Hey Y’all! The Pratt Fam is still here… in Franklin, TN… where Spring is in full bloom (literally), and we are rapidly wrapping up another school year! This year we have a highschool graduate, highschool junior, and a sixth grader! We have had so many changes and updates on life… and quite honestly, it’s been a very overwhelming year. We are still seeking wisdom from God in so many areas of life, but we are focusing on being intentional in the moments. Being present where our feet hit the ground each morning, and sharing the Love of our Great God as often as we are able!
Throughout our continual health battles I’ve been working hard to remove any and all toxins from our diets, personal hygiene products, makeup, toiletries, home goods, and just overall lifestyle!
I have added many of our “FAVES” to the MENU on this site. To view them, order, or just investigate some alternative products for your family… click on “FAVES” at the top of the homepage and you will see sub-categories such as: “Supplements”, “Toxic- Free Living”, “Home Favorites”, “Health Books”, and some of our fave foods too!
We also use lots of Essential Oils, a TRS spray for Detoxing, and so much more that I’d like to cover here in the near future!
Removing toxins is a process… I’ve been slowly working on it for the past almost 10 years now and it’s NOT an overnight thing! Have grace with yourself in the journey!
Let me know any questions you might have… and I look forward to living our best Toxin Free life with each of you!
Our Nashelle 2017 warrior campaign is coming to a close and we wanted to let you know this is the last time you’ll be able to order our necklace and bracelet! Thank you all soooo much for supporting us… we are about to begin another intense round of doctor appts for Myself as well as we are working on some options for treating the kids too! Everything helps us so much, and we couldn’t do it without y’all! And a HUGE thank you to Heather Nashelle for everything! We love you!
“Live It Out”… to us this means that we are chosen to walk this journey by God. The choice is ours daily how we’re going to “Live It Out” for Him. Our prayer is that each new day we’re gifted; we choose to live each moment sharing Gods love, showing Gods love and always pointing to Him alone as the One who is worthy of our each and every breath.
We are always praying for healing and know that He alone can heal our disease ridden bodies in an instant… but even if the healing doesn’t come, He is a good, good God! We will choose to Live It Out moment by moment for Him!
The men are both wearing the cuff. Haydens does not have antlers and Cory’s does. All three of us girls are wearing the necklace and Lucy chose hers without antlers.
Weve had so many people asking for pictures of our remodeled RV, several others wanting pics of certain things or wondering where something was from… I figure it’s time for a good tour!
Many of you know that as soon as we returned to Bend from Oahu we began remodeling our coach. This ended up being a complete overhaul to make it HOME! I’m the type that needs to feel at home when I’m there, I love to have things deep cleaned, organized and we always end our day with picking things up so that you get to enjoy waking up to a clean space… this had to carry through to our home on wheels especially since it’s a small space shared by five of us and our pooch!
This called for a clean and minimal approach which began with everything going WHITE! I also knew that we needed the space to have a cohesive look and feel to it to have that homey vibe and to feel clean to live in… (I told you, I’m kinda ridiculous about clean and organized and how I need that homey feelin’!). Soooooo… aside from everything being painted white, we stuck with consistent interior colors of white, gray, and blue. Aside from that, I was then able to have fun with patterns and prints. I love to mix and match patterns so that it softens the look and feel and creates a cozy and fun environment for everyone. I usually stick with one botanical, one solid, one stripe or geometric, and one abstract! I absolutely LOVE how this all turned out in our coach. This way nothing is overwhelming or sticks out horribly and each kiddo was still able to accessorize and add pops of color to their sleeping spaces and I am not on overload and freaking out by all the clashing colors and busyness going on😉. This coordination of colors went all the way to the upholstery, bath towels, and comforters… but stopped in time to let kiddos have fun throw pillows, and blankets at the ends of their bunks, pictures displayed, etc… and no one is complaining😍
We tore out all the flooring, replaced it, replaced all plumbing fixtures and upgraded the shower to a high pressure shower head that we LOVE! We installed a kitchen backsplash, and tiled the bathroom walls, then added some wallpaper too! We replaced several lights with fixtures Cory made, replaced all bulbs with LED ones, we replaced all hardware on cabinets to an unlaquered brass handle, we reupholstered ALL window valances after we took apart and threw out all the frilly parts, we reupholstered all panels, the dining table cushions and surrounds, three bunks, and new bunk curtains too! We installed two stand up desks that fold flat to the wall, sooooo much storage in the bathroom, bunks, and master bedroom, as well as under the bed… we seriously live easily Day to Day with everything and wayyyyy more than we need in this Class C motorhome and have more space than we need; though, we LOVE having each square inch we have😜.
Lastly, when we were on the hunt for this RV… Cory and I each had our “must have” items and since we were looking at used coaches, this became quite the task. On the top of Cory’s list was having a Diesel engine, and on mine was each person having a dedicated sleeping space that did not double time as the couch or dining table. We found it… and knew that once it checked off both of those top two “must haves” it had to be the one! Our coach sleeps ten because of having three bunks and one of them being larger than a queen size bunk above the cab. All of this inside our 34’ Class C Motorhome!!!
Here are all our pics… I’m sure there will be questions. Just comment here on the blog so everyone else can see all the answers too!
yayaya… we’ve all head that saying before… I know! But I wanted to share my life with you. Today has been a super rough one. This last month has been rough. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had LOTS of good and joy in it all too. Somedays we’re having to try harder to find the good that others and somedays we want to throw in the towel (me today😬)
MY GOOD:
We’re seeing a lot of this country
We’re together as a family
We are growing as a family in each new day
We have a truck and motorhome that run
We are saved by Gods grace
I could continue on and on and on really…
MY BAD:
Im sick
Ive had three ribs out for over a month now and I’m in horrible pain
I can’t sleep with this pain
My ferretin levels are dropping each day as the Babesia bugs eat it as their sole food source
My migraines are increasing again
Im gaining a lot of weight suddenly with no reason and each pound is so discouraging
I hardly have enough hair to keep my extensions in
MY UGLY:
When I’m this sleep deprived and in so much pain I’m not a very patient or sweet wife or mommy
I need to cover my super silvery roots and take my extensions out… they are about to fall out they’re so long (I don’t have enough energy to take them out, color my hair and put them back in… Lucy helps me color and install them)
I am having extremely low self esteem between my weight, lack of hair, no energy to work out, and nothing fitting me
There is no funding for a cure for Babesia
There is no insurance coverage for any treatments to help keep me alive
We have to pay for everything up front with cash
Babesia will stop my heart unless we find a cure before then
We need help financially and are hoping that someday we could have insurance that would help to cover these costs so that we can get treatment faster! Until then we hang onto the Hope we have in Jesus!
That’s a glimpse of just a portion of my days. The reality is bleak and yet I know my God is bigger and greater and I’m begging Him to heal me!
Thank you for your continued prayers, love and encouragement. We need you all walking alongside us in this BeautyFULL Mess.
Just when you think you have a leg up on Babesia… it reminds you that there’s no stopping it’s disease. While we’ve been traveling for the past almost 20 days now, I’ve had a lot of really good days and then I’ve also had some pretty rough ones. We’ve been super hopeful as has our doctor that my ferretin (a protein in my iron), would maintain its levels since all my vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, mitochondria, and all my blood and oxygen levels were finally back to where a body’s are supposed to be. However, babesiosis only feeds on ferretin and we HAVE to figure out how to kill them so that my body can continue to maintain crucial levels of hemaglobin, hematocrit, platelets, and of course ferretin. My recent labs show that Babesia is extremely active as my ferretin levels are rapidly dropping again. We were working so hard to kill them from November until mid May when I almost didn’t make it on May 19th. Since then, we’ve had to take a break on the “kill” and have had to be in a “building” phase so that I can survive.
So, where we’re at now… I’m sitting in the truck while Cory and the kiddos are exploring Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s only 43* outside, and even bundled up like I am… it’s too much for me. This view is amazing and we’ve been listening to bull elk send off their bugles, watching all the mommas and their babies, and just enjoying seeing all of Gods great creation around us! I am continually researching Babesiosis and trying to find some better ways to go about killing it off before it wins. We are all praying for help and healing. We are traveling, exploring, and taking in all of these amazing creations!
We were in South Dakota last week for five nights and saw Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Badlands National Park, Minuteman Missles, Windcaves National Park, and the Needles Highway in gorgeous Custer State Park. We have seen sooooo many elk, antelope, tons of buffalo, deer, thousands of prairie dogs, an eagle, and more.
Colorado was a special stop we made to see my Aunt Lisa, Uncle Ken, and cousins, Zach, Logan, (we really really wanted to see Korey Anna, Brittany and Boots and their baby who’s already overdue a week😬. (Come on baby! 👶)… but we had to escape the early cold Colorado is having. We made sure to go to Rocky Mountain National Park quickly before we head off to Kansas!
We sure love our family near and far and we’re enjoying seeing as many as we can along this adventure!
I just finished tucking the kiddos in tonight, and I am sitting next to them on my bed starting to write this post. I’m missing Cory madly as he’s been gone on the mainland back home in Bend for over a week working on Lone Mill as well as working tirelessly on our home so that it is ready for whatever is next.
I’ve been reminded today to pack light and love heavy. I’ll tell you that I never ever expected to have to leave all our things, all our people, all our animals, and all our comforts so suddenly… but good has come from it for sure. It is the only way that I have ever found to SLOW DOWN! We instantly left our crazy schedules, kiddos and I dropped all commitments, we couldn’t say yes to anything else… and for someone who didn’t know how to say no, this is not a place I thought I’d ever be able to be at.
We had to pack light… we came with 6 checked bags and our carry ons. We don’t have too much clutter (yet).
We are able to love heavy… we have eachother and I am fighting fiercely for beauty-full family times. We jumped into an amazing church family that has embraced us, they check on us, they include us, they are messy humans just like we are… but they are truly living out being the “hands and feet of Christ”. We have been able to start spending time with Great Auntie Joan over here each week and we all sure love her. We get lots of time with my brother Joel and his sweet girl Ally… they are here for us and have dropped everything at times that we needed help. Just tonight, we had a lovely dinner with Cory’s parents who are visiting for a few weeks and an aunt and uncle too.
I am learning to make my YES matter, to not commit to too much, to love richly, to enjoy moments, and to not be sooooo hard on myself.
This isn’t where I thought our 2017 would have us. We truly miss seeing faces of our family in Bend and our friends too. We miss Jake our dog and Max and Harvey, Sergeant, and Huck (the other animals), I miss having a home and my bed, but we are choosing to find the beauty in this mess and when we really stop to count the blessings it is so full of beauty!
Please continue praying for:
Direction with our home/ ranch in Bend
Being able to afford a place here to call home for now
Severe Stomach pains to go away
Constant migraines to go away
Safe return to Oahu for Cory and sooooooon!
Finances for medical expenses and housing
HEALING
Praises for:
Cory getting home safely and his super hard work
Kiddos that are just taking this in stride
A roof over our heads
Friends
No Seizures
Less pain than at home
Live It OUT
Pack Light and Love Heavy!
Sincerely, Dani
Isaiah 40:29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Matthew 5:37 Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one.
Im sorry it’s been such a delay in my posts… My mom quickly updated to let you all know via FB that Cory and I made it out and into recovery safely! I needed to take some time to rest, recover, and work on keeping up with the detoxing game!
I know that I’ve stressed it before… But we began intense detoxing before coming to Germany for about three months and I know that it was very beneficial for us both, however… Keeping up on it with all of these thousands of dead bugs needing to be expelled is incredibly important now too!!!
While here, Lucy got a pretty bad head cold and they always turn bronchial in her quickly. Then my mom got it, now Cory and I have it currently and Hayden had a small bout with a cough too. So far, Grey is in the clear as is my dad! PTL👍
Please pray we recover from this nasty bug quickly and can continue releasing toxins at a rapid rate so we can return home healthy next week!
In the meantime, we are not wasting any precious days while here… We are grabbing each moment and making the very most of it with each other! Here are some pics from our weekend adventures when our hospital treatments are very limited!
We rode the gondolas up the mountain and then had a beautiful and very steep hike up to the tippy top of Mt. Wendelstein!
This village dates back to the 700’s😁
We are standing on a ROMAN ROAD… Mind blown by the history here!
That castle is above the Roman road and is now a very expensive and elite boarding school.
You now drive through the village walls that were once where the gates hung.
Silly kiddos… Wanted to grab the clouds!😜
Soooooooooo steep, rugged and beautiful.
Hanging on tight to his baby😁
Trying to find the stairs up to the castle…
Please continue to keep us all in your prayers for health, complete healing, safety, and for those helping us back at home as well… Corys parents are holding down our fort and our irrigation pump seized up… Making it very difficult to water the property, water animals, and just plain keep things living in the amazing heat y’all are having back home!
Wow! I knew that Lyme was all over. I knew wholeheartedly that it was here on the West Coast, and without a doubt in Bend, Oregon… But to hear over a hundred personal stories from people in the last two days has blown my mind. Not the number itself, but the amount of people who have been so afraid to speak of it out loud. People who have expired doctor after doctor and feel hopeless.
Its for these people, my husband, our three kiddos, diseased friends whom I’ve met at the doctors office, and myself that I cannot stop sharing, talking, blogging, and won’t stop fighting for health, answers, and a voice for a disease that makes so many feel alone and isolated. This disease desires to break you down so much that you have no fight left in you, it drives you to severe depression, it eats at your brain, it causes aches so deep you can’t walk, impaires hearing, sight, breathing, memory, heart rhythms, causes seizures, pain like I’ve never known I could feel, and a constant migraine that grates on you so much that daily life is never the same. We have to keep fighting for funding, acknowledgement, and answers!
Please continue sharing these posts, please pray for all these people that have reached out, please help our family financially so that we can be healthy enough to make waves and fight on for all of those that cannot fight for themselves…
I struggle daily for some crazy reason to sit my rear down and type here… not that I don’t have enough to write about, but that it won’t matter anyways. So today as I finished praying and asking/ arguing with the Lord about what purpose it could serve to go blog, I came into my office and plopped myself down in front of my laptop and I kid-you-NOT… that very second Grey woke up from her nap. (here she is loving being part of her newest little cousin’s photo shoot! )
You see, part of my health stuff has been that I cannot process more than one thing at a time anymore. If I hear anything else at all… it is enough to completely break my thoughts and jumble my words. I have lost so much of my memory and at times it moves me to tears. So, the fact that nap is over now and I am already struggling to write… well, just bare with me! 😉
As I was reading the Word today and dwelling on this season of resting in God, waiting on direction, and being always thankful, the goose bumps set in. You see, Cory’s last day of employment was yesterday and while we had been waiting for six months for that day to finally arrive, I felt no extra sense of urgency, un-rest, or stress… I simply felt thankful in the waiting. And because I like to overanalyze why I am lacking emotions that the world would tell me to have and feel, I started wondering if I was just losing my mind. Proverbs 8:32-36 says:
“Now then, my children, listen to me;
blessed are those who keep my ways.
33 Listen to my instruction and be wise;
do not disregard it.
34 Blessed are those who listen to me,
watching daily at my doors,
waiting at my doorway.
35 For those who find me find life
and receive favor from the Lord.
36 But those who fail to find me harm themselves;
all who hate me love death.”
Now, I already know that I have lost loads of my mind… as I said earlier today! But I strive to be a blessed waiting daughter watching at His door and waiting at His doorway as this verse says. So, this feeling of just waiting and being thankful in the waiting is something that I am working on getting used to.
I can’t help but wonder if in this “waiting” season which seems like it’ll never end quite honestly… if it is allowing me all the more time to dwell earnestly on God’s rich blessings in my life. For the last almost 11 years of this waiting on healing, and then waiting on direction for our family with work these last six months; I have realized that the blessings that I have always counted are still blessings, but there are sooooo many others that I never would have thought of as even good things. And now I see them as generous blessings in my life!
(these are the 5 sets of tootsies waiting on direction from God…
“Lord, I pray we stay still and wait on you before we move. Amen”)
I found some scribbles in my Beth Moore Esther Biblestudy guide that I had written and it totally sums up my heart at this stage in our families life… “God is just as purposeful of what He does NOT reveal as what He does. Trust Him, rest in Him!”
Jeremiah 29:11-13 gives great hope for our waiting and says: 11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” and
Psalm 100:3 proclaims it again saying,
“Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”
So, if you find yourself in the season of waiting… waiting on healing, waiting on finances to improve, waiting on finding God’s direction in dating, marriage, parenting, or just life in general, I would encourage you to wait, rest and be thankful for this time that He is allowing you. Be patient. Be in the Word. Be in prayer. Be listening. And don’t’ ever forget His rich promises. Memorize them, scribble them on sticky notes all over your home and in your car. This life is a mess, but in Him it is a “beauty full mess”!
The mere thought of trying to play catch up is daunting and one that has paralyzed me from logging into my blog and even saying a quick “hi”, “I’m still here”, “The holidays didn’t actually kill me”, or a simple “HELP ME…”! I know it sounds ridiculous… but with the amount of new things to write about, along with the speed in which they have been hopping on life’s train; my head is spinning and my stomach was in knots! A little too dramatic for everyone? I’ll admit it sounds like it… but here is a brief summary of life since I last signed on:
Christmas 2013 was one we shared with family and friends. Our railing was lined with 25 stockings, and don’t forget Jake, Sammy Sosa, Chance, and Rudy’s too… the pet ones of course! The richest blessings in our lives are these zany people that we are somehow related to. Starting with “Happy Birthday Jesus”, paper shredding, 7 littles running around in pure excitement, a soccer game in the field (almost 60 on Christmas Day), yummy dinner bursting with lively conversations, our huge family photo shoot of the year, and more family coming and going for the next 10-ish days! It was a wonderful time of really celebrating how blessed we are. God is so good!
Bringing Lucy home to teach her is one of the best things we ever could have done. She is re-gaining her self-confidence, beginning to enjoy reading again, believing that she is great at math, and enjoying that her history, science, and reading are Bible based and founded on truths! I have known that God would ask me to school our kiddos at home for sometime now… all I can say is; He is so very Good and His ways are perfect. Now, if I want to pull my hair out tomorrow and throw in the “teacher” towel… let me blow off some stream and re-gain my composure. But I assure you, He is always good!
We found out that the kiddos have a water born parasite in their gut. Our poor little ladies were really uncomfortable for two whole weeks. Now the boys have this plague, though we are beginning to see light at the end (we think!) I had mentioned to hubby man that buying stock in 3 year old undies would have been a wonderful idea as I could not keep up on the laundry… I have never seen anything like it. But again, with two weeks of poop up to my elbows and sleepless nights on end; I can confidently say that our God is always incredibly good!
This last week let down the hammer… Cory woke me up Wednesday morning after a work call and relayed that the Corporate office that he has worked in for these last 6 plus years was closing and he would be without a job soon. Out of the blue. No warning. Not something we had even really considered. For a job… this was the bomb-digity… we hadn’t imagined life without it… didn’t really want to try. All I knew to do was pray. The kind of prayer where it was raw, half empty of words, and yet a prayer of thanksgiving. Thankful for the job, thankful for the adventure ahead, and thankful that my best friend, myself, and God were there together in that moment. We are still wading through the questions, the possibilities, the opportunities, but are resting in the arms of the One writing the words of this novel. A story that one day we will see beauty in, chapters that lead to life abundantly in Him! While using the brains he has given us, we are also resting in His promises, waiting on His timing, seeking His direction, and knowing that He has “plans to prosper us, and not to harm us. Plans to give us hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 He is good time after time.
I feel God saying; “There is much beauty in this mess.” And I choose to trust Him for He is good!
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