Life Goals

Where do you see yourself in 25 years? What are your definite hopes and dreams? I have a couple goals that have held in my mind for many years now. I'm not there yet with them but with each year I get a little bit closer.
One fanciful goal or ambition of mine is to live off the grid. I'd like to build a cabin or cottage home somewhere in a wide open space or nestled into a mountain side with a decent plot of land around it. I want it to be built in such a way that if need be I could operate all of my utilities without paying the public works for the service. I imagine such a space wouldn't be too close to cities or grocery stores so I also want to know how to be self sufficient.
Each year I work to learn more about being self sufficient. I'd like to learn all of the old skills that skipped my generation completely. My mother grew up on a farm and got to experience self sufficiency first hand. While raising her family she tried to avoid many of the childhood chores she grew up with. So I never learned how to garden, bottle and can food, milk cows, cook from scratch or really sew while growing up. I did convince my parents to let me have chickens growing up, we did have cows but they were always just for meat or showing, we also had pigs and some sheep once too. They raised alfalfa that a neighbor would come cut and bale for us. I tried growing a garden when I was in my teens and failed miserably, as in nothing grew, one plant I thought was a carrot was actually a weed. Still I always wished for more animals and more plants to harvest. Even though she didn't teach her kids any of those things growing up she is still the first one I call when I have a question on anything relating to bottling food and every once in a while I can pick her brain about other things she grew up doing. When it comes to gardening she sends me on to call my aunt or my nana. I've read and own several books on gardening that I reference, I think with each year I've gotten a tiny bit better at it.
One of the things I've always wanted is to have my own personal produce stand in my backyard. I love fruits, they are so much less picky than the vegetables that have to be re-done each year. In the past year and a half that we have lived in our new place I have added just about any fruit I can get my hands on. We planted apple trees, a peach tree, cherry tree, grape vines, strawberry plants, raspberry canes and two blueberry bushes. Fruit does take some time before it begins producing much but last year we had two apples, a bunch of peaches, a handful of cherries, raspberries, and a small amount of strawberries. I don't know that we will have grapes for at least another year, but hopefully we will get some blueberries before the chickens pick off the first fruits they spy.
I think we plan on living here for several years so in that time I will try to learn the skills it takes to manage a wide variety of fruits as well as learn all the ways to use them. It helps to have neighbors who are so smart with gardening too. In time I do want to take what I have learned and use it on a homestead somewhere.

Peace

Church began later today than its 9:00 time we had all of last year. It was a change that I have been looking forward to for quite sometime, getting a family of 5 up and ready for a 3 hour block of church is a challenge when you have to be there so early. Even though we didn't need to be there till 11:30 my morning was far from ideal. I bit my bottom lip twice in the same spot when trying to eat breakfast and then stepped into an argument with Jared that keeps finding its way back to the surface. When we were finally off to church I was emotional and distressed, far from the stress free that I had imagined I was going to be that morning. I pleaded heavenward for peace from what seems like so much useless turmoil in my life. I know what I want but when your a female you just have a hard time turning off the emotional feeling of it all. In my last class of the block my neighbor gave a lesson on a book that John Bytheway had written and I immediately was able to calm my distress and find a solution to how I can become more balanced in my expectations and life in general.
The lesson began with the discussion of contentment. In January it seems that everyone's focus is far off the mark of contentment because we all choose to add goals and a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of ambition to your expectations of the New Year. While its disguised as a great thing, and in some instances I guess it could be but it doesn't encourage contentment. When things are working great with me and Jared it is because of contentment. Peace prevails when we are happy with what we have and we aren't competing with the "Jones". When we are content with our own lives we have no desire to judge others and their life choices. I've been distressed because I wasn't recognizing what makes my life ideal for me and my family. We haven't happened upon our situation because this is just where we have ended up, we've made conscious choices that best fit our family framework to be where we are now. Today I re-found my appreciation for that reality and now I am working on remembering to be content with all that I have been truly blessed with. My life is exactly how I can handle it right now, all that I have deeply wanted to be, is; and if I can't find peace in that knowledge then I'm not going to find it anywhere else. So you can either be unsatisfied with what you have and miserable or  you can see the good and find contentment. I plan on choosing contentment this year and loving what I've got.

Our 2013 Christmas Card

I didn't feel like doing the whole Christmas card thing this year, but I did manage to create one for all of my friends on Facebook and here to see. We hope you all get to enjoy a Merry Christmas!

Parenting learning curve

I never realized before I had children what incredible characteristics each individual has. I may have taken note that not all kids in the same family act the same but I still assumed that when your raised by certain adults you take on their mannerisms and way of being. Then I became a parent, after several years of bringing up children I came to the conclusion that every child's spirit is so completely their own. The three kids I have are not carbon copies of myself or Jared, in fact if you were just to observe how they are without looking at them you wouldn't put them in the same family category or match them up with us. I parented each of my infants nearly the same but yet I had three different sleepers, two cuddly babies and one who needed distance and more evidence that no matter what I did that baby was going to march to the beat of its own drum. Its fascinating and completely terrifying all at once. I love seeing their specific interests in life, and what motivates them to be happy. I also realize that how I raise one child may not be effective in raising my others.
 When your young and to be honest fairly stupid its easy to find the fault in others parenting skills, I know a whole lot of "I would never's" and "My children will never's" crossed my mind and probably my lips when I was young and didn't have a clue. I've learned since that you just don't allow those thoughts to cross your mind because most of the time I've had a chance to eat those words or clearly see what someone else was dealing with.
In a manual I was reading the other night I came across several parenting tips that I know would help in my own parenting of my very different children. One suggestion is to get to know each child individually, a helpful idea was to help young children with their personal prayers at night. If you ever wanted to know what is on my sons mind just ask him to say the prayer and you'll have a pretty open window to his thoughts. That wont always be the case but it would help for me to take the time each night to help my children with their individual prayers and also spend 5 minutes or so talking with them about their day or thoughts. Its hard when I just want everyone in bed because I am spent, but I know that the rewards of actually knowing my child will out way my impatience.
One profound quote that I read by Elder Boyd K. Packer on parenting with the help of heaven is-
"Once parents know that there is a God and that we are his children, they can face problems like this and win.
"If you are helpless, he is not.
"If you are lost, he is not.
"If you don't know what to do next, he knows.
"It would take a miracle, you say?
"Well, if it takes a miracle, why not"
(in Conference Report, Oct. 1970)
Ultimately it doesn't matter what parenting advice I read in books or online, each of my children require their own unique approach, its a matter of lovingly finding what works and when that fails ask the one who has all of the answers for help in raising His children.

2014 is gonna be great

Have you ever had a year that just really sucked? We've had several but 2013 did its best to take the cake. It started out with a bang when in January Jared was told that the program that he was working on was being outsourced to a company in Canada. He quickly took an open position within the company paying about $5 less an hour until he could secure another job. Well that other job didn't come around until 3 months ago so we supplemented our income with the our tax return until it ran completely out. I went back to work cleaning for my moms business just to keep our heads slightly above water and then Jared started his next semester of school along with his new job. We saw him on weekends and sometimes he would surface from doing homework downstairs in between school and work. Now were in December and I'm honestly just waiting out the year. Jared should have a permanent position with Auto Liv at the first of the year. He plans on taking spring semester off because I will be due to deliver right around finals and that is just too much stress. We've been budgeting about $200 a month for him to drive down to school everyday which is a huge, but necessary bite of our budget. After Wednesday of this week he wont need to drive to Weber State until he begins his next semester of school possibly in the summer but maybe not till fall. I plan on using the extra $200 to pay down debts and then when our tax return comes most of it will hopefully go to get rid of the rest of our debt.
When we lived in Ogden we were robbed several times and one time after our door was busted in and just about any valuable we had at the time was taken, we had to make a home owners insurance claim to fix and replace all that was lost. Well that claim came back to haunt us after purchasing our new place and nobody wanted to insure us without taking us to the cleaners. Up until October of this year we were double paying for our homeowners insurance because they wanted our monthly payment and our mortgage company wanted to prepay for the following year. Can you see why 2013 just sucked every bloody penny from us? In March of 2014 that stupid robbery claim will be three years old and will drop off of our record and in turn our homeowners insurance should also drop.
Gratefully we have survived thus far, we aren't financially ruined, we have a home to live in, food to eat and clothes to wear. I know that the Lord has blessed us time and time again, I am so grateful to everyone who did so much for us in the darkest hours of 2013, I pray that you will be blessed with what you stand in need of for your kindness.
 I can't wait to toast away this crummy year and move on to better things!

Coconut Oil, Almond Butter Cookies

It is the third of December and it is really cold, like 28 degrees cold so of course we need some warm treats from the oven. My little boy is allergic to peanuts and it has been around 3 to 4 years since I last made some. I really love peanut butter and its a bummer to not be able to cook or bake with it whenever I please. Today I thought hey I bet I could find an almond butter cookie recipe that would be similar to peanut butter cookies, and I found lots of almond butter recipes and lots of them were paleo so they didn't call for flour but were okay with flour around here so I didn't feel like making some that weren't similar to what I love peanut butter cookies to be. Lately I've backed off using Crisco in my cookie recipes and have been replacing it with either butter or coconut oil, today I wanted to use coconut oil because I have zero patience with waiting for my butter to soften. I thought it would be hard to find a recipe that called for both almond butter and coconut oil so I adapted a peanut butter/ coconut oil recipe from Cowgirl Chef and came up with some really yummy cookies.

Almond Butter Cookies
ingredients:
1 C coconut oil
1 C white sugar
1 C brown sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 C Almond butter (mine is the Kroger brand and it is already sweetened)
2 C flour (her recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups but I thought that would make them a little too dry)
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t sea salt (I used coarse sea salt and it gave them a small salty bite with the sweet)

 Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, cream coconut oil with the sugars, add eggs and vanilla blend, add almond butter and cream it all together, pour all of the remaining ingredients into the bowl and mix. I hate using two bowls so that is how I always mix my dry ingredients. Drop by rounded Tbs on an ungreased baking sheet and smash with a fork in a criss-cross pattern (just like regular peanut butter cookies). Bake for 8-10 minutes, 12 minutes in my oven would have been too long, you don't want them too dry or burned.

These cookies held up really well once they were allowed to cool for a minute, also their flavor developed better when they were cooled. Serve with a tall glass of cold milk and let that oven help heat your cold kitchen!

Recipe adapted from Cowgirl Chef peanut butter cookies

Christmas Dinner

This year we will be staying home for Christmas dinner, which really makes me excited because I love cooking big meals. Jared's work gave us a turkey this year for thanksgiving but we went to my aunts for thanksgiving dinner so its still hanging out in our freezer. So naturally the perfect time to use it will be for a beautiful Christmas dinner. I've cooked one turkey in the past and it turned out lovely so I've been itching to do another but turkey just isn't something I go pick up from the grocery store for obvious expense reasons and really my kids don't really care to eat much meat as it is. I'm pretty sure that besides the turkey I will bake up some homemade Lion House rolls. We received two different Lion House cook books for our wedding and on special occasions I have made their rolls. Their recipe for rolls is slightly different than my regular go to dough recipe in that it calls for warmed milk in place of water and butter in place of oil, so it makes some really great melt in your mouth rolls. I'll also make some stuffing, but I usually just use the Stove Top box or a Pepperidge farm bag of stuffing because stuffing really isn't my favorite and it looks like too much work to make from scratch. My other sides will be mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, some peas and raw carrots.
 I love setting the table all fancy for special days and a long time ago, before I was married, my mom bought me some Christmas china that has Christmas trees on each of the plates and also the mugs. I originally thought it was kind of juvenile but I'm excited to use it with my little family because the kids will love it, and honestly I've gotten to a point as an adult that I would rather the kids be excited to see a familiar plate each year than have the fanciest grown up china.
The dessert is probably up for grabs I may make a chocolate cream pie because it is Jared's favorite I love making pies because they are so pretty and really they aren't too difficult to put together, making the crust is probably the biggest pain in the whole process but other than that pie can be quite simple. I may make some Jell-O as a side/ dessert also only because the kids really like it.
All in all it is just fun to have my own family to share a yummy meal with and create some fond family memories.