Thankful

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What am I grateful for in my life?

A growing baby inside of me

Two awesome boys that I get to play with and teach each day

A marriage that just keeps getting better

A husband with a great job he loves and that keeps our bank account from empty

The spiritual and emotional growth I have accomplished

The chance to re-try so many times

My own home that is large and full of stuff

Learning about permaculture and gaining a new perspective on gardens

Opportunity to help out others with their gardens, including the community garden

Friendships that continue to grow

Gardens and chickens

Opportunities that are only limited by imagination

Waiting

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Babies are too unpredictable. I am uncomfortably pregnant. Both my other boys arrived before I reached 38 weeks, although one was induced, and I wasn’t certain on the other due date. I’m past 37 weeks, so now it is just waiting. I know my husband would love to be able to plan work off better if he actually knew when the baby was coming, but our baby will come just when he is ready. And really, I don’t know if I am.

Joe has been super busy with work. He took a promotion and will be the Rehab leader at one of the nursing homes. But he still has all his old responsibilities, and he has picked up more home health patients. Because of the extra work, we decided to buy an second car. It’s the first time we’ve had two cars in the 6.5 years we’ve been married. We bought an old truck that matched our small budget. (I really did not want to get into more debt.) I think Joe will enjoy not biking to work when it is snowing now.

We put up our Christmas tree and started listening to Christmas music. It’s not after Thanksgiving yet, but I wanted to get it done before baby came, and Christmas is less than a month away.

Here are the kids at the museum Grandma and daddy. I went Christmas shopping.
flying

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Bread

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I had a goal to make my own bread for a long time. But I was never motivated enough to bake it regularly until I put it on my chore rotation. I bake two loaves about once a week, which is perfect for our family. Now we rarely buy bread, and I enjoy eating homemade bread consistently, as well as having it a main portion of my children’s diet. I grind my own wheat as well, using white wheat which I like much better than traditional hard red wheat.

rise mix bread

I use my mom’s recipie, that I’ve modified to fit my own mixer and tastes. It is very simple and I have good results with it.

Whole Wheat Bread

Recipe yields two large loaves

  • 3 cups warm water
  • 2 tablespoons yeast
  • 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
  • 8ish+ cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1/2 cup oil

Grind flour if not already done. Combine warm water and yeast. Add wheat gluten and 3 cups of flour in a mixer with a good dough hook. Add remaining ingredients. Gradually add flour until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl. Turn mixer on medium high and allow to knead for 6 minutes. Divide dough into two parts, and form into loaf shapes. Place in bread pans. Preheat oven to 350. When oven is heated and dough is risen (I allow the bread to rise the same time it takes to heat the over), bake bread for 30 minutes.

I love making bread, not only because it is delicious, but because it was a goal I wanted to do and have now met. I didn’t reach my goal for a long time, but eventually I figured out a system that worked for me. It reminds me that if I give myself time and just keep trying other goals that I have will become realities.

Joy of Childhood

I see my children playing for hours making castles in the sandbox, parking lots of matchbox cars, and drawings that grow from scribbles to recognizable shapes and people. Childhood is joyful. There is a lot of free time to explore and play. Responsibility and worries aren’t as great, there is more room to be creative and playful. I can look back on my own childhood with happy memories of hours spent playing outside climbing trees, of reading book after book, and flying in the stars in pretend spaceships.

But I don’t think being a child is always fun and games. I have plenty of memories from my own childhood of frustration, disappointment and pain. It can be a hard time of life, with a lot of expectations to learn, and dealing with problems with little experience or emotional capacity. I see my own children in tears as they can’t quite make their drawing look right, they don’t understand why we have to leave a friend’s house, or get in trouble for wrestling their brother or drawing on the walls.

What do I want my children to gain from their childhood? I want them to learn and grown and turn into responsible and righteous people. Sometimes I am frustrated as we face the same problems with little progress. I can feel angry, inadequate as a mother, and even hopeless.

It helps to remind myself that they are children. They want to play and be happy and have yet to develop all the understanding of an adult. I do need to guide them and correct them, but  it is just as important to help them experience the joy of childhood. I want them to look back on their childhood and have more memories of the joy of playing, than to remember time-outs and tears.

So sometimes, I can let things go. Parenting is as much about playfulness as discipline, and is never about being perfect.  When I want my children to do something that they aren’t too interested in, forcing them often accomplishes nothing. It is far more important for a child to experience play and creativity then to always be pushing them to live up to expectations they can’t reach. They will grow and get better, at their own pace and only with gentle guidance.

Right now, it is often better to let them track mud in the house than to stop them from making mud pies, to clean up a big mess of paint with a smile instead of putting a child on time-out, and to go outside and play in the rain instead of getting one more chore done.

Snow

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Fall changed quickly from warm to cold. It meant a morning of frustration as I tried to figure out a good system to prevent the chicken water from icing over that did not involve lots of input from me. (Which, if you would like to know I used an aquarium heater in our existing nipple waterer that seems to be doing just great. Joe did have to take the thing apart so we could put it in the bottom section though.)

I miss being able to just send the boys outside, but I’m not minding the cold too much. I’ve got a nice sized baby belly to keep me warm. According to some friends, I look very cute too (I’m not sure about that–I’m more distracted by the fact that moving too often equals back pain).

belly

The first snow came, and I was happy to find that I had adequate snow gear for the kids. They went out sledding and tromping around. PB also shoveled the walks, and didn’t do a bad job. I was grateful for the help.

snow sled cold

Loving Guidance

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I love feeling like the Lord is guiding my life, strengthening me and showing me a Godly path to follow. I feel I have grown spiritually recently: many weaknesses I have struggled with recently aren’t as much of a problem. I can see myself growing.

I want to never go backward again, to become truly changed as a person. And I believe that through the Atonement this is possible. But I sometimes have bad days, where weaknesses threaten to come back and bad habits take over.

I cannot ever stop trying or believe I will not be tempted again in certain ways. Spirituality requires constant vigilance.

Mosiah 4: 30 “But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not.”

New Nursery

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We decided to turn the storage room into a nursery. Technically it was already a bedroom, but it is a very small room, and it had a cement floor and other various parts that were not finished . When we moved in, it was a clothes closet and then a place to store all the games and school/craft supplies. It made a great storage room. but we are having a baby and it made sense to turn it into a bedroom. I did not want to put a lot of money into this room, but I did want a room that I felt comfortable in.

I cleaned out all the various junk inside the room to other locations around the house. We started by installing some remnant carpet tiles for the flooring. It is mismatched flooring, but also very inexpensive and easy to install. I added some curtains from IKEA, got a new cover for my recliner, and set up the crib. Joe added an overhead light that wasn’t on a pull switch, along with another outlet. He also removed some redundant plumbing pipe. (That took awhile because he didn’t quite know what he was doing…thank goodness for a good friend that was able to show him what to do.)

nursery

Total cost was also under $175 so far, which included new flooring. The bedroom still isn’t going to impress anyone, but I enjoy it and it is a huge improvement over what we had. I wish I had a picture of the place beforehand, but it was never anything worthy of taking a picture of. It still isn’t quite done, the room needs molding and inside the closet isn’t finished. We might get those projects done eventually. For now it will work wonderfully as a nursery for our new little baby who is coming very soon.

Sometimes I’ve found it very easy to get caught up in dreaming. Dreaming made easier by the world of Pinterest, and Houzz. Before I moved into my new home, I love perusing photographs of lovely homes, saving ideas and pictures I dreamed of copying. Then I bought a house. Our house isn’t perfect. When we moved in, I was much more interested in making the house comfortable and safe than copying the ideas I saved. Projects like finishing off a threshold, installing a toilet correctly, and getting rid of anything I found hideous came first. I stopped looking for ideas, instead going off of my limited budget and own desires. I love my home now if I let myself, and I didn’t create it by copying ideas on the Internet. I am creating my home by responding to my own desires and ideas, and by often being content with less than perfect.

Sometimes I still find a blog or post that makes me want to re-do another room or abandon my simple decor and strange floor plan. I have to take a step back. I stop comparing my home to another and instead ask, “Am I comfortable here? Does my house function well for our family? Is it a place I love to be?” There are still projects I want to do, but they don’t necessarily match the goals of the wide world of home decor out there. This is my home, and the only people who need to love it is my family and me.

I re-did a nursery and I’m not getting any awards from it. But I stayed in our budget, and I’m perfectly happy with it. That’s far more important to me than to try to impress anyone else.

Pizza and Monsters

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Yesterday, PB went with my husband over to his parents to help move a few items. I stayed home to finish a book. When they got home, PB walked in extremely excited. he acted like he just won a free trip to Disneyland. “Mom, Little Ceasers opens in seven days!” He talked about it all night, and even made a countdown. So next week, we will be eating cheap pizza because that is the best kind of food when you are five.

monsterplaydough

Fall Leaves

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I don’t have any large deciduous trees on my property, so fall leaf clean-up isn’t an issue for me. But I wish it was. Leaves are valuable! I cringe when I see leaves thrown away in regular garbage (green waste is okay if you have to). Why? Well, because they are free organic matter. And organic matter is key to good soils and gardens.

How to you transform fall leaves into good soil? Here are some ideas for using them:

1)Mow. The year I did landscaping for a condo HOA, I raked only a small section of leaves. For the most part, I’d shred them up with the mower and leave them. I did it about three different times, so I never had over a couple of inches of leaves on the ground at any one time. The leaves nicely decomposed in the ground. It was super easy. This works really well for fine leaved trees like honeylocust (sometimes you don’t even have to mow those), but will also work with the thicker leaves like maples as long as you don’t let the leaves get too thick.

2)Mulch. This year, I piled the leaves nice and high around some spireas. I needed mulch there, and fall leaves are free. It also would work well in sheet mulching to smother lawn and other weeds.

fall leaves

3)Compost. Leaves can be added to a compost pile. They would act as a high-carbon or brown type of compost and should be combined with a bit of something high in nitrogen like manure, kitchen scraps or green material if you want ideal compost. (Although compost doesn’t ever have to be perfect.)

4)Annual Garden. This is probably the most common use I see: adding a nice layer of leaves to the garden. Most people till it in, which could be done in the spring or fall, but it doesn’t have to be. It would work well with a no-till garden by just leaving the leaves there and using them as mulch in the spring. The only caution is if you do till a large amount of leaves in, the high-carbon can eat up the nitrogen in the soil. Don’t do a large amount right before planting, or if you do make sure there is an additional source of nitrogen.

One of my actual fears in life is at some point I’m going to have a lot of leaves and some kind person will feel the need to rake them up and haul them away for me. I love leaves and firmly believe that they are far too valuable to end up in the trash!