rain gutter planters

We are trying something new in our garden this year.  We'll have to see how well our spinach and lettuce do in these rain gutters.

 

 

I'm pretty sure this idea was a result of Dave's browsing on Pinterest.

And I'm also pretty sure these gutters were bought over a year ago to make bookshelves in Gavin's room.  I guess Dave decided they had been sitting long enough and needed another purpose.  Sorry Gavin, no bookshelves. That's what Mommy gets for not getting to a project for over a year.

 

 

All three kids were big helpers.

 

Gavin did his share of putting dirt in the gutter, and also grabbing handfuls of dirt from the gutter and throwing it out.  So his efforts probably ended up being more of a wash.

 I have no idea how the spinach and lettuce are going to do up in these gutters.  Dave screwed the whole thing in pretty good to hold the weight, and drilled holes in the bottom for the water to drain.  I realized that that means the top row will drain onto the bottom row, so the lettuce on the bottom may be pretty dirty.  But it all gets washed anyway.  We'll just have to see how it all turns out. 

 

Other than the little bit of help he gave us, Gavin spent most of his time cruising the yard. 

 



 

He got stuck lots of times and had to be rescued.  He really needs to learn how to steer that thing.'

 

I guess 4-wheeling is serious business, because I couldn't get any other look from him than this one.

 

 

The kids also planted their own lettuce in some pots and left some room for one or two other things too.  I love that they love gardening so much.  It's probably one of our most favorite things to do as a family during the spring and summer.  Today we all dreamed out loud of the huge garden we may have one day.

 

 

We got some corn in tonight too, first time for that.  But otherwise, everything else we'll add will start from plants, and we'll add them after it gets and stays warmer.

We are already struggling to keep this little guy out of the garden.  Even with little fences around it, we find him in there all the time.  He's definitely my boy who is drawn to dirt.  And likes to eat it.

 

I'm guessing our plants have more to fear this year other than hail, wind and extreme heat.

They will have to survive this little guy too.

it's time.

 

I figured this day was coming...

I have watched the numbers on the scale going bigger and bigger and bigger. And have done nothing about it for years.  As in virtually NOTHING. Except eat lots of really yummy food. But in all reality as SHOCKED as I pretended to be at the scale's truth.  It makes total sense.

Other than a great exercise spurt I had before our cruise 3 years ago, I really haven't worked out well since college.  So we're talking 10 years here folks.  10 years of SUPER bad habits. 

And after thinking it over for a few weeks now, I decided I'd expose myself and my bad habits and share some of my goals. Mostly to keep myself accountable.  I feel super vulnerable telling anyone about "being on a diet" or "trying to lose weight" because I fear that I'll go under a microscope of people watching to see how I do.  And what if I don't have any success??  That would be a total bummer.  But oh well, win or lose, if I share my plan here - I'm certain there will be times I stick with it only because I know that I told people.  So here goes...I'll share my super awful bad habits with you first. 

1. Pepsi.  It's a huge habit.  I love it way too much.  If we buy it, I for SURE have one a day.  Sometimes 2, and on the rare occasion maybe 3??   I have wondered MANY times how much healthier or "skinnier" I could be if I didn't drink so much pop - but I never care too much to stop.

2. French Vanilla Cappuchino.  I'm not a coffee drinker...yet.  I feel like I'm getting closer though. But I do still have to have my morning cup of this yumminess.  It's just a mix that I put with hot water.  But it's so full of calories. 

3. But let's talk about what else I drink....oh yeah, nothing.  I don't drink water, don't like milk.  And on the rare rare occasion I'd have a glass of OJ in the mornings.  So it was very common to end my day with the only fluids going into my body being cappuchino and pepsi. That sounds so lovely doesn't it?

4. Now let me share my eating habits.  They are just as bad. Maybe worse.

I hardly ever eat breakfast.  If I do, I grab a bagel, but that's about it.  But most days I pretty much each nothing for breakfast.  Except my cappuchino. 

For lunch...maybe I eat, maybe I don't.  It depends on what we have in the house, or what is going on with the kids. Sometimes it's enough work to feed 3 other mouths, that I just don't have the time nor energy left to feed myself.  I'll eat some mac and cheese if I make it for them. Or maybe make plate of nachos or leftovers if we have them.  But it's probably 50-50 on whether I eat lunch at all. 

So we approach dinner time and many many days I have yet to really eaten anything all day.  So you can only imagine how big I eat for dinner.  And then on into the night hours.  I am ALWAYS hunger a few hours after dinner and am the worst late night snacker.  Chocolate chip cookie dough, brownies, nachos, ice cream, and maybe a pepsi.  So basically almost all of my calories are consumed after 6pm.  Going to bed hungry is no fun at all. So I just never do it.

Put all of this on repeat for months and months, actually...probably years.

So you are probably agreeing with me (or maybe cringing and screaming inside) that changes needed

to be made. They've needed to be made for a long time, but I guess I had to get to a point that I really had the desire and motivation.

So here's my plan of action (I'm in my 2nd week):

1. Don't buy Pepsi.  None.  It  cannot be at our house at all.  I have to go cold-turkey or I can't knock it. 

2. Drink water, all day long.  I've been keeping my water bottle full and by me as much as I can.  I still drink my morning cup of cappuchino.  But I've finished up week 2 of no Pepsi (only one cheat in there) And I don't even crave it.  This is huge people.  At our house, if we are out of Pepsi and crave it - late night trips to the store or gas station are made. 

3.  Eat 4-5 small meals a day.  This is major steps for a person who was pretty much just eating dinner and night snacks.

4.  No carbs after 4pm.  This is crazy hard for me.  After 4 is when I'm used to eating.  And I do not think about carbs when cooking for my family.  We eat a lot of pasta meals.  And at this point I am not at a point where I want to be changing up our entire meal plans and experimenting with all new recipes for my family.  So I am still cooking the same for them.  But most of the time I'm eating something different.

5.  Start working out regularly.  For the first time since college I have a gym membership.  I'm going almost every day.  Thanks to my sweet hubby who is making that so easy for me to break away for an hour or so.

 

What I've noticed so far:
 

1. I don't crave sweet snacks at night like I used to.  I've read that if you are eating more protein for breakfast and throughout your day, you will crave less sweets.

2. I love going to workout. I don't love when I'm on the treadmill doing intervals.  But overall I love that I am FINALLY doing this for ME. And I always feel great afterwards.

3. I am not a very adventurous (or knowledgeable) health food eater.  So I don't have a ton of variety in what I'm eating.  I'm scared of getting bored too fast with it all, but my sister has been helping me a ton. 

4. It is SUPER SUPER hard to say no to yummy baked ziti and cheese garlic bread sitting on the counter at dinner time.  But I did it.  I cooked myself a chicken breast.  I have NEVER been disciplined when it comes to food - so these are leaps and bounds for me people!  Even my husband has been quite shocked at my discipline lately.  That is just one of the many yummy meals I have cooked but not eaten.  Last night it was waffles, hash browns and bacon.  Ugh. I had a few pieces of bacon and then left for the gym.

5. Sometimes cheating is worth it.  Like when I'm up late trying to finish taxes, after working on them nearly all day.  Pepsi and chocolate covered almonds may have set me back- but it was worth it, and gave me the last push I needed to finish up. 

6. I have been warned (although the warning came too late) to NOT get on the scale.  My little sister, who is so great with health and fitness, has been lots of help to me as I try to get a new plan going for myself. My text to her one day was this:

   "if this scale doesn't show a decrease even by ONE pound really soon, then I'm done!!!"

So she warned me that it will take awhile before the scale does what I want it to, and just like so many other people, it will discourage me and make me quit all that I'm doing.  So I'm going to try to follow this rule.  Or maybe I just need to have Dave hide it.

 

 

I get overwhelmed by a lot of the eating plans out there right now, and even all the workout plans.  There are so many different opinions and methods. And so many of them I just look at and think "no way can I do that!"  So I'm still figuring everything out and even trying to figure out what I'm willing to do.  I have always been so stubborn with my food...I love food way too much. I love to eat out, I love chicken fried steaks and mashed potatoes and gravy, and batches of chocolate chip cookies, and pasta.  But....I also love to look in the mirror without wanting to hurl.

I sometimes feel like I am surrounded by moms who pop babies out and in no time at all are back to their pre-baby size. Sometimes even smaller than they were before kids. Blah!

 Or at least somehow LOOK like they are, flat tummies, skinny legs and all. I am not one of those. The pounds have slowly and surely been packed on over the past several years.

After my pity party, I try to convince myself that they are probably making way better choices than I am, and probably working to get there, and that there's no way they just get there by doing nothing (I'll pretend anyway). So it comes down to my choices and what I'm willing to do. 

Caring about it is the first step.  I got that one covered.  It just took me awhile to get there.
But now it becomes more about my commitment. What I'm willing to give up and what I'm not willing to give up.  And how disciplined I can be.  That's the hard part.

I keep telling myself it will be worth it.

If you see me at the gym, looking a little lost.  It's because I am.  The first few times I was so nervous, I hated thinking that people were watching me as I had no clue what I was doing.  But I'm getting better at pretending to look like I know what I'm doing.  And no one knows I'm texting my sister saying "what do I do now?".... "I did this....is that good?"....."how do you do THAT?"
Thanks sis for all the help!  I promise not to get on the scale and get mad and quit.
(maybe).
 

grace is all we need {symbolic easter lesson for kids}

I had several emails from readers asking about our jars of jelly beans.  It does kind of look like our kids just got a full jar of jelly beans to eat.  But there was a special meaning to them.  So I'll explain...

 





 

 I know I read about this idea somewhere in the last year or so.  I hate when I run across things that I just read about and don't think enough to save them at the time.  And then later I just try to implement them with the details I remember. 

 

About 2 weeks before Easter, I started the kids out on a challenge to fill their jars with jelly beans by doing good things for others, helping around the house, having a good attitude, and anything that they were caught doing that was good.  If they could fill their jars by Easter, they would earn a family date night, one of their favorite things. They were pumped, and they worked so hard. But as it got closer to Easter they got discouraged as they realized how much of their jars still needed to be filled. (this is part of the lesson)  We just kept telling them to keep trying, and even said some prayers asking for God's help.  On Easter morning when they came home, they found their jars filled to the brim with white jelly beans that were not there before, and a note to explain what happened.  (In fact, there were much less colored jelly beans in their jars than what the picture shows.  I had to add more as filler, because I didn't have enough white to fill to the top.)  They were so excited and puzzled at the same time to see their jars filled. 

 

They learned that the white jelly beans stood for God's grace. The note helped explain to them that we can try and try and try to be good, but it's God's grace that fills in all the places that we just can't do it.  We will never be enough, but Jesus is enough all the time.  It was a good reminder that we can't earn eternity with Jesus by doing good things.  Just as they weren't able to earn their family date night on their own.  But because of Easter, heaven is a gift to us that is freely given by God's grace.  And in the end, they earned their family date night anyway. 

 

I'm not sure how much Mason understood.  Probably just some of the basics.  But Taylor really seemed to "get it".  I'm not sure if it's something we can do every year.  I have no idea how it would work if they remember from the year before and just know their jars will be filled.  But I'm sure the lesson can be adapted and used over and over again.  Otherwise, I may just wait a few years for them to forget and then do it again.

 

"But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

2 Corinthians 12:9

 *it's really hard to find a lot of white jelly beans.  Buying enough bags of jelly beans to get enough white ones is kind of a waste.  If I do this again, I'll try to find a candy store that maybe sells colored just white jelly beans by the pound, or order online.  If the kids don't actually eat them, they could be saved for other years.

easter 2013

Our Easter weekend was FAR from the ordinary.

We had saved some Easter activities for the last minute, like egg dying and doing our Resurrection Eggs.  I also needed to finalize church clothes and get Easter baskets ready.  All the stuff that you do at the last minute, when you tend to be a last-minute person.  And when you don't have much else planned for the day, there's time for these things.

 

But instead we woke up to wailing screams coming from Gavin's room on Saturday morning.  He has never woke up like that, and being 6am and knowing he never wakes up that early, my booty got out of bed pretty fast to check on him.  His heart was racing and was struggling to breathe. I had no idea what was going on.  I wondered if he was having an allergic reaction to something. We've just begun dealing with some food allergies, so I had no clue if this could be it.  He hadn't been even the slightest bit sick when we put him to bed Friday night.  We tried his new inhaler and waited for it to work. 

But as more time went on, I didn't think things were right.  So we headed to immediate care. I felt more comfortable having a doctor tell me he just has a cold and some chest stuff going on and breathing treatments will do the trick.

Poor thing moaned and groaned and his heart continued to race as he was breathing so hard.

He got an x-ray, the doctor on call called his normal doctor and by noon we were being checked into the hospital.

While Dave and the kids were at their soccer game, this was us in the exam room...

 

 

 For a few minutes right after a breathing treatment, he got a burst of energy.  Poor thing had to go through quite a bit of torture to get x-rays, a throat swab for RSV and blood work.  He screamed bloody murder every time anyone touched him besides me.

 

 We had no idea how long we'd be in the hospital.  We weren't sure at first if it was just for them to evaluate him for a bit, or if we were just waiting for his doctor to come and tell us more.  We didn't know what plans to make for the kids, or Easter, or anything.

Daddy got there shortly after the soccer game (good thing those are only 20 minutes long).

And he became a Daddy's boy for most of the rest of the day.

 

He was put on oxygen right when we checked in and didn't get to take that tube off till we were leaving.  It is no fun for anyone when a 16 month old has to wear an oxygen tube and a oxygen monitor for 2 days.  I'll let you imagine him climbing chairs and beds, and also the ordeal as he slept and tossed and rolled around his crib...all with tubes connected to him.

 



While these 2 boys were doing just fine on their own for awhile, I snuck home to get things ready for Easter.  I didn't know yet if we'd be home that night or in the morning or what.  But I figured I'd get their baskets ready just in case.

 

 



Back at the hospital, we watched more March Madness.  Well, as much as you can watch as you chase a baby on steroids around a hospital room and untangle his cords constantly.  And some sweet friends brought us Applebees at 10pm, and it was just what I needed!

 

 

The first half of the day he was dead weight, laying on top of us and not moving an inch. The 2nd half of the day we could tell our little boy was coming back to us.

Sometime in the day we ended up finding out that we had to stay there until he could sleep without his oxygen levels dropping.  So we would be there one night for sure, and possibly a second.

It was a rough and short night.  4 hours of sleep for all of us.  And then a very very cranky and hyper boy from about 7am on on Easter morning.
It was not the way I had planned to get my heart in the right place for Easter.  To be honest, there were a few times that morning I forgot completely about it being Easter.  I was thankful for worship music on Pandora more than ever before.  Even if I was cranky and trying to entertain a little boy, our room was filled with songs of praise, and it helped me focus my heart during the breaks in chasing.

 

 

There were 3 hours in the night that  Gavin seemed super agitated and overly tired but wouldn't go to sleep and yanked his oxygen tube off in anger about 25 times until finally passing out. I was thankful Dave had stayed for part of this time before going home to sleep since there was only one bed.  And so he could take the kids to church in the morning.

 

 

The kids stopped by before church to bring Gavin's Easter basket to him and so Dave could give me a quick 30 minute break.  As much break as one can get when trying to sit in the same room with everyone and tune everything out.

 

 

I think the kids were relieved to see their crazy brother climbing on everything he possibly could and acting just fine. The only problem is that he did not accomplish sleeping the night before without oxygen levels dropping too low.  So we were possibly looking at another night.

 

 

I was glad to be at the hospital for most of the day on Saturday.  I could tell our poor baby was sick enough that I knew he was being taken care of.  But after he started bouncing back after getting breathing treatments in him, and the constant oxygen, it got harder and harder to be in that room.

 

They finally let us unhook him from oxygen and leave the room.  We enjoyed our Easter lunch in the hospital cafeteria.

 

After lunch, Dave and I switched places and I went home for a nap, and to get out of the clothes I had been wearing since the previous morning...knowing that we may be needing to prepare for another night.  I left him with the goal of getting Gavin to nap, as this "sleep time" was our only hope of getting another shot to see if he could keep his levels up.  If he could accomplish this at naptime, maybe we'd be able to go home. 

When I got home and laid my head on my pillow, I got a text that say "he's sleeping, and his levels look good!"  I fell fast asleep and woke up to another text telling me the Doctor finally got there, and was dismissing him!  YAY!

We finally found out it was pneumonia.  And on top of that, we may be dealing with asthma also.

We were glad to finally have answers and know that we can go home and treat it.

 

We made it out about 4pm, and dinner with Dave's family had been moved to 5, hoping we'd be out by then.  So we made it just in time.

In all the extra time that the kids had at Nana and Papa's, Taylor designed the centerpieces - one table had Jesus on the cross, and the other table had him rising from the grave.

 



And the kids finally got to dye some Easter eggs.

 

 

I considered trying to get the kids to do a non-hospital picture all together, but I think I was too tired to even mess with it.  So no cute Easter pictures of the kids our the whole family.

But I think the pictures we do have are a good depiction of our Easter.

 



 But there was nothing like finally being back home.
And so thankful our little one was feeling much better.

 

He's been a breathing treatment champ.  He sits perfectly snuggling into us during most of them. He claps for himself when he's done.  And he has even asked for them a few times, or gotten upset when it's finished.

 

It's no fun seeing your kiddos sick. But in between the steroid induced hyperactivity and fights with the oxygen tubes, it was really a sweet time with our littlest one.  And I think he was loving the one on one attention. We are just praying that if asthma is in his future, these stays at the hospital do not become all too common.