Totally Awesome

Wow. I feel all warm and cozy. Evie at The Road Less Traveled gave me this award! Now to pass it on......harder since many, many of my favorite bloggers have already received this award and I'm not supposed to duplicate. I've been mulling over how to do this for days now. Do I just post my blogroll? No, too lazy. Agh. I know I will leave someone wonderful out, but I'll do my best!

Mama B. at My Little Soap Box: in real life and in blogdom she inspires me to think and to homeschool in ways I had not thought of on my own. In my unschooly world, she is a well trained mind.

Needleroozer at Turtleworks: An artist. She inspired me to get creative again, and despite my puttering, keeps me at it. Until I get the box off the counter and in the mail to her (I will, maybe when it's not so cold!) I hope this award shows my appreciation!

Evie's Incredible Shrinking Whimsigal: Oh, the food. Yum. You all should try her mushroom soup. Also, I could never fry an egg before. I know. Weird.

Laura at LifeDreamed: Another local friend and unschooler of a little. Honestly, her friendship came at a time when I really needed it. Our kids adore each other, despite the age gap. Also, yay!, she's due in August! We'll have summer babies together (I'm in June).

Anna Kiss at sugar boot and weasel: She's a poet too. I'm getting back into my groove and writing poetry- one a day in February. I totally bombed at NaNoWriMo. I didn't even get started. This I can do! Oh, and she's in Ohio. My hope is that I'll get to meet her when we move there.

Montucky Rox at South of the Bridgers: She posts rarely, but when she does it is usually something I need to reflect on at that very point in my journey. She's actual family, a precious and rare commodity. She has helped me through some pretty tough times and transitions AND she unschooled her young ones before life had other plans for her. I never knew that before this summer and it certainly made our connection feel deeper.

Kip at 24 piece set: Rox's middle one in NE, my second cousin. I recently found his blog and reconnected through that. The Internet is so cool! So is Kip's art, BTW.

Sarah at The View From Here: She is very conservative and religious. Sometimes I need to connect with that too. She also is a wealth of knowledge (and products) on natural parenting and that's awesome too. She's had a tough year, full of loss and hurting. A constant reminder to me to be more gentle with people, as we don't know what they are going through. Despite everything, she has still inspired many and continues to do so.

Christine at Welcome to My Brain: The pastor's wife. She cracks me up. She's sexy and nurturing and a whole lot of other stuff too. She has an awesome weekly Magic Milk o'the Week picture series- a major thing in breastfeeding advocacy. She's also got a crazy beautiful family and is about to add more to her brood. All that and she homeschools too!

KMDuff at Stuff About The Duffs: She's just like the rest of us, working towards gentleness, unschooling, raising kids, AND she writes about it too. She's in a warm locale- I often visit her blogs and think about flip flops in February. I've never worn flip flops in my life (web toe power and all). Mostly I love getting ideas from her. Her kids are much like Lil'Bug in interests.

I know. I left off the list some really great blogs- but the rules say only ten!

Better Butter

Eating and what we eat is a hot topic in our house. I won't go as far to say that we are foodies but Dearest Husband and I have in common the hatred of plastic food. I don't mean that the food is actually plastic, but that it is messed with. Low-fat, fat free, sugar free, cornified, modified, processed....fake. Also, don't kid yourself, processed food has an acceptable level of rodent feces and insect waste. Sorry to put that out there, but who really knows what's in Twinkies? The FDA- they set the levels. (shudder) Not to mention the chemicals used in preserving food for shelf life.

What got me thinking about this today was a conversation I had with one of my favorite aunts: she has struggled with her weight and blood sugar for as long as I can remember. She's going to try Weight Watchers but doesn't have time for the meetings. My understanding is that it's all about portion control. This is good, but misses something in order to sell their product. That missing element is food quality. It is still processed convenience food that disconnects the eater from the food ingested. There is no personal accountability for the ingredients (AND doesn't support local economies). I think that the connection is a vital ingredient to a healthier lifestyle.

Anyway, we like whole foods. We found that by using whole milk, butter, farm fresh eggs, and the like that we eat smaller portions and are more satisfied by the meal.

There are a couple things to note about this. Smaller portions means less food, means less purchased. We also buy our meat directly from farms so our overall yearly meat bill is about $1,200. That's right. $100 a month AND we are eating Black Angus steaks, roasts, and burgers AND holiday hams, Iowa chops, and pork roasts, etc. Oh and the bacon! Divine. We grow a lot of tomatoes and peppers so that helps too. We spend more than average on milk and dairy because I insist on hormone free products. (When we have our own cow, I expect the initial cost to be the same since we'll have care and feeding costs of an animal. Maybe not? Maybe just to begin with?) Our monthly grocery bill is averaging $400 (including the meat, but also non-food items like shampoo, cleaning products, paper, etc). That's pretty good (I think) for as well as we eat.

Last month I tried real from the farm organic hormone free butter. Sounds fancy and was a luxury purchase. I admit that I didn't expect it to taste much different, after all butter is butter- right? Oh......my.....was I wrong. It is luscious, just enough salty, and melted dreamily. I ate it on toast but now I must set out to make those hot crusty rolls this week. It is prioritized!

Back to what I was saying. Food matters. It is the fuel we run on, mind and body. We don't spend more just because we are picky because the other costs balance it out.

We eat well, we spend less, and our doctors say we are pretty darn healthy (which also means we visit them less and save medical expenses). Can't beat that.

No Pictures, "Mama I don't feel good...."

LilBug has rubbed her nose and most of her face raw wiping away dripping snot. If I pin her down I can wipe Foil Hat Shea Butter on her cheeks to soothe the redness and help repel the snot from crusting, but she hates having gooey snot like stuff wiped on to her face. Her words, not mine. I happen to think the Shea Butter is divine and Amy should be crowned the queen of Shea Butter for making me Chai scented Butter for my pregnant belly.

With not much work to do and a kid who just wanted to alternantly hibernate or play farm in her room without me, I tried to play with my camera. This only made her cry. "No pictures, please mama," heartbreaking it was. So we mopped snow mud tracks off the floor and drank lots of tea and then I actually got to sit down and read a book (until I got up for more tea and came back- the book was gone. Tot says she knows nothing. Hmph.).

So Lil'Bug is still feverish off and on, her face is raw, and all she wants to eat are cookies. That's the update!

My Goodness, IS It Only Tuesday?

You'd think that with Dearest Husband home yesterday that today would feel like a Monday- but it didn't. It feels like a Thursday that is at an end. Weekend in sight. I have all my classes graded, caught up on email, laundry, and dishes, tended a sick babe all day AND cooked a new recipe (scalloped potatoes from a CI book).

Now, my back aches and my feet are tingly so I am putting my feet up and messing around on the computer. Tot is in the bath, soon to be in bed, and I am likely up for the night as she wakes every 20 minutes asking for a drink or a hug because she doesn't feel good. Just. Like. Last. Night. I'm ready for it. Water is stationed, hugs are at full capacity. Germs, get ready for a fight.

Oh, and it snowed another 2 inches. Someone (not me) will have to shovel our 35'+75'+135'+10' of sidewalk soon or the City will fine us. This snow makes for a lot of work when you live on a corner lot! The upside is that snow is insulating so we are warmer inside.

Last week we went on a field trip to the Neal Smith Prairie Refuge. I love this museum and I love the vast prairie restoration that surrounds it. Lil'Bug became really upset in the seed lab and refused to stay in that room, opted to stand outside the door and watch her friends while they built seed throwers. She was very patient about waiting, but her aversion to the lab room was very odd. But then she had a blast! I could barely keep up. (Also, I played with the action settings on my camera...)

We also went to a rockin' awesome birthday party for one of Lil'Bug's favorite friends. K. is 5! Such a little gentleman too. Lil'Bug adores him. So much that she talked her Nana into getting her dressed up in party clothes and dress shoes so K. would think she's adorable. THAT was adorable! (Yes, he did in fact compliment her on her outfit! She grinned so big that she looked like a muppet!)
Update on the baby: I feel great. Hungry all the time, but still watching food for protein and nutrients- no junk, no caffeine. She kicks me all the time and I know where her head and feet are. I look more like 7 months instead of 20 weeks- or so EVERY stranger informs me. Or they tell me I am having twins- which I'm not (verified by the THREE ultrasounds we have had already. One. She's a girl). Also, the ultrasounds found a fibroid. It is tiny, but reason enough to continue monitoring. Fibroids caused complication with Lil'Bug's birth and led to the C-Section. Anyway, here's my first attempt at a mirror assisted belly photo at the museum. Unfortunately the mirror was less than ideal!