I still don't know how I am going to vote but...

this is why I LOVE Sarah Palin

Cause she is from Alaska
Cause she has remained female in a male world
Cause she sold the jet on ebay
Cause she lives out consequences of her faith, without regret
Cause she is soft enough to tenderly care for her infant son and yet
tough enough to kill a moose
Cause she stopped the bridge to nowhere
Cause her son is in active duty
Cause her parents worked in local jobs

Our 1 year anniversary

For our 1 year, Michael and I scooted out to Hood River & stayed at the Sakura Lodge and did the fruit loop. Here are some pics of our time-

Our first fruit stand stop. We tasted the pears & they were amazing. 

The Sakura Lodge. It's awesome, completely worth the drive to Hood River. They serve breakfast with all their own fruits and veggies. It was amazing. 

Sakura means Cherry Blossom in Japanese. Here is Michael and I in front of the cherry orchard on the Sakura property. 

Here I am at the lodge. Michael and I sat in these rocking chairs and just looked out at Mt. Hood. It was very peaceful.  

 Here I am touching a sun flower on their lower fruit and veggie garden. 

The view of Mt. Hood from the lodge backyard, deck and kitchen window. 

Saturday Plans

Today Michael and I went to the farmers market - love those fresh, local fruit and veggies. We're headed out again this afternoon to downtown Portland. We're going to the Children's Cancer Association festival. We're also going to head to Powell's and try to exchange a couple of books. I love to read and always need a new book, so we're trying to get books used and someday I hope we'll use the library too. Tonight is a party at my bosses house for the DoveLewis. It should be a good time, I just hope it doesn't rain. Tomorrow I hope to sleep in and have lunch with my friend Christy and go to church. 

Dialog

I've got this dialog going with God. I'm not talking about some weird conversation I have in my head, I'm talking about reading the Bible and then having an experience happen in my life where the Bible becomes truth and the words that I read make sense out of life.  

I'm a very logical, literal, realist person. I have difficulty believing things against reason, physics, experience, and judgment. Therefore, a couple of years ago I had decided to have 1 or 2 children at specific times due to various reasons. Michael and I got married September 2007, therefore I had planed that we would start to try to get pregnant in September 2008 and then again in exactly 3 years. I started to plan other things about this situation - such as how many bedrooms we would need in our house, how to set up an account for a child's education, etc. I knew the cost estimate of raising a child today was $250,000 from birth - 18 and determined that we could possible afford 2 children and even that would be hard. 

And then I watched a tv show called "The Duggars" about a family with 17 children (and #18 on the way) on discovery health.  It was just an hour long tv show about a family and the reality of choosing not to use birth control. I couldn't believe my eyes. Not only did these children seem happy (despite their lack of name brand clothing) but they were a strong family that loves God. I started to read books about large families and used google to do some small scale research. I couldn't believe the end result. I found that I didn't want to use birth control but just wanted to let whatever happens happen and then Michael and I had several long talks about it. 

That was 10 months ago and now it is September 2008, the month that I had originally planned to start trying for a baby. I don't know why we haven't gotten pregnant yet. I don't know what will happen if all of a sudden we start conceiving easily and rapidly. As a realist, I must admit that at any moment I might feel the need to go back on birth control. 

So this leads me back to the bunk bed blessing-what I talked about on my last blog. Once I started realizing that we could have a big family, I had several reality checks. What about college tuition? What about the looks of others in the grocery store? How will I be able to feed them? Where in the heck would more than 2 children sleep, if we only have 2 children bedrooms in our house? 

A large family isn't going to be complete fulfillment in life, but having dialog open with my husband and reading the Bible does fulfill me. Although I gave up birth control a while ago and did assume I'd have a baby by now, it hasn't been the emotional roller coaster that one might assume. I feel content with whatever happens, happens. I'm happy with my life the way that it is and at the same time, feel that it would be a blessing to fill our bunk beds up with kids. Either way is cool. We just keep praying that God would stitch together our family, be it thru biological or adoption, that it would just be done at his time.