This past week has been extremely hard for me. I lost my Great Grandpa, who I was very very close to. I can honestly say that he was THE best grandpa I’ve ever had. I am so thankful for the last 5 years of being able to grow closer to him, of course, it wasn’t as long as I wanted, but I am very glad I had them. It was wonderful! It was wonderful to grow as close to him as I did.

Over the past 5 years, he really opened up to me about his WWII experiences which he hadn’t shared them at all before. When I presented him the Armed Service album I made for him at his 65th anniversary, he was moved to tears. I knew that all the efforts and the sleepless night I spent on it was so worth it! Getting to know him was truly a blessing to me. I pray it was to him also. Since I did that for him and grew closer to him through it, I have a very important place in my heart for the armed service men. When we took him to the cemetery, they gave him a beautiful Final Military Salute with the playing of Taps and a 21 Gun Salute. I bawled through the whole thing. Knowing that his service was important to him, and that was so very important to me because of him. It was very hard to sit through for me.
Sitting in his funeral service remembering all the times we had together, the tears just flowed. We would color when I was younger and as I grew up, we would sit on his front porch and play cards. He taught me to play rummy, war, slap jack, and more. One of the last times he played cards he was 87 and got down on the floor with the Littles to play go fish with them. It wasn’t easy for him to crawl on the floor but he showed his love to his family by doing it. He truly was a family man. That was all he was worried about: his family. He made it known that his family was all that was important to him.

I truly miss him. I miss his hugs. I miss his smile. I miss his playing cards. I miss praying for him. I now found myself crying when I pray because he is no longer on my list and it reminds me he is gone. I just miss him! But he lived a full and meaningful life. A life devoted to his family. I praise God that Grandpa knew our Savior and that I have the hope to once again see him on Resurrection Day. It hurts and its hard to have to wait for that day, but I know that the day is drawing close. OH, what a glorious day that will be!

Isaiah 25:8
He will swallow up death forever. Adonai ELOHIM will wipe away the tears from every face, and he will remove from all the earth the disgrace his people suffer. For ADONAI has spoken.

Revelation 21
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death; and there will no longer be any mourning, crying or pain; because the old order has passed away.”

Love you, Grandpa!

Please continue to pray for us and also my Great Grandma who is by herself now, and also for my Uncle Keith. It’s been hard for them too.

©AmandaDixon2009

Tags: 21 Gun Salute, Armed Services, coloring, cry, family, Final Military Salute, funeral, grandpa, Great Grandma Walters, Great Grandpa Walters, He will swallow up death forever. Adonai ELOHIM will wipe away the tears from every face and he will remove from all the earth the disgrace his people suffer. For ADONAI has spoken., He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will no longer be any death and there will no longer be any mourning crying or pain because the old order has passed away.", hurts, important, Isaiah 25:8, military salute, pain, playing cards, Resurrection Day, Revelation 21, sad, Savior, scrapbooking, Taps, WWII

Yes, this is a shameless plug on behalf of my familia. I’m sure y’all have heard that the Home School Blog Awards are going on… if not… they are. Well I would like to present to you where my votes are going…
My familia:
In the Best Homeschool Mom Blog, I’m voting for Walking Therein
In the Best Teen Girl Blog, I’m voting for A Pondering Heart
In the Best Teen Group Blog, I’m voting for Feelin’ Feminine
In the Best Teen Guy Blog, I’m voting for On The Road To Manhood
In the Best Homemaking or Recipes Blog, I’m voting for A City on a Hill
In the Best Family or Group Blog, I’m voting for Gleaning the Harvest
In the Best Blog Design, I’m voting for Gleaning the Harvest

And also for these supporters of Gleaning the Harvest:
In the Best “Live-What-You-Believe” Homeschool Blog, I’m voting for A Dusty Frame
In the Best Variety, I’m voting for Penny Raine
In the Best Nitty-Gritty Homeschool Blog, I’m voting for Heart of Wisdom
In the Best Crafts, Plans & Projects Blog, I’m voting for Seven Sisters
In the Best Eclectic Homeschooling, I’m voting for Delightful Learning
In the Best Thrifty Homeschooler, I’m voting for Money Saving Mom
In the Best NEW Homeschool Blog, I’m voting for Delightful Learning
In the Best Geographical Blog, I’m voting for  For the Time Has Come (Costa Rica)
In the Funniest Homeschool Blog, I’m voting for Always a Work in Progress!

I would sooo appreciate if you would take 5min or so of your time to go vote for these choices. The voting ends at midnight on November 21st which is Saturday, so hurry over!
And that is my shameless plug. Thanks y’all!

©AmandaDixon2009

Tags: A Dusty Frame, A Pondering Heart, best, blog, blog awards, crafts, Crystal Paine, design, eclectic, family, Feelin' Feminine, funniest, geographical, Gleaning The Harvest, Heart of Wisdom, Home School Blog Awards, homemaking, homeschool mom, HSBA Post, Jacque Dixon, Jocelyn Dixon, live what you believe, Money Saving Mom, new, nitty-gritty, Penny Raine, recipes, Robin Sampson, teen boy, teen girl, teen group, thrifty, variety, vote, Walking Therein

and that I guess makes up for not sleeping. Look at those colors and those clouds! Gorgeous! It’s a Beloved Dawn… kinda like my name.

But as beautiful as that is… I still prefer regular sleeping hours, so I hope the goat gets better and moved back to the barn, so I can get back to sleeping at night and in my bed. so if y’all could pray that she gets better. lol! also last week, I did some acrobatics in the dark over a lawn chair. :/ Bruised up my leg quite a bit and it is still pretty sore.

And that’s what I’ve been up to… up… literally!

©AmandaDixon2009

Tags: acrobatics, Amanda Dawn, beautiful, Beloved Dawn, bruised, clouds, color, family, goats, gorgeous, moon, night shift, not sleeping, photography, photos, pictures, sick, sky, sleeping, staying up all night, sun, sunrise

Christian “Dozer” Drews

Prayers and Loves to Mr. Drews, Marshie, Austin, and Noah and all the extended family! Waiting with you til the glorious day that we will all be reunited with him!

©AmandaDixon2009

Tags: boy, Christian Drews, drewsfamilytx, drowned, family, Jesus, Lord, love, loving memory, Marsha Drews, missing, one year anniversary, star, Texas, three year old

oh sheesh! Last week was some week! I was a goat doctor, a computer doctor, phone line doctor, a all nighter, an errand runner every hour, and more!

Last Sunday night, one of the goat mamas who had twins was really sick. Mom, Jocelyn and Rachel all did what they could to help her and thought she was doing better when they came up to the house late that night, but the next morning, she wasn’t.
This happened after we had no internet all weekend… I still don’t know why, but it only came on for about an hour and late at night! So we couldn’t really research what to do for the doe. From Friday night to Monday, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the world was going on with our internet. Unhooking, rehooking, rewiring, and resetting up everything for our router and modem, still nothing. FINALLY on Monday morning, I was able to get a hold of our internet provider. It was our phone line but I ended up getting it up and running! Only bad thing is is that our system is downstairs in the kitchen because I’m gonna have to rewire the upstairs line to get it to work there.
After I got that to work, Mom figured out what the goat would need, so Jocelyn and I went into TSC to get some stuff to help her get well. I administered a 6cc shot of penicillin to Bella, but it was too late. She ended up dying within an hour. This is the second animal we lost this month. Later that night, Jocelyn’s laptop was freaking out on her and giving her the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), so I ran some tests and diagnostics for 6hours. I just couldn’t come up with the problem and solution so I ended up calling my IT uncle and he helped me run a special diagnostics and we found out that her harddrive was bad! ugh! We contacted Dell and they said they would ship us out a new one to install. After all that, two other does weren’t doing well, so Mom and I made a 1am Wal-Mart trip to get some stuff to mix up for them.

Tuesday night one of the does went down and started getting really sick. We started giving her stuff and Jocelyn and I stayed up all night to check on her every hour. We also had to bring in the two doelings of the mama that died to feed them too. The doe was not doing good at all, so around 6am, Mom and I went into town and got some more supplies to make goat medicine. When we got home, I had to wrestle the goat for an hour to give her vitamins. Bleh! If you know me… I hate getting dirty and so wrestling a goat outside after it rained all night… I got dirty! BLEH!
Since TSC wasn’t open when we were in town earlier, I ended up going back into town an hour later to get the antitoxin. The guy at TSC was kinda funny. After I spent however long trying to get the right medicines, I got up to the check out counter and the older man looked at me and says, “Looks like you’re having ‘one of those days’.” I was like, “well… my day never really started because I’ve been up since 11am on Tuesday.” We chuckled and he said “well I hope your day gets better.” Then I went to fill up the van and grab something to drink, only get a call that I needed something else from TSC. Oi! So I headed back, got the medicines, and went to the counter. They guy goes, “Your day isn’t getting any better, is it?” I laughed and was like, “not yet.” I went home only to find out that Lillie was sick. I then gave the doe a 12cc shot of antitoxin and let me tell you… that is not easy! Have you ever seen a shot that was 12cc? oi! The doe didn’t like it and kept moving and when you give a subcutaneous shot, you have to make sure to only get under the skin and not into the muscle or bone. I had to reinsert the needle a couple of times because she wouldn’t stand still. After we finally were able to give her the whole shot, came back up to the house and cleaned up. Jocelyn and I were running on no sleep all the while. I had to run back into town to get some stuff for Lillie, but it didn’t help her at all and a couple hours later, Mom ended up taking her into the ER because she had a rash, headache, neckache, and fever. Mom was worried it might be meningitis. While they were gone, I researched a link between what the goats had and if it could cause meningitis which it could. Thank God that Lillie just had an ear infection.
I installed Jocelyn’s harddrive too… its easier than it sounds! I was really worried that I might mess something up at first, but it ended up being easy to do and after an hour or so of reloading everything, her laptop was working great!
After dinner, we went back down to give the doe her last dose of a gazillion medicines of the night and after spending an hour doing that, came back up and I collapsed in bed and didn’t get up til 10hours later!

Woke up, still dead tired and Mom said we needed yet another something from TSC… you can imagine the looks I got from the workers who had seen me 10x in the last three days! LOL! I had to get some bigger syringes because the 12cc of antitoxin wasn’t enough! WHAT?! I thought 12cc was ALOT of medicine… while I was looking at the syringes I saw a gigantic one that was 60cc and I’m thinking Oh Lord! I hope she doesn’t need that much! So I called Mom and was like… “are you sure 12cc isn’t enough?” She was like “no she needs more.” So I went to grab the package of 20cc, and it was HUGE! I’m thinking “Oh my word“. I do not want to shoot this much into that goat! it will take a year! Luckily, someone had put a 60cc package where the 20cc was supposed to be, so after I grabbed the 20cc, I was able to breathe a little bit more. After running to get popsicles, came home and gave the doe her bigger dose and spent an hour giving her the other medicine with Jocelyn and Rachel. Then we ate dinner, and I caught up on some of my computer work til late late.

I might mention that the doe is better. She was doing so much better that I only had to give her 1 shot of antitoxin on Friday compared to the 3-4 shots of antitoxin and penicillin that I had been giving! I spent most of Friday cleaning for Sabbath and then right as I was getting ready for bed, Jocelyn came in and asked me to fix her laptop! :O Somehow a spyware had gotten downloaded on it. I ran all our antispyware programs and nothing was working. Stayed up til about 6:30am trying to figure this out. I finally gave up because there was nothing I could do.

Woke up on Saturday and checked my email to see if I had gotten any answers to her spyware problem… nope no answers, but I did get an email that I had won a giveaway for an Asus Netbook! YIPPEE! I am like soooo excited. its pretty awesome! Then I reloaded Jocelyn’s OS onto her laptop and its working now. Hoping that nothing else goes wrong with it! Saturday was pretty restful! finally… ahhh!

So what a week, right? I guess its just another week in the life of a homeschool graduate, huh? Someone asked me if I was a vet student last week… Nope… just a girl living on a hobby farm with her family. If I had gone to college, I would have never been able to learn all the life skills and everything I learned this week. I keep telling myself that God has something in my future that I’m gonna need all this know how for, although I hope it has nothing to do with goats, because I can’t stand them. Seriously… I DO NOT like them… at. all. So I’m thinking that all this goat doctoring is just for now. lol.

Taking a deep breath this week… hopefully things will go back to normal, of course… what’s normal anyway. LOL!
I’m sure you really didn’t care to hear all about that, but hey, oh well! Wonder what this month will hold… can’t believe its August already! sheesh!

©AmandaDixon2009

Tags: 12cc, all nighter, antispyware, antitoxin, Asus Netbook, Blue Screen of Death, BSOD, college, computer, Dell, dirty, doctor, doelings, does, ear infection, family, farm, giveaway, goats, harddrive, hobby farm, homeschool graduate, infection, install, internet, Jacque Dixon, Jocelyn Dixon, laptop, life skills, Lillie, meningitis, netbook, penicillin, phone lines, rest, Sabbath, shot, shots, sick, sleep, spyware, subcutaneous shots, Tractor Supply Company, Wal-Mart, won

While watching television can be fun and amusing, a lot of the time it is a waste of time to watch it. We used to watch a lot of tv. We had a tv show for every night that we would spend 3 or more hours every night watching them. Now we rarely watch 2hours of tv a week! We realized that watching tv wasn’t as important as getting others things done and most of the stuff on tv isn’t wholesome anyway!

There are so many things we can do instead of sit in front of the television.  Since I don’t watch too much tv, I am not only turning off the tv, but my Vostro as much as I can too! So in honor of Turn It Off week, I have made up a list of things you can do instead of watching tv or movies or being on your computer.

Here are my top 20 things:

Read a complete book
Go for a walk or bike ride
Bake some goodies and take them to your neighbor’s.
Write a poem
Draw or paint a picture
Write letters to your grandparents, family, friends, or someone who may not expect one.
Clean out some junk from your closet, garage, bed, drawers, etc.
Wash windows
Rake leaves
Plant some flowers
Go to the park with your family
Research your family history
Create a scrapbook
Sew something like a bag, apron, curtains, etc.
Learn to knit or crochet
Visit the elderly in a nursing home
Clean off the porch
Learn a hymn and a matching scripture
Call your grandmas and get their recipes and make a recipe book
Take a swimming safety class

I am going to try and complete all these 20 things and will cross them off as I do it! So what about you? Will you turn it off too? What are 20 things you can do rather than watch tv? You can use my list or make your own. Share your 20 things with me!

©AmandaDixon2009

Tags: article, articles, bake, bed, book, clean, closet, column, craft, Creative Memories, crochet, documentary, dramas, draw, drawers, family, flowers, friends, garage, garden, Grandma, grandparents, history, Hymn, junk, knit, learn, leaves, letters, Movies, mysteries, neighbor, nursing home, paint, park, photography, photos, picture, plant, poem, poetry, porch, rake, read, recipe book, recipes, research, scrapbook, Scripture, sew, shows, sitcoms, Stop the Presses, swimming safety class, television, turn it off week, tv, visit, walk, wash, windows, write