My dad took this picture this past weekend when we were visiting them.

Karen, thanks for reminding me that I haven’t posted pictures in a while!

I had just taken clothes out of the dryer, and had set the laundry basket down in the living room. Little man decided it was a good place to lay to watch Veggie Tales.

We used this picture to make place markers for Thanksgiving Day. We made traced around Little man’s hand and let him color the page, then we drew eyes and beak on the thumb to make it into a turkey. Then we glued the cut-out turkey to a folded piece of paper so it would stand up. We slipped this picture inside it.

Little man wanted me to take some pictures with me in them with him. This is my favorite.

Stephanie asked me if I have a recipe for a smoothie that doesn’t use yogurt. Well, no, I don’t have one, but. . .

HillbillyHousewife.com sure does. Well, kinda. She has a really yummy (and cheap!) recipe for Magic Milk Shakes that I used the last time I tried to make a smoothie. I took the recipe for the shakes, and left out the cocoa powder and put in strawberries instead. It tasted quite good!

If you do decide to try it, just don’t make your smoothie the way I did, ok? If you do, I want to see pictures!

Just wanted to say a big Thank You to all of you who have been so encouraging with this weight loss. You’ve all been a big encouragement.

Lora, the weight loss started some time in August, when we were living with our friends. They eat far healthier than we did, so just living with them helped. They didn’t do all the cooking (we split it half and half), but it sure is hard to fix something deep-fried for dinner when their usual is baked, stir-fried, or grilled. Everything we ate before that wasn’t deep-fried, but we did cook a lot less healthy than we do now.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family, and my mom was so accommodating with food. Everything was as low-carb and sugar-free as possible. It was wonderful. While we were there, somehow I managed to maintain my weight, which was a big concern of mine. It can be done.

Kayla – I’m not too sure about the before and after pictures. Both pictures are ones that others have taken, and they haven’t sent them to me yet (yes, I’ve asked). There are plenty that I have that would work for before pictures, but I don’t have any recent after photos. My dad took some family pictures for us this weekend, but he hasn’t had a chance to email them to me yet. Once I get them, we’ll see. I’m not done losing weight – I still have a ways to go to meet my goal weight – so I had thought of waiting until I’m done to show pictures then. We’ll see.

Apple Bread

1/2 cup butter or oleo
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 Tbsp sour milk
2 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups peeled diced apples

Topping:
2 Tbsp soft butter
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar, add rest of ingredients. Mix well. Put batter in a greased 9×5 loaf pan. Sprinkle on topping, and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

At the beginning of the year, I made a commitment to reading my Bible through in a year’s time. For the first part of the year, I made really good progress.

Then, with all of our moves, and living with another family for a month, I got behind somewhat. I’ve been trying to catch up but am not as far as I’d like to be to finish by the end of the year.

My solution was to go to Google and to look up various reading plans to see if I could find one that might give me an indication of how much I needed to read each day to be able to finish by the end of the year. One website I found intrigued me. It listed the daily requirements to read the Bible through in a year, 6 months, 4 months, 3 months, 2 months, and even the number of pages required to read the Bible through in 1 month.

That was so motivating for me. It was so neat to see how it breaks down to read the Bible through in shorter and shorter periods of time. It’s also convicting to me to see that reading just 20 pages a day will let you read through the Bible in 90 days. How come I can sit down with other books and read them cover to cover in a couple of hours, yet reading just 20 pages a day of my Bible seems like such a large task?

This is something I will be praying about. I’d like to set a personal goal for myself to read the Bible through in a shorter period of time than I’ve done before. . .

How to Read your Bible is the website that I found. I can’t guarantee the content of the rest of the site; use discretion as you usually would when reading a website you’re not familiar with.

For many years I’ve been told how we are to memorize Scripture. I’ve attempted to do so, but yesterday something happened to really motivate me to memorize more.

I was upset about something and was praying that the Lord would comfort me and quiet my spirit. While I was still praying, verses started to cross my mind. I didn’t remember the reference, so I had to look it up.

Psalm 121
A Song of degrees.

1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is they keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

What a blessing it was to be reminded of these verses. I just love how the Lord used these verses to remind me that He will take care of me. There was one thing that surprised me though – I don’t remember actually memorizing that passage. Not that I didn’t – I just don’t remember.

It makes me want to memorize more.

What a surprise I had tonight! We spent the evening with another family from church. It was a real blessing. While we were there, I asked to use their scale, since it has been three weeks since I weighed myself last.

Wow! I’ve met my first short-term goal! Thirty pounds – gone. I chose the goal not for the goal of thirty pounds gone, but for the actual number itself. It was a surprise to see that number on the scale, when I haven’t seen it in years.

As far as size is concerned, I’ve lost twelve inches so far, and two dress sizes. I can wear the next size farther down some, but not consistently, so I’m not counting that one yet.

In the past, I’ve never been able to lose weight easily. I had heard that a low-carb diet was better for insulin resistance, but had never tried it. Now, if I eat too many carbs, I feel it right away. The chili supper a few weeks ago was a “cheat night,” but I felt so crummy later that night that I decided it just wasn’t worth it. Next time I’ll just have a bite or two of those favorite foods, instead of eating a full serving like that night.

Really though, all the credit needs to go to the Lord. If it weren’t for Him working it out for me to end up with my new doctor, living a healthier lifestyle like this may never have happened.

It is also a blessing to me to know that my son will grow up to think that healthy eating and exercise are normal. He goes with me to the garage sometimes, and wants to walk on the treadmill with me (don’t worry – I don’t let him play on it). Even his eating habits are really improving. He loves oatmeal and apples and vegetables. The other night, I made a chicken, artichoke, and cheese bake, and instead of eating the chicken or the cheese out of it, he was picking out the pieces of artichoke out and eating them first! Yes, my son is learning early and that really pleases me.

Wednesday night after church we had the funniest thing happen with Little man and the pastor’s son. We joke that the two are double trouble. Those two boys are best buddies – and it is not uncommon to find them causing trouble somewhere. Pastor and his wife had brought cupcakes for their daughter’s birthday, and after everybody had one after church, they brought the remainder upstairs and put them in the pastor’s office.

Stephen and I were just standing around talking when we realized that Little man was nowhere to be seen. Stephen looked in the office, and from the sanctuary we could hear him saying, “Oh boys!”

They had found the cupcakes and had eaten the frosting off all but two of them. Stephen came out of the office with two 2-year-old boys in tow. They were covered in pink frosting. Little man even walked out shoving another cupcake in his mouth. . .while leaving a trail of cupcake crumbs and pink frosting the whole way.

Little man watched wide-eyed as Pastor scolded his son. Right as he was telling him that the cupcakes were no-no’s, he looked right at Pastor and said, “Please?” I guess he wanted another cupcake.

You know, if I had just remembered the night we found them stomping popcorn into the floor, and then trying to eat it. . .I might not have been quite as surprised. . .

We found out right away what was wrong with our van. Somebody was kind enough to pull out the spark plug wires and the coil. We have no idea who could have done it. Welcome to living in town, huh? We had been parking it in our driveway instead of in the garage, but you’d better believe it’s parked in the locked garage now.

Our mechanic told us that had he known that was the problem, he would have driven out here to our house and fixed it for free. As it is, he didn’t charge us. We do have to pay the towing bill, but here’s an example of God’s provision – that money we were given this week – the towing bill came out to just $5 more than we had in cash. What a blessing.