My Random Thoughts & Dirty Laundry

I got this recipe from here:
Green Monster Smoothies

I didn't measure like it suggest, and my smoothie blender is the one in the picture- it is a single serving blender.

I frozen pineapples, mango and peaches, a small slice of banana, 8 large fresh spinach leaves, and banana-orange-pineapple juice.

Yum! It was kid approved first thing this morning!

Here are 3 of our 6 new babies. They're so spoiled rotten already!

I think I can say Quinnie is a walker now. I still am not sure when because she's been taking steps for a while and each day is better than the day before but I'd say her transportation is walking at least 50% of the time.

She is still officially 12 months old until tomorrow. We know for me it has to be "official" and actually Special K and I "called it" yesterday.

We call her our little Frankenstein and it is more than precious!

Recipe I got off pinterest
Oat Meal Cream Pies

For the cookies
1 1/4 cup of softened unsalted butter (cream)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup flour
3 cups oats
1 egg
2 t vanilla
1 t soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 t cinnamon
*cream the butter, add white sugar vanilla, and eggs, and mix then add the rest. Use 1 TBS to drop dough on greased cookie sheet bake for 10 minutes on 375. Wait until completely cool to frost.

For the filling
1/2 cup butter (creamed)
1 t vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
2 T whipping cream
*cream butter first, then combine the rest and mix until well and then whip on high for 2 minutes at the end*

I sowed 2 rows of organic bell peppers today! I hope to see some growth in 2 weeks and then I am going to thin out the plants. We planted a hybrid apple tree with fugi apples, red delicious and gala apples. Special K "made" a new mailbox for us- I will have to post pictures of that later when I get my hanging plant up on it, for now it looks a little strange. Now I just need major prayers that everything turn out.

Tomorrow I am planting onions, carrots, and strawberries.

Saturday update:
I decided to plant the carrots in these beautiful, wild, tacky colored tires. We got them all for free, and we used them for a photoprop on a few occasions with my clients. Don't worry- this is in my BACK yard folks!



The boys think their carrots are the one with the "boy" colors and the girls are the tires with the "girl" colors and it is apparently a competition! I'd really like to get a few more tires with carrots and make about 4 of these little raised beds, but this is what we have for now.

For those of you who know me or heck, even if you follow this blog you probably know that I get very deep and strong convictions from our Lord.

We have been wanting to be self sufficient for a long time and slowly slowly we've managed to do a lot. It never seems/feels like enough or fast enough to me. I would like to be totally self sufficient and reliant, hypothetically of course and it still feels like we're so needy. We also have to have funds to start up self sufficiency.

We've been wanting to move. We'd love to move to a little hobby farm sitting on a few acres. I don't even care what the house looks like or how small it is. However, we're stuck at this house until God sends me the signal to move. Since the economy is so bad we cannot sell our house for what it is/was worth or even for our remaining balance on the loan. We can however rent it out.

Today as I was running up the stairs I got a hard conviction to stop wishing I could live somewhere else and be happy where I live- and I have a LONG way to go before I am even close to self sufficient even in the home we have. He told me that I should utilize all the space that he has given me before He will send us the signal to move. We all know the parable of the talents right? It is in Matthew 25:14-30 and we weren't given the "5 bags of gold" land to live on. I am not sure we were even given 2- but I can invest my talent and what I have and use it to the full potential and see what rewards He has for us and our obedience. I can't wait to see what He has in store for our family. I hope that I can inspire someone else in the process, I can't inspire with a stinky attitude. I now have a great attitude and a happy heart with everything God has given us, when I get convicted- my inward changes happen that fast.

Okay, so the first thing I did was call Special K and tell him that from now on I was at peace with living here, and I had a new liberated feeling in loving the place God has given to us! I also told him we had to stop complaining about what we didn't have and use all free space we DO have- even if it is minimal.

Now our supply list is grown for this spring and God is providing! Praise the Lord!

Today we're getting our first clothes line after our electricity bill won't go down despite using hardly any except for essential usage. That is our "change of the day". Every day we're going to do something to prepare to live on less.

Here is a few other things we've been working on this week:

We ripped up the shrubs and decided to have something that could be useful to us. This is our 2nd garden box, not the one we were working on last week. This is going to have tomatoes (we're going to stalk them on lattice so it'll be pretty), bell peppers and green beans.



Here are our potatoes- they've already been planted since they need to be planted 2 weeks before the last frost- I am not sure we'll have another but it is fine to plant them now. I hope I'm not being too optimistic but I hope to get 40 lbs of potatoes from these.



We're getting different colored buckets like this to plant our carrots also- we're planting those asap and we're going to be planting onions in the small garden box at the bottom of our hill. It is so hard to decide what to plant when I want everything! If all goes well this fall when it is time for winter crops we'll be ripping out our shrubs on the other side of our house and making another raised bed there. We used FREE pallet wood for our raised beds and Kevin built them.

We've also gotten new carpet after 7 years!

This one I totally made up myself. I have been searching to no avail the perfect potato soup recipe. I have tasted failure after failure. What I was going for is something similar to O'Charlies- and this one isn't similar but it was delish and a huge hit. I have not had a home made one that is better.

I used 7 russet potatoes- I cut them like skinny french fries so that we could call it "french fry soup" so the kids would love it.

1 large onion

4 whole/fresh skinned carrots

4 celery stalks

7 cloves of garlic

4 cups of chicken broth

2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper

1 packet of dry ranch dressing mix

I cooked on high for about 6 hours.

Here it is right after I tossed everything in:



About an hour before we ate I made a rue (is that how it is spelled)?

I used a stick of butter over medium heat, added 4 tbs flour stirring constantly- let it cook for 2 minutes or so and then I slowly added 4 cups of room temperature half and half. I stirred constantly.

I added 1 lb of fresh graded sharp cheddar cheese (well I left out a little to garnish)

I cooked 1 lb bacon and threw most of it in the pot and left out a little for garnishing.

We topped with sour cream.

Green onions would have also been delish too!

Enjoy!


Here it was completed- excuse the crappy house lights, I took this with no natural lights.

Our lives have obviously made some huge changes since we have been convicted to homeschool our children. I wanted to write this post to the first obvious change that I noticed tonight. Tonight is an ordinary Sunday night, we went to church, lunch with family, rested, cleaned, played and had a great time. Once 10:30 pm hits I casually walk by the clock and wonder how it got that late and why are the kids still awake?! It is a school night for goodness sake! Even our precious Quinnie was awake too. I told Special K to hurry those babies to bed.

Our first big change is bed time! It went out the window and we can enjoy late nights spending time as a family. This has been amazing for Special K who is a service plumber and has long hours. Often I had to do bed time routines with the kids because he didn't make it home in time to see them. We tried to keep Skyler and Payton going to bed early even when only Riley was still in school so everyone would be on a similar schedule.

We have noticed that all the kids have also made another awesome change...they SLEEP LATE! This is every mothers dream come true, people don't even believe me when I tell them we don't have sleepless nights in our household.

We love staying in pajamas, schooling and learning together with morning breath and a cup of coffee in hand. The benefits have been plentiful in every area of our lives. The kids, especially Riley needed this so bad. I don't know how I didn't see this before except that God didn't reveal it to my eyes before He wanted me to see it, or maybe He knew I wasn't ready yet. I am not sure but wow. Riley is a different child, he was a spirited child before but now he is respectful, obedient, he (for the most part) treats others like he wants to be treated, he is so smart and secure, and he loves school. I am so proud of him...I am so thankful to God- glory to my God for leading us down this path. I love being his teacher, I love Kevin being our principal. This is how our lives were meant to be. Kevin was doing a short devotional with the kids nightly. I am doing a Bible curriculum with the kids every day and Special K wanted to take over so he could be our spiritual leader- as he has felt led to do but he tried and isn't good with a scripted school subject curriculum as this one. He didn't want to go back to the little dinky devotional either, so what we've decided to do is take our Sunday sermon and bring it home to our children. Special K started tonight and he is going to take this adult 1 hour sermon, put it in kiddo terms and spread it over a week. When he pulled out his Bible and did his first lesson tonight I could tell that this was something he would be good at and this was what he needed to teach his children. Our most important lessons in schooling our kids are to teach them to love God and love others and if we teach them that and nothing else we will consider it a huge success.

Too many people don't understand the importance of life and how to define success.

Last night we had some terrible weather roll in, a tornado hit in our county, north of us and we were pretty oblivious to it. I thought we were getting storms later in the evening so Special K, Quinn and I were out shopping and to dinner, so we didn't see or hear anything until we started getting phone calls from worried family, friends and neighbors. The older 3 were spending a night with Grammy.

When we found out about the storm we thought about heading south (away from it), to Walmart beside the place we were at, or home...but home was sort of close to the storm so we started driving south and our neighbors called us when it was clear on the radar and told us to come home.

We got home and watched the news the rest of the night while Kevin made this for our boys room



*updated* It's all hung now!

Happy March!

Quinn is 12 months and 2 weeks today and I hate to make such a prediction but I think she may be my earliest walker. She is taking little steps (like 1-3) at least once a day and she is standing up in the middle of the floor. She has been bending down to get things and standing back up. She is cruising around the furniture really fast. Right now I can't see the forest through the trees and I'd like to believe that the memories of my crawling Quinn will be freshly preserved forever but when I think back to my other crawlers- I only have a few specific/funny incidences that I remember. I hate how memories fade and become cloudy. I want to remember Quinn just like she is today, forever.

Tonight I went to the All4Kids consignment sale that I sell in (my 2nd time as a seller- I have attended for several years) and I got her some late birthday presents. We were sick around her birthday and I knew this was coming up in 2 weeks. I got her a push behind/walker toy stroller and she loves it and can even pick it up, I got her a FP piggy coin bank, a bubble gum machine with the big clear balls, and a fridge farmer baby toy. I put away all of her baby toys tonight and am really sad about it. I know when I pull them back out for #5 it will seem like it was just yesterday when I packed them up. It always does. When getting ready for the consignment sale I was working in the basement and pulling out Riley's old cloths for Payton and Skyler's old clothes for Quinn to take spring/summer inventory and see what I need, and I remember being so sad when I pack things up but I love pulling everything back out. The memories come flooding back and I can't wait to see the next precious little one in line make new memories in the same clothes. We've also re-used a lot of diapers on Quinn that belonged to Skyler. The best part of putting away baby things is knowing that there will always be another precious baby to wear them. I can't believe I am only going to have one more. I have so many mixed emotions about it but I am looking forward to having my entire family together for the first, it is going to be an awesome feeling and a new chapter in our lives...and one spoiled rotten baby...oh wait, we've had 4 of those already :)

Mornings are my best time of day. Around here I like to start my morning out reading the Bible and drinking caffeine and my entire day is better when I have a meeting with God before it starts. The kiddos let me sleep in this morning, the weather is warm but stormy, our windows are open. Payton is sitting at the table with his Beanie Baby birdie tipping his cereal bowl up to drink it and I can see the back of his fuzzy bed head, Skyler is dancing in her princess dress with baby rattles on her toes and in her hands, Quinn is playing with her music table and Riley is spending the night with my sister.

I can brew some changes in our family's future and I am really excited to see what God has in store for us. I am ready to accept whatever he leads us to and ready and waiting for instructions. I am constantly praying for Him to fill me up with more of Him and less of myself. I want to see Him, know Him and feel Him...I want His will for my life even if it is not my own. I want to please Him even when it is hard for my flesh. I want to worship and exalt Him during the great times and during the storms. We've been filling our lives with worship and our perspective is now a heavenly perspective rather than a worldly one. I am becoming someone I used to judge. My family has been under attack from Satan because we've been following God's will for our lives. He has attacked my entire family with illness, lies, rumors, hate, persecution, threats, judgement. I know it is a spiritual battle to knock us down. God has also given me messages of peace and comfort almost daily to combat the evil that is trying to crumble our lives. Satan is no match for God. I opened my Bible on Monday and God shared this with me John 15:18-19 If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Oh, so that is a perfect explanation of why the world, secular people and Satan hates us, it also makes all the pain and suffering so glorious to know that Jesus suffered first, and God has chosen us out of the world, how amazing, glorious and WORTH it everything is we are going through. If I am hated for the sake of the LORD I am fine being disliked. 1 day later God sent me another message explaining our hardships 1 Peter 3:14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. "And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.". I have had several more personal messages from God in the past week all from different places in the Bible all pertaining to personal situations in our lives. I love it God shows up big and shows off his mighty powers. Our earthly issues are nothing for him. He loves bold and audacious prayers from his hurting children so he can have an opportunity to show up, show off things that only He can do.

Okay, I am getting a little long winded and have tons of chores I could be doing but I need to brag for a second how amazing my heavenly Daddy is and how he can pour so much peace and love on a hurting family it washes away all fears and doubt about life. It even makes me excited to follow where he leads us even if my flesh hates change.

I am so over this and ready to kick it in the butt. In one way it is easier to have mastitis when your nursling is little because then people understand why you're trying to savor the breastfeeding relationship but once that 1st birthday hits all sympathy and support turns in to questioning why you're still doing it with all those issues. So I don't really like telling anyone about it and I decided now is a better time than never to figure out the truth on natural remedies and mastitis. I know that there are 2 types of mastitis- a topical mastitis and an actual bacterial infection that won't go away without antibiotics and it is hard to tell the two apart unless your milk is cultured, or your abscess, or puss..something that comes from the infection. I can tell you with 100% certainty mine is bacterial. I have had it 5 times since October (that is once per month) and often it will last weeks. It has never gone away without an antibiotic or gotten better, it has gotten significantly worse until I take one. I waited so long with once case of it, it took me days to get better even with the antibiotic. I don't like too much medications, but there are times when I am a firm believer in them- they have cured me multiple occasions.

My last case the OB who called in the meds told me I had to quit breastfeeding and my OB told me she wanted me to go to an infectious disease doctor. I keep thinking to myself that I KNOW this is going to be the last case and when it is over it is out of my mind until it is back.

This time is different, something has to give with my over 12 month old baby.

I had someone private message me and suggested I do something her midwife suggested.

Did I even mention I woke up with mastitis today? Tonight Special K went grocery shopping for me- bless him. He got me garlic pills, probiotics, vitamin c pills, and organic unpasturized unfiltered apple cider vinegar. That is my new regimen until I am not sure when.

I am praying that this new, safe and natural approach will be far better than the antibiotics that don't work long term for me.

I guess the next step if this fails is seeing my OB and the specialist she suggest. I am not giving up because of hardships.