Getting Strong

When you live three miles from your nearest neighbor, you don't think much about what you wear in your house. Or your front yard. Your kids can wear pajamas outside and no neighbors gossip about it. Chores? Chorin' can be done in bright pink boots with a bathrobe covering all else and? Nope. Still no one cares. However, I don't own pink boots and I like to keep my bathrobe clean...but I COULD IF I WANTED TO and that's really the point.

The problem is I get a bit lazy with this beautiful freedom we have. We dress more for comfort (what in this closet is warm...) rather than style (oh! Here! Buzz Lightyear pajama pants...perfect!)

We dress all warm and then? Then my little guy goes and does something adorable and I can't help but capture it to share with you all. And even as I am taking this video, I am wishing I had something a bit more...normal on him. But you know what? I think you can look past the buzz lightyear pajama pants which clash with his bright yellow sweatshirt and don't work at all with his SNOW BOOTS that I put on him even in the lack of snow because they are warm. What crazy concoction mommy put him in really isn't his fault. I couldn't help but let you watch as he works on training his overly-submissive new dog, Sadie.

Sadie came to us a few weeks back. She is about a year old and a ball full of love. However, she and Ryan are the same height. She Luuurves Ryan. Ryan is both terrified and delighted by this. Because Sadie runs up and squishes right into Ryan until he is huddled in a little ball on the ground. Upon hearing his cries she's all "Oh, don't worry! Let me cuddle with you and help you feel better" and proceeds to nuzzle up closely with all the graces of a wild chihuahua. This doesn't help the crying.

But, my dear husband has recognized that this is one of his first fears we get to help him conquer. Me? I would rather put him in a large inflated bubble. There are a lot of logistics problems with my version of comfort, however, and so here we are, working on guts.

I love that big sigh at the end like "phew. I survived again."

This may sound crazy...(OAMS Part One)

A marriage magazine that Phil and I subscribed to last year had an article about once a year shopping. Truly. One time a year? After picking my jaw up off the ground, I continued reading that this couple had started out simply doing once a month shopping. Then, they figured they could shop every three months. This was the way they made the progression to once a year shopping. Though I had originally been quite excited about this prospect, the reality of life and my dislike of planning kept me from it.
And then, my friends, gas prices hit $3.30 per gallon. And I started actually tracking my expenses and grocery costs.
My goal is to spend around $50 per week on groceries. This includes things like foil or dish soap, toilet paper, etc. But the past few weeks I have not been meeting that goal by far.
Grocery stores believe that the more times you go into the store, the more impulse buys you will make. AND IT"S TRUE! For example, with my lack of planning, we will end up hungry on a Friday night. I will suggest running to the grocery store, picking up a pizza or something. And while there, I will get a pop...and maybe something fun to snack on for a game...and what about that extra bottle of creamer because we are running low? Oooh, a good price on carrots/flour/raisins/M&M's!
And there goes any harebrained idea I had of budgeting.
Some people are really good at cash-envelopes. Dave Ramsey calls for them and I think they are fantastic. But I like food so much, that I will steal from other envelopes because I am out of creamer.
The biggest problem I have is that I just don't plan. When I have my meals planned out, and the ingredients I need to make them, we are happy, well-fed campers. When I don't? The house is seemingly empty. And we are ravenous. A quick run to the store for us is a 30 minute trip (and that's to the highly-priced store, it's an hour round trip to the reasonably priced one.)
Add to this the need to cart kids back and forth to the car, the multiple stops we make each trip to make the drive worth it and voila, you have a great reason to dread the shopping trip.
So, here's my plan. I am going to try this once a month shopping thing.
For those of you who would like to follow along, let me tell you how the first part has gone.

We went into town on Saturday (the 29th). We bought all the animal feed we would need for the next four weeks (ouch! Cows and sheep and chickens and dog oh my!) But, you know what? It was so painful to buy all that food we didn't walk out with the extra bucket or a few small tools. We just ran.

Then we hit two really well-priced stores in our area: Aldi's and Fareway. You west-coasters don't have either of these stores, and I am so sorry for you. However, you do have Costco...it's all about options and prices!
We spent $60 at Aldi's and $160 at Fareway, putting our total groceries so far at $220. We only ended up with one gallon of milk because of expiration dates, so we will need to see if we can con some close friends to add a gallon or two to one of their shopping trips. BUT do you know how many things don't expire for over a month when properly stored? I know we could have been purists and frozen our milk or maybe bought powdered milk...but we thought...no.

In planning for the trip, I made a month's worth of dinner plans. I decided what we would eat for breakfast (a combination of oatmeal, homemade granola, and breakfast casseroles) and thought through some lunches for Phil (like making a roast a week so I could put sandwiches together). I even planned out treats (like week 1, I will make an apple pie, week 2, bread pudding, etc.) It wasn't as daunting as I thought it was going to be. And, looking at meat prices at the store, I changed some of my plans to save money (like buying a "family pack" of pork chops instead of chicken breasts, getting a well-priced turkey over a roast).

I stocked up on diapers (sorry, price not included in the above costs- add $20) and took inventory of my laundry supplies, toiletries and cleaners. Planning so well for a shopping trip for some of you might seem natural, but was kind of new to me. Surveying the landscape, if you will, puts my mind at rest that I won't run out of vanilla right when it's time to make my three year old his birthday cake! Not that I would ever do that...
So, here we are on day three of my little experiment. My cupboards are stocked, I have a plan for dinner and I'm a bit giddy to not have to enter the grocery store for a month. But? Already I can tell I am going to be low on creamer. There may be all-out wars by week two here if we use up our planned "month's supply".
I guess so far that 's the one thing that has surprised me: how much you actually use of an item over a month. Like I have heard financial planners talk - if you just cut out your daily Starbucks...this is how much you would save!...I feel that way about coffee already. I never paid attention to how much we actually go through because of our multiple trips to the store.
So? There it is. Can we save money on gas and groceries by switching gears? Will I go stir crazy without the ability to be at the market each week? Will I stash the last bottle of Chocolate Raspberry creamer in my sock drawer and feign ignorance, forcing my husband to drink his black? Only time will tell...

7 months, 3 years

Every time I think I am going to get a few minutes to sit and write a blog post, something crazy will happen. I have had this video for a week or so now, along with the pictures.

But, oh, the stories my friends! Chicken chomping, cow wrangling stories of farm-folly glory.

More posts surely are to come...too fun not to share. But, for now, for the grandparents and aunts and aunts-in-spirit, here are new photos of the boys.

Ever since Ryan learned what a camera is my response to "smile!" has either been RUN! or the most overplayed, cheesy, unrealistic plastered smile I have ever seen. Think:silly putty face meets windtunnel.

But two days ago he was sitting so nicely giving his dad a hug and let me actually capture the sweet little face I so often see and also the face the keeps me from moving his room out to the barn. Because he is nearly three and sometimes? We test mom.

David has started to really, really like his big brother. Some of my best delights come from watching David spring with joy as Ryan does something REALLY EXCITING like hold a block out to see! Or maybe? Ryan will do something CRAZY like RUN from one end of the room to the other, flopping on the couch. The video is a bit dark (sorry for the bad cinematography...) but for those of you who want to see what those little kids look like when they are not in a still frame, here it is:

Farm Follies

This winter has been full of experiences which I will laugh at later in life. Like twenty years from now. “Remember that winter where there was 3 feet of rock-like frost in the ground and the water main into the house broke under it? Hahaha that was an experience, we’ll say. We’ll share them like war stories with other old-house owners, or fellow farmers. Like all other fun Iowan farm stories, the reality of it, being in the middle of it, makes me want to eat an entire batch of cookie dough. And finish that off with a pint of ice cream and a grande nonfat with whip white chocolate mocha. And then cry. And then repeat.

But because the new struggles are just a bit too raw to make light of just yet, let’s review some of the previous doozies for fun, shall we?

My personal favorite and the one that initiated us into the community of farm-embarrassment: the time we had 3000 ladybeetles appear in a gigantic crawling swarm days before four friends came to stay with us. The little beetles set up camp and stayed for, oh, the entire visit. Our friends and the bugs engaged in all-out war that ended with squealing and “the wicked witch is dead!” being triumphantly shouted down the stairs post-bug-massacre.
The time Phil’s sister and brother in law stayed with us and the toilet ran overnight, flooding the basement and leaving us waterless with three children and four adults in the house. (hmm, that one still doesn’t seem very funny)
When we were driving the big green truck back from Illinois and it overheated so we pulled off the freeway to let it rest. It stalled and we were unable to revive it at the stoplight directly off the freeway, so we all piled into the car. Two blocks down, the car got a flat tire. At 5:10pm. We walked a mile to retrieve fix-a-flat and ended up spending two nights in Illinois to get it all fixed. But we had no idea that this was a big city and ended up being grateful that there was a motel, as seedy as it was, and spent the night in the red-light district. The next day we got the car fixed and asked to be directed to a different hotel. It was like driving from White Center in Seattle to Redmond and THERE WAS A RED ROBIN THERE and we all lived happily ever after (ok, I can chuckle at that one).
When I hit a deer with my car and totaled it (the car, the deer was fine) soon after we sold the truck, leaving us car-less. (“oooh, and isn’t it ironic…don’t ya think?”) BUT I GOT A VAN IN REPLACEMENT and we lived happily ever after.
When we had a big ice storm and it knocked out power for 12 days and we ended up moving in with our pastor and his family. Two days after we got there I took Ryan to the doctor and found out that he had some fun contagious winter bug that he spent the next week spreading around their house. Ha! We bought 4 cans of Lysol and two large bottles of hand sanitizer to protect everyone (read: my highly illness-prone pastor).We ate lots of double-stuffed Oreos and coffee, which helped everyone make it through alive.
Or when our tractor broke down and I spent a week trying to mow our gigantic yard, 9 inch tall grass and all, with a walk-behind bag mower. HAHA It went like this: walk behind 1/3 yard width, dislodge bag, walk across yard, drop on ever-growing pile, walk back, restart. Hours, days, weeks. And then, Phil finally fixed the mower and spent 30 minutes mowing the rest of the yard. I cried. And then I kissed the tractor. On the lips.
The time my mom came for a visit in February (still quite cold here) and we had a really neat idea to hook up an add-on wood furnace three days before she came. Minutes before the final hook-up, at 2am in a 50 degree house, we found out that the chimney liner was crumbling and therefore unusable (for those of you who don’t understand furnaces and chimneys, like me, it means: no heat for you! At all!). So husband and friends spent the next day in below-zero weather on top of our roof re-lining the chimney.
Or when our clean city friends came back for another visit during a nice, long, hot summer that had bred a lot of flies, and we spent the entire week eating with a neon swatter as a centerpiece. Sort of as a scarecrow for flies, if you will. Mmm.
Or yes, remember not too long ago when my sheep dog protected me from the big-bad farmers who were here to deliver our fuel and had ended up sinking into my lawn?
Okay, this one is from this month: three weeks ago my new “protective dog” scared a skunk RIGHT NEXT TO OUR FRONT DOOR and Phil, who had been sick in bed for two days and had, among other maladies, not been able to smell for its duration, woke at 3:30am to the terrible smell wafting up and throughout the house. His first scent in days, so strong it woke him from a sound sleep and sent him outside with a gun in search of a culprit. (Haha I didn’t say we always think through plans. We can’t be held accountable for decisions made before morning coffee.) As it turns out, the scoundrel sprayed our new barbeque grill…because nothing says yummy like Skunk-scent infused burgers. Ryan kept asking “Mom? Is there a Stunk outside?” Yes. Yes there is certainly a stunk outside.

I know you are laughing now. See, horribly embarrassing in the middle, fodder for stories later on. What would I do if I always had electricity, running water, and working vehicles? What if there were no wild vermin running around to make my life interesting? WHAT WOULD I DO??? Heh heh. Probably? I would eat cookie dough, ice cream, and Starbucks. Just not so ravenously.