I don’t normally do many quizzes, but I thought this one was cute.

What kind of muffin are you?

You are a Prairie Muffin! You love God and you love your home, and you are determined to do it all Right. Have you read your manifesto yet? Do a google search for Prairie Muffin Manifesto, if you haven’t. Take this quiz!

I haven’t posted about the Prairie Muffin Manifesto before because although I’ve read through it in the past, it’s been a while and I do not wish to promote something that I’ve not researched first. I did take the results of the quiz as complimentary based on what I do know of the manifesto, though. :O)

Wow – the snow just keeps coming! It was coming down pretty good when I woke up this morning, and hasn’t really let up all day.

Our local news website states that we’re under a blizzard warning and that we’ve gotten over 14 inches of snow so far. Up to 18 inches is possible by morning. After living in the South for so many years, it has been many years since I’ve seen this much snow. When I took the dog out a moment ago, the drift in our front yard was thigh high. Thankfully, I do have a pair of boots, but I discovered they weren’t quite high enough when I almost fell off the step in our walkway. I knew it was there, but it was so covered in snow that I tripped. Oh well! :O)

I was hoping to see a good amount of snow before we left, but I surely did not expect this much!

It’s beautiful though. The time with the three (well, ok, four if you count the dog) of us shut in our house has been really nice.

So tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day plans are to stay holed up in the house as much as possible. . .no problem there. I’d like to take Little man out in the snow to play, but we’ll see what the temperatures are like. That, and if I can find something warmer to wear under my skirt! Well, I’d better clarify that. . . I have a prairie-style skirt that fits under my denim skirt for quite a bit of added warmth. It’s finding socks thick enough and long enough to wear with my boots. . .unless I borrow Stephen’s steel-toed boots and wear them. . .

Now there’s a mental picture!

I have this feeling that this is going to be a long week.

Stephen has the flu and the poor guy is absolutely miserable. It’s been going around church as well as his work, so it’s not a huge surprise that he’s gotten it. He just had me run to the store for some soda and saltines.

Hopefully Little man won’t get it, but it’s not the end of the world if he does. That’s why I bought lots of soda and two boxes of saltines.

Then my parents are supposed to come visit on Wednesday. Between the flu here and the winter storm watch they have out for the next couple of days. . .life is going to be interesting. They’re calling for up to a foot of snow. Yay, right?

I’m just praying that I don’t get it, or that if I do, it’ll be at a different time than my two guys. It is not fun around here when we are all sick at once!

This afternoon was spent packing up decorative things that we’ve had in the kitchen while we’ve been here. I figured I’d go ahead and pack them up so we could get another box or two done.

After that I started on the tub of newborn clothes. Stephen has asked that we get rid of most of the baby clothes, so we don’t have to move all those huge tubs back across the country. The boxes of all the other sizes have already been gone through, but not the box of newborn clothes, because it was piled under so many other boxes downstairs.

It was hard to imagine Little man so small. Those preemie clothes are so tiny! I know he really was that size, but now. . .it was a real trip down memory lane. A lot of the sleepers and gowns and things like that I did keep. Lord willing, we’ll be able to use it some day with another child, so we kept it. The rest was bagged up and posted on freecycle.

The other day I showed Little man the video we took while he spent his week in NICU. It was funny to watch him because he wanted to hold the baby. He informed me, “Baby crying, Mama.” It does amaze me how a little trip down memory lane can make me miss those baby days, though!

Yesterday Stephen and I went into town to go grocery shopping, and stopped to visit with some friends on our way. They have a scale, so I asked if I could weigh myself on it while we were there.

What a surprise! I have officially hit the 50 pound mark! The credit all goes to the Lord, because there is no way I could have done this on my own. I am absolutely amazed.

For a few weeks, I was starting to become convinced that I had stalled in the weight loss, but without having a scale of our own to double-check that, there was no way of knowing.

It has been quite the challenge with our diet though. I have plenty of ideas for what to eat, but I often limit those in an effort to keep the grocery bill as low as possible. The one thing eluding me the most is finding a good low- or no-carb “treat.” So many of my favorite “treat” foods are too high in carbs to eat more than very rarely anymore. By “treat” I don’t mean “reward” – just those little finishing touches that make meals special. Before going low-carb, that would have been things like cookies or a pretty cake to add to meals once a week or so.

One thing that has helped immensely with that has been hot tea. It’s been a lot of fun trying to find flavors that I love. Our local grocery store has discontinued the Stash tea brand, which is a real bummer because it’s my favorite brand. The nice thing about it though is that they’re selling the boxes for super-cheap, and when you combine that with the fact that I have coupons for the boxes, that makes me happy. Last week I got two boxes of Earl Grey (a new flavor for me – yummy!) for $.15 each. Nice. That definitely helps with the cravings!

It’s been fun to watch the progress with dress size and inches lost as well. Down four dress sizes so far, and a total of 21 inches gone. I’m liking being able to find my size at the thrift store so easily again – they didn’t have a whole lot of selection in the plus-size section.

What an adventure this has been! When I first started making the diet and exercise changes, I went in with the mindset that I needed to do it for health. If I lost weight, that’d just be an added bonus. This isn’t what I expected, but I’ll take it!

My friend Sunny started a new blog – go check it out! She is so creative, and posts pictures of her projects. I just love to see them! The fun thing is I go to church with her so I get to see some of her projects in person. . .which is way better. But you can go to her blog and see them. *grin*

Her blog is called The Red Nine.

We have had some major problems lately with our van. The radiator has been threatening for quite a while now to quit, and has been leaking fluid something awful. We were a bit concerned, so we limited driving it and waited for our tax return to be deposited into our account to actually pay to have it fixed.

Almost two weeks ago, a friend of Stephen’s approached him at work (one of the few Christians at the plant). He told him that God had laid it on his heart that he and his wife were to help us move in any way that they could. He told Stephen to take our van into the shop and to have it completely fixed and readied for our move, and that he and his wife would pay for it.

Wow.

Our mechanic called us Wednesday to tell us that our van was done. This morning when Stephen came home from work, he handed me a check from his friend. Our van has been paid for!

The mechanic had fun fixing the van. . .when he replaced one of the radiator hoses, the radiator itself couldn’t handle it and it blew, so he had to replace that too. He told me over the phone that the entire cooling system has pretty much been rebuilt now. Nice. One less thing to worry about!

Oh, and the dash lights are fixed again. No more driving down the road and turning a flashlight on to read the dial! (Yes, I know that’s not safe. . .but that’s what we were doing until we could get it into the shop again)

Isn’t God GOOD?????

In case you’ve tried to leave a comment recently and it hasn’t appeared, I’m sorry. I’m having a horrible time with spam comments and have been trying to make adjustments to eliminate them. I’ve tried to weed through them as best as I can, but if you’ve left a comment and it’s accidentally gotten deleted, I’m sorry.

WordPress has some spam plugins that you can install, but the ones I’ve got right now aren’t enough. . .

If I hadn’t heard Stephen telling him what to ask me, I would have had no idea what Little man’s dance was all about.

He came into the room and stood there on one foot, trying to balance while pulling his pants leg up and rubbing his calf.

“Sho-shoo me yeeg, Mama!”

He has extremely dry skin and wanted me to put lotion on his legs. Yep, definitely a good thing I already knew what he wanted!