What is an Essential Oil?

Safe Use of Young Living Essential Oils

Safety When Using Essential Oils

* Always test for skin sensitivity and keep a bottle of carrier oil handy when using essential oils. Carrier oils (olive oil, coconut oil, V6) dilute essential oils if they cause discomfort or skin irritations. NEVER use water, as water and oil do not mix and will only spread the essential oil around!

* Keep essential oils away from your eyes and out of your ears! NEVER put essential oils directly in the ear or eyes! Do not handle contact lenses or rub your eyes with essential oils on your finters. If the oils should get into your eyes, soothe with a drop or two of carrier oil - again NEVER use water!

* Keep bottles tightly closed and store them in a cool location away from direct sunlight. Keep them up and away from children. If a child should swallow an essential oil, administer milk, honey or another safe, oil-soluble liquid such as rice milk.

* Do not use essential oils rich in menthol such as Peppermint on the throat or neck area of children under 30 months.

* Oils with high phenol content - Oregano, Helichrysum, Cinnamon, Thyme, Clover, Lemongrass, Bergamot, Thieves and ImmuPower = may damage contact lenses and irritate eyes. Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly before handling contact lenses or touching your eyes.

* The citrus-based oils of Bergamot, Grapefruit, Lemon, Orange and Tangerine as well as oil blends with a heavy citrus concentration such as White Angelica and Purification should not be used on areas of the skin that will be exposed to the sun or UV rays within 72 hours. They may cause an increased reaction to the sun.

* Read the complete label before using essential oils GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe by the FDA) essential oils internally, always dilute with an oil soluble liquid like honey, olive oil or rice milk.

* Epileptics and those with high blood pressure should consult their health care professionals before using some essential oils. Avoid Hyssop, Fennel and Idaho Tansy oils.

* Do not add undiluted essential oils directly to bath water. Use Bath Gel Base as dispersing agent for oils in the bath. Or put in Epsom Salt before adding to water.

* Pregnant women should consult their health care professional before using essential oils containing constituents with hormone-like activity such as Clary Sage, Sage, Idaho Tansy, Juniper and Fennel.

PanAway

Another favorite of mine! 

I most recently used this when my daughter dropped a toy just right on my toe and it hurt like the dickens. It was so crazy that it landed just right that it actually hurt to walk! I immediately rubbed PanAway neat (undiluted) on my toe and within seconds felt relief! 

Fundraising Goal

The number one reason people don't adopt is the cost! It is expensive no matter how you look at it! 

We will need $30,000 

This covers medical care, agency expenses, legal fees and other expected expenses!

We are just beginning, and we are praying and trusting the Lord to provide! 

Please prayerfully consider helping us reach our goal by donating HERE!

Bonus Weekend - Help us win this Competition!

Chosen Marathon is running a competition this weekend from 12am Friday (September 27 to midnight on the 29th) the team who has the most people sign up to join the team gets a significant bonus for their team - meaning that if we won the contest, we would receive even more funds towards our adoption!!!! 

Help us WIN this competition and bring us closer to our goal!!!! 

Reminder: you do not have to actually participate in the race to join the team - just sign up to be a sleepwalker and be with us in spirit!!!!!!!!!!!! 

***Only sign ups this weekend (September 27-29) count towards the competition***

http://www.chosenmarathon.com/race/register-2/

(make sure on page 2 of registration you join the FORBIS FAMILY team)

Peppermint Testimony

Peppermint

One of my very favorite oils - not only does it smell so good, but it has so many uses! 

I woke up at 3am the other night with my stomach in knots, and so nauseous. I couldn't get comfortable and was rolling around in pain! I asked my hubby to go get my oils - and I rubbed a drop of peppermint on my stomach and within seconds I was able to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. I was still sturggling the next day and did this a few more times, plus rubbed some on my temples to help get rid of a headache that I thought could be causing the nausea! For the next few days it would come in waves, and as long as I had my peppermint handy - I was fine! 

I love how versatile this oil is! 

Called to Adopt

Since before we even met, we have both had hearts for adoption. As we have prayed about how the Lord would grow our family, we have waited with eager anticipation for the day that God said – NOW! Now is the time to adopt! Romans 8:14-16 tell us that those who have been led by the Holy Spirit have been adopted as children of God. We enter into a relationship in which He calls us His children, and we call Him our Father.

There is something so powerful with this truth that we were destined to be without our true
and perfect Father. Through Jesus Christ, we now have our Father. We feel that there is no greater picture of the gospel than adoption. Knowing that we get to be part of something so incredible is a truly overwhelming blessing. Just as we have been welcomed into God’s family, we will get to welcome someone into our family, forever!

God has said NOW for us, and we have begun moving forward in the adoption process! This is a wonderful opportunity for us to allow our friends and family to join our team and be part of this incredible journey. Joining our team is a wonderful way to show support and encouragement spiritually, financially and emotionally as we walk out the calling the Lord has placed on our hearts.

We have chosen to adopt domestically! While we were dating, and Alisha was in Guatemala {Guatemala is closed for adoption to anyone outside native Guatemalans - or else we would have an entire house full already}, the Lord spoke to both of us on the same day about the needs of the children in the USA. Since that time, we have both felt very burdened for the children in the US in need of a forever home.

We have spent a LOT of time praying, seeking wisdom, and asking the Lord to guide us as we take this step! It was a very overwhelming process in the beginning until we found Christian Adoption Consultants. We talked with a Consultant for a long time and had a very long list of questions to ask. After praying some more, we really felt this was the way the Lord was directing us to go! So we now have someone walking us through each step of the way! At this point, we have completed our homestudy and are waiting on a local agency to complete that paperwork for us! We feel like all we have done for months now is paperwork, paperwork, and MORE paperwork, and we know there will be MUCH more to come, but we are excited to finally be able to share with you where we are in the process and what we have been doing!!!! 

We ask that you would prayerfully consider joining our team through prayer, encouragement, or by making a generous contribution to help alleviate the financial burden of adopting our child.

Below is a link to donate - you can also join our team for the chosen marathon, you do not have to run, you do not even have to be present to be a sleepwalker and cheer us on from home:) - If you would like to sign up please wait until Friday September 27-Sunday September 29 - the team who has the most sign ups in those 3 days will receive a $$ bonus towards their adoption fund! 

Join the Chosen Marathon Team - All proceeds will go directly into the Forbis Family Adoption Fund:

How you can be a part::

****  Read our latest blog here and find links to give ****

Please feel free to email me with ANY questions!!!!! 

alishajenee@gmail.com

Be Involved in our Adoption Story

Ways to get involved through financially giving::

**Join our team for the Chosen Marathon

October 26, 2013

http://www.abbafund.org/blog/forbis-family/chosen-marathon-teams/

**Give directly - We have been given a matching grant for up to $10,000 funded by Legacy685 - gifts given between February 24, 2014 and April 28, 2014 will be matched!!!! Click the link HERE for more details!!!!! 

**Shop for coffee online to benefit the Forbis Family Adoption::

https://justlovecoffee.com/about/beneficiary/Forbis/

******

Ways to join us in prayer::

**Our family as we prepare our hearts and home for our baby! 

*The Gospel of Jesus Christ would be seen through our adoption 

**The birth mother and family - what a selfless decision they are making! Pray the Lord would reveal Himself to them and bring peace and comfort to their hearts. Pray for our relationship, as we pray to have an open relationship with them in the future!

Exciting News!!!

We are excited to announce.....

http://www.ashleylaurenphotography.com

Making this sweet girl a......

http://www.ashleylaurenphotography.com

more information coming soon....

Please follow the Adoption Page for more information and details in the near future! 

Block Muffins

We have a new favorite activity in our house

 It is so simple and yet so much fun

Because she isn't quite ready to walk on her own, and crawling on the concrete ends in huge strawberry knees, I decided to take the high chair outside! 

Fill muffin tins with water and blocks

And a full hour of fun began:: we counted, splashed, poured water into cups and then into the tins, dumped it all out, talked about letters, numbers, and colors, and watched lots of people drive by. But the most fun of all was concentrating really hard to get TWO blocks in ONE hand! 

And she did it! YAY! 

Essential oils vs Pharmaceuticals

I found THIS ARTICLE very interesting, and from the experiences I have had (blogged about here) , a lot of this makes sense. I do not commit that myself or my family will never again use drugs, but I feel so blessed to have found natural ways to treat our bodies before jumping into the vicious cycle of pharmaceuticals.

Purity of Young Living

After a LONG journey, I finally found, what I believe to be a gift from the Lord. Young Living Essential Oils.

Why Young Living Essential Oils?

As the pioneers of modern essential oils, Young Living takes great care to preserve the purity and active constituents of every oil they offer. Through careful attention to detail, the exclusive 

Seed to Seal

process gives me confidence that I am receiving the highest quality oils and products possible from the time the seed is sourced until the oil is sealed in the bottle. Young Living is dedicated to quality and ensures that it provides pure, therapeutic grade essential oils with complete, optimal blend of plant chemicals to ensure maximum potency and results.

Young Living takes great care and pride in their product in order to produce the world's finest essential oils. Identifying uncontaminated soil, creating the proper pH balance, and ensuring access to clean, unpolluted water are just a few of the critical steps that Young Living takes.

I decided if I am going to really take the leap into using essential oils, I wanted to ensure that I was using the most pure, uncontaminated, and complete oils possible. Although I myself have never been to a Young Living farm, I have met and talked with a woman who spent 2.5 years researching oils and even visiting farms to ensure that the products she was using on herself and for her family members were the purest grade possible. I was intrigued to meet someone that had actually taken the time to do hands on research.

So where to begin?

I decided to start with this Premium Starter Kit! It was too good of a deal not to pass up! I became a distributor, (so that I could purchase products wholesale and also share my new found love with friends and family), and received all of these great products at an unbelievably GREAT price!!!!!

So how could YOU use these oils? 

Journey that brought me to Young Living

Young Living

The (VERY LONG) story of how I have come to LOVE love LOVE Young Living essential oils starts several years ago. At the time, I had never heard of essential oils, and had never even considered that there might be alternate ways to approach health outside of modern medicine. I had seen sections at the grocery store for natural health and was intrigued, but I had just always assumed that Doctors knew best and trusted basically whatever they told me to do. 

I have a history of horrible migraines, tons of headaches, and a stomach that gets nauseous at the very thought of motion, heat, dizziness, basically anything you can imagine. I have a weak stomach that doesn't deal well with life. 

I also have a history of lots and lots of medicines. I was always at the doctor for something and was always taking medicine to see if it would help. And never failed I ended up throwing up and having to switch medicines until finally I would just deal with the pain until I couldn't take it anymore and the cycle would repeat. For probably almost 15 years this has been the story.

I am a girl who loves to workout, have never been over weight, and have always been conscious of my health. I have been frustrated for as long as I can remember at the way that I felt. I have described myself as a 20's something in an 80 year olds body for my entire 20s and now into my 30s it has just progressed to where I feel like a 90 year old.  Just a general lack of energy, pain in all my joints, and probably 3-4 days a week having a migraine, and at least once a week having a very upset stomach. Also have had arthritis since I was 20. 

Not all the time and not to the point of completely inhibiting me, for the most part. I still was able to be a college athlete, finish my Master's in Kinesiology, teach Pilates and run lots of races and triathlons! 

But, I moved to Guatemala before getting married and there I became very sick. I had Typhoid Fever, multiple parasites, and Dengue Fever. For almost a year, on any given night I would wake up in excruciating pain and would spend the rest of the night on the toilet with a trashcan in my lap. And again, every medicine I would try, would cause some reaction that would make the symptoms worse. However, I was desperate and really had no idea that there were other options for me.

I began researching diet changes that I could make to help heal my gut. I didn't even know what that meant, but I knew that it hurt bad all the time and there had to be something I could do to help it out. I had attempted Gluten Free several times in the past, only to become defeated in the lack of options that were available and again, it always seemed to make me feel even worse. (I now know that I never gave it an honest shot for long enough to really see any benefit) Living in a different country is hard enough on its own, but plagued with illness and trying to communicate with doctors that speak a different language just adds a whole new element, let alone trying to completely change my diet. Well again, I failed, but continued to research a whole new world that I was discovering. It really is true and completely scary that you are what you eat. 

As my eyes became open to this new world, I began to look into all kinds of things. My fiance {now husband} and I had always both struggled a lot with allergies. As I began to look into that, I found that not only do a lot of the foods we eat affect our allergies and cause inflammation in our bodies, but also what we breath and put on our skin does as well. 

As I returned to the states and got married, I was still dealing with a lot of sickness and just feeling awful. We began working towards having a chemical free home, which I knew would be more healthy for both of us and would help our allergies - which it did, but that wasn't the final puzzle piece....

I became addicted to researching. I was still seeing tons of doctors and having all kinds of tests run, but I was becoming more and more convinced that there was something I could do to help heal my body.

8 months after being married, I got pregnant and dealt with a lot of things that most pregnant women deal with. Heartburn like crazy, restless legs, migraines, lots of nausea. This was all before 30 weeks when I was put on bed rest and had lots of other complications. I started trying a few natural ginger teas and things like that in the beginning, but when I gagged on them, I began just listening to my midwife and doing exactly what she said, which meant I was eating bottles of tums a day and taking medicine to help me sleep at night. All things that I swore I would never do when pregnant, but desperate times called for desperate measures. It was not until I stopped the tylenol 3 times a day that I actual got relief from my migraines!!!!  If only I would have known then what I know now.......(but I can see how God used those things to help me rely more on Him and seek His healing and press in to Him when the nights were long....I can also see how He used those times to prepare me for what He was about to show me)

Then I had the baby and had a series of complications from a faulty epidural, ending in almost 2 weeks in the hospital, I was sent home on more medicines that my husband or I could either one keep up with. We actually had a notebook that we kept a list of what all i was supposed to take and when. I just trusted the doctors and when I would be throwing up and feeling completely awful, on top of all the pain I was in, I just took more medicine, as I was told to. Not really what you want when you are trying to care for and enjoy every second with your sweet little new baby! Again, the cycle just repeated itself over and over until I took myself off all meds and suddenly started feeling better and better...... you would think I would have gotten the point by now right.....

Well fast forward a few months and its flu season and I have a 6lb baby who has not been vaccinated yet and my husband is teaching at a school full of germy sick kids. I went to the local grocery store and bought us essential oils, being very proud that I was going to help us fight off any sickness that even thought about making its nasty little way into our home. We dosed up on probiotics, vitamin C & D3, and started eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. ALL REALLY REALLY GOOD THINGS THAT WE STILL DO!!! And at the first sign of sickness I began treating my husband with a home made concoction of oils to rub on his chest and bottoms of his feet, along with making him some oh-so-tasty Apple Cider Vinegar, Honey, cayenne shots (again good and we still use this mixture). BUT - after so many days he ended up at the doctor and taking antibiotics. 

But after everything I had been through, I decided I was done with medicines (AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE - there had to be a better option than what is in medicine that always causes me to be more sick) and began really looking into other oils, which at this point I had started seeing friends posting about on their facebook pages. I was researching like crazy anytime the baby was asleep and also just praying for wisdom. We were in the midst of one of the craziest seasons of our lives at this point (we had a newborn, husband was taking 9 graduate hours plus interning for his principal plus teaching full time, and we were looking at moving and job searching and doing lots of travel involved with moving). All that to say, I was just gaining knowledge but didn't have the time to really put anything into action. Well shortly before moving I attended a class to learn more about the benefits of Young Living essential oils and learn how they could benefit our family. Let me just tell you - I WAS BLOWN AWAY!!! 

I came home and could not stop talking about all the testimonials I had heard. We were literally days away from moving at that point, but the second we got moved in to our new home, I ordered my Premium Starter Kit! I was giddy for it to come in and was almost excited when my hubby told me that night that he was feeling sick and his throat was hurting. I immediately dropped lemon oil down his throat and started diffusing Thieves. After two days of this treatment, he was symptom free! 

So why YOUNG LIVING? Why is this the answer I have been looking for? Next blog! 

I am back!

I have been busy, but not with fun home projects or crafting...

We had a baby, moved to a new town, and my husband started a new job! Just a few little things like that.... 

I kept thinking I would get all caught up in blog land, until one day I realized A. no one cares what I have been up to B. all I have been doing is learning how to be a mommy, packing to move and unpacking, and learning a new city and C. I am never caught up with anything in life - laundry, cleaning, cooking, fashion, celebs, etc so why start with blogging.... 

but in short.......

We had a baby in November and she is the absolute joy of our lives!!!! She is so much fun and brings such a fun sweet spirit to our home! It is an honor to be trusted with her and we are so grateful the Lord chose us to be her parents! 

             {THEN}                                                            {NOW} 

       





We have also moved and my sweet husband has started a new job as principal at an elementary school (which was his plan for 10 years from now) - it was very sweet how the Lord brought us to a new city, gave us a heart for this place and has already answered so many prayers we had for our family. We are grateful and expectant to see what the Lord has in store for us here!