In my quiet time yesterday I read a verse that I’ve never noticed before. I know I’ve read it, but don’t remember noticing it until now.

But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left. And Benhadad fled, and came into the city, into an inner chamber.
1 Kings 20:30

A wall fell on twenty seven thousand men. I just had to stop when I read that. God was giving Israel the victory in that battle, but I imagine nobody ever dreamed that He would do it that way.

I don’t know how people who use laundromats do it and still stay on top of everything else! Wow. The boys and I went over to Stephen’s mom’s house on Tuesday to do some laundry, and went to a friend’s house yesterday (thanks, H!). I feel like we haven’t been home much this week. . .and it’s about time for me to go wash another 2-3 loads. Aaahhh!

Seriously though, I’m thankful for the warm weather and a clothesline – it makes it a lot easier to go wash clothes and then bring them home wet so that we can get more done around here.

I finally got in touch with my doctor’s office this week regarding my bloodwork. Everything came back normal. I was absolutely shocked! I asked her for the specific numbers because I just couldn’t believe the test came back normal. The nurse told me that sometimes weight loss is enough to reverse insulin resistance, and apparently that is true with me. I still have some post-baby weight to lose, but apparently I lost enough before the pregnancy to do what was needed.

They’re not putting me back on the metformin as there’s no need for it now. That seems so strange to say now, after being on it for so long.

So now I just need to keep this weight off. I wasn’t done losing weight when I became pregnant, even though I had lost right at 60 pounds already. As of right now, I still have about 30 pounds I’d like to lose.

The adventure begins again. . .

. . .throw the laundry into the tub, add some soap, take off your shoes if you’re wearing them, and step into the tub with bare feet. Stomp on the clothes. Or in our case, sheets and towels. Let the water out, add more water to rinse, and stomp again. Let the rinse water out, wring out the clothes (you may need to stomp on them again), and put them in the laundry basket.

Let your three-year-old help. Water will get everywhere. It will be fun. Really, it will. The stomping is a real stress-reliever. If you walk in circles in the tub, you will get dizzy. That’s not so fun. At least I didn’t think it was.

The next step is to hang the laundry on the line. Unless, of course, there are lowering gray clouds in the sky. If that’s the case, set the basket on your washing machine to wait until the clouds pass.

Life sure is fun around here.

My washer just started making a funny noise. I had just put a load in to wash, it filled up, and then started making a horrible noise instead of agitating like it should.

We had talked about using part of the stimulus payment to buy a new washer and dryer set. This set is 10 years old and is already dying. The dryer has been on the fritz ever since we moved back, but since we have a clothesline that’s easily dealt with. It dries, kind of. . .a full-sized load takes 3 times through the hour cycle. It’s nuts. But it works well enough to be able to use it when the weather isn’t conducive to line drying.

So now I’m going to take the baby bathtub and get all the wet clothes out of the washer. I’ll wash and rinse them in the tub and hang them to dry. . . .and I’m sure S will enjoy “playing” in the water with me, lol! C, thankfully, is asleep at the moment so hopefully I can get it mostly done.

This is not what I planned for today, but I am very thankful that the rain forecast for today has now been moved to tomorrow, and that it’s almost 80 outside already. The clothes should dry quickly.

I wanted to lose some weight – I’m gonna get my exercise today! HA!

The flowers in my yard are so pretty this year. Well, ok, they’re beautiful every year, but I’m really enjoying them. As usual.

This is the first year my tulips have bloomed. They were planted so close to our front walk that I dug them up and moved them. For two or three years, I considered digging them back up and tossing them. But this year they finally bloomed. There are only 3 blooms, but they’re still beautiful.

The detail of flowers always amazes me. I don’t normally do this, but you can click this first picture to view it full size. God’s attention to detail. . .wow.

Here’s the first iris that bloomed. There are TONS of buds out there, so I’m really looking forward to them all being in bloom.

The azalea bush is blooming too. It’s not a solid block of pink like it’s been in other years, but it’s still pretty. That reminds me – we planted a tiny azalea bush on the other corner of the house, so I should go see if it’s blooming yet. We actually planted four of them – all different colors – but only one survived. But this one is a big one. It’s planted as part of the hedge around our house.

At 4 am this morning we awakened to loud chirping from the living room. The first of our 15 chicks hatched! I’ve been taking pictures.

So far we have two out now, and two more working on their shells. It’s so neat to stand by the incubator and hear the peeping from inside the shells.

I’m hoping to post pictures later, when more of the chicks are out.

I got the BEST green peppers at Aldi this week. They were absolutely huge, sweet, and crunchy. Yum. They were cheap too. I chopped some up on Wednesday for our salads, and chopped extra so they’d be ready later. I’m so glad I did.

A big handful went into my scrambled eggs just now. Oh wow – the eggs were SO good. Then I put some of the eggs in one of the rolls that Stephen’s folks sent us, and I had an instant delicious breakfast sandwich. Then I dropped a bunch of eggs right on my skirt (which isn’t even an everyday skirt – I’m wearing a church skirt today because it’s more comfortable, lol!). Thankfully they didn’t leave a stain.

These peppers are so good that I saved some of the seeds. They might not grow, but it’s worth a try. They’re probably a hybrid of some sort, but we’re planning a big garden so it’s ok.

And you just can’t beat the farm fresh eggs either. . .between that and the peppers, my breakfast was FANTASTIC!

Wow, today was long. I am glad I get to stay home most of the day tomorrow!

The day started like it does every day – pumping (today the milk went straight into a bottle for the funeral), and then nursing C. I am loving nursing him, and it is going well.

Then I got a batch of rolls started. While they were rising, I made brownies, then baked the rolls. I used a box mix for the brownies, but made the rolls from scratch. That’s why I buy mixes like that at coupon sales. I didn’t even think about buying a thing of dinner rolls – maybe next time for the sake of busyness I’ll consider it though. Hopped in the shower, and fed C again. At that point, we needed to leave in an hour and I remembered I hadn’t made the slaw for the funeral dinner yet. Made slaw.

We got out the door at about 12:30. I was already tired, lol. The funeral was as good as a funeral could be. There was a clear salvation message preached. Lord willing, souls will be saved as a result. It was a two hour funeral – but really it didn’t seem that long.

After the funeral, we stopped at Stephen’s folks’ house for dinner, and then we headed right back out. Their church is having revival services this week so we went tonight. We finally left the church at 9pm. We attended that church shortly after we were married, and that is where Stephen pretty much grew up, so we had a lot of catching up to do with people since we don’t get to visit there very often.

Then when we came home, we let S play for a little bit. For an almost four-year-old, he did wonderfully sitting so much today.

Then Stephen made chocolate yogurt “milkshakes.” Or smoothies – not really too sure what they’d technically be called. They have homemade plain yogurt, some milk, some ice, cocoa powder, sweetener (I think Stephen used Splenda), and some vanilla. We topped them with some Reddi Whip. It was actually a great complement to the tanginess of the yogurt.

Our chicks are chirping too! We have 15 eggs in the incubator. 7 should hatch tomorrow and 8 on Saturday. Since we can hear chirping now though, we will probably have a chick or two by morning. It is the neatest sound. I’m hoping to get some pictures of the process. It is so cool.

Now I’m going to bed. It’s been a pretty good day, but long, and I’m tired. Tomorrow I have housework to do! Like getting the diapers off the line that I hung right before we left. For some reason, I was thinking I’d actually have time to get them off. . .like maybe between the funeral and revival. . .yeah right.

That’s ok. Hopefully the rain will hold off and they’ll still be dry when I go to get them off. I should probably make a point to go get them first thing. . .

Scratch that. Stephen just remembered the dipes on the line and went to go get them. I have the best husband! I was sure I mentioned them to him, but he says I didn’t. Heh. Oh well. Now I don’t have to worry about them getting wet!

Stephen called me on his way home from work today to tell me he was stopping by his mom’s house. He said that they had some leftover food from the school for us.

Did they ever.

When I mentioned the other day that when God gives you free food, you don’t complain about it, I meant it. Well, this time, God gave us the kind of food that had me jumping up and down with glee (seriously).

Bags of long rolls – the kind of rolls you would make sub sandwiches with and then cut them into 2-3 sandwiches. One bag has several long wheat rolls – each 18 inches long at least. Two more bags have hoagie-like rolls in them. Big, eight-inch rolls to make big sub sandwiches from. One of the bags has at least a dozen rolls in it. I’m not sure about the other bag. It went right into the freezer so I’m sure it’s equally full.

There was a TON of lunchmeat. One thing we discovered a long time ago is that lunchmeat freezes well. There were two packages of roast beef and a HUGE party-sized package of several different types of meat. I’ll divide that into smaller packages so we don’t have to thaw the entire thing to get to the meat later.

A big container of sliced cheese. I ate most of the Swiss cheese but there’s a good bit of American left.

There were several containers of flavored mustards. . . and a big bottle of Subway’s sweet onion sauce. Yum.

There was also an ice cream bucket mostly full of hamburger patties, and four hamburgers made up with cheese and buns.

Oh – and an entire ice cream bucket full of corn.

Most of the food will freeze well, and the food that won’t will go onto this week’s menu.

Not only that, but when I went to go pick up the babysitter and her sister (her sister comes once in a while), they brought me a couple bags of salad. I had just bought a head of iceberg lettuce, but this was Romaine and spinach. Someone had given them some salad that was about to expire, and they passed some along to us. We’ll eat it soon enough so spoiling won’t be an issue. After all, salad is on the menu for tomorrow night’s dinner.

I’ll do a bit of changing around to our menu plan for the week. We’ll eat a lot of produce this week (my frig is packed!) and I’ll put what I can onto next week’s menu.

How cool is that? God has provided a ton of food for us – again. I’m incredibly excited. What a great reminder that He cares about our needs AND our wants!