Keeping it Simple

Travel Trailer - Night 1 Our first night on the property in our travel trailer was a SUCCESS! Thank you Heavenly Father for all of our wonderful blessings! This is the one I am celebrating right now! Sleep! Addie slept better last night than she has in 35 days…she woke at 6 am to eat and then back down again till 8 am. Probably because I had a plan for our early morning. We were going to walk around the lake…exercise. She must of heard me thinking exercise and decided to sleep instead! The boys slept through the night and in the same bed for the entire night! They even slept through Toby leaving this morning. Anyone who has had a family in a travel trailer  knows that this is a huge success! God is watching over us and knew that we needed to kick this next part of our adventure off with ease.  It is Day One of waking up on the property, boys have ate and brushed their teeth and now at 11:30, they have played cards, pulled weeds, created mudpies and are now swimmin...

Thought 1 As I was sitting feeding out little girl this morning...blended prunes - trying to get things moving(TMI?) I sat in awe of her after each spoonful, she would move it around in her mouth to slowly spit back out any little bit of texture that I hadn't blended well enough. All I could think of was how much feeling let alone taste she must have at such a young age. How amazing, how God thought of everything when he created us...he gave us amazing senses to take in all the world around us and within us. Watching our little five-month old I am often reminded just how incredible our little girl is...which brings me to how absolutely incredible our Lord is! Thought 2 Our Boys...I am so thrilled that they are older now and can do more things on their own. Like bike up very steep hills so I can try to keep up with them while pushing the stroller. It doesn't seem like long ago that I was holding onto the back of their bikes as they dreamed of getting rid of training wheels...

What a wonderful time of year, all the new life around us. The beautiful trees and flowers all just starting to blossom and show us the chance to restart again! Boys playing outside in the sunshine and baseball... I can not wait to get into the garden...putting a few seeds in the ground here at this house and then a few fall plants for the property. I figure we are moving in during the fall...when it will be time to be decorating with pumpkins, gourds and corn stalks...hmmm....wonder if I will have the energy to decorate? But hey, I am going to be ready to decorate and the boys couldn't be more excited about their pumpkins sprouting out of the ground.  Her are four of their sprouts...the boys decided that the sprouts should have an army of rocks around them to help protect them.  So cute! We had a friend dig out where my garden will be and I wish I had a picture to show you it...but really it is a 30' x 40' area with a trench dug around it. A trench ...

So it is Week 2 of Home Building...So Exciting!!! The forms are going up this week and then they are pouring the foundation...our builder sent us the following pics: Just realized that this will be the garage. That triangle shape area will be the laundry room, pantry, powder room and mud room area. After traveling to the property five times last week....I decided that this week I was going to wait and go out on the weekend. Let a week's worth of work be done and then go and see it all in surprise and ah with my husband when we can go together. So last week after much debate, prayer, a restless night or two and a little more money out the door...we decided to move the house closer to the lake. When we originally placed we were thinking back off of the lake about 130' or so. It has to be 100' away...so we were going to add an extra 30' to our distance so we had some extra play room. Well...we ended up back up at the 100' line after many trips out to ...

This week I have lots of leftovers from the weekend so you will see those in my menu...but then some new items too. Breakfast Lunch Dinner Monday Day 8 Broccoli Spinach Frittata with Caramelized Onions Cinnamon Braised Beef Over Ice Berg lettuce with salsa and Avocado I had one of the Aidell’s Chicken Apple Sausages Tuesday Day 9  Broccoli Spinach Frittata with Caramelized Onions Cinnamon Braised Beef Over Sautéed Yellow Peppers and Zucchini and Topped with Fresh Salsa Taco Salad with Boiled Taco Chicken Wednesday Day 10 Broccoli Spinach Frittata with Caramelized Onions Taco Salad Grilled Chicken Over Salad Thursday Day 11   Slow Cooker Breakfast Meatloaf and Easy Over Egg Grilled Chicken over Salad Paleo Bang Bang Shrimp With Zucchini Noodles and Asparagus Friday Day 12 Breakfast Casserole Paleo Shrimp Coconut Chicken with Thai Sauce   Saturday Day 13 Sweet Potato Hash Coconu...

Well I completed one week on the Whole 30. I really want to make it to 30 days without any major slips. I think the key is to listen to your/my body and take time for myself right now. (This is a hard priority to make when I have a 5 month old and we just broke ground on our new home and the list goes on....) But, trying to relax more and have more grace for myself. This is the menu after I adjusted it with what I really ate all week: Breakfast Lunch Dinner Snack Ideas Monday Day 1 Sweet Potato Apple and Pancetta Hash Tuma Salad on top of Fresh Grens Paleo Tex-Mex Casserole Larabars Tuesday Day 2 Sweet Potato Apple and Pancetta Hash Tuma Salad on top of Fresh Grens Paleo Tex Mes Veggies Wednesday Day 3   Sweet Potato Apple and Pancetta Hash Paleo Tex-Mex Casserole Paleo Tex-Mex Casserole Apples and PB Thursday Day 4 Leftovers of Sweet Potato.. and Tex Mex Asian chicken salad with friends…not totally ...

Let the process begin... Let the digging begin... Today, I received a text from our builder. One of many to come in the future I am sure. He texted me, "We are digging today!" Digging out where the foundation will soon be pored! So far we have been doing different tasks and getting ready and waiting. My DH (Dear Husband) was the task manager for getting electricity into the property, as well as hiring someone to take care of the existing well. He will still be in charge of putting in the sewer tank? Is that how it is referred to? Then we applied for our loan and the builder applied for the building permit. After the loan was approved about two weeks later the building permit was approved. It took about a month total for the building permit. Pretty short amount of time from what I hear. I think that Toby's as well as our builder's constant checks on it to make sure it was moving along definitely helped the process. Where our future home will be. Which pu...