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The last week we were in Florida, was sheer MADNESS! We had so many people we wanted to see, so many last minute errands to do, and I had no idea we spread out so much during our winter in Florida, we had a TON to pack back up! And, as I shared yesterday, we had family wedding to attend, 2 days before we left town. With a business meeting, community class, wedding prep and packing to do, there was just NO time to go shopping. So I turned to Stitch Fix at midnight one night, and saw I could get a box of dresses the DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING. Risky, but tempting! No running from store to store to look at dresses made me decide it was worth a chance. So I wrote a note to my stylist and said I wanted 5 dress choices, in a variety of styles, colors and lengths. Here goes nothing. It arrived, the day before the wedding, as planned. We were in a HUGE hurry, setting up the barn, so I had the girls use my cell to snap quick pics of each. There was no time for real pics and nice shots, we had a wedding to set up for and I needed to pick a dress to wear for tomorrow's big day! The box looked hopeful, and right away I loved 2 and hated 2. Haha! This striped dress has amazing material, kinda stretchy and thick....  It's a keeper, and I love it! I will add a wide black belt too and maybe a crinoline skirt under. The back is super fun! Sorry the photo chops my feet off, I will do a cute black pump, or for Team doTERRA Dorothy events, bright red with red accessories. :) We also have several other weddings coming up! The back is super fun....   This navy sun dress is soft and cute, but I am not sure its cute enough to make the cut. Remember, I have a VERY limited closet in the RV!  I fell in love with this one from the SECOND I opened the box! I was hoping it'd be a keeper and it WAS! This is the one I wore to the wedding with red accessories and ankle booties!  For the sake of time, I didn't try on a violet lace number and a disgusting dusty teal long dress I hated even without putting it on! haha :) I am a child of the 80's, which means in elementary school in 1990's, I saw WAY TO MANY "dusty" soft button down shirts. YUCK! Those both went back, along with the navy one I didn't keep. I am mad I didn't get a picture with our family all dressed up for the wedding in the daylight, but here is a pic from the dance. I am super happy with the rose dress and look forward to wearing it again this year for several events we have coming up!  Haven't tried Stitch Fix yet? WHAT are you waiting for?! Its SO FUN! And look, it saved me time to not have to run into town to try to find something for the wedding too.
Use my referral link and go shopping already! :) Hugs, T https://www.stitchfix.com/referral/3137778
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 Meet Uncle Daniel and the future Aunt Torrey.....these 2 sweethearts got engaged recently! We had all been praying and hoping for a LONG time it would come to pass. The girls kept asking, NOW can she be Aunt Torrey? YES! :) We were so honored when they decided to do the wedding while we were still living in Florida. That meant like 3 weeks to plan! They were so chill, no problemo! The wedding was to be held at Dad and Drea's country property we live on, with food in the barn and a dance floor under the open shed roof. It was to be an "I Do BBQ" and super laid back and fun! They asked the kids to bake and decorate the cake they would cut. Boy were they excited! (Mommy was nervous, but okay, we can do it!) The days leading up to the wedding, also happened to be our final week in Florida, so we had a business training dinner, a community class, lots of wedding prep to get done AND pack up to leave! (its amazing how spread out we get after 4 months of parking)
I bought some white and gold sugar crystals to help hide all of our decorating problems, and read some articles about a crumb layer of frosting, so little red flecks of cake didn't get in our pretty creamy icing the next day. Once it was frosted, we went outside and threw sugar ALL OVER IT! Super fun! Probably the boys' favorite part ;)  Finishing touches. Now, to keep it safe until wedding time!
The open shed was decorated SO beautifully!!!! People would sit here for both the wedding and reception after.....    Showtime! The beautiful bride (and Flokie) ready for the FIRST LOOK:    I was busy running around trying to keep everyone on schedule, so I didn't get many photos. SHAME ON ME!!! I am thankful Drea shared hers to facebook while we wait for the photographer to share hers! Ty got to drive the bride up to the barn! :) And Destiny sang her down the aisle....
  
After a brief ceremony, we ate southern BBQ, which was tucked away in that cute barn we celebrate Christmas in, listened to some amazing toasts, and then danced the night away. There was even a s'mores station out back on the patio. Everyone had a great time! The bride and group left surrounded by sparklers..... Here is a slideshow of my remaining cell pics: The red velvet cake was a bit dry, shhh don't tell my precious cake bakers, but the frosting was divine and the cake was BEAUTIFUL! So proud of them! Eating a big slice of it was the perfect ending to a perfect night.....Congratulations Daniel and Torrey! We are SO excited for you all and the amazing life together to come.  One last service at our AMAZING Florida church, a quick breakfast with Uncle Chad and his crew, and then it was back on the road again. We needed to move some things and get ready for the builder at our home sweet hub before April 1st! I'll be honest, we are missing Florida ALREADY! It just kept getting colder and colder and colder as we drove further north and west. A highlight of the trip home, was that our Nana got to ride home with us! 2 - 12 hour days later, she still loves us (haha) and we all had a great time reading, playing games, watching movies and hanging out on the LONG drive back. She was also a FANTASTIC school helper!
 'Bout broke my finger off, thankfully the ring gave before my bone did. OUCH! Who knew the hardware on a kitchen cupboard could do so much damage?! One more thing on the "TO DO" list when we get home, fix my band! Waaaah! My finger is black and blue! OUCH.  We were so glad to get home and see for ourselves that our shed was still standing, despite the fires! More to come on that later...... Hugs, T  After leadership retreat was done, we loaded up the car and headed back home to unpack and move into the RV again. A week in a condo is SUPER fun, but we are SPOILED. We are so accustomed to taking our home and comfort items with us, its a pain in the rear to have to pack and un pack now!  Our good friends we met from the 4 little Ferguson's blog, Ray and Kristina, and their two kiddos, met us down south for some fun in the Florida sun. They just bought their first RV and brought it to Leadership. SO FUN! They are on our doTERRA team and we are blessed to have such great business partners! They had never seen the beach, so we were super excited to experience that for the first time with them!
 Though I was in awe of the beautiy around us, my heart was heavy for those back home......  Massive wildfires were surrounding our neighborhood, our hub and our community! Our thoughts and prayers were with them constantly!  It almost didn't seem real! I know it will hit us more when we are at home and actually survey the burned neighborhood! Despite all that was going on in Kansas, we had fun showing the Vissers around and taking them to all our favorite places to eat! We even got to eat out with Grammy and Papa too, since we were in their neck of the woods.  After this, we traveled 2 hours north back up to where we live for the winter, and hung out there for a few days. I love how the Lord brings us friends from all over the USA! These guys are so fun, and our kids love being together. We hung out at Papa's place and even got to go see Tim Hawkins at church. He is hysterical! Then it was time for our friends to go, and time for US to get ready for our final weeks in Florida! See you soon in Kansas! Drive safe......  It was time to get down to business, we had a family wedding to help plan, AND the final business training and community class for our Florida Dorothy team.
Ready set GO..... Hugs, T For the second year in a row, we were privileged to travel to Orlando for some MAGIC, no no, not the basketball team. MAGIC. Some team building, tear jerking, soul strengthening, awesome Leadership training at doTERRA's Leadership Retreat MAGIC. These kind of events just get a fire burning in your soul, to change lives, empower people to take back their health, and to change their homes with financial blessings as well as health!  Plus, we get to stay in a HUGE condo for a week! Ok, ok, maybe in my former life, I wouldn't think a condo was HUGE, but now that we live in an RV? H U G E. You guys, I kept losing my people! I spent MORE time wandering around trying to FIND THEM. Seriously. I often would find Ty reading a book in "his room", Destiny on the porch enjoying the view, Avery in the kitchen baking yet another something and Pax? That kid was either playing pool the whole time, or trying to get me to let him watch TV. Crazy kid! Here is our porch breakfast picnic Avery worked so hard on:
Take a tour of our condo in this slideshow: The kids wanted to use our HUGE dining room for a "Fancy Dinner"! Oh, we had SO much fun, fancy accents and all! ;) I also got to have a condo essential oil class while we were there, before all the festivities started.
 We had such a nice time! It felt good to connect as a family, and like I said, spread out a bit. Then it was down to business with 3 days of solid learning from doTERRA. First day was DIAMOND day! What an honor to eat breakfast and learn from the leaders of this company!  The next 2 days our teams got to join us. We originally were going to have 5 leaders come. I made them each a secret recipe, custom roller bottle of as a gift. Dorothy and Mr. Dorothy  THEN, we had a record breaking MONTH and several more qualified as Silvers. We added 5 more leaders at the last minute!!!!! WOAH BABY! Each day was jam packed with incredible learning from the owners and leaders of doTERRA, who love to teach about giving back and living debt free so you can give more freely.    We were blessed to be asked to speak on a Gold Panel during break out sessions:  Evenings are not without their fun. DoTERRA hosted one heck of a Super Hero party too!   They had tons of amazing food stations, funky orange couches, comic themed everything, and a rocking dance floor. They even had artists their to draw your super hero portrait! Pretty sweet, right!? Slide show below
Unfortunately in all the late nights and early mornings and thousands of people around us, I caught a yucky bug! I am SO thankful for oils, because I could fight and win from the comfort of our condo, without trying to find a dr in a strange town.  Here are the recipes I used to KICK IT TO THE CURB:
 After a week Orlando living, it was time to head back south. I cannot WAIT for Convention in September, 6th through the 9th, which is in Utah! That event is for everyone, and it is UNBELIEVABLE. Let's go! I have tons more to catch you up on, I have gotten SO behind on blogging! I plan on getting us all caught up this week, so stay tuned..... Hugs, T  The images in this blog post are not mine, but from news articles and friends facebook messages and posts, as I am not there to take any of my own.  A few weeks ago, a dear friend of our called an encouraged us to plead the blood of Jesus over our home and lives, and even our unfinished shed house in Kansas. It was a great conversation, encouraging as always, but because of her prayer burden for us, we took her call extra seriously. So pray we did, the blood of Jesus specifically and often, over everything we owned. This is something we usually do in passing, like angels of protection in Jesus name, but we specifically asked for the blood of Jesus AROUND our home.  So Sunday night, we start getting calls about evacuations happening because of wildfire in our neck of the woods. We prayed and prayed and prayed some more. It almost didn't seem real! Then we start getting messages from the neighbors that the fire was literally traveling down our road! And boy did we feel helpless, but we know the important things are here with us. Right? The rest of that stuff, is just stuff. (ooo, and photo albums and home videos. Sniff sniff!) But just stuff we can't take with us anyhow. It will all pass away when we move on to eternity. That's how I slept that night...I just kept telling myself that!  Because I have sweet neighbors and friends who love me, they were out checking things at our place, as SOON as the evacuation was lifted, and the sun was up. One friend in particular called me bawling....it's overwhelming, I think, the smoke and the burnt prairie. The homes just a few feet away from the line of black! The video she showed me was mind blowing! I had to sit down and breath a little to take it all in. You all, the fire literally traveled down our road, crossed behind our neighbors home and kept going north. We have one burnt tree. One. I was shaking, crying and praising God for being so faithful to answer the prayers of His children! This is taken from our neighbors drive. That is our tree row over across the road....  Here is our neighbors home and how close it came to her before moving on north behind her property! God is so good to have protected her home.     Sadly, despite fire crews parking out there all day and watching hot spots, AND bringing in the National Guard to drop water on the area, the wildfires STILL started back up again Monday night. This time the wind shifted and blew TOWARDS town.  They called in firefighters from all over the state to help, but by Monday evening, were instructed to all line up on the road and stop the fire from spreading to town. Its SERIOUS business when they go with that line of action. That means its going to run wild and free in the country, before being contained as best as possible at the road to city limits. Oh I pray for peoples homes and barns. Horses and animals. Livelihoods and dreams. All of our country friends north of town, were evacuated. From our new home site northwest of town, all the way over to the property we sold to move into the RV, northeast of town, asked to pack up and leave their homes. All looking back towards a flame filled night sky. TERRIFYING.   I have got to go to bed. I have been super sick the past few days, but I will finish this when I wake up tomorrow and hear what happened. Until then, I am praying without ceasing!  Thankful to all these heros from near and far coming to help!  It's Tuesday morning, here is what I am learning: "Reno County officials estimate 6,000 acres have burned in the county; 4,500 acres of that is from the Highlands Area subdivision grassfire. At least 30 homes are destroyed, with the possibility that more are damaged. Local officials have been unable to get into the area to asses the damages." The fire continues to burn and has not been contained. We have been unable at this point to determine damage estimates. However, a fly-over is planned today with a Hutchinson firefighter and Kansas Highway Patrol to get a more accurate picture of the damage. We know many residents were evacuated and anxious for information about their properties and homes, so we hope to begin damage assessments later today so we can give out accurate information. The evacuation area remains closed. The area is Hendricks Street to Hwy K-61 from 30th Avenue to 108th Avenue/county line. However those with physical addresses on 30th Avenue have been allowed to return. All areas north of 30th remain closed. We have heard reports of residents returning to homes to collect belongings. We strongly emphasize the importance of remaining out of the evacuation area. When the wind shifts and there is a great deal of unburned fuel, there is no way to be safe. Also helicopters are doing water drops, and if they spot people in the area they must abort their operations. Law enforcement officers continue to provide security in the evacuation zone. The shelter at the Encampment Building at the Kansas State Fairgrounds remains open and there were 70 evacuees in the shelter this morning. There is also a pet shelter open at the fairgrounds, including space for horses. For information and updates, residents can call 2-1-1, which is an information hotline run by United Way. Also the United Way of the Plains will be taking financial donations for those impacted by the fire. You can contact 2-1-1 about the donations; 100 percent of those donations will be back to the local community. Also evacuees are encouraged to register as “Safe and Well” on the American Red Cross website: www.safeandwell.communityos.org so that loved ones know you are safe. We have been overwhelmed with the generosity of the community in donations for our first responders. If you wish to donate items please bring them to the Garden Center at Wal-Mart, 1905 E. 17th. Requested item include: water, Gatorade, high protein snacks, eye drops, contact solution, baby wipes, over the county allergy medication, and phone chargers. Please do not bring items to the fire stations. Salvation Army and Red Cross are coordinating the feeding of first responders. National Guard will continue air drops throughout the day. Just a reminder to local drone operators that they are prohibited during these air drops. If a drone is spotted, the air drop operations will be halted immediately. Currently there are over 230 responders still out on-scene from 116 agencies. We are asking for everyone to remain out of the areas so the first responders can do their jobs safely; because this is a long way from being over.o assess damages due to the fire."  This was taken from the clubhouse of the area we live in. Praying for everyone involved!!!! I will update as I learn anything new.
Hugs, T |
Tonya Ferguson
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