A Big Day in the Kitchen

I had a great day today! Good news of the day is that I popped down to the dermatologist and got the two little stitches out of my chin. I am SO excited about that! It was getting pretty itchy. Good news from that biopsy, it seems that what is on my chin is a sunspot which they are not concerned about but would like to keep an eye on. I get to return and see them in about eight months.

With that good news I ran a few errands and took on Aldi all by myself for the first time in over a month. When I came home the kids helped unload the groceries and we got to work on dinner and some of the veggies. There was a lot to do. The plan for dinner was cottage pie. My recipe has evolved and changed a little over the years. Once I started cooking gluten free for Zachary I stopped using cream of mushroom soup and started using pasta sauce.

Not everyone loves pasta sauce in our house, in lasagna they like less pasta and more cheese, in spaghetti they like more pasta and less sauce. So, not long ago I started making my own "cream of" soup to cook with. You will find a similar recipe here although I am not sure where I got the original recipe. It works pretty slick, I keep it in an airtight container and have written on it the recipe for the dry mix and on the other side, I wrote how to cook it up. Dawn mashed all of the potatoes. They were yummy!

We cooked up two five pound bags of potatoes because I was  hoping to make one for supper and make up two for the freezer. That makes two more freezer meals and makes me happy! Stacey cut up all of the cucumbers and we used about half of them for cucumber salad for supper and she cut the rest a little thicker and put them in the fridge for snacks (the children in this house are always hungry!)

I was excited to find a zucchini pickle recipe...a SIMPLE zucchini pickle recipe and I had all of the ingredients in my cupboard. Unfortunately one of jars in the batch cracked but I fished everything out before it broke in the canner. The little bit of time that the zucchini was in the jar waiting for the canner, gave it enough of the taste when I tried it that I am pretty excited about how the pickles will taste. I have six quarts of zucchini pickles.

I shredded the rest of the large zucchinis and put eight 4-cup bags in the freezer for breads and muffins through the winter. Stacey snapped the beans that David picked this afternoon and there are a few smaller zucchinis to fry up in the next few days.

Never having any experience with cabbage and sauerkraut, I stuffed a whole head of cabbage into a quart jar and had about 1/3 of the jar empty at the top. This is my second fermenting attempt after the curried zucchini last week. I have enjoyed trying new things and I always forget how much I love this time of year when I can make most of my supper from my back yard.

Tonight we had okra, Stacey's awesome cucumber salad and the cottage pie made with Dawn's help. It was a perfectly yummy meal and the kitchen was full with many hands and lots of conversation and time with my girls. Good stuff!

A Little Organizing

I have not seen the top of my desk since April when I started substitute teaching. I got behind on a few things and everything piled up on my desk. Then summer came and who wants to sit there and wade through stacks and stacks of paper, many of them are stuff that should have probably been put right in the trash when they came in the house.

I haven't enjoyed sitting at my computer all summer long and so I decided yesterday that I should at least find the top of the desk. I did and then I got the organizing bug so I started going through cabinets. I stopped to do something fun and write a card to send and thought "I should buy some new cards". That is when I got a moment of clarity and remembered that I had three boxes full of cards downstairs.



It has been so long since I have used the mail to send greetings or cards that for a moment I forgot that I used to love to do that! I took a small detour and pulled them up and sorted through them. That is when I decided to find a place for them up at my desk so I might remember that they are there!

I am happy to have a somewhat organized desk, but I am also pretty proud of the three times I had to empty my garbage can because I was getting rid of some of the useless papers and things that have been piling up in my life! Tomorrow, I am going to tackle more veggies in the kitchen! It will be nice to look over at my desk and actually see it while I am working.

A Completed Project

I told you I would share of my adventures in the sewing room as of late. It was one of the days in the second week of recovery after the first surgery when this little one's mommy went in to start labor. I popped a few pain pills and headed downstairs!

I went through some of my stash and found a few things, but what seemed to be the most fitting was the lime green and purple/lavender.

It turned out better than I had hoped, and my friend was excited to receive it. I have written recently about how I don't love my kitchen as a place to hang out in, but I sure do love a morning, an afternoon, or a late night project in my sewing room.

Really, my sewing room is just a space in our unfinished basement that I have organized to be a somewhat efficient place for me to be creative. I try to get some time there every so often because it makes me a better person. That is the way it is with those of us who like to create.

My mom was a huge help in talking through the set up of my sewing area in the basement. Someday I may have a finished basement and a real sewing "room" but as you can see, I try not to let that stop me.

We were all made with different talents and I know that what I make in the basement is fun and many times pretty easy for me to put together. It is the appreciation and the awe when I give a gift when I realize that God has gifted me with this talent.

So I have learned that as I am appreciative to those who love their kitchens and bless me occasionally with the creativity that they experience there, I should always be thankful that God gave me a way to be creative that can bless others too.

Twenty-Four

Twenty-four years ago I was wearing a white dress. I was staring at my future as I held his hand and we exchanged vows and rings. The future that was started on that day has not left me disappointed. It has been full of calm and storm, success and failure, faith and fear, good decisions and bad.

I had an idea over the weekend to go through my pictures and see if I could pick out the best picture of David and I from each year we have been married and make a 24 year collage. What great therapy! With all of the "marriage challenges" that have been going around on Facebook, I will be honest, I am thankful that I haven't been nominated...our life isn't the fairy tale in our house. I was reminded of that truth in the last couple days thinking about and putting together this pictorial review of our life.

What is that truth? Well...we don't always live "happily ever after" and that is okay. As I was thinking about some pictures off of the top of my head I was thinking "ooh, there is that one, and oh, I am going to look for that one". I started going through year by year. There were a lot more pictures to choose from during the four years BEFORE we married than there was any year after that.

I was sad to find there were not an abundance of pictures to choose from. In fact, there were NONE to speak of from 2005 until I remembered that my brother was married that year and David and I stood together in the family picture up at the altar. So there it is...the one time all year in 2005 that we were photographed together both facing the camera. (My apologies to the rest of the family who got cropped out).

Stacey came  by while I was working on it and said "Mom! Don't you have a better picture of you and Dad from this year?" Actually...no, life has been a little hectic this year. We have family pictures to take but that isn't til next week. We will probably have a better one for 2016 after that but no...us sitting on the back step of the house while the kids are lighting sparklers on the 4th of July is the best I can do for now. It is okay, there are a few other years along the way where I couldn't do any better. That is life sweet daughter!

I saw a spoof on the "marriage challenge" the other day on FB. This person posted pictures of she and her husband posed arguing, posed facing opposite sides of the bed and numerous other poses that were supposed to help us to remember that none of us live the lives we portray on Facebook. I laugh as I write that last line because 2013's picture I had to go online to find because the one my sister-in-law posted on Facebook was better than any I could come up with myself.

Before I remembered my brother's wedding picture for the 2005 slot, I actually had cropped a picture that showed David and I together but looking the opposite direction...the back of our heads. That was the only one I had of us together. Then I stop and and I think: "some years are just like that". And isn't that the truth?

The spoofer of the marriage challenge is absolutely right. I say that knowing full well that my husband's road is certainly not easy living with me and I know that. There are days that loving him is a no-brainer and then there are days that I have to press through knowing that today I CHOOSE love. It isn't romantic, it isn't easy and it isn't the movies. It is real life.

I say it every year in some form but I am thankful for a God who holds it all together. I am thankful that we were all romance and big dreams when it all began. I am thankful for the nine vehicles that have gotten us around, the five places we have lived in the last twenty-four years. But mostly, I am thankful for a man who loves me for who I am and has committed to me for as long as we live.

David is home to me. Nothing is real until I share it with him, nothing is truly experienced until I can tell him and get his take on it. His way of thinking about things and working through things is so different that I am amazed at how all of this actually works even after all of these years.

Any regular day we would be paying bills, getting groceries, taxiing children here and there, cooking dinner, cleaning up, refereeing disagreements, but tonight...we eat sushi sitting across the table from one another like we are the only ones there. Life is good...SO good!

Survivor Files: Once Upon a Stubborn Drain

Tired of this look in my bathroom

Not much make-up has been put on lately in my bathroom!

Today marks the one month point post-first-surgery (at least the first surgery this time around). It also marks the one month mark of the lymph node drain coming out from under my arm. It was a rough weekend. I had hovered over the 30 cc limit all last week. I could have gone in on Saturday since I had finally hit below 30 for two 24 hour periods in a row but of course, it was the weekend and no one was there to take it out.







I wasn't sure what to think when Saturday's numbers were back up again and then Sunday's too. I just knew that it was clogging up and some of the fluid was draining out where the tube came out under my arm. Obviously this thing wasn't doing what it needed to do effectively. I called first thing this morning and the nurse said the two days Thursday and Friday were all she needed and I should come in and get it out!

Oh the bliss of not having to carry around this drain. It is my record. Of the eight surgeries I have had, only two did not require drains and many of them required more than one. Never though, until this time did I have a drain in for a full month.

I understand that these are lymph node sites so I know that we are talking about more fluid than other places and so I hope now that the drain is gone that we will not have problems with fluid build up. Lymph node removal was very different than I imagined it would be but as I have been reading up on it now that I am experiencing the aftermath, I find that what I am dealing with is part of the recovery. I just hope that the numbness and the range of motion can be restored. It is quite debilitating to not be able to use your dominant arm like normal.

For now I am going to rejoice in my broadening wardrobe selection now that I am not wearing surgical vests! I am going to have to start replacing all of my regular bras. It is part of the grieving process because I was an underwire girl, they have always been the best for me. Now, there is too much pain with the wires because they dig into the scar in the wrong places so I am on a quest to find good non-underwire. (Feel free to message me if you have suggestions of anything that works for you)!

I have one great sports bra that I have been surprised with. It seems to give me enough support but also helps even things out (you know, since I am not "evenly distributed" on both sides anymore). I am thankful that they didn't have to take out the tram, but there was a big chunk taken out without any type of reconstruction.) 

Oh the things we deal with on the journey of life! Today is a great day...free once again!

Tax Free Weekend

My first major test getting "back in the swing of things" was on Friday. We went out to get four out of five their new school shoes and then on to Walmart for school supplies. Wowza! I was able to come up with about half of the supplies out of my stash in the school supply cabinet but still...I am looking forward to see what my eighth graders are going to do with three 2" binders. 

The shoes went well for the two boys (Ryan didn't get home til Saturday but thankfully he was home in time to get him there to take advantage of tax-free). Zachary always finds the one he likes and then tries them on to see if they fit and is ready in less than five minutes to get out of there. Matthew tried a couple and was able to decide right at about five minutes!

Dawn had fun. She has been complaining for the last few years that she hasn't grown in three years! She took advantage of that on Friday because she currently has three pairs of tennis shoes from previous years that still fit her. She doesn't wear them out because she has had more than one pair to wear. So she asked if she could get a pair of Converse All Stars. There is not a pair more perfect than the one that was splashed with the water color looking rainbow. She was a happy camper.

Stacey had two she couldn't decide on but eventually made her choice. Success all around. The boys were wonderful at Walmart and kept coming back to ask what else they could go look for. They found at least three or four of the things on the list. Sometimes they make a good team! We were all pretty exhausted when we got home. David was wonderful and said he would come up with something for supper!

The girls had to be somewhere Friday night so I got home with the boys and Matthew and I worked on getting everyone's stuff into their baskets. I will tell you, I celebrated with some Olympic opening ceremonies with my feet up in the recliner! Another very productive day!

I got to thinking as I made may way through the day. God has been so good to me this summer. I have asked Him that although I have been diagnosed again with breast cancer and have had two surgeries last month and am looking ahead to chemo, He really has perfect timing. In the beginning of June when all this was starting and I was going through the ultra sound, biopsy and then the diagnosis, I asked Him many things but as a mom, there were a few things that I was really hoping for:

• That I wouldn't miss more than one day of Matthew and Zachary's cub scout day camp.
• That I could go with the children and serve at kids overnight camp with our church.
• That I could attend the For King and Country concert with my family at the Jones County Fair.
• That I could be able to properly prepare my kids for the coming school year with the shopping and the other things that go along with it.

There are a few other things that I would like to also do and I will still continue to take those requests to Him. There is a lot more to all of this than my personal schedule but He is faithful in the small and the large. I am so thankful for that and that through all of it I remembered that it was tax free weekend!

Guess Who's Home!

Ryan left last Sunday morning before the rooster crowed to head up north to the boundary waters. He spent the week canoeing and camping in the great outdoors. I missed him. Yesterday in the middle of our freezer meal cooking David went to pick him up.

It was nice to have him home. He didn't jump right in and tell me all about the trip right away but I made him come with me to get him his new shoes for the school year along with new running shoes for cross country. He doesn't like shopping very much at all so when I also told him that we needed to stop in at Walmart to return a few things, he was not thrilled.

I pulled out the big guns. "How about we stop at DQ on the way home? Ice cream makes anything better! We sat and ate our Blizzards and took a sample permit test (you know, he will be 14 NEXT month!) He told me he had taken a few of the samples online and didn't do too well. I thought I would help him by explaining the answers as we went along.

Embarrassingly enough, we didn't pass. There were a couple of questions that I had no idea why they would need to ask a 14-year-old trying to get a permit! There was one I saw as helpful to know about making a right turn on red, oh, and maybe the one about which color a rest stop sign would be but other than that...not so sure!

On the way home he reminded me that I was going to take him to a parking lot so he could try his hand at driving. As we drove I told him he better take off his slip ons and put on his new shoes. "Why?" he asked. He got a big smile on his face when I told him "Well, I don't want you driving the van in slip-ons!"

He did a great job. Driver training three may not be too bad. I have had two of them try for a little bit and they are both excited to try again. We will do a lot more of it in just a little over a month! But first...it looks like a little more studying for the test!