Alpaca farm

We had a fun playdate/field trip this week. My friend Joyce and her family live across the street from an alpaca farm. Joyce has 5 kids, and homeschools, so we are able to get together in the morning for playdates. Her kids help over at the alpaca farm, so we got to go over there and see the alpacas and the goats. There was one baby alpaca, and two baby goats. They were so adorable! Here is the baby alpaca...

And the mama and baby...

Here are two adorable kids holding two adorable kids :).

I seriously wanted to take one of the baby goats home. They kept nibbling on my sweatshirt. Aren't they so sweet???

Two super sweet babies :).

We had so much fun!!

Jeff did a lot of work today, clearing out the old flower bed that was against the old fence. It really opened up the back yard. You can see by the dirt patches where the old fence line was. Jeff planted grass seed there, so it should look really nice in a few weeks. The old fence next to our new one it is our neighbors fence. Jeff put up a tire swing for Evie today, and the rope is about 40 feet up in our Sycamore tree. The tire swings super far, and Evie absolutely loves it!

I have been making a lot of fermented foods lately. I am trying new things to see what I like before the garden starts producing. I made sauerkraut today. We love it! I start with this...

Then I chop it up in a large bowl. I should have chopped it smaller. I had to do a lot more work because the pieces were bigger. I added celtic salt to the bowl. It is about 2 Tblsp. of salt to a head of cabbage. It does make the sauerkraut salty, but you eat it more like a condiment and not a side dish. Just a tablespoon or two is loaded with way more probiotics than the kind you can get in pill form! According to Dr. Mercola (who is a very popular natural doctor online), he says that fermented foods have 100 times more probiotics than the pill form!!!

After I chop the cabbage up in a bowl, I take my big wooden rolling pin and start smashing the cabbage. It usually takes about 10-15 minutes to get it to look like this....

Once that is done, I put the sauerkraut in a jar. If there isn't enough juice from the cabbage to cover it, I add a little water. Then I sit it on my counter for about 3 days to ferment. After that I refrigerate it. We love it on salads, and on sandwiches. Evie loves it plain, and will eat lots of it.

I have been making kefir for awhile now, and I want to try some other fermented foods. I have a recipe for gingered carrots that sounds interesting. I also want to try radishes, green beans and turnips, since I will have so many in my garden. It is fun trying new things!

Urban gardening/homesteading

It is that time of year that I love, when everything starts to grow! I love all the seasons, but spring and early summer are fun because of all the things that start to come up. I think I truly am becoming an urban homesteader. I would love to be able to move to the country, but that isn't an option for us right now, so I am bringing the country to me. I'm trying to cram as many edible things as I can into my 1/2 acre of property.

We planted these strawberries last year, and they are doing well so far. They were a mix of June-bearing and Ever-bearing. We have been picking a handful a day. I hope they start producing more, but it looks like I will definitely have to buy some this year instead of relying on my patch. Maybe next year though :).

We planted 6 blueberry bushes two years ago, and they are small, but are loaded down with blueberries. You can see tiny berries on this bush below. I can't wait until they get huge and produce a lot of fruit!!

We expanded our garden this year. Thankfully we haven't gotten so many weird looks this year like we did last year. It cracked me up how people stared. They looked at us like we were digging a bomb shelter! It seems like people in subdivisions have forgotten what gardens are. Of the 50 or so houses in our little subdivision, we are the only ones with a garden. There is one woman who has a garden, but it is not in the subdivision, but on acreage next to the subdivision.

I started many of my plants from seed, and they did so/so. My tomatoes did great, and I planted 12 of them. The broccoli and cabbage also did great. My peppers and celery did really bad, as did my herbs. Next year I am just going to buy them. We found a guy who grows his own heirloom veggies, and he has a small greenhouse. I bought my celery and pepper plants there, and last year I bought tomatoes from him. They are always super healthy plants, and so much easier than trying to get mine to grow. I would love to have a greenhouse, but we don't have the room or the money. In the garden, along with my tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and broccoli, there are carrots, turnips, beets, peas (they are the ones near the middle growing up the fence), cucumbers and celery. We are doing a lot of things vertically this year. In the back yard, I went a little squash crazy. I planted 4 different kinds, all are going to be grown vertically. Here is a picture of my big garden.

Jeff is talking about making a root cellar to store our veggies for winter, so I won't have to can or freeze everything. I am also learning about how the pioneers used to preserve things, before canning. They did what was called lacto-fermentation. The lacto doesn't refer to dairy, but refers to the lactic acid that results from the fermentation process. The pioneers didn't have pressure canners or regular canners, so they fermented a lot of foods. It actually is really easy and very healthy. I fermented pickles and sauerkraut last year (I did a few jars), and kept them in my fridge. They can be stored in a root cellar too (most root cellars stay at around 50 degrees). They are supposed to be loaded with probiotics, and the salt in them preserves them. I was amazed at how crisp and fresh they tasted, even after 8 months!

We have had lots of fun animals and critters around. Our Orioles came back and made another nest in our Sycamore tree. I keep trying to take a picture of them at our Oriole feeder, but haven't been able to get one :(. Both the male and female have come to the feeder at the same time, and they are so beautiful! Our ducks are also back, but haven't been swimming in our pond as of yet. The tree frogs are everywhere, and we can hear them chirping. They love hanging out under the cover of our hot tub. Evie found this one :)....

Our school year is almost done. We have one month left. We were going to be done the first week of June, but we took a week off. We will only have 6 weeks off in the summer, but I have a plan for next year. I want to start the first week of August, then take a week off each month and 2 weeks off at Christmas. I figured that we will have our 180 days in by the 30th of May if we do that. I love the idea of being able to have a week off every month! I think it will avoid burnout for me.

Evie started soccer, and is having so much fun. They did soccer pictures a week ago, and we were able to take some great pictures instead with our camera. I didn't want to spend $30 for 6 wallets and a 5x7, which is what the package prices were. I thought this picture turned out great. There were several other really good ones.

My birthday was on the 9th. It was the big 4-0. It feels strange just typing that. When I was a kid, 40 seemed so old and decripit. Now here I am! Not that I am old and decripit :). I actually had a wonderful birthday. I didn't want a party. Jeff took the day off of work, and he and Evie showered me with lots of love. The night before, they made me go to my room and relax (oooohhhh the torture!) while they secretly decorated the house and made me a cake. I figured out what they were doing when Evie came in to ask me how I was doing, and her face was covered with chocolate :). lol! They decorated with purple balloons and streamers. Purple is my favorite color :). On my birthday, I opened my presents. Jeff got me a really sweet book with pictures of our family. I cried when I saw it because it was so sweet. It was an actually book he had printed out. He also got me this.....

I LOVE my swing! I am out there several times a day, swinging whenever I can. It folds out into a bed too, but I haven't done that yet. It is so relaxing, and a wonderful place to go out and read. Evie and I have homeschooled out on it too, which is great.

We are making changes to the backyard. Jeff privacy fenced in a larger section of the yard. It looks so nice, and really makes our back yard look bigger! We have a chain link fence across the other side of the back yard, and we want to fence that in with a privacy fence too. Then it will seem like our own little oasis back there. Jeff said he was completely fine with me getting a few chickens (Yay!), so I can do that once we fence in the rest of the back yard with privacy fence.

I wanted to post this picture because it is SO funny. I use a hot water bottle every day on sore spots, and put essential oils on beforehand. The hot water bottle helps the oils sink in better. I had heated up the bottle with hot water, then stuck it on my bed. Then I went to go get something. When I came back, I found Sierra laying like this....

And no, I didn't put it like that, she did! I guess her legs or paws were sore, or she just liked how warm it felt. I love the guilty look on her face :)!

Okay, this blog post is ginormous. I will end it with a picture of my beautiful irises. Oh how I wish they lasted longer, and that I could bottle their scent. The scent of them reminds me of fresh grapes cut from the vine. During iris season, I definitely take time to stop and smell the irises!

Trouble with Blogger

Is anyone else out there having trouble with Blogger?? I keep trying to post to blogs, and keep getting an internal error message, it shows up as anonymous, or won't show up at all. I'm wondering if anyone else is having trouble. SchanuzerMom, if you are reading this, I can't reply at all to your blog. Kelly, I wrote a big long reply to your post and it also gave me an error :(. Grrrr! No one at all is commenting on mine, so either no one is reading my blog (which is possible! lol!), or they can't comment. Could you all email me if you can't reply here? My email is jen 42394 @ yahoo .com .

Myrtle Beach

I guess I need to update my blog, since it has been awhile. Book sales have been slow. I was hoping for a huge amount of sales, but so far I have only sold about 50. Not exactly earth shattering. I need to figure out a better way to promote it. It has been out for over a month now. Maybe it will just take some time.

Gardening season is underway. My seedlings did great this year. My tomato plants are so big that there is no more room under the grow light. They are past knee high! They seriously need to be planted, but we keep getting frost, so I haven't planted them yet. My pepper plants and celery plants are tiny though. I will still plant them, but they are little bitty. The cabbage and broccoli plants are huge too, and are going to be planted soon. I have been really happy with my seedlings this year, except for my peppers and celery. I think they will still grow, despite being so small. The weather here has been sooo strange. I have strawberries on my plants.....and it is only May. They are green and the size of marbles, but they are still there. That is about a month early. In February, it was so warm that Evie was outside in a swimsuit playing in the water. For this area, that is insane. It got into the high 80's in March, and in April it frosted almost every day :(. Not good. The grape and apple crop this year took a huge hit.

We went to Myrtle Beach, SC for spring break, and got back about a week ago. It was the longest vacation we have taken in quite some time. We were gone 10 days. It was a lot of fun, and we had great weather. We went with Jeff's parents, and we drove. It was a really long drive!!

Here are some pictures from our trip.....

We stayed at a gorgeous resort that was part of my in-laws timeshare. This was our view from our balcony, in the suite we were staying in. It had a full kitchen, and 2 full bedrooms. The pools at the resort were so pretty, and we were within easy walking distance to the beach (which was private for resort people only).

Evie loved the beach. She had never seen the ocean before, so she loved it. We went looking for shells almost every morning.

I had never seen a jellyfish up close before. I was glad it wasn't alive, seeing as I was that close to it! There was lots of them that would wash up on shore, and they would either be dead or dying.

One of the many times we went miniature golfing. They had such fun places there!!

 Jeff and I celebrated our 18th anniversary the day we got back from our trip. We got to have a fun date while we were in Myrtle Beach, while my in-laws watched Evie :).

One thing about Myrtle Beach...it is SO windy! There seriously wasn't such thing as a good hair day while we were there. If I lived there, it would be really hard to ever wear my hair down. I had that beachy, wind-blown look the entire week.

Bad, bad blogger!!

That is me scolding myself for being so awful about updating my blog :)! Oh my, has it really been that long? With working on the cookbook, homeschooling, and all of Evie's activities, I haven't been on here a whole lot! I'll try not to make this a 50 page blog post. lol.

Evie loves to grab my camera and take random pictures. Sometimes, the pictures are so flattering....like this one....p.s. please note the sarcasm....

This one is actually quite flattering of Sierra though :).

In cookbook news, the cookbook is almost finished! It has taken me longer because I have had to make every recipe! I am one who just throws in ingredients, so I had to measure everything out. So far I have done 83 recipes. I may end up making 90 instead of 100, just so I can get it done faster.

On a hair related note, I found a new way to do curls that I love. They are more like braid waves, but with curls at the end. I got the idea from Rapunzel's Resource blog. Love her blog!! I need to post the link to her blog in my favorites. The curls/waves come from using bandanas. The length really gets shortened by the curls, but I love the look! This is what it looks like before.....

And this is after.....

Evie just finished up her first year of Bible quizzing. It goes for 6 months, and is off for 6 months. It was amazing to see these kids quote the Bible. Her age group memorized  90 verses, along with detailed questions about other verses. They just had their last quiz meet, and they did great! I'm so proud of the kids!

In baby news, we had an amazing thing happen a few weeks ago. I was really struggling with the financial aspect of the adoption. We were hitting a brick wall with the finances, and I started wondering if this was really what God wanted for us. I asked Jeff if he thought we should throw out a fleece. For those of you who don't know what that means, the expression "putting out a fleece" comes to us from the biblical story of Gideon. During a time of invasion by the armies of Midian, God called Gideon and the Israelites to fight the Midians. Before Gideon would commit himself to battle, however, he wanted to be sure that God was going to give Israel the victory. In Judges 6:36-40 Gideon asked God to make a fleece of wool wet with dew on one morning, then totally dry on the next morning. The fleece was to be the sign that God would definitely rescue Israel from the Midianites. God gave Gideon the sign that he asked for, and Gideon then went out and defeated the Midianites. Okay, that was your Bible lesson for today :). Anyways, I felt like I wanted to do a fleece. This is such a life-changing decision, and I wanted our family to know for sure that this was God's plan. Jeff asked me what I wanted to ask for. My words were, "Something huge, like a neon sign that I can't miss." About 2 weeks later, I decided to read the story of Gideon in the Bible, to see if God got angry when Gideon asked for a fleece. God didn't get angry at all, according to the Bible. I read this on a Friday. The following Monday, I started doing the Bible lesson for Evie's homeschool lesson. I hadn't even looked at it beforehand, so I had no clue what it was going to be about. Guess what it was about?? Gideon's fleece. Coincidence? No, I don't think so. The next day, I was having my devotional time, and I read one of my devotionals called The Daily Bread. It is a booklet that comes out every 3 months, and has set devotions for each day of the week. That day, I read the Bible lesson and story, and guess what it was about?????? Gideon's fleece!!! Then, 2 hours later, I get a phone call from Jeff. He said that his boss had called him and told him that they had placed his named several months ago on a list to get in on the profit sharing bonuses. They were so happy with his work, and all that he had done that they picked him from the list, even though there were many others on the list. His boss told him that they had cut him a check for the bonus. I gulped and asked Jeff, "How big of a check???" Jeff told me, "Five thousand dollars!!!" Then he said, "There's your fleece!" I was crying so hard that Evie thought something bad happened! Jeff has never gotten a bonus like that in all of his years of working, and the timing was just too crazy. The money got us to a point where we now only need about $6000, which is so much less overwhelming!! We feel so blessed that God made things so clear! We actually cleared out the room where the baby's room is supposed to be, and we are planning to paint it and get it ready!

So that is what has been happening for the past month or so. I hope you all are doing well!

New stratagies

I want to thank you all for your encouraging words. I owe some of you emails, and will do that soon. I apologize for my previous post. It really was a giant pity party to myself. Thankfully, I am over it now :). After a week of feeling extremely low, I realized I was being ridiculous. God doesn't want me to act like that. I need to trust Him. To explain our adoption situation, the adoption plans were put on hold because of finances, and because of Jeff's job situation. His company was bought out about 2 weeks ago, which could be either good or bad. It could put his job, and everyone elses at the company in jeopardy. He has been in this situation twice before. One company he worked for was bought out, and they got rid of most of the employees and started over. The other company that he worked for that was bought out ended up keeping the employees. We are praying hard that they keep all of the employees at his company. He is feeling an urgency to go back to school to finish his business degree, and get out of engineering completely. Sales jobs are a lot easier to find than engineering jobs. If he does go back to school, the money that we have saved so far for the adoption would need to go to that. That is why we aren't sure we will be able to do the adoption.

I have been brainstorming, trying to figure out ways I can help the situation. Jeff has always wanted me to write a book. That is actually what I am doing! I started it yesterday, and it is going to be a Kindle book. With a Kindle book, it can be read on any device, even a PC, as long as you download the free Kindle app. I am writing a gluten free/casein free/soy free cookbook. Then I plan on promoting it on autism websites where the diet is very popular. Kindle publishes for free as long as I set the price low (it will be $2.99). They take a percentage of the profits, and I get the rest. I have been cooking the gfcfsf way for a long time now, and have been daily tweaking regular recipes to make them gfcfsf. Because Evie and I have to eat this way, it has been a goal of mine to copycat recipes that taste great. So far, the book will have over 100 recipes. I am excited about that! I didn't realize I had come up with that many! If I can make enough money, it will help to pay for the adoption and Jeff's schooling too. That is my goal. I am going to be busy these next few months! My plan is to write at least 20 recipes a week in the book. I am going to have to make a lot of these recipes first, because I tend to just throw ingredients in without measuring. Jeff was happy to hear that I needed to make all the dessert recipes :). I am excited, and hopeful. It may be a long shot, but it may be a huge answer to prayer for us!

Changes

Sometimes I think writing can be really cathartic. Really healing. Being able to blog has been that way for me a lot of times. I actually love that most people I know personally don't read my blog. I hope that doesn't sound bad. It just helps me feel more free in what I write.

I'm feeling pretty shredded emotionally right now. Majorly defeated. It looks like we are not going to be able to do the adoption. Financially we are hitting a brick wall, and can't come up with the finances. I keep watching these old tv shows and movies, and these people who want children are given children. Given. They didn't have to pay $20,000 and have to endure being scrutinized to the point of insanity. I sure wish it was still that way. I have been going through every range of emotions. I feel guilt that Evie will not have any siblings. I feel sadness that we will only have one child. I feel frustration over my body, that it failed me. I hate the feeling of failure. I hate how people don't know things, and they make comments because they don't know. We always hear this from people when they see Evie: "Is she your only? Really?" I remember when we first moved to this area, and were living with my parents. Their church had Vacation Bible School, so we decided to take Evie to it. One of the workers came up to me later, and nastily asked, "Is she your only?" I said yes, and she proceeded to tell me how terrible I was for not having more children, and that if Evie had siblings she would be better at sharing. It was horrible. People don't know, so they make judgements. Jeff thinks I should just blurt out, "Well, she does have 7 siblings, but they all died". He said that would shut the people up. I haven't done that yet. I absolutely cringe when I get the "how many kids do you have" question. I bristle.

After trying to save and save for the adoption, and not getting anywhere, we started looking into embryo adoption. Embryo adoption is where we would adopt frozen embryos, and I would carry them like a normal pregnancy. I researched for weeks because the cost is a lot less than traditional adoption. The problem is that the success rate is only 26%. That is so low. After finding that out, Jeff and I talked about trying again. I started researching the genetic issue I was diagnosed with. It is called a Balanced Translocation (I'll call it BT to save typing). I called the genetic specialist we went to 11 years ago, and asked them to send me all the paperwork. Back when we got the diagnosis, not much was known about BT. Now there is a lot more information. I got my paperwork last week, and researched online all last week. I found that with the BT, most women on average lost 6-10 babies. Many times, a baby would implant and they would carry it, and it would be chromosomally unbalanced. After delivery, the baby would die shortly after birth. Some babies lived, and had severe problems. What got to me the most was reading about the babies that were "fine". I joined a BT board, and the women would excitedly tell about the babies that they finally were able to carry that lived and were healthy. Then they mentioned, almost like a side note, that their baby tested positive for the same BT they had. In other words, their kids were healthy, except that when they grow up and go to conceive, they (whether male of female) would have to endure the same horrible things that come with BT. Almost all the women who had healthy children said that their kids were BT carriers also. So besides all the horrors that could happen in a pregnancy with a BT, I would knowingly be risking putting my child through what I have gone through. That option flew out the window after I found that all out. Every time we turned to a different option, we have hit a wall.

Jeff was gone all last week on business. When he came home on Friday, we wanted to do something fun. We went to the mall, and went to a pet store. Evie played on the floor with the most adorable puppy ever, and I laughed and laughed. He was called a Havanese, and he was like a little bunny, hopping all around. The little guy brought me joy. Then Evie went on the bungie jumper at the mall. Have you all seen that? It is where they strap the kids into a harness, attached to all these bungie chords. Then they can jump on a trampoline and go about 30 feet into the air over and over again. Evie loves to do it. My little fearless child. She did about 20 flips. I couldn't watch. She had a blast. Afterwards, we went to a Japanese restaurant where they make your food in front of you. Jeff's company paid for it (they do that for the families after a long business trip). We sat at a table with total strangers, and the chef made the table light up in flames, and threw food at our plates. It was really fun, and the food was great. Afterwards, as we were leaving, everyone commented on how adorable and sweet Evie was (she was off looking at the Koi in the pond). People tell us that all the time. She is super outgoing, and well adjusted, despite not having siblings. That is a comfort to me. She said later that she had the "best day she has ever had". She says that a lot, so we must not be ruining her life by not having more kids. That comforts me too.

I am trying to come to terms with all of this. The hardest part is going to be telling everyone. The awkwardness of it all. We are going to give back the money that was donated, then that door will be closed. Amazingly, Evie is fine with all of it. I thought she would be heartbroken. She just wants a kitten. Her siblings will be furry and soft, and walk on 4 legs. I feel better just writing. Less heavy in the heart. I need to move on. I need to walk away from all this grief and sadness and loss that has enveloped me for all these years. Having more children is not going to be part of the picture for my life, and I need to be okay with that. I need to know that I am not a failure as a person. I need to know that having a child isn't what defines a person. I still have a lot to work through.