I have been thinking about and spending a lot of time and money on this topic the past few months. We are working to build up our food storage so that we have some when we need it (and we’ve needed it before like when Bo lost his job all those years ago). We’d do it even if we didn’t feel a pressing need to do so as the prophet has been telling us to my entire life. But I feel like it’s an urgent need anyhow and Bo’s even on board with it and you know he doesn’t really do things because Pres. Monson recommends them. I don’t feel like we’re extremest and we aren’t spending all our savings on our food storage or anything but we do budget and spend on it every month and the supply slowly grows. I do have a list of what we’ll need for 9 months of subsistence living and I’m working on my list for three months of normal type things to eat (that’s the daunting one to me). My Mom, Dad, Sister, In-laws they’re all thinking about food storage too so I thought maybe some of you are as well. Here’s the list of my favorite places to read about it, buy it and find motivation to do it.

This website is my favorite for finding tips on storing food, ideas on how to organize and what not.

There’s also tons of good information here and on provident living topics other than storing food. If you go to the family home storage link on the right you can find info. on the current church food storage offerings and a link that let’s you know the current prices. If you are not LDS you can still purchase and can food at the bishops storehouse you just need to find one local to you and phone them for details.

The foods from this site I LOVE especially the TVP for my friends out there that have a desire to eat some sort of meat substitute. It doesn’t store for 30 years but if it’s unopened it does store for several years which is good enough for a 3 month supply or even your long term supply if you can get it together and rotate it. I can’t say enough about the dehydrated beans either. They have saved supper more than once at this house!

This site is fabulous for long term food storage items and they have a great variety some of which I’d want to break open the day they arrived and have for a snack. They have good sales so if you are interested in the items on their site just subscribe to their email newsletter and wait till what you want goes on sale. There are other sites that have bulk long term storage items at a great price but the shipping is out of control so this place is nice because you can afford to buy it in smaller batches.

I haven’t shopped at this place but I intend to order bulk grain from there in the Fall with a group of ladies in town that does that anally. If you have a lot of friends that want to order food items then get together and order and you can get some really good prices. If you don’t then I’d pass as the shipping is really high for single orders and you don’t get the best price unless you place a big bulk order.

For food storage organization I love the products here. I wouldn’t buy my food here unless it was a super sale because the sale prices that I’ve seen are still more than the regular prices at places like honeyville. I have the 72″ harvest in my garage for short term storage items. I don’t have room for racks inside or I’d love to have all my #10 can on them as it’s so much easier to rotate that way. I got my rack on sale so if you have enough patience wait for one of those to roll around before ordering one for yourself. They’re kind of a pain to put together but not difficult and definitely worth the bother.

Ok, that’s probably enough for today. Now my Mom can look here for what she needs instead of getting me to email her links and I hope it can be helpful to others as well. Happy shopping!

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Today it’s official. Our ward is splitting and they finally announced that we’d learn the new boundaries and structure next Sunday. Now granted no one is really moving away or anything but it seems that when a ward splits that the relationships that are outside of boundaries don’t exist in the same way once the frequent interaction ends. We’ve only lived in town for about three months now but I feel like I’ve gotten to know a lot of the sister better and I’ll miss the frequent interaction.

Like I’ve said before one of the few constants in life appears to be change so let’s all toast to adjustments and change one more time.

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That’s a compliment in this house!

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Yesterday we had an adventure. It started to rain and then it open up and poured rain like it does in the SE on those hot incredibly humid afternoons in the summer. We had our presidency meeting at our house this week and so a friend was here with her children and they were basically stuck for an hour or more (not that we minded that). They have built a new arroyo up the road and it seems that it’s redirected the water away from it’s original path and down our street. I hope they do something to fix it and this isn’t what happens every time that it rains this summer!

Street on the side of our house.

flooded park.

post flood park

Tarantula that is now living under the ledge on our front porch and which I will not move because I hate touching tarantulas and am afraid that if I poke them they will jump at me even though I know that this is a totally irrational fear… I think that he is there because his home was flooded out. We also found a frog in our front yard after it flooded. Hmm, crazier things have happened I guess.

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yay chocorate

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See the bunny? This is the second rabbit that I have seen lounging around like this in the past week. I think that it’s great that rabbits have time to just lounge and watch us drive around like crazy people. Maybe that’s not what they are doing… maybe they are listening to birds or watching the sun chart it’s course through the sky. It really don’t know what they are doing but the lounging posture of this rabbit makes me feel that he’s just kicking back and enjoying him or herself.

I want to have some lounge time. Don’t get me wrong my busy life is good and it’s mostly busy because I choose to keep it full BUT after a week like this past one where there has bee something(s) that has to get done EVERY day I feel like I need a little lounge time. Because I am scheduling fiend I think that I’ll just schedule some lounge time sometime in the near future. Forget the laundry, just wear a robe or a swimsuit or whatever else is clean!

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While Bo and Aidan are safely tucked away cleaning themselves in the shower I thought I’d share our evening shower experience with you.

We had a 5 foot marble and glass surround shower put in the master bath. As you can imagine Aidan loves the glass walled room where he can play in the water so every time that someone mentions that they are going to take a shower he says “shower, shower” and starts tugging at his clothes. Tonight was no exception and while we were doing pre-shower things Aidan hopped right in sans water. He is able to lift the cover to the drain if he puts a little effort into it and does so frequently if we aren’t vigilant. He’s to date (that we know of) dropped a crayon down there and also tried fitting a tinker toys stick into the hole. Well tonight he found just the perfect thing in a ball that goes with his shape sorter toy. He took the cover off and dropped the ball down the shower drain. Being that it was hollow it just floated on the water in the pipe and it was the perfect size in that it fit but was completely snug to the sides of the pipe. If you know Bo and I you can picture us standing over the hole peering in with Aidan at our side wondering how we would get that ball out. We tried sucking through a pipe and lifting it out, no go. We tried double sided tape on a stick, no go (it was already wet). Bo went downstairs to get some tools to work on it with and while he was gone I had the brainstorm of using the plunger. I got it to come closer, closer, closer… SCORE, it bounced right out of the hole. I popped the cover on the drain and was so proud of myself I handed the ball to Aidan and told him to go and show his Daddy. He proudly marched out and showed him and while we were discussing the details of how I got it out Aidan ran ahead and pulled the drain cover off and popped the ball back down the drain. I heard it and ran to catch him and see him walking out of the toilet room with the plunger. Apparently it’s now a fun game for him. At this moment the ball is hidden and I am adding caulk drain cover close to my mental “to-do” list.

Adventure part two. The drain is covered, the ball is hid, Aidan in undressed and standing patiently in the shower waiting for the water to turn on and he pees on his foot. I am standing next to him and see from the look on his face that this is a total revelation to him as he doesn’t appear to recall ever peeing anywhere but his diaper before. Given that it’s warm he bends right down to play in it. This of course my cue to turn on the water.

I love parenting!

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It turns out that we didn’t need to agonize over a puppy name after all as her owner showed up at the vet this morning looking for her. She had been stolen from the owners back yard and she had been looking for her everywhere. It seems that it works out for everyone but Chullain. Puppy is getting fixed. We don’t have to spend all our money on puppy surgery. Chullain is bummed as he wanted a pet so a puppy might be in our future after all but I can just about guarantee you that it won’t be a great dane puppy and that we’ll find one that doesn’t need a hip replacement! I’m happy it’s all worked out for the best. Life is an adventure so just ride the wave.

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This is puppy as we haven’t thought of a name for her yet. She’s pretty much joined our family through some cruel twist of fate. She stays with us through sacrifice of vacation and leisure time but it was a sacrifice that everyone (yes, I mean everyone as the kids wanted to do this too) wanted to make given the alternative of putting her to sleep or giving up a little fun for ourselves. She is going to be Chullain’s dog as we have been promising him a pet since well before we left Kuwait and he asked for her.

Here is the story of puppy: Bo’s parents were here for a week which threw all things out of whack (such as house cleaning and what not). Soo, we decided to continue the bad eating trend get a pizza so that we could have more time to pick up and spend less cooking. Bo and Chullain went to get the pizzas and on the way home they drove up to puppy who had just been run over by a car (literally, there were tire marks on her bottom half). Bo opened the door to check her and she tried to pull her little self up enough to get into the car with him before he even got to her. I think that he and Chullain were both sold at that but they weren’t sure that she’d make it so they took her to the vet and she started to improve pretty rapidly. By the morning she was well enough to go to the regular vet to have her leg which was broken (or so we thought) set so they picked her up and she was happy to see them. They of course have now spent quite a bit of time with her and are pretty attached (as is easy to get when someone or some animal is needy). The vet takes x-rays and it turns out that her leg is broke but also that her hip has been knocked out of socket which is a much bigger deal. Now it’s really decision time because fixing this up isn’t a small thing but the vet shows us x-rays of a dog that he’s works with prior and gives us an honest break down of her mobility after surgery (he really was honest and up front about it all which was refreshing). We can afford this but it’s going to take sacrifice so we have a family meeting of sorts and determine that it’s still what we want to do. We couldn’t have if the vet wasn’t so wonderful about working with us at a discount (which he offered because we were willing to take in a stray and fix her up, anyhow) but since he was we could and we decided to. The kids were sad because they have been really looking forward to our beach week but with no prodding from us they both decided that they’d rather sacrifice that and help the puppy. The alternative was a course putting her down. So now are praying puppy does well with her surgery tomorrow and thinking of a name for her. She really is a miraculous little dog as we were pretty sure she’d die when they first picked her up and now she’s eating, drinking and wagging her tail. The vet called us this morning and told us she was friendly and so sweet.

From the response that I got from the few people that I talked to about this most people would have just been a little sad and had her put down. That’s o.k. if they can but Bo can’t and Chullain can’t and since we can save her we will. It’s the right decision for us so provided all goes well tomorrow we’ll be saying “welcome” to puppy soon. We had wanted to get a puppy for Ruca to keep her from degrading too much (she’s 7 now) so it’s all working out…

Ohh, and this too. She’s a 3-4 month old girl who appears to be primarily great dane. God willing let the adventure begin!

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Bo’s parents aka Mamaw and Papaw came to visit last Friday and were with us for a week. This is the first visit where Aidan really interacted with them and he had a great time. Chullain and Victoria jabbered away at them as much as possible the first day or two and we took in a few of the sites. It was a great way to start the summer and wonderful to catch up with them as we haven’t really visited with them both since we were in SC last June.

Old Mesilla was a fun place to visit and to shop. Papaw is a big history buff and loves things related to the Native American tribes so he found a few of the shops really interesting.

Victoria and Bo went around with his parents while they shopped and Aidan, Chullain and I played in the square. Victoria couldn’t pass up the rack of hats in one of the stores and had to give just a few of them a try.

You just have to have your picture with “Billy the Kid” when passing by the court house where he was tried (it’s now a lame-o shop but hey…)

We headed to our old stomping grounds at white sand missile range and wander around the missile exhibits as well as the museum. Both of these things were interesting to my in-laws as they haven’t been through either place before. The kids have been to both places quite a few times so I just spent time chasing them about but that was cool as it’s all family time.

A trip to White Sands National Monument is almost obligatory when someone comes to visit. The great part about this trip was that Papaw slid down the sand dune! The kids won’t be forgetting that one anytime soon and neither will he I suspect.

Just as Aidan was warming up to playing with his Papaw it was time for them to go home. I took this picture of them this morning before we went to the airport and it was just too cute to watch them play. Ronnie would show Aidan something new and Aidan would have to try it right out. Too much fun!

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