The Huffmaster Family

My friend Leeanne shared a link to a software program, to which she gave a raving review, that will organize ALL your books with very little effort. If you collect books like we do as a home educating family you have more than just a handful of them to organize!

The program is fittingly called All My Books and was created by Bolide Software.  Now you may be thinking…I don’t have very many books to organize, or that you already have a good system of keeping track, but may I encourage you to just take a peek!

It’s more than just a generic organizer, it’s a visual compilation of every book you have in your home! Not just that, but just by plugging in the ISBN number found on or in most every book with the click of the button it will load and save to a database the title, publishing year, a photo of your book if available, the dimensions of the book, a synopsis of what the book is about, and any comments or reviews that other readers have shared! You do nothing but enter in a bit of info and All My Books does the rest pulling the rest of the information from book databases found online! It can even find books by the title and author that may not have an ISBN number!

And hold on to your library cards! It does MORE!! You can create an HTML page to publish online to share every book you have in your collection with others, you can export a list of the books you have in your collection to take with you to book fairs or swaps, so you don’t get something you already have, and it also has a loan/return feature so in case you are like me and often loan out your books, you know who has it and when it should be returned. There is so much more that you just have to try it and see! I am REALLY enjoying what I’ve seen and it’s been a great help to us!

If you are ready to download it and try it free for 30 days, just visit the All My Books information and download page by clicking the link below:

http://www.bolidesoft.com/allmybooks.html

After 30 days if you have found you love it as much as I do, there are various options for purchasing which can be found in the section titled Active Special Offers also found on the information and download page!

I hope you enjoy this as much as we do!

My appointment went great! My blood pressure was 127/73 …about normal for me. Shockingly I didn’t gain anything, and in fact lost an ounce. HOW in the WORLD that happened I have NO idea! So at my first OB visit I was 214 and today I was 219.

Usually I loose about 20lbs from being so sick in the first 4-5 months, then gain back about 10lbs in the 6th month, 10lbs in the 7th month, and about 10-15 more pounds by delivery…at least for all pregnancies but the first one where I gained 80lbs! So my overall gain is normally 10-15lbs, but I start out loosing. With this pregnancy I started off gaining up to about 4lbs then I had lost it again a couple of visits ago, and somewhere between then and today found it again for a total of 5lbs since my first visit and I have 9 weeks left. That’s just not normal for me, but I won’t complain!!!

Baby girl’s heart rate was 155 and she was kicking all over the place, and she seems to be doing well. Blood sugar great, iron great, and she is head down from what he could feel and he said I could come back in 2 or 3 weeks, and I said how about 4, and he was fine with that, so I go back July 15th. We’ll be doing my GBS test then.

My OB was fine with my husband catching the baby per my request if everything is going well delivery wise or doing whatever part he feels comfortable assisting with…although he joked and said if delivery goes like last time whomever is closest to the bed can catch the baby.

We literally had to CATCH our last child before he went off the end of the bed. YIKES! I suggested we NOT break down the bed (where they remove the end so it’s just open past your rump) this time, and he said that was a great idea!

I did ask him though about why my blood sugar and weight are staying so stable. I said honestly since my blood sugar crashed and I came in that time, I pretty much eat what I feel like eating and I haven’t been to the gym in like 3 months now. Then our 3yo daughter (one of the 3 children I brought with me today) goes Mama ate French Fries..and I clamped my hand over her mouth laughing nervously. He said what else did she eat? So I unclamped her mouth and she finished like I’d never hushed her and a cheeseburger in the car on the way here. I said Ok yeah I did but I had a Diet Dr. Pepper!

He just told me I’m doing fine, but don’t get overconfident about what I can eat. I told him that was a RARE treat believe me. I told him none of us had eaten McDonald’s since last year…so he said in THAT case I hope you all enjoyed it!

Oh YEAH, but I’ll hate myself later I’m sure…gotta love that $1 menu, but glad the nearest McD’s is now 10 miles away and that eating anything out is usually nil in the budget! That’s how I gained 80lbs with our first child!

Just 66 days to go!

This is just SO incredibly sad to me. I found it on my friend Katie’s blog and thought I’d repost it here.  I’ve bolded parts that really stood out to me.

China’s one-child policy has exemptions for quake victims’ parents
CHENGDU, China
In response to inquiries from grieving relatives, local officials announced Monday that parents whose only child was killed or grievously injured in the May 12 earthquake would be exempt from the country’s one-child policy.

The exception, issued by the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in Sichuan Province, said qualified parents could apply for legal permission to have another child, according to The Associated Press.

Thousands of parents have openly challenged the government over why so many schools collapsed during the earthquake. An estimated 10,000 students are believed to have died.

The anguish of parents and grandparents has been compounded by the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to control population growth. Provincial officials, especially those in rural areas or in regions with large minority populations, are sometimes given latitude in the application of the regulations. In some places, for example, families are permitted to have more than one child if the first is a girl.

According to the policy, local governments can levy steep fines on couples who have more than one child; the children of those who defy the rules are sometimes denied government benefits, including access to a free education.

The committee announced Monday that if a couple’s legally born child was killed in the earthquake, an illegal child under 18 years could be registered as a legal replacement. If the dead child was illegal, it said the family would no longer be responsible for outstanding fines, although parents would not be reimbursed for penalties already paid.

The changes, however, may come as little solace to parents who have only a photo, a backpack or the ashes of their dead son or daughter. Zhongxin Sun, a sociology professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said some mothers may be too old to conceive; others may have undergone sterilization. “To lose a child is to lose everything for Chinese parents,” said Professor Sun, who is a visiting scholar at Yale University Law School. “A child is their only hope.”

Pray for these families , give extra hugs to the children in your home tonight, and thank the Lord for EVERY one of those children whether you have one child or twenty!

I’m thanking the Lord tonight for allowing my children to be born in America instead of China, where even though we have our own set of problems, we are still free to bear the number children the Lord gives us or at the very least the number we choose without anyone’s permission!

I found this on my friend Michele’s blog and she in turn found it at Tracy’s blog, and thought I would share it here as well. Michelle wrote, that it had been suggested that the comments were taken out of context. But she shares the direct link where it can be seen that this is indeed in context with his reply on abortion & sex education. “Stop These Abortions”.

Psalm 127: 3 says Children are an heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is His REWARD.

Tell Mr. Obama, who proclaims Christianity, that he’s mistaken! Do we want a man who considers the world’s children a punishment as our next President? I think not!