If You Give A Mom A Muffin

by Kathy Fictorie - based on "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie” & “If You Give a Moose A Muffin” by Laura Numeroff

If you’ve been a mother for more than 6 years, chances are, you’ve read the above mentioned book. Our Pastor’s wife read this at the beginning of bible study last Tuesday. I had never heard it and it made me chuckle.

If you give a mom a muffin, she'll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She'll pour herself some. Her three-year-old will spill the coffee.  She'll wipe it up.

Wiping the floor, she will find dirty socks. She'll remember she has to do laundry. When she puts the laundry in the  washer, she'll trip over boots and bump into the freezer.

Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper. She will get out a pound of hamburger. She'll look for her cookbook. (101 Things To Make With A Pound Of Hamburger.)

The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail. She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow. She will look for her checkbook. The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two-year-old.

She'll smell something funny. She'll change the two-year-old. While she is changing the two-year-old the phone will ring. Her five-year-old will answer and hang up.

She'll remember that she wants to phone a friend to come for coffee. Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup. She will pour herself some.

And chances are, if she has a cup of coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Isn’t that the sweetest? I find myself living days somewhat close to this at times. I make a hot cup of coffee after our morning is finished, only to find it three hours later, cold in the microwave. It is all in how you view life…it IS our calling to serve, rather than be served and it IS a blessing to be last, rather than first.

May we thank the Lord for days like this 1. Because we even have a family. 2. Because we are at home, able bodied to care for our children 3. Because it is within our grasp to take some opportunity for the flesh to pity itself and respond rightly and bring glory to our sweet Lord and Savior. 

“…even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."Matt 20:28

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jn 12:24

 

Farm Report Winter 2011

 

Our Bourbon Red trio, aren’t they pertty?

 

 

We were doubting Jackie Chan was pregnant because she never seemed to grow. I went out there two days ago and her udder is swelling and hardening and she is *loosing* her ligaments which is a sign of her body preparing for kidding? I dunno.   

See? She just looks normal. I think she does.

Chloe is a lowrider. She also has me stumped and I can’t figure where she’s hiding the kids. I see them kicking up a storm so I know their in there!

Posing pretty. She is showing no signs of kidding soon. Tomorrow will be possible due date #1, as it is five months since the buck was with them. I am washing my bottles and getting the birth kit put together…very exciting!!

Then there is poor Junie. She can’t hide a pregnancy to save her life. She carries those babies straight out the sides!

  

She is huge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see triplets again!

 

 

Look at the difference between these two goats! I think it is hilarious. Junie is waddling when she does walk, but pretty much hangs out in the barn.

 

 

 

Our flock of guineas. If you ever get the chance, raise guineas for 1 year. It’s an..experience. You won’t have to feed them but during a long snow when the ground is covered. They totally sustain themselves, they’re amazing. You won’t want them longer than a year as that is about all your nerves can handle. They constantly make noise, they *bark* at e v e r y t h i n g, are untamable, and they fly, like, away. Oh they come back…but be warned.  Oh, and they’re uuuuuugly.

 

 

So why do I have them? I saw them at the feed store as keets and thought they were cute. No other reason.

 

Riley. The big, dumb, happy-go-lucky, loyal to the end, best described as Doug from the movie UP, it is not funny. That is totally our dog.

You’ll be talking to him, throwing the ball around and he will do the “Squirrel!” thing and you’ll have snap him out of it and call his attention back. Seriously not much up there.

 

Well, it is Sunday evening, movie night, and I need to go make oodles of popcorn ;)

Woohoo!

See this? Our first 2011 Bourbon Red fertile turkey egg, two months earlier than expected. Pure gold.

I also want to say THANK you for all your sweet excitement & rejoicing with us over our little one. I am so blessed with good friends who have nothing but kind words to offer. It may be #8, but I am no less giddy inside anticipating the arrival of this little bundle of joy than I was with #1, #2 or #3...if anything I look forward to those sleepless nights and smelling like rotten milk, lol!

The days are too long and we pray the Lord will see fit to allow

her to be delivered safely in our arms in June. 

Meet Baby(In Utero)

 

I wasn't going to get an ultrasound, but not knowing whether it was a boy or girl was driving me crazy. My mother, who is as bad as I, kindly offered to pay half. The deciding factor was when I found 1st Impressions, in Bellingham, that will give you a 10 min gender ID ultrasound, no diagnosticsand it was very, very inexpensive compared to the $350-$950 alternative.

Paul and I made the appointment and went today. The tech sent us home with a 25 minute DVD set to classical music and used the pointer to mark feet, hands, mouth, etc. We even saw him/her yawn!! It was so dern adorable! He/she was playing with his/her feet and even at one point the cord got in his/her way and he/she gently pushed it out of his/her face as it was bothersome...too cute! I could have sat there all day watching this little one playing with toes, clasping hands and kicking at the doppler. Very active, no doubt about that.

My heart was settled when we clearly saw the placenta placed in a good spot, the tech also seemed to look at the heart for a bit. After a few minutes I asked her, "I know you can not tell us a thing(they make that clear), but what if you saw something odd, would you encourage us to get a diagnostic ultrasound?" She said "No, I'd call your midwife today, tell her what I saw and my concerns and get things rolling." Oh that made me feel good! She does *look* and in a *way* it is diagnostic.

We had Pastor L., his wife, who is due a week ahead of me with a little girl, and his sweet family over for dinner tonight. It was soOOoo fun to sit down after dinner, as we had promised the children, and make the announcement with friends. We all watched the DVD together then after about 5 minutes there appeared an arrow on the screen and the words being typed at the bottom of the picture....

......"I T ' S   A   G I R L !!!"

The girls high-fived each other, a tie maker, back to even numbers, four daughters, four sons, and my sweet little baby boy Elijah stays just that, my sweet little baby boy. ;)

Simple Homemade Lotion Bar

Jessica and I went to the store to shop shoes, when at the counter there was a cute pretty little tin with a lotion bar in it sitting there batting it’s eyes at me. It looked new, not totally smothered with OP germs, so I indulged. OooOOooh, it smelled heavenly and felt the same on my skin. I wanted some. It was so expensive. I wanted some. It was so expensive, I looked at Jess…I just couldn’t do it. I flipped over the expensive chic lotion bar made with all-organic ingredients and copied the ingredients down in my head. The first four ingredients were oil, beeswax, butter and oil. Not exactly Einstein’s brainchild.

I came home and decided to wing it …

I eyeballed >1/4 C of beeswax…

  

1/4 C of organic coconut oil…

3/4 teaspoon organic fake vanilla EO scented oil…

4 drops grapeseed oil as preservative (optional)

 

Melted it all in a double boiler…

    

Poured said mixture in environmentally friendly recycled yogurt cup and…

Tada! Less than an hour after coming home I have my very own hand lotion bar! It smells dreeeeamy and my dog keeps wanting to lick my hands. Ewe, ewe, ewe.

My daughters looooove it! Isn’t she beautiful?! I can’t believe how old my little Emma looks here!  All lotion bars feel a little greasy, as does mine at first, adding shea butter would help. After 2 minutes my hands were dry to where I could write with a pen, not bad. The moisturized(not greasy) feeling lasted for a couple hours if I stayed out of the dishwater.

Jessie loves it for her elbows and knees, Emma uses it on her hands and Gracie and Elijah on their chubby legs and arms after their bathes.

Free PDF download – Randy Alcorn

Free PDF download

Randy Alcorn says in his booklet Does The Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?

“…I heard someone suggest that birth control pills can cause abortions. 

This was brand new to me – in all my years as a pastor and a ProLifer, I had never heard it before. I was immediately skeptical.

My vested interests were strong in that Nanci and I used the Pill in the early years of our marriage, as did many of our prolife friends. Why not? We believed it simply prevented conception. We never suspected it had any potential for abortion. No one told us this was even a possibility. I confess I never read the fine print of the Pill’s package insert, nor am I sure I would have understood it even if I had….”

Oology

I wish I had more time to write on egg formation, it is soooo fascinating! Alas, I have but a few minutes to post. Lucky you.

 

Yolks develop in a chicken days ahead of time and you can actually pull out a string of eggs in different stages of development, but I had never seen it. Our meat birds haven’t reached maturity when we kill them and we usually do not butcher our layers as they are so scrawny. 

These yolks were pulled out of our neighbor’s chicken that was attacked by a dog this morning(Yes, Kristy, one of yours. The water treatment guy brought his dog to work with him, the dog jumped out and immediately took down the chicken) and Paul’s Dad offered to take it home and butcher it up for Mr. C…gross, I know. You can see in the pictures what he found inside the hen along with a lot more yolks in line with these. Here are 6 days worth of eggs. The day before the egg is laid, it gets fertilized, well ours do because we have a roo, and the night before it is laid, the egg gets it’s shell put on and as soon as it starts to harden the chickens lays it, blunt end first, in the morning.   

Our goofy birds have forgotten to put shells on their eggs before and there sits an egg, only in the membrane! Quite odd.

Below is a picture my friend Kim sent this morning.

 

I feel sorry for that poor thing.

Surprisingly there was only one yolk in this egg, but it did have an egg in an egg. If you look closely there are two egg shells, one inside of the other.

We also had a four yolker about 13 yrs ago. It was a huuuge egg and the chicken died, poor thing.

There you have it folks, a bunch of worthless chicken facts to crowd out that worthwhile knowledge in your brain.

Wordless Wednesday