Where's the beef?

Since my last post pertained to my love of pigs and therefore dislike for
pork, here some more of my meat preferences!

About a year ago I was browsing craigslist for furniture.  It's one of my
hobbies.  A side hobby of buying things off craigslist is looking at
hilariously misspelled posts and pinpointing weirdos by their ads.  I
thought I'd found a winner when (in the furniture section mind you) I saw an
ad for "Boxed Beef".  My mind went straight to potted meats and the like.
Blah!  So of course I clicked on it and I was pleasantly, no amazingly
surprised!  In this ad I found pictures of cows and a farm.  They were
selling, local, grass fed beef for $3 a pound!! 

I wrote them an email asking about a million questions and the nicest lady
in the world wrote me back.  I was sold.  About a week later we made our
first purchase, we met in a Starbucks parking lot and for $75 she filled my
trunk with beef!!  It was a nice mix of ground beef, steaks, ribs, roasts
and stew meat.  Crazy.  You can read more about it here.

We still order from Riley Farms regularly and now we order 50 lbs at a time
and share with another family.  25 lbs is not as much as you think.  We have
a side by side fridge and can fit all the meat on the bottom shelf/drawer.  If you're interested give them a call, they are the sweetest people ever and they will meet you anywhere in central AR!

This has also forced me to expand my kitchen abilities.  I got a recipe
(from Mrs. Judy) for ribs and they were amaaazing.  I grill a lot, although
I would still say that I'm not great at it.  sometimes the steaks come out
chewy.  The ground beef is great too, it is very lean, not much to drain
off.  It has a different flavor, maybe "gamey" is the word?  I'm not totally
sure what that means, but people say it a lot in reference to buffalo or
deer meat.  Hint of grass?  Anyway.  Today is beef day!  Live it up!

Happenings

To whom it may concern:

The weather is beautiful!  We have been enjoying the sunshine, fresh air and blooming flowers!  Lately on our walks, which don't happen as much when the weather is not this beautiful, Will has decided he is done with his stroller.  SO, we have to walk at the pace of someone who has an 11" inseam.  You can imagine.  I love every minute of it!  I love how he exclaims! every observation!

"White truck!"

"Leaf!"

"Doggie!"

And my personal favorite, "TRUCKBOOOOOAT!"  This is a truck, pulling a boat, and it actually sounds more like "guhk bow!" - ha.larious.

Other things have been going well at our house, normal stuff like:

John printing out enough coupons online to get 10 cans of tomatoes for free from Kroger. 

Me having it "together" enough to make shamrock cookies for St. Pattys.

Will deciding he hates his church shoes.  Good things his sneakers are brown, you can wear sneakers as dress shoes when you are two.

In other special events, we attended the Arkansas Angel's Pageant on Saturday and we amazed at the beautiful girls we saw!  The AA pageant is for girls with disabilities like cerebral palsy and spina bifida, we only stayed for the 6-9 year old category, but it was the sweetest thing! 

I probably got choked up about 10 times, not exaggerating, but I felt so blessed to be there!  I was so amazed at the strength of the families, of the mothers (oh, the amazing mothers!), who love, care for and rally around these Angels.  I feel blessed to be close friends with one of these contestants (who happened to be crowned "Most Bubbly Princess"!) and I truly admire her mother and all she gives to her family.  

I was glad Will was there with us, to cheer for these beauties, he was riveted (for the first 30 min...) by the music, the dresses and the atmosphere.  I don't want him to take his health for granted.  We are all God's children, and our bodies are just temporary vessels, but physical health is a blessing that I know I take for granted too often.  Someday we will all be made whole and perfect, won't that be a show of beauty!


Last random bit of info, I was totally turned on to a new lotion by a friend at a baby shower a couple weeks ago.  I have seen it before, bar lotion, that you rub on your skin.  Anyway, I think I am going to start making it in my home and see if there is a market to sell it here in town??  Check it out on this website, it's totally natural, only 3 ingredients.  More on that later when my supplies arrive... 

This concludes my random post. 

Confessions of a stay at home Mom.

Well first of all, I work part time.  I like to dip into both worlds.  Complain about how "unfriendly the workplace is to Mothers" while calling myself a SAHM, soaking up all the toddler time I can handle on my off days!  And honestly, if they were that bad I wouldn't have a job at all...

If you know me (at all) you know I can be a bit hard headed about the things I think are important in life.  I (personally) think you should teach your child to be a Christian and to love like Jesus loves.  But the more petty things actually get me more worked up, which is really not how it should be!

I hate Walmart.  They are the worst.  I work in the garment industry and I have developed very close relationships with the factory (sample room) workers that supply us overseas.  They are people.  I see their wedding pictures, their baby pictures, they send me hilarious Christmas cards, they have a place in my heart.  I've been dealing w/ the same people for almost 8 years (yikes...) so I have a respect for them.  When people insinuate that our products are made by Chinese kids, it offends me.  We have a team that visits each factory at least 2 times a year to verify that this is NOT the case.  Long story long, Walmart has long been known for exploiting the factories that serve them.  They monopolize them, force them to drop prices with the treat of pulling all their product out at once, and give them so little respect that it's heartbreaking.  Those are the people that end up using child labor.  When a factory is making so little on a product that they can barely afford to pay their workers and are then forced to take less, they have no choice but to close their doors or outsource the product.  You don't want them to outsource b/c who works cheaper than them?  Their kids. So I won't buy gas there, I won't shop sales, I don't respect them and I refuse to give them my money.  Most of the time.  I have gone there in the early mornings and late nights when nothing else is open to buy my child medicine.  And a toy.  And I feel horribly guilty about it!!  Ugh.  Mostly b/c I spend so much time guilt tripping other people...But, now you know.  I have actually set foot in a W store before.  Sometimes I even thing, "I bet they have that at Walmart" or "Walmart is so close..."  But I hated.every.minute.of.it.

My other take-a-stand soapbox?  Pork.  When I was in 9th grade my boyfriend's family got a pig.  The cutest thing you'd ever seen.  A teeny, tiny, one-hand size black pot bellied pig.  They were told it was a miniature.  I think they were going out of town or something?  For almost the whole summer...?  My memory is hazy.  But my sweet parents agreed to take in this pig for a couple of months and it was the best!  She took naps on the couch with us, played outside, was better than any dog or cat I had experienced.  So it goes without saying that I stopped eating pork about that time.  I mean, would you eat a dog or a cat?  And pigs are treated horribly in bulk farming areas...I think it was the next school year that I went completely vegetarian, but by the end of college I was back on meat.  But not pork.  I cannot ever shake the thought of that sweet little (then very big) pig cuddled up on the couch with me.  

Oh so the confession part??  Lately I've been really hungry for a BLT.  I haven't eaten one, but I want to.  It's not that I don't like bacon, I mean, I wouldn't buy turkey bacon if I didn't!  But a few weeks ago at a work party there was fruit, cheese, and little sausage slices..I couldn't resist.  They were right in front of me and they smelled so good!  So I ate one.  I wanted three.  And after I ate it I found out that it was a blend of turkey, pork and VENISON!  AHHHH!  Who Am I??

Whew.  I don't think I can confess anything else right now.  Oh, I ate 3 shamrock cookies at lunch.  Maybe I'll edit something else in later.

A very special day!

Tomorrow is a very special day for someone in our house, can you take a guess???  It's Winston's birthday!!

"Who, me?"

Yes, you!  Sweet boy!  Here's a little background on this guy...

When John started grad school, it was gruling.  He started in the summer time and would go 2 nights a week from 6-10 pm.  Then we would have church one night, I was teaching a kids class, and we both worked full time!  I was getting lonely so I decided we needed a dog.  I am not so impulsive that I would just go grab a dog, so I called our local humane society and started volunteering.

I would go out there once a week or so and just take dogs out to their park and play with them for a while, all the while scoping out the talent for my potential new best friend!  If you've ever spent any time with shelter dogs, you know that they tend to be shy, or spastic, or even aggressive.  It's not their fault, they just haven't been loved :(  But I brought my love and out I went with those dogs.  I went less in the winter, and started to actually get discouraged b/c I hadn't met that special someone yet...

And then one sunny afternoon I was sitting in a chair out in the park and a scrawny hound dog came over and set his chin in my lap.  It was literally the sweetest thing I had ever experienced!  He was a doll, slightly goofy, kind of shy, my kind of dog.  I asked about him and found out that he had been there for about a year!  I guess I'd just never seen him before.  I played with him for a while and started thinking of how I could convince John of his worthiness.

There was one blaring issue with this dog.  He had a pretty bad case of mange.  Not just regular-stinky-needs-a-bath-mange, serious demodectic hereditary mange.  We were assured that he would be treated, b/c he was practically recovered, and we would be given any meds needed to clear it up.  Great!  Sign me up!  We were told we could pick him up the following week...

Do you see how it looks like his paws are ginormous and his undercoat is kind of gray?  Well...we figured out that he does not have gray hair, his skin had turned black.  After this he even lost a large patch of hair on the top of his head exposing more black skin.  Oh and all 4 of his paws are extremely infected.  We still had no idea.  We just knew he smelled terrible!

We were referred to a very good vet and became REG.U.LARS.  When we would walk in it was a chorus of "William!!"  "Oh look at William"  "Here's that sweet dog!"  Oh yeah, and his name was William!  He went in to the vet every 3 weeks for a skin scrape, to see the amount of mites (yes, mites) living in his skin and I bathed him every 3 days in dawn dish soap followed by a medicated soap.  The days after his bath, John and I would hold him down and soak his paws, one at a time, in a solution to help his infection.  He got an oral syringe of Ivermex (cattle grade, super concentrated parasite killer) every morning and evening and antibiotic pills every night.  Which I had to pry his mouth open and shove down his throat.

And then we found out we were expecting!  We got William in late May and realized we were getting another family member in June...The medical issues continued the entire summer.  I even cried to the vet that I could not do this, I could not take care of this lump of hair!  How in the world could I take care of a child!  And I certainly couldn't take care of both at the same time!  Some one had to go.  She said she would take William if it came to that, she was so sweet and she really loved him...and so did I.  

Somehow, through a LOT of encouragement, and enough vet bills to build a Hilton in our veterinarian's backyard we got through it.  The appointment arrived that announce he no longer needed antibiotics.  Next we dropped the foot soaks.  Then the Ivermex.  OH HAPPY DAY!  I think it was winter.  We had a healthy dog, he is the sweetest dog I've ever met.  And he went along with the name changed when we announced to him one day that his name would now be Winston because the baby would be snagging up that family jewel. 

It was a wild ride, I wouldn't say "I wouldn't trade a minute of it", but I can say that I'd do it again in a heartbeat :) 

Happy Birthday Winston!    

And not to leave anyone out, but I have a special post for a 2 legged friend coming up who ALSO has a birthday tomorrow, here's a preview...