A time of grief

Grief is a horrible thing for anyone to have to go through.  My sister became a widow six months ago.  This week has been like it just happened for her.  She is in a deep depression and it breaks my heart.  I wish I could make her better.  I wish she didn't have to raise two children alone.  I wish her husband was by her side.  I don't understand why God took him so suddenly, but I do know that God is sovereign and just.  I know good things will come out of this.  I have never lost my spouse, but I do know grief.

     My infertility at times completely sweeps me off my feet.  I will be fine for months, enjoying raising my wonderful adopted children and then suddenly I will attend a baby shower or even hear of a family member being pregnant and suddenly I am back in that dark place of inadequacy.  It hits me right in the gut.  I find myself slipping back into that place of rage, bitterness and heartbreak.  Pleading with God to please heal my body so I can conceive.  God is so good.  He hears my heart, understands my pain and lovingly guides me back to Him.  I love Him so!  Psalms 30:5 says For his anger endureth but a moment: in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

In my weakness, He is my rock!  Hallelujah!


As I am traveling on this THM way, I am loving the food I am eating!  I am still trying to get through the book and as I come across a recipe, I try it.  It's been fun so far and I can't wait until my glucomannan comes in and the other things I ordered.  I will be excited to see that amazon box after Christmas.  Here are some dishes I have made so far.

This is chicken fajitas without any shells.  I just sauteed onions and peppers in coconut oil and then removed them, added a chicken breast cut into thin strips and put some homemade taco seasoning on after it had cooked.  I added the peppers and onions back to coat them with seasoning.  I deglazed the pan with a little heavy cream and cheese to make a cheesy sauce which I poured over the chicken and veggies.  It was so delicious!  And very filling.

I made the fooled ya pizza and it was wonderful! My family gobbled it up in ten minutes. They wanted to know when I was going to make it again.

I made the trim healthy pancakes with 0% Greek yogurt and blueberries that I heated until warm and poured them with the juice over it all! I was in heaven!!! I'm loving this book more and more every day.

Some thoughts

So today and yesterday I did pretty good with my eating plan.  Except for this evening. 

Yesterday
B- muffin in a mug (this was surprisingly good and easy and quick, all things I like in the morning :)

L- salmon cakes made with whole oats ( I just tweaked a recipe that I had and made it S friendly with very few carbs.  I fried them in organic palm shortening and they were delicious

D- At church last night it was pinto beans and cornbread night so I filled up first with two bowls of turnip greens and had a small bowl of pinto beans making this an E meal


Today's meal:

B- muffin in a mug ( I rarely make the same thing two days in a row, but again, it was easy and quick and very filling)  This was an S meal

L- I ate lunch out as we were finishing up shopping and had a gyro sandwich without the pita, and a huge salad with lots of creamy dressing.  It was delicious and i was so satisfied, so it's an S meal.

Now dinner was another matter.  I totally was not prepared to still be in town and having to eat out for dinner too.  So it ended up being a cheap quick meal at Sonic.  I ordered a double cheeseburger and removed the bun.  It was ok and filling, but I ate a half a container or french fries before I even knew what I was doing!  UGH!  I am still trying to get through the book and know that potatoes are a no, no but old habits are hard to break.  Hopefully I didn't do too much damage.  It's still a new learning process for me.

Sugar Detox stinks!

As I am reading my THM book and trying out new recipes, I am also detoxing off of sugar.  It is HARD! I want a stinking doughnut, sweet tea, anything!  Yesterday, my husband left part of his lunch at home.  I had made a homemade chocolate cake with butter cream chocolate icing on Monday for my nephew's birthday.  I had some batter left over and made these cute little cupcakes for my dh's lunch.  Wouldn't you know, he left them at home on the morning I decide to plunge straight into the THM lifestyle.  UGH!  Satan was trying to throw me a big curve ball!

Well guess what?  I WON!  I did not have any of those cupcakes.  Instead I ate some leftover meatloaf for breakfast (can you tell I need groceries!).  It was satisfying and I managed to ignore them for the rest of the day.  VICTORY!!! 

For supper I had a yummy  Satisfying meal.  I sauteed onions in butter until caramelized, added mushrooms and cooked them down, added a little bit of chicken stock and finished it off with heavy cream.  I had grilled some deer burgers and poured this over the top of mine.  Oh my, so good!  I had made my family Parmesan potatoes and we all had steamed broccoli tossed with butter and Parmesan.  It was a yummy S meal and I loved every bite!

Now just to get over the sugar blahs :)

I'm resurrecting this blog!

It's been way too long again since I blogged.  Life gets busy!  Very, very busy.  I have a lot to say about our past year, but that will come later.  I am excited about a new book I am reading.  It's called Trim Healthy Mama by Seren Allison and Pearle Bartlett.  They are sisters, homeschooling moms and I absolutely am loving their book.  It is teaching me so much about health and nutrition.  I have ready so many books over the years and have a fairly decent knowledge about what is healthy and what is not.  The thing I love about this book is that it is finally putting all the pieces together for me that I have been collecting for years.  I finally have hope that I can eat this way and (gasp!) lose weight too!  It's an exciting time for me.  I will blog about my journey to discover new recipes, meal ideas and weight loss.  I'm ready to reclaim my health and it's a good feeling!

Christmas Highlights and Organized Chaos!

Since starting the new year, there have been ups and downs.  I have spent the last week getting over sickness and trying not to cough my head off.   I said in my last post that I was praying about adoption.  I still am and my heart is ready and willing but my husband is not.  He said he has not recieved an answer yet.  It is frustrating to not be on the same page.  But I have to remember that it's all in His time, not ours.  If God means for us to adopt again, then I will rejoice when He gives Frankie the answer!  I'm willing to wait.  Our Christmas was wonderful but boy was I glad it was over.  We focused this year on lot of homemade things.  It was more meaningful to the kids and heck, it was just plain fun to make them!

 Lexie really loved her doll house that Frankie and I worked on for days and days!

 Lexie got her brother these itty bitty toys called squinkies.  I give them a week before our dog Tucker eats them, ha!

My son has had great fun shooting a million darts at us.  I'm finding them in the oddest places (washing machine, dishwasher, in shoes, etc)

We made these reading tents to go in their bedrooms.  They loved them and use them every day!  We spent maybe 20 dollars to make both of them!  It was their favorite gifts.  

This is an animals of the world poster.  My son looks at it every day!

They also got wii games, clothes, shoes, games, american girl doll clothes and tons of little stocking stuffers.  It was a great day!

After the holidays my house was an absolute wreck.  I decided to purge and organize my main school areas.  We do the bulk of our school in the dining room and it was starting to look very sorry.  Here are a few pictures that show it before.

 Stuff is everywhere!

 It's falling off the shelves.

 This is my school closet.  Looks all cute closed but then you open the door and......

 hope something doesn't fall out on top of you!

I pulled everything out and reorganized everything.  It took me 5 hours to clean both areas.  Here's what they looked like when I was done.

 Big sigh of relief!

 I can see the table and now we can eat there!

One happy homeschooling momma.  I can find everything.

My next goal is to paint this bookshelf black, but I'm thinking it will be a summer project ;)

Two happy kiddos.