parade, we headed on over to my parents’ house for the feast!  As usual, there was a ton of food and about 40 people.  I love my family and am so blessed to have so many wonderful aunts and uncles.  My cousin, Laura, came to Thanksgiving in my grandmother’s Moravian outfit which was squeezed on top of her 8 month pregnant belly.  It was hilarious!  And she celebrated her 30th birthday at the same time!

My parents had the bounce house blown up for all of the kids (about 15 of them).  They also got some great use out of the trampoline.  I had to go outside at one point and tell them to come in and eat!  Now that my kids are older, I hardly even see them on Thanksgiving.  They are having too much fun playing with all of their cousins.  I think that the only time that I saw Miller was when he kept coming back inside to ask for another cookie.  He had to have had 5-10 cookies that day.  I am pretty sure they ate more desserts than anything else.

It was another success Wilson thanksgiving! I am thankful for all of my loved ones and the time we spend together.

NC State Football

It has been years since I have been to an NC state football game. My dad used to have season tickets and I would go to a couple of games a year, but that was over 8 years ago.  While we were at the lake with Doug and Mavis over Labor Day weekend we planned a football game get away weekend together. Of course we ended up choosing the biggest game of the year to attend: NC state vs Clemson. It was so much fun! 

We arrived at Mavis and Jeff’s house Friday night, socialized and drank a bit too much wine. :). We were excited to see each other!!  Saturday morning arrived quickly!  We at breakfast, packed up the car, got on our NCSU gear, picked up some BBQ and we were on our way!  We tailed gated for hours, played Corn Hole, ate and drank and went into the game. 

The game was the loudest game I think that I have ever been to.  The fans were so loud! It was a great experience!  We lost the game, but the weekend is to be remembered.  We plan to do it again next year. 

Halloween!

This year, Halloween was a little bit different than it has been in years past.  Tom and I had a meeting that we HAD to attend and so we were unable to take the kids trick-or-treating this year.  We let each of the kids pick where they wanted to go for Halloween, and of course, they each picked a different house!  It took a bit of driving around town, but it worked out, thanks to my parents doing the driving.

Wilson went trick-or-treating with the Youngs, Miller went with the Rotherts and Faith went with her friend, Presley.  They all had a great time and came home with more candy than I have ever seen them get.  We have all bought some of their candy from them and they still have pounds of it!

Faith as Evie from Descendants and Presley the Angel….IMG_3484

Wilson the pirate and Jesse is Dorothy…..IMG_1819

Miller is a ninja and I assume that is Hudson as a transformer…..haha…..

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Wilson with his favorite funny face…which makes me laugh….

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Faith is 10!

IMG_3491 IMG_3400 IMG_3402 IMG_3405 IMG_3408 My baby girl turned ten-years-old today!  Yesterday she and I looked at a picture that I have of her in my room when she was only a few days old and was sooo tiny!  Now she is a ten year old, fourth grader that does flips non-stop!  Where did the time go?

Faith is such a good friend and sweet girl. She is kind to everyone (even her brothers, most of the time) and has a big heart.  I have loved getting to know her better over the past year. Homeschooling has it’s challenges, but she and I have definitely improved our relationship through our time together each day.  I love that she wants to spend time with me and cuddle up at night.  She may be getting bigger but she is still my little girl who loves her Mommy, and for that I am very thankful.   Faith used to be so shy (and still is a little), but she has been so brave and adaptable through all of the schooling changes that we have made over the past few years.  I am proud of the young lady that she is becoming.

Faith had her party a few weeks ago at the gym where she does gymnastics.  She had a great time with her friends and then had a few of them spend the night.  She was so excited to have her party.  She decorated the house all by herself and had a vision for how it was to be done.  She definitely has a knack for decorating and putting together outfits….she can do it better than I can!!

Here are some pictures of the birthday fun!!  I love you Faith!!

Disney


Once again, Disney did not disappoint! We stayed even longer this year and loved it! We spent two days in the parks, had a pool day, and then went back to the parks for one last day. It is such a great way for us to spend time as a family without any of the distractions of life – no phones, no work, no tv, no school and no one else to be with except us.

This year we had a little excitement due to the fact that a hurricane was coming up the coast of Florida. It wasn’t supposed to hit until Sunday morning so we left around 5:00pm Saturday. Haha. We were not about to end our fabulous vacation any earlier than we needed to. As we were driving north on I-95 Saturday afternoon, it was beginning to rain hard and there was not a single car heading south. Scary as it sounds, the hurricane did help with the crowds. There was not a single line on Friday in any of the parks….a definite silver lining!

Here are some of the “best ofs” from our trip….

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Transformation

transformed

I had an amazing revelation today while I was reading my Bible.  I read two verses and they spoke to me like never before.  I had read them many times before, but I guess I never really knew what they meant until today.  Today, the Lord opened my eyes to really understand them.  Here is what the verses said:

“For in him you have been enriched in every way – in all your speaking and in all your knowledge – because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you.”..1 Corinthians 1:5-6

I was reminded of a phone call that occurred between me and an old friend of mine that called me out of the blue about ten years ago.  This friend was a hot mess back in the day.  She cussed, drank a lot, her speech was always a bit slurred (in my memories of her), and in general she was a mess. (Of course, I was not much better.)  She called me out of the blue to apologize for some of the things that she had said and done many years prior.  I remember talking to her a bit and then hanging up the phone and saying to my mom, “I think that my friend has become a Christian.  She sounds so different.  She sounded like a different person.  Only the Lord can change someone’s voice and the way they speak and sound.”  I retold the conversation to Tom later that week and he said, “Becca, that is probably what your friends think about you as well.  Your voice and speech has changed due to your relationship with the Lord.”  It was an eye-opening conversation.  I had never thought about myself being changed or transformed.

Now, back to today’s revelation about this Bible verse…In the verse it says, that for in Jesus, we have been enriched in every way – in our speaking and in our knowledge!  When I, or we, become Christians and accept Christ as Savior, we are given His Spirit.  We are enriched in every way – our speech changes and our knowledge of Him increases.  Hence, we sound different than we did before we believed.  We have been transformed – every aspect of our lives can be transformed into His likeness – the things we say, the way we talk, the way we act, the way we treat others, etc.

The end of this verse really brings home the message – “because our testimony of Christ was confirmed in you.”  Paul and the other disciples were preaching that Jesus was the Son of God and that he came to set us free from sin and this world.  They were preaching that Jesus leads to life, and a new life in Him.  When we accept this gospel message, we are given a new life, new speech, and new knowledge, and it shows to the others that we interact with.  Paul knew that this transformation would occur, and that this change was proof that Jesus is the true Messiah.  This transformation was obvious in the lives of the believers that he was writing to, it is obvious in my life and in the life of my friend that I spoke to on the phone!  That is praise worthy!

I am so thankful that God revealed this verse to me and that I can claim it as true in my life.   I am thankful that I have God’s Word to read and to have it revealed to me.  I am thankful that “I am a new creation in Christ, the old has gone and the new has come.”                           2 Cor  5:17

A Healthier Mammogram Alternative

Have you ever heard of a “thermogram”?  I hadn’t either until a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately, I had found a lump that needed to be examined more closely.  After watching “The Truth About Cancer” video series last year, I had already decided that I was not going to get a mammogram unless it was absolutely necessary. The videos explained how women are being exposed to high amounts of radiation each year for a test that is only 50% effective.

Dr. Mercola’s website states that, “Mammograms use ionizing radiation at a relatively high dose, which can contribute to the mutations that can lead to breast cancer. You can get as much radiation from one mammogram as you would from 1,000 chest X-rays. Mammography also compresses your breasts tightly, which can lead to a dangerous spread of cancerous cells, should they exist. Dr. Samuel Epstein, one of the world’s top cancer experts, has stated:

“The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 rad exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent, with a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade’s screening.””   https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/03/experts-say-avoid-mammograms.aspx

Being the health nut that I am, I went on the hunt for a safer test to find the answers that I needed.

Thankfully, the Lord pointed me to two different people to help me along my path to finding out if the lump that I felt was harmful.  My first wise decision was to confide in my friend, Delaney, who is a nurse.  I hoped that she would have some great medical insight for me and she did!  She told me that she had heard of a thing called “thermography” and that I should look into it.  I googled “thermography charlotte” and only one placed popped up.  It was the Thermography Center in Matthews.  I immediately made an appointment for the next day (because it is such an unknown process, they weren’t overly busy).

This appointment was the most amazing experience I have had in a long time.  The woman who took the thermogram (infrared heat sensitive pictures) was an amazing, christian woman.   She took the pictures and then explained everything to me right then and there.  I knew within minutes what I was looking at, what needed to be addressed, and what didn’t.  First and foremost, the lump I felt was nothing to worry about.  Because thermograms sense heat within the body, anything that was red on the screen was a place in my body where heat was building up more than it should.  On the other end of the spectrum, parts that were blue were cooler.  A cancerous tumor (or one forming) would appear red on the screen because it is a living thing inside of you that is drawing blood so that it can grow.  This test can see where problems are occurring years before they turn cancerous (a mammogram can only see the problem after it is already over 1 cm and potentially cancerous).  She could see where estrogen was building up in my chest, which could lead to problems down the road. Then she advised me on how to get rid of that build up.  I could even see on the screen where my lump was and that it was blue.  :)  Blue = good

I am writing all of this to tell you to please ask around to see if there is a thermography center where you live.  It may not be covered by insurance but they will take your HSA card.  It is worth the little bit of extra money that you may spend.  You will not regret taking the extra time and effort to get a better test than the one that squishes your boobs so hard that it hurts and then sends radiation throughout your body at the same time.  I thank God everyday that the lump I felt was not cancerous.  I am also very thankful that the Lord directed me to Kathrine Wassung at the Charlotte Thermography Center.  It turns out that there are numerous thermography offices in Charlotte, but for some reason, only one appeared on my screen that day.  The Lord was directing my steps and saving me from having to do a mammogram unnecessarily.  I am telling everyone I know about this test because it was fascinating, painless, and effective.

I have attached an interesting bit of an article for you to read and the link to the “Truth About Cancer” series that discusses mammograms and thermography.  Please check them out!

This is the actual video footage from “The Truth About Cancer” series.  Please watch this video.  

Mammograms Cause Breast Cancer (video)