Deal of the week at St.Vinnies

*one man's double breasted suit to be converted into a coat with tails for a steampunklet costume
*one pair of mens dress shoes for speech competition

*one red blouse with long sleeves and ruffles for steampunklet costume

*2 cami's for modesty

*one beading loom for fun

*one red chinese top for my girl

*one yellow t-shirt for the one girl in my house who can wear yellow

*one 4x4 deep red table cloth with gold trim and tassels for the steampunklets new room

*one red silk queen size top sheet for lining for the sherlock holmes coat in the making

*12 yards of gold braiding for the steampunklets new room

*large buralpy but nicer type curtain to block light in the food storage room

*one yard pink flower flannel for daughters new business

*4 yds of goldenish 60"vinyl for a washable table cloth (thanks for the idea Missy)

Grand total

$17.43

WHAT A DEAL!!!!!

A trip to the ER

Sometimes the internet isn't such a good thing for me. I love being able to have friends and even relationships with family and friends on facebook. In fact, I know my cousins more now because of facebook than I did since we were all kids. Being far away from friends we had while in the military makes the internet so vital to keeping up with them. And blogging! Well how did I ever learn anything new or have a plethora of recipes right at my fingertips or get advice on the many facets of my life before blogging? Okay some of that part is tongue in cheek, but I really do enjoy seeing how other people do things.

But then there is this other thing. The thing that happens when one of my dear family gets sick. The thing that keeps me up for hours researching. The thing that sets me off into a panic. WebMD. Yup, I am a closet hypocondriac. And so when my sweet Beary wakes up in the middle of the night writhing in pain(well not that bad, but still), and crying out for me, I go into panic mode. After comforting her and getting her back to sleep, onto the internet I go. SHE HAS AN APPENDICITIS!!! Well, that is what I convince myself of. Never mind that she only has one symptom. Stay, calm, wake up my sweetheart who is my saving grace. "Is she asleep now? Does she have a fever? Lets just wait til morning then." Okay, so I go to bed at about 2 AM and lie there listening. Is she snoring or crying in her sleep, is she turning over or thrashing, do I wake her up and ask how she feels or just let her get all the sleep she can before they roll her into surgery? Yup, I'm nuts. So then mom in law calls at 430AM and needs to be talked into going to dialysis. I ended up having to take her in her car so no coming home. For 4 hours, I sit looking at my phone, just waiting for my oldest to call and tell me my sweet Beary has a fever of 105 and is vomiting. And my battery is low from talking mom in law into going so I don't dare keep calling, cuz what if, just when her appendix bursts, my phone totally runs out of battery and the hospital can't get a hold of me to tell me the ambulance just got there? Yup, nuts. And of course this had to be the day she needs more Tylenol. Could she have told me that while we were in the hospital with the little store that sells Tylenol? NOOOOO! So after a super super quick trip to Walgreens, home I fly, I mean drive at a responsible speed. And just as I pull in, I get a call. I don't even answer the phone, I run into the house to find my sweet Beary dead from a ruptured appendix, I mean, crying on the sofa with the slightest of fever. And the stupid doctors office puts me on hold, and my sweetheart is with patients and can't talk (me down) to me and give me his sage advice. Into the truck we go and off to the local children's hospital ER.

Where, after sitting for four hours! and xrays, find out she is ...wait for it... constipated up to her ears! Thank you God for making her just be full of poop! No surgery! But does that stop the insanity? I'm nuts. I now know all the reasons for constipation and how to cure it and the bad effects of and possible side effects of....

p.s. We answered nine different times, "What did you do to you foot?"

Why I Have Food Storage

(NOT MY FOOD STORAGE, but similar)
So there was this time, way back not so long ago, when I made a HUGE mistake in my checkbook. I read a one as a seven and spent away and well, yeah, big troubles. Luckily, I had money in other places to cover the money I had spent, but it made us pretty tight that pay period. Enter, Food Storage.
It is the banner I have been waving for about two years now. I think it is so important to have at least a years worth of food in storage. Now I don't have cases of MRE's sitting in my garage just in case the world goes bonkers. I don't have the money to spend on that type of food. (Although I do have some in my 72 hour emergency bag). I also don't have cans and cans of dehydrated food that would require tons of water to re-hydrate. We don't normally eat that kind of food anyway. What I have is a years worth of food that we normally eat put in storage or in the freezer.
Why? Well, let's just say that the time mentioned was not the first time I boo booed the check book. And there have been times in our married life that our income didn't match our outgo. And I have five kids still at home. And gas is getting outrageously high. And there is no such thing as job security. And when the unemployment rate is high it effects people who still have jobs that depend on other people coming in and getting elective medical procedures. And there was this one time when I wrecked the car. And the dollar doesn't stretch as far as it used to. And medical co pays are super high and I still have five kids at home. Well lets just say I have lots of reasons. Mainly, if for any reason, I don't have money in my pocket, I still want to be able to feed those sweet little cherubs of mine. For me it is a security issue. It makes me feel safer.
How? We are not rich (yet). I could not go to one of those websites that sell a years supply for one for $1200 on sale. Nope, not gonna happen. So I started by keeping track of what we eat in one month. Remarkably, not as big as a variety as I thought. We eat spaghetti at least once a week for example. So in my food storage, I have 52 weeks or so of spaghetti dinner fixings. Did I go and buy it all at once, again, nope. When I found pasta on sale, I bought as many extra as my budget would allow. I buy big cans of spaghetti sauce when they are on sale at our local restaurant sized food store. With our large family that works, but I still end up freezing left over sauce and using it next time. I buy meat in bulk and freeze it in sizes that I use. A little extra over a few months really adds up.
Now, I have a list of basic things we use all the time. I started with having a one month supply of everything, then I worked up to three months and then six and then a year. It has really helped my monthly budget. I can now shop only for those things that we need fresh or that are on sale and I need to back fill my food storage supplies.
Water is also pretty important to have. No, I don't have a row of water barrels lined up outside. (Not that my sweetheart wouldn't just love that) Mainly because of the expense. But when the water was turned off for a day when the water people were working on the main outside, boy did I miss it. Now we had water bottles for drinking during the day, and for a short time, you don't have to wash clothes or dishes, but flushing, yeah we like doing that ALL the time. Our low flow toilets still use a lot of water. On day two we filled the tubs for flushing water before they turned it off again. It made storing water a priority. Here in the PNW, it is fairly easy to leave a few storage containers out in the rain for the day and get enough water, but to me that just looks too red neck. So I started filling our empty milk jugs and putting them in the garage. That takes up a ton of space. So now for my birthday, I want water storage boxes. I know, romantic right. I got Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers for Chanukah. It made me very happy.
Don't forget things like oil and seasoning, vinegar and koolaide. We have allergy problems here, so I have to have eggless mayonnaise and gluten free things too. How about things like vitamins and shampoo and toothpaste? I can live without paper towels, but I have friends who can't. Guess what they should have. Yup, however much they need for a year. Medicine. I get as much as we can of prescription medicine as they will let me. Over the counter stuff I buy in the generic bottles and have plenty on hand. Band aides and Benadryl cream and lotion and deodorant are all important to think about too. And don't forget about toilet paper, I sure don't want to have to use corncobs and the sears catalog.
It isn't as hard or weird as it sounds. It is common sense to me. Before we buy what we want, we buy what we need. God has provided for me now to take care of my family in the future, like the ant. I don't want to put Him to the test when things are tough. Yeshua didn't, why should I?

ps. my kidos thought it was sweet that I called them cherubs ^.^

Phones

Remember, back in the day, when you called a place, not a person. You called Joe's house, or Joe's work or even Joe's mom's house. If he was there, you talked, if not, you assumed he was out and about. Shucks, I remember when there weren't even answering machines, let alone voice mail. Now, you call Joe. No matter where he is or what time it is or where you are, you just dial and there he is.

This is good and bad. It is good to be able to reach someone when there is an emergency and you really need to get a hold of Joe. But for me, for the most part it is bad. Now you can't look at a number and not answer the phone with out the caller knowing you just plain don't want to talk to them. It might be a bad time or you have a headache or maybe you just don't want to deal with that person's drama at the time, but they know that you know it's them. And that works both ways. If you call someone, and they don't answer, the first thing that goes through my head is, why don't they pick up, don't they love me anymore?

All to say, I forgot to put the ringer back up on my phone yesterday and missed a few calls. Sorry, I'll get back with you as soon as I can.

Sweet Potatoe Starch Noodles

Sometimes I have to say that having allergy ridden kids in a major pain in the patootie. Not only do I have to read every label of everything we buy every time we buy it, (cuz the manufacturers are always changing formulas...gggrrr!) it is darn expensive! I just don't understand why wheat makes things less expensive. There are countries all over the world who don't use wheat as their main grain. Wait, there's a thought.

So after having this great revelation and a visiting a dear friend from Okinawa, we went to the Korean Market and we bought sweet potato starch noodles. Ingredients: sweet potato starch. That's it, no preservatives, no wheat to keep noodles separate, nothing else. And were they cheep! I bought a kilo of noodles for a little more than 2 bucks. Seriously, a kilo! And they taste so good. All of my kids and my sweetheart (who hates all things gluten free) like them.

It doesn't take much to make a meal. I use a handful to make stir fry. They are good in soup. Add a little salad dressing and chicken for a quick lunch.

But most of all they are fun. Yeah, the sanguine in me always makes an appearance, cuz if life isn't fun, find something else to do. These noodles are amazing in that they don't break. You can bend these suckers backwards and they don't break. And once they are cooked they are springy. You can throw them like a fly line and they bounce back. Not that I've done that ^.^ If you don't cut them after they are cooked, then you can slurp them for days. Now that is my idea of a great wheat, egg, nitrate free product.

p.s. Don't you just love my daughters great hand model pose!

Star Trek

Have I mentioned that we are science fiction geeks at our house. It is a lot of fun. And it always sparks interesting conversations. Sometimes deep philosophical ones, and sometimes silly what ifs. My children are very imaginative and surprisingly observant. They notice flaws in logic and will talk about how the creators world view has influenced their work. They like making props and costumes and movie adaptations of the books they've read and the movies they see. It is a good thing their mother is a pack rat and always has lots of materials for them to work with.
Our latest journey has been into the world of old school Star Trek. We have determined that Kirks favorite color is green. And that this must have been a super fun set to work on. And that special effects have come a llllllooooonnnnngggggggggg way.
Not wanting to copy story lines, my children have created their own ship. It is called the USS Dreambuilder. It's mission is to explore new worlds and no kissing everything, and no socialist message. (Their words, not mine. But I do agree with them.) They have Captain Elizabeth who is short, cute, and bossy. Kind of like Kirk ^.^ An engineer who yells at the captain a lot. She is Barbara and wears a red shirt. But she has a name so that is okay. Then there is the pilot Charles McCoy, the great great grandson of the famous Leonard McCoy. He too is bossy. Their are occasional guest appearances by a one legged navigator named Billy, who doesn't show up often because there are steps on the way to the ship that are hard to navigate with crutches.
They have created quite a few props. There are lots of badges, communicators and phasers that shoot potato pellets. There are lots of panels with buttons and switches and monitors. I could never describe these so I took a video.
You have to excuse the mess, it is a room under construction. At the end, I have to clarify, we don't have cable, the only thing my kids watch are things we choose to let them watch and when we choose. No mindless watching. And we don't have gaming systems and they are only allowed half an hour of computer time a day if they have finished all their school lessons and chores. So not very often ^.^ Things like this ship tend to be a distraction. But I'm okay with that.

ps. Did you see that lense flair? JJ Abrams would be so proud!