Good Morning!!

Well, I managed to cut out coffee totally.  I’m back to drinking organic herbal teas from Trader Joes. I really had too.  The diet I’m on helps keeping my hormones in check.  When my hormones go wild , I start feeling anxious, depressed, and start having weird thoughts.  That’s where I’ve been the last few days. When I stick to the low carb diet, eat more veggies and cut out all processed foods, caffeine and alcohol.   I feel much better! 

I’m exercising more too.   My new exercise routine is to wear a pedometer.  (It’s a little gadget that you clip on yourself and it measures your foot steps for the day.   My hubby, Brian bought me one.  And since he has I’ve done more walking.  Sometimes I compete with him, to see who took the most steps and sometimes I just compete with my self to do better then the day before (or at least maintain   ).

I’ve gotten alot done yesterday and today already.  I read bits & pieces of “The Messies Manual” (check above) and got inspired to get my butt moving.  My schedule for just focusing on a room a day without a huge list of what to dos seems to be working out so far.  Will have to do it for a longer period of time to be sure.

Well, I better run if I want to come around and get some commenting done on your posts before I gotta get back to work.

Have a great day!

Jenn

It was such a blessed and quiet Lord’s Day yesterday.  So refreshing and I feel like I’m ready for the week.  Looking forward to seeing what the Lord’s plans are.

Hubby is home today!  Woo-Hoo!   He took today off as a comp. day since they made him work on President’s Day. And we are going to get a project done today that has been hanging over my head.  We wrote out a Hanley newsletter talking about last year and we are writing thank you notes on them for people who went out of their way to bless us when tragedy struck our family. ( There are many!)  We are almost done and today we are going to work on them together and get them in the mail.     So wish we could do sooo much more for people.

I have alot of other things planned for today too.  I’d like to go to Trader Joes and the library (I want to see if they have any Emilie Barnes books) besides getting the daily chores done and focused cleaning on the living room.    I’ve been struggling lately in making a schedule to get house cleaning chores done.  I have done the cards (a few times) and have tried other methods.  I feel so overwhelmed in following cards or a notebook list of chores (which I know works really well for some.).  So I just assigned one or two rooms a day to focus on cleaning.  I know what has to be done to make the room clean so I’m just going to do as much as I can each day and know if I didn’t get to a job done in the room , I will try to get it done the next week. (Maybe make a note of what I didn’t do in my planner.)  Looking at a whole list of chores just makes me crazy.  I’m a perfectionist and if I don’t complete a list I feel awful guilty.  So no list for me, just common sense.  I’ll let you know how this works for I am just starting this, this week.

I’m trying a new recipe today that I got from a fellow blogger Copperswife  for dinner, Stroganoff Meatballs.  I think it will be yummy!

Well, I gotta go jump in the shower then wake the girls.  Have a great day.

Jenn

We made a new friend!   

Hope all of you who have snow are enjoying it as much as we are!  

Good Morning!

Shhhh it’s still early.  

Woke up to about 3 inches of snow already.  Probably get up to at least 6.    

It’s gonna be a nice, quiet, day at my house.    The weather will keep the girls home from school and Brian took the day off.  We have plenty of food so no reason to go out.  (Except to shovel or play)   I’ve got the fixings for homemade bread, soup, and hot chocolate.  So we are good to go.  I love days like these.  Makes me so grateful for my family, our house  and all the good things the Lord has blessed us with. 

Have a great weekend.   Enjoy your families!

Hey! 

Well, I got hubby off to work (I love you, Brian!) , the girls off to school and had blood taken for my yearly physical (which I haven’t done yearly in awhile ).

I’m home now eating breakfast and drinking my coffee (had to fast for the blood draw).   I so need to stop drinking coffee again.  It’s not on the diet I do (in fact it’s a major no-no) but I’m having a hard time giving it up. I had stopped drinking it for over a year but when I was staying with Elizabeth at the hospital I started drinking it again.(Was the only way to keep my eyes open some days!) I’ve cut back alot but I really need to stop.  So I only had 3/4 of a cup this morning as opposed to the normal cup/cup and a half.

It’s so easy to get too busy or lazy and not take care of ourselves.  But our health is all so important.   It effects so much of our lives and our families.  So let’s make sure taking care of ourselves is a priority. (I know it has fallen too low on my own list!)

I have to get the dog her rabies shot today and get her license renewed.  I should have done this already.  Not sure what else is on my agenda besides the daily chores.  (Maybe some exercise   .)

Have a great day!

Jenn

Okay.  I was an ignorant Jersey girl.  I had no idea that Taylor Ham (pork roll) was an indigenous delicacy to my state.  But I tell ya, the rest of you are missing out.  It’s not the healthiest thing for ya, but boy is it yummy.

“People who live in New Jersey all their lives, and then move to states that don’t even border the Garden State, are often in for a rude surprise. There’s no Taylor ham.

Some people compare it to Canadian bacon, some say it’s a richer cousin of Spam. Others say there is just no comparison. One thing is sure. Taylor ham is a staple of life in New Jersey. Go in any Jersey diner for breakfast and you will have your choice of eggs, any style, with bacon, sausage or Taylor ham. If you don’t want eggs, you can have a Taylor ham sandwich on a hard roll, on toast, with pancakes, or any other way you can think of, with or without cheese.

For the uninitiated, Taylor ham is actually the brand name for pork roll. John Taylor invented the original Taylor ham in Trenton, New Jersey in the late 1800s. It does say pork roll on the ham package, but the prominence of the word Taylor is one reason why it has come to be known as such, at least in North Jersey. South Jerseyans tend to call it Taylor pork roll. Other companies came along and also made pork roll, but to a true New Jerseyan, North or South, these imitations are of little consequence: there is only one Taylor ham.”

This was quoted from this article on the web http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/92095/what_is_taylor_ham_and_why_does_new.html  by Valerie Ferrari.  

Have a great day.

Jenn

Good Day!

It’s been a busy morning around here!  Girl’s were up early (even though they have the day off  ) took showers, finished their homework, read books, made cards and now are all happily playing together  .  

I got up with hubby (he has to work today  ), made coffee, made eggs and taylor ham for breakfast, emptied the dishwasher, read my Bible (decided to read Ruth, I love that book), stripped my bed, completed two loads of laundry (have one in the dryer, one in the washer and one ready to go) vacuumed, washed the kitchen floor, wiped down the bathroom and here I am. 

Thinking about making chocolate chip cookies with whichever girls want to help.  Megan has been asking for them. And I think we will have homemade pizza for dinner. 

I will probably work on some thank you notes, read to Megan (she’s got 3 library books we haven’t read yet), and I’m not sure what else.

Have a great day.

Jenn

Exodus 20:8
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Isaiah 58:13-14

13If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:

 14Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

A quote from Pastor Joseph  Pipa’s Book,  The Lord’s Day:

“God does not forbid our work or pleasure on the Sabbath because He is opposed to pleasure.   Rather, He is called us to turn aside from lesser pleasures in order to seek the greater pleasures He has in store for us in the day.   Thus the prophet continues by telling us what to do.   Positively, we are to honour and revere the day:  ‘call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD, honorable.’ Not only are we to refrain from profaning the day, but also we must honour it and delight in it as God’s holy day.

We are to consider the Sabbath a delight.   The word ‘delight’ is a form of the word used in verse 14, ‘to delight in God.’  As we noted above, the word means ‘to take exquisite pleasure’.   As we delight in beloved people or beautiful things, so we are to delight in the spiritual exercises of the day.  We are to take great pleasure in worship, fellowship, and Christian service.  With this command Isaiah begins to attack the formalism alluded to above.  Proper worship and Sabbath-keeping spring from an exuberant delight in the spiritual exercises of the day. 

Furthermore, we delight in the day as we honour it.  Since God has set it aside, we are to honour the day as special, the holy day of the Lord.  This is what God means in the forth commandment when He says, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” We remember the Sabbath day by taking exquisite delight in the day and calling it honourable.” “

Have a blessed day in Him!

Jenn

Good Morning!

I didn’t get the planning I wanted to get done yesterday.   I just wasn’t very motivated.  I (Lord willing) will do it today.

The girl’s had Spirit Week at school this week.  So every day they had some crazy theme.  Today was backwards day so the girls put their blouses and jumpers on backward for school.

This weekend is a long weekend for the girl’s they have Monday off for President’s Day.  Normally, Brian would have off too but he has to go to work tomorrow and Monday.   So it will just be me and the girls.  Elizabeth is going to a friend’s house on Saturday.  It’s the first time she has gone some place by herself, other then school.  I’m kinda nervous about it but I know I gotta let her go.  Hard to let go of the protection mode. Not sure what else we’ll be doing except going to the library to get books and maybe a movie.  Any book suggestions?  I don’t have a “want to read list” at the moment and always on the prowl for a good read.

Well, I better get planning (menu, grocery list, next weeks schedule).  

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Good Morning!  Sorry,  I haven’t been around much.  I am suffering with many migraines recently and when I don’t have a headache I’ve been trying to keep up around here. (no headache this morning!  )

I think (Praise God) that I am caught up!  Not that I don’t have a bunch of things that need to be done around here but it’s the normal stuff.  I don’t have anything from the last three months haunting me.  Woo-Hoo!

I’ve been trying to live in a tighter food budget and I’m happy to say I’m doing well.  I spend alot more time going thru ads and going to more stores but I’m sticking to the limit and I have probably cut about $50 from the bill.

Tonite we are having chicken enchiladas.  I made a chicken in the crock pot Monday for dinner (got it on sale for .79 a pound) and so I will use the leftovers for our meal.

Yesterday the school was canceled for the girls.  We have had lots of precipitation the last couple of days, snow, ice, sleet, rain.  Today they have a delayed opening,  I guess due to the wet freezing on the roads. I was just about to get the girls up and decided to check my email quickly.  Good thing, got the notice that school isn’t opening until 10:30 so they get to sleep in.

I got all the grocery shopping done, so I will probably use the day for planning.  Yes, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.

Have a lovely day!

Jenn

PS.  I can’t believe how well Huckabee did!

PPS.  Question about the Minis.  How do you use them?  I’ve seen people in the past lose their comments when they use them.  I haven’t tried it yet.  Just wondering…