March Madness: Week 1

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am all about preparation in many ways! This has stretched into the area of emergency preparation. Over the last 4 years or so, I have collected and organized a large amount of food, dry goods, and home essentials to provide us with a satisfying independence. The goal: to be self-sufficient for months, and eventually years. As an immensely blessed American society, we rely on our retail network HEAVILY. We are, for the most part, dependent on it. Many of us, rely on stores to feed ourselves and our families on a daily basis. I challenged myself to count how many times I went the the store in a week. My typical goal is once or less- but more often than not I go two or three times. I venture to say that there are many that do much more than that. How many times have you run out of diapers at 6pm on a Saturday night? Or realize you are totally out of milk, and your kids will only eat cold cereal for breakfast with milk? Do you have to make the run? I do, often.



So, our March Madness is this: We will rely solely on the contents within our home for food and household items for the entire month of March. The only exclusion will be fuel.



To document the process, I will post a picture of our fridge at the start of each week. I also, will be documenting our daily meals (I won't be posting those).

March 1st:



Does the chaos of the fridge alarm you? It does me...:)

My Little Alien's

Brinly and Cade went to a "Space"-themed birthday party of a friend.

They went as aliens...pretty darn cute ones.

Cade and his weird self.

Brinly with her lushous eyelashes. Adelle had to get in on it. She has one little sparkle on her right check...its kinda dangling there, but she's proud!

Rural Style Valentine

Limited restaurant choices (and limited means) allowed us to continue our home-made Valentine dinner. Brinly and Cade have learned to love the "special" aspect of this dinner. They moved the kitchen table to the middle of the living room and set a little kid table up as well. As you can see, they thoroughly enjoyed it. Cade is a bit perturbed because he wanted to be at the big table not the little one.

We enjoyed salmon burgers, potato wedge fries, strawberry shakes, vinaigrette spinach salad, shrimp cocktail, and heart-shaped rolls. We had to save 2/3's of it for another meal:)! It was yummy, and the company was even better!

Shane woke up early (and I mean super early- before his normal leave by 6:45am early) to make these beauties! Side note: if found a big glob of white chocolate in the trash, so I think several attempts were made. They were SO yummy...makes my mouth water just looking at them!!

More Sledding Fun

The outing ended with Brinly and Cade crashing into each other. They are still asking if we can go again:).

Winter Wonderland

We live in the winter wonderland zone, for sure! We made a Saturday outing of sledding one afternoon and enjoyed a local slope (though it was actually quite difficult to find ONE hill in these parts). We lasted for a little while. It was really cold. Adelle HATED it, and bawled the entire time! The falling snow kept falling in her eyes and she couldn't take the aggravation...and I think she was probably cold. It was frigid.

Washer Crud

I honestly have to say, I am very proud of this accomplishment. My washer has been semi-stinking for several months now...and I've done everything from washing with bleach, vinegar, lemon juice, etc. SEVERAL times, to no avail. Fortunately, I have a little bit of appliance savvy (thanks to u-tube and various Internet sites), and was able to take my washer apart and found the culprit of the stank!

NASTINESS in the outer plastic barrel....ewwww (TMI, I know):

So, I did what any frugal fanny would do, covered my nasal passages to save my lungs from the hazardous fumes and particles, grabbed an old toothbrush and started scrubbin.And, wha-la! That was all the way around the washer. Can you see the stark contrast????!!!Now, no more stink! And I saved myself a service call and a few dollars, and got a pretty good work out, if I do say so.

If anyone is interested in learning the HOW of this process, let me know- I'd be happy to share:).

Santa Came To Town

Proud to say we have one child who would sit with Santa without bawling at this age! She was perfectly content and smiling even. Who would'a thunk?:)
Cade hugging Santa. He really was a cute Santa.

Brinly was really into it this year. She sat and talked to Santa for several minutes, despite the line behind us!

Merry Christmas!

I couldn't leave out Shane's amazing accomplishment this year. He decked the house with boughs of lights that we've been hauling around for 7 years:). Doesn't it look great!!

Blizzard

Blizzard:

1. Strong Winds

2. Heavy Snow

3. Low Temperature

Difference between snowstorm and blizzard- the gusting winds.

Our blizzard cancelled church this morning, and so far has cancelled one day of school (tomorrow). Brinly's first snow day ever! FUN! Now, lets see how stir crazy we get:). Shane still has work, boo-hoo. But he's enjoying our new snowblower! Now, we need to get a winter survival car kit put together for both cars. We REALLY need that here!

Anyway, these are pictures of our recent fun.