UUUGHHH...going backwards!

OK, not good. Sonic and Speedee Wok. That's all I'll say.

Weight Loss Update

I think it's been nearly a month since I posted, so I will just go ahead and update even though I am not as excited about the weight loss as I was 2 years ago. Since January 1st of this year I have lost 6 pounds. I wish I could say it was 10 or more, but at this point I am just glad it's coming off at all and I hear "slow" weight loss is much more sustainable over the long haul than dropping 15 pounds in a month and then gaining it all back in 2 weeks. I have to wonder if the kombucha is helping the weight loss. That and the fact that I am buying a produce basket every 2 weeks and so there are vegetables that HAVE to be eaten or they go to the bad, and most of you who know me know that I am one who does NOT waste food (aka: money!). :) So just please pray that I will keep the focus on losing to Glorify the One who made me and not for impressing anyone or even fitting into clothes that are looser and fit me much nicer (although our 20th high school class reunion in June is a good date to set as a target, but the lifestyle will have to continue throughout my lifetime).

It's been 7 months since I last posted anything here. Just wanted to briefly write to let everyone know (all 5 of you!) that I am expecting accountability. I am on a journey to replace the love of food with the love of Jesus! The Proverbs 31 Ministry devotional today spoke directly to the issue and here is the prayer I have printed out and will hang all around my house, "Dear Lord, if I'm being honest with myself and You, I know sometimes I rely on food more than I rely on You. I want to recalibrate my soul and change for the right reasons. I want to see You in and through this entire process. Please be with me, Lord, each day. In Jesus' Name. Amen."

I suppose there are many other "loves" or "addictions" or (call it what it is) "sins" that could be substituted in place of the word "food", so if this speaks to you, feel free to write out the prayer and put whatever the sin that so easily entangles you in the blank for food. I hope to check in at least weekly with progress reports, so please ask or inquire on f*cebook if you see I'm being negligent or quiet. :) Since Jan. 1st I have lost 2.5 pounds so far. But I have not begun to exercise and I have not truly stuck with the 1000 calories a day nor the 3 bottles of water I had planned to drink. I HAVE, however, overcome the no-caffeine coffee headache thing, so God is making me a conquerer one step at a time! And for that I am so grateful!

An Addition to Our Family {perhaps more of a Cowgirl than I thought!}

INTRODUCING>>>{drum roll, please}>>> our newest little family member...There he is nearly touching noses with his momma (the white cow resting in the shade...I'd be resting too if I'd done what she did just 3 days ago):

Emma Grace wanted to name him "Bitsy" because he's so small. Actually, he's a regular sized bull calf, but she's never seen a calf only 2 days old. We arrived home from vacation at the beach to find him following closely behind his momma, walking well, nursing well, and just generally being a great addition to our flock. :) We knew the momma was going to be having a baby when we bought her, but we just weren't sure when. So we're claiming his birthdate as 6/11/11. Easy to remember!

And so I must tell you all that I called it a week or so ago after noticing some signs us mommas go through and saying, "What do you want to bet she will have that calf while we're out of town?" So erase my last post about not meant to be a farmer. I'm a budding little cowgirl! HA! I'm just so thankful that mom didn't need *help* because apparently not even our substitute parents next door noticed that he had been birthed! AHEM. :) Where can you get good help? {Just kidding} Really, I just kept wondering how she did it so beautifully and quietly when ours (human birth) is so complicated. Haven't even seen any afterbirth or vultures flying around or anything. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. God is so good!

And so here's our next mother-to-be...

You may not be able to tell, but she was probably bred around the same time as the one above, so we're expecting another calf anyday now. I have noticed she is sitting more lately with these hot, no SWELTERING, days. I must say I sure hope this one is a heifer. I don't want Dear Farmer Husband to have to decide to either sell him or make him a *STEER*, if you know what I mean?! PU-LEASE don't tell me what day that is for our new little Bitsy. Oh, and we have one other bull calf (one of the brown calves in the picture). They might surely make some good, grass fed beef one day, but I just can't bear to know it. Tell me it came from somewhere else!

Nowhere Close to Being a Cowgirl!

While DH was out of town for 4 days this past week, I had the grand opportunity to play cowgirl! I say that with all of the affection I can muster up considering I grew up in a suburb of Charles*on and really never considered that we would own cows one day. It's been about 3 weeks now that we've owned these 4 heffers and 2 nursing calves, so I thought they were pretty acclimated to their new surroundings, but something in them must have decided that, truly, the grass IS greener on the other side...and that decision had to come while Jason was half a country away in St. Lo*is.

Here's the scenario. The pond where they drink water is low. Two brown cows (Herford cows or as some call "white faced cows")decide to venture out to the middle of the pond up against the barbed wire fence running through the middle of the pond. They are able to successfully cross the fence (or what's left of it in the middle of the pond). Farmer Wife decides the two calves need their mommas for milk (they are around 3 months old) and must go to the gap to let them in, coaxing with sweet feed, all the while in nice, dressy sandals and capri pants. Farmer Wife has trouble opening up said "gap" Dear Farmer Husband has created--when this has happened once before, I might add!!

Please picture for yourselves the nicely dressed woman loading up with a white bucket with a bare minimum of sweet feed heading out where the cows are peering at her across the gap. She is straining with all her might in battle with a rusty, big gate and finding out she has to untie a blue strap holding it to a tree. Then seeing the barbed wire going round and round the gate and attempting to untie the barbed wire with her B.A.R.E. hands!!! Not a nice picture once I was finished...bloody, bloody mess compounded with a rusty, rusty mess. And the gate still would not move to the right or the left (hence the shoulder pain now!). The left side of the gap/gate was wedged between two trees...when my husband does a job, he DOES IT WELL!

Please remember I was in nice sandals---not even sure that the area where I was stepping did not contain tons of poison ivy or poison oak. OH, yeah....back to the 3rd person story...

So Farmer Wife remembers Son up in the baby pool (he's 3) playing and calls with cell phone (thank you Lord I remembered that!) to the house to ask Daughter (who is 6) to go out and watch out for Son---that this is going to take longer than expected!! Ya think??!

Next call was to Papa Jeep next door (my FIL) to ask him to come down and see if he can help part the gap so these noses across the way can come through and make life LOTS easier. He arrives and cannot remove the pins from the middle of the gap either, so helps to lift and slide left gate out enough that the two mommas can come through to their nursing babies (who could not cross the pond like their silly mommas did then could not figure out how to get back to them!!). Then the worst part (in MY estimation) occurs:

Papa Jeep says the cows need more sweet feed. I wondered why but figured he had known cows a LOT longer than I, so I did what he said. FW runs, *literally runs*, to get some more and the cows both RUN after FW!!! Can I just tell you how scared I was?? Having lived all my life in the suburbs, I think the movie 8 Seconds (bull riding) is the only memory of knowing anything about cows (bulls--the male kind, which we only have one calf that is a bull). That and the fact that if you wave a red flag, they will come running. And all the pictures of the Spanish people running from the bulls in whatever town it is they do that silly thing. So I could just see myself getting trampled to death by two Herford Heffers!!

At any rate, Papa Jeep tells me to stop running and I DO and they start walking nicely beside me. I get the sweet feed, hand it over the fence to him to put in the feeding troughs and then all 4 heffers come running full speed at the troughs!!! It was quite an experience, let me tell you. I head to give the cows some water on the left side of the house in the watering troughs so maybe they'll stay away from the pond. Papa remarks that we all need to pray for rain so the cows can have some green grass.

Now, I am thinking all is well and can roll up the hose and head back to the house (15 min. later!). That's when I hear Dear Son screaming at the top of his lungs standing on the back deck! The screaming continues as I am reeling in the hose pipe madly. I get to him and he yells, "Sissy said she's gonna spank me with the metal spoon!!" Sissy tells me that he went out barefoot and got 2 splinters in his foot and she told him if he went outside barefoot she would spank him (not with metal spoon, she said, but with wooden spoon we discipline the children with---yeah, not sure if I believe that). I reassure both that grownups are the ONLY ones who will do any spanking of any sort.

Well, I wish that was the happily ever after ending to the story, but it isn't. As I receive a return call from my husband, now finding he is stuck at the St. L airport as his flight has been cancelled (now I see my duties as FW may continue yet another day---oh boy!), I share the whole story with him telling him I AM IN NO WAY CALLED TO BE A FARMER and I should have called Daniel (but it's Daniel's birthday--bless him--and he works out of town anyway, so probably couldn't have helped)!!! Dear Husband just laughs (AT ME and my antics!) and tells me he hopes he'll be home tonight...when....low and behold...looking out the window what do I see but the same two white-faced cows go RIGHT BACK ACROSS THE POND FENCE!! I've never! And they didn't even nurse their young!!!! BAD MOMMAS!!! I could not do that enticing and working and straining like before, knowing all the while they may cross over a 3rd time, so I left them over there where "the grass is greener on the other side"!!!

Ending to story: Daddy came home at 1:30am that night without any luggage and the cows were somehow all on our side of the fence that morning when Daddy woke up to see where they were. Five minutes later Daddy watched the two white-faced ones go back across and throughout that day they continued to cross over at will. Farmer Husband has since fixed the barbed wire in the pond and the cows cannot in any way cross over. Praise the Good Lord!

Now, who wants to care for the cows while we're gone to the beach next week??! Bibbi and Papa, you're up! :)

Wordless Wednesday {although the last 3.5 months have been wordless}

Trying to learn via osmosis?

Not sure why, but my kids have a new fashion trend---strappy journals on their heads!

Made to Crave?

There has been a post in the works coming for nearly a month now. And I have probably had a million ideas on what I want to write about during that month....

Friends, homeschooling, dieting, marriage, Christianity today...

But today I am not really in the mood for something serious, so here is what you get...

CRAVINGS, FOOD, ADDICTION to FOOD

I know, not the greatest post and I'll probably lose a few readers right about now, but this has just consumed so many thoughts lately.

Last year I lost about 33 pounds from Feb. 1 through April 30 and I felt so much better about myself. I did not read any books about it but I went on the dieting plunge with my Aunt Pam and, through the grace of God only, I was able to see food for its nutritional value and not something that I "controlled". In actuality, it controlled me!! Very much so. Not many would call overeating an addiction, but that's just what it is. I had grown up eating all the wrong foods and those habits went with me into adulthood. If I craved it, I found a way to get it. Food was for comfort and pleasure.

Now, I believe food should be good (as in palatable to the tongue) and should bring pleasure because it fills that hunger in your body & cells, but I now know that I must choose to find pleasure first in obeying God and not in feeding whatever craving I have. And if I choose foods that bring more lasting nourishment instead of chips/dip, chocolate, etc., then my cells are fuller longer. :) Make sense? If my craving were alcohol, I suppose I could be a recovering alcoholic. Or if my craving were pornography, I suppose I would dealing with those sins right now instead of the food. My "sin that so easily entangles" happens to be overeating/glutony.

Lately I have been hearing scripture through sermons and others on FB and receiving devotionals dealing with lusts of the flesh and being controlled by the Spirit instead of food, and I have really been convicted once again that, even though I have only gained back about 10 pounds of the 33, I have fallen back into the "being controlled by food" syndrome. I constantly pray for my will to bend to His and that I will focus more on serving Him/doing things for my children/being a godly productive wife/exercising & taking care of this "temple"/choosing the healthy alternative.

Here are some of the scriptures in Romans that have been helpful to me:

"...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans words cannot express" (Romans 8:26).

"You, however, are controlled not the sinful nature but by the Spirit" (Romans 8:9a).

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31b)

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us" (Romans 8:37)

I would like to ask if any of you have read the book Made to Crave? I have considered buying the book and seeing what the author Lysa TerKeurst says about filling your need with GOD. I think it's wonderful that she acknowledges that we as women were made to crave---it's that "something" that we crave.

I'll end with that as I resist the habanero dip I have prepared for my husband. :(