Blah

It's gray.  It's raining.  It's cold.  My Jakers is still a little sick (he woke me up from dreaming about vacationing in Hawaii yesterday morning at 5:30 to say he "throwed up").  My knee hurts again (apparently it was not ready to run yet even though it felt fine).  I hate this month of 7.  I should be doing x,y, and z.  

Instead I am procaffinating.

Seems like a good day to blog about our recent trip to Atlanta.  In a previous post I mentioned that my brother has abandoned the family for the south.  Seeing as how March and I are not very good friends, I thought a visit to Georgia would be a good idea.

It was.

We picked the kids up at school on a Wednesday at lunch time.  We drove for a million hours until we stopped to spend the night with some friends in North Carolina.  Truthfully, the driving was not bad at all.  I really expected it to be, pardon me, hell on wheels.  There was really only one moment when I wanted to kill one child in particular.  So I consider that a win!

Anyway, we had a lovely time catching up with Ryan and Denise Weaver.  Unfortunately, I'm an idiot and forgot to get a photo with them.  But I have some of the kids!  We went to a Krispy Kremes where you could watch the doughnut making process and then buy hot doughnuts right off the line.

Following that we went to Pullen Park.  It was sunny.  And warm.  The opposite of today.  I literally sat down on the black spongy stuff they put under playground equipment nowadays (i think it's made out of shredded tires?) to soak up the sun.  Until I started soaking up the moisture the spongy stuff was holding.  Dang.

There were was a little train ride we went on and the carousel.  I can't even tell you how much I love carousels.  No sarcasm.  This particular one was pretty fast.  I closed my eyes and felt like I was flying.

We brought this lovely girl along with us:

Adrianne was back in the states on furlough.  So we thought it would be nice to use her to entertain the kids have her company on the trip.  And it was.  She made all kinds of road trip games and helped us keep track of our 4 wild animals.  It was wonderful to spend time with her before she went back to her mission field.

So before we left Raleigh we went out to lunch at a place called...oh shoot, I can't remember.  Because... this.

*side note:  I just opened the oven to get out a pan of bar cookies and I wanted to crawl in there.  a.) it smells delicious and b.) it's so warm.  Ahhhh.

Anyhow, lunch.  We were walking thru the parking lot and saw this:  

My apologies to those of you who are animal lovers.  But this cracked me up.  oh.my.word.  Reminds me of the time I was driving with my mom as the passenger (I think I just had my permit) on Wallace Road and we hit a bird.  It hit the windshield right in my line of sight.  I may have screamed, let go of the wheel, and closed my eyes.  Maybe.

My goodness, I am taking a lot of bunny trails today.  So sorry.

So after a fantastic lunch outside on the patio of some restaurant in North Carolina, we headed for Atlanta.  Checked into our hotel then found Travis and Nell's house.  We drove past some houses that made me want to stop, ring the doorbell, and ask for a tour.  Gorgeous.  But no pictures because, see above.

Travis made us some fabulous deep dish pizza and we ate outside again.  *Delighted sigh*

Nell came home and we all chatted a bit.  Then we left 2 of our kids there and headed for the hotel.  Don't worry, it was on purpose.

On Friday we spent the day at the Georgia Aquarium.

For lack of a better word, it was amazing.

In the above photos we were walking thru a glass tunnel.  There were 2 whale sharks in addition to tons of other cool things swimming to our left, right, and above us.  If it wouldn't have been for the other 100 people in the tunnel I would have laid down on the floor and spent a long time just watching.

Around the corner from the tunnel there was  ginormous wall of glass and steps where you could just sit and watch.  

We saw lots of other displays and I was so in awe of God's handiwork.

If you ever end up in Atlanta I would highly recommend a visit to the aquarium!

We spent a relaxed time on Saturday morning drinking coffee and watching the water.

The kids were entertained (mostly) by playing down at the water's edge so the 5 adults could have some good conversation.

Then my boys came up from the water with this:

I know it's small but a snake's a snake.  Shudder.  We took a picture and posted it to Nana and Grandpa's facebook right away.

After coffee we parted ways with Travis and Nell.  We spent some time (some of us in wonder and delight and some of us whining and complaining all the way) in a store called World Market.  I'll let you guess who was who.  

I bought this pile of food even though none of it was 7 sanctioned for the month of March.

Cajun Dill Gator-Taters.  They'll change your life.

After World Market we picked up Trav (poor Nell had to work) and went to Stone Mountain.  We hiked about a mile up to the top. I sweated in a tank top.  And loved it.

No gondola ride for us.  We have people with too much energy.

Blue sky.  I think I'm going to cry a little right now.

Back to Trav and Nell's.  Chicken pot pie out on the deck.  Duck Dynasty inside.  Lovely evening.

Sunday:  Cold and rainy morning.  Visited Trav and Nell's church.  Screamed at Kye and Cole on the way back to Trav and Nell's.  Seriously, so much drama over a bucket of golf balls.

Burgers for lunch.  Watched/slept thru Planes.  Did some laundry.  Caught up on facebook.  Introduced Adrianne to kid president.

Supper: 

I have pictures of food but none of my brother and sis-in-law.  That's how I roll.  Ugh.

Hugs and goodbyes.  Then we left for home, Larry drove the whole 11 hours straight thru.  My hero!

Thanks for having us, Ryan and Denise and Travis and Nell!

Next time I promise to take pictures of the people I love.

22 Pies + 2 Kiddos = Delightful Morning

I should be working on this:

But I don't want to.  Paperwork is such a drag.

What I want to do is write about my morning.  Meet my niece, Riley:

She excels at being adorable and asking questions.  I don't get to babysit her very often since she lives at the end of the earth (also known as Lititz).  But my sister was desperate today so I got to keep Riley.

This is also the day I needed to make 22 chocolate chip pies for MCC's Relief Sale.

So, I put the kids to work.

There was lots of "IT'S MY TURN!" and "I WANNA DO THAT!" and "IT'S MY TURN!".  So I sang this song.  I don't think they got it.

In between pie making we did other things.  Like laundry.

And making imaginary pies.

And being silly.

We also discovered that some of us have irrational fears.

We already knew Riley was terrified of cats, vacuum cleaners, and Santa Claus.  Now we need to add play microphones and stick horses.

Some of us hit others with spatulas.  Some of us locked ourselves in our bedroom.  I was neither one of those.

We were all super cute.

We ate lunch and drew pictures.

The pies all got made.

Some of the pies acted like brats.

So instead of my house smelling deliciously chocolate chippy, it smells like burnt crust.  Fabulous.

My house looked like this when I was almost done making pies:

This was not a "normal" day at my house since I don't usually have two children at home or make 22 pies.  But it was a real day.  With real fun, real tears, and real messes.

Everyday life is so beautiful.  I hope we learn to embrace it fully.

Real & Raw (and it ain't pretty)

So, we are done with our first month of 7.  

I was going to have 'after' photos of my cupboards, pantry, fridge, and freezer for you.  But I don't.  What I do have are a bunch of excuses.  

I'm tired.

I'm cold.

I'm in pain.

My kids suck at sweeping the floor.

It's windy.

I'm tired.

Nobody hand washed dishes in this house but me.

My desk is cluttered.

I'm tired.

I had to wash Jessie's sheets today because Jake peed in her bed last night.

I wanted to have a nice story of how reducing our grocery list to 7 items changed our lives.  How it majorly impacted our kids.  How they had such good attitudes about it.  But I don't.

We had too many loopholes.

I don't think the kids got it.

There was so much whining.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we did it.  It's probably going to be something we do again.  With less loopholes.  And more intentionality.

Deep breath, on to month 2...clothes.

I can't even begin to tell you how much my attitude stinks already and this month hasn't even begun.

I'm doing this one solo.  Technically my kids probably already do this one.  Does anyone else's kids wear the same clothes all day, sleep in them, and then try to wear them to school the next day?

I want you to think about this with me.  If you stood in front of your clothes and had to pick just 7 items to wear for a month, how would you feel?  What would you choose?

Jen Hatmaker, the author of "7", chose 7 clothing items but decided to not count undergarments and socks.  Good choice.  She also chose 2 sets of footwear and counted it as 1.  I'm doing the same.

As for my other choices, I'm tweaking a little.  I'm choosing a pair of kahki pants and my blue Lickity Split tee shirt and counting it as one.  And a pair of capri yoga pants and a long sleeve black tee shirt for working out and counting it as one.

A pair of sparkly sandals and running shoes are one choice.  So, 3 items down, 4 to go.

1 pair of jeans.

A black dress.

A green long sleeved shirt.

My jean jacket.

I am so grumpy about this.  I can feel the scowl as I type.  No jewelry (besides my wedding ring), no scarves (except the one I need to wear in my hair for work), no belts.  This is hard.

And then that voice.

You know, the still small one?

"Is this as hard as living in a third world country?"

And then the heart rending.

I am so superficial.  

My "problems" would be a dream come true for so many women.

Sure, I'm tired.  I've been having knee pain and it's been keeping me up at night.  But I could drive myself to the doctor today.  I could drive myself to the pharmacy to pick up a medication that should help.  I had the money to pay for the prescription.

I choose thankfulness.

Sure, I'm cold.  But I can brew myself another pot of coffee.  I can pull my favorite hoodie on.  I can snuggle under an extra blanket.

I choose thankfulness.

Sure, my kids don't clean to my standards and I'm still walking on crumbs in the kitchen after they "sweep".  But I've been blessed with 4 healthy babies.  I have a kitchen to sweep.  I have a family that makes dirt.

I choose thankfulness.

Do you get the point?  Do I get the point?

There are many small annoyances that happen in a day.  With the right factors (mainly being sleep deprived) the smallest grievances grow and grow til I am not a person you would want to be around.  I'm not even a person I want to be around, but I'm stuck with me.

My heart needs changing.  If it takes wearing 7 things for one month, I'm all in.

Jesus, do your thing.

Confession

They say it's good for the soul.

We just returned this morning from an action packed "vacation" to Atlanta.  More on that, and photos, later.

Right now I just want to share one confessional photo with you:

I bought this pile of food.   None of it is even related to my 7 sanctioned foods for this month.

We went into this store called "World Market".  To my knowledge there are none around home.  If I had many dollars with me I would have spent them all.  So many cool things.

Since I didn't have many dollars (and little room to bring back things) I bought food.  I already designated this trip as a loophole for this month.  So, whatever.

Cajun Dill Gator-Taters.  If you ever get a chance to eat these, do it!

Larry picked the clearance potato chips.  They were tasty but really normal, nothing special.  

I'm sipping the Turtle coffee now.  Not like turtle the animal, but like turtle candy (you know, caramel, pecans, chocolate).

The dill pickle was for Jessie and Cole.  I tried it, not terribly impressed.  Please pass the Gator-Tators.

The dried fruit chips were ok.  Seeing as how it wouldn't bother me to never eat fruit again, I'm probably not the best judge.

We have not yet sampled the strawberry chocolate.

There, my soul feels better.  I'm ready to embrace our last week of our 7 foods!

Par-tay!

So today was the 2nd to last loophole in our first month of "7".  

Jessie and Cole's combined birthday party.

I said from the beginning that I was not going to stick to our 7 ingredients for this day.  But I wanted to try the best I could to use what I had on hand and to utilize some of our 7 foods that we are buying this month.

The birthday kids wanted burgers and chips.  Seems pretty simple, right?  

WRONG!

Being an all or nothing girl, burgers to me mean:  lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, ketchup, mustard, relish, peppers, cheese and maybe some avocado.  And delicious buns.  I buy the cheap kind cuz my peeps don't appreciate seeds and grains like I do, but when there are other people coming I break out the good rolls.

Except this time I didn't.  My mom got me some free bread:

There, in the back, do you see it?  Onion, pepper, and poppy seed buns.  Oh my!

I could use the million condiments from my fridge:

Dill pickles, 7 day pickles, zucchini relish, and jalapenos:  all canned bounty from my garden last year.  A jar of mayo.  A bottle of ketchup.  And three, yes three, kinds of mustard.  None of it regular.

Cheese is one of our 7 foods.  So really, the only "rule" i broke for burgers was buying the actual burgers themselves.

Ok, I hear you screaming "HOT DOGS!!! I SEE HOT DOGS!!!"

Don't get your panties in a bunch.  My mom gave me them too.  But no hot dog buns.  And I didn't want to buy any.  Enter pretzel dogs.

(Ew, weird/gross looking photo.  These were actually delicious.)  My cupboards held all the ingredients for soft pretzel dough.  So, no cheating on the dogs!

Chips.  Clearly cheating, no way around it.

Broccoli Salad.  I don't have a photo because I tried to take one and it didn't look right and I was too lazy too busy to move it to try different lighting.  Broccoli, cauliflower, and cheese are all "7" sanctioned food.  I had bacon in the freezer.  I had the dressing ingredients in the fridge/cupboard.  Win.

The cakes:

I'm not gonna lie, I bought a bucket of Leola Frosting at Glenwood.  I can't make homemade icing as good as that, ok people?  Other than that I had all the ingredients on hand.

And how cool is that polka dot cake?!  Shout out to Michelle, thanks for letting me borrow the cake pop maker!  Wanna come up for dessert?  I have half a cake left  :)

Normally a birthday celebration would include soda and ice cream.  I omitted both.  No one asked for them.  Not even the kids.

That.Is.Shocking.

Then I fed my niece chocolate cake right off the cake server.  Because it's my house and I can.  And also because I don't have to deal with her at bedtime.  

Sorry, Tiana.

Overall, I would say "7" didn't ruin change our party drastically.  Mostly because I still have SO much food in the house.

When it comes right down to it, a party is not so much about the food (gasp!) but the people you get to spend quality time with.

And we had cool, quality people in abundance.

Day 11

This experiment is not happening like I thought it would.  I'm still not sure my family realizes we're doing this.  

Besides the lack of snack food.

Last night, on Meatless Monday, we had ham and mashed potatoes.

WHAT?!

I told you, this month is full of loop holes.

One of those loop holes was Saturday evening.  I hosted an adults only dinner for my Sunday school class.  The girls came on the Wednesday before and we made a ton of food.  And it wasn't limited to 7 ingredients.  (Seriously, these people are my friends, I want them to like me.)

So, leftover food from Saturday = Sunday lunch, Monday supper.

It was also Miss J's 10th birthday yesterday and I was delighted to give her a supper she was excited about.  We had mocha brownies for dessert (these were made with ingredients I already had in my cupboards/freezer before this month began so we had a win there).

But tonight...we go out for dinner.  Ugh!  My fridge is stressing me out because it is too full and I am longing to make something simple with it's ingredients like pan seared chicken breasts and roasted broccoli.

I can't believe I just typed that sentence.  To quote Jen Hatmaker in "7":  "You don't understand how much I love food.  Good food.  I adore innovative ingredients with fresh produce and perfectly cooked meat, especially the kind that is doused in condiments.  I believe food is simply a vehicle to devour sauces.  I am a flavor junkie, and my happiest moments take place with a fork in my mouth."

Sometimes I think this woman is inside my head stealing my thoughts.

We're going out tonight to celebrate Jessie's birthday.   And I want to just stay home and cook something simple with no sauce.  Could it be that God is changing my heart already?

I hope so.