"Pick me! ohhhohh pick me pick me!"

Well, after getting so many suggestions for food storage ideas, i went to http://www.funwithfoodstorage.net/ and met jodie, julie and crystal , and shauntell. (my new best friends, even if they don't know it yet;)(don't worry annalie, you're still my mwbff!) I've especially fallen in love with crysal's ideas and addaptations of recipes that she uses everyday to incorperate her food storage. it seems that she uses at least 3 items, THREE items people, of food storage in almost every meal that she makes. in some recipes i think there were like 8? maybe it was 6 of 8, but anyways, she helps answer that question "now that i've got it, what do i do with it?". and NOOOOW, she's published a cookbook (a real life tangible thing that i can put in my cupboard and use even if my internet isn't working) to share all her tricks of the trade!

• She was recently given the task of making a home made whole wheat that is just like the store brands, you know, squishy and yummy, and passes her pb & j sandwich test. well, i've been trying my hand at some homemade breads... a little unsuccessfully btw, and thought, well if i try it and it's good, then she's GOT TO BE GOOD! and i'd like to announce that she passed with flying colors!
• now you may be asking yourselves, "why is she still posting about this food storage stuff???"
• (and why is she still using bullets to seperate her paragraphs?)

1. I'm posting about this because if i do.... i could win this cookbook for my very very very own!!!! she is giving 3 away randomly, and then 3 depending on how passionate they are about this. now, i've no luck on randomness, unless you count the random acts of "unkindness" that i seem to have all the luck in the universe for (oklahoma, a year of unluckness temporally, but blessed in friendships for sure!)and now here in alabama, problem after problem that always requires money (we will never, no never no never ever ever buy a house with a septic system again!) and so now we are seriously pinching pennies, which on a student loan income and a family of 5 is seriously near impossible to do, buying ANOTHER cookbook would be more of a christmas present really and sooooo, i'm hoping to show my "passion" for food storage in a very pathetic way of trying to win one of the three that she choooses. (please oh please oh please pick me!)

2. and i still can't format my posts. elizabeth, i NEED you.

seriously though, this network of sites is truly awesome, julie and jodi break food storage down in to simple steps to complete just a 3 month storage in little baby steps. and they make it really fun. crystal, like i said before makes it worth it by showing us how to actually use it, and i'm still trying to get the coupon lessons down that shauntell teaches. I have gotten so excited about food storage and the recipes from crytal have made it fun and exciting. i know you're thinking "just how "exciting" can food storage get?" since gas prices had jumped last year (and thankfully gone way down!) and now with current economic situations, i was trying to find something the i could do for our family; something little that wouldn't be overwhelming, but still make a difference. and these sites did all the hard prep work for us, and made just increadible, seriously!

• oh, and ps, crystal, in the words of donkey from shrek, "pick me,oooh pick me!"

I am only One Person

I saw this sign (not the one pictured above) last night on my way home from book club, it said:

• I am only one person, I cannot do everything, but I CAN do something.

I don't know about you, but i have been seriously disturbed by the way our government is running OUR country. I have also decided that i have no party. and am in no way attatched to one anymore! I am not pointing fingers saying because of Obama this, or it was Bush that started it, or if we could just get control of congress, or the house or the senate (whatever). This is just a never-ending game, and it hasn't just been in the last 4 months, or 8 years that this country has downslided. It's been for quite awhile. now i want to educate myself on the facts of what this country is really about, and what it has become and where it might be going. a friend pointed out this clip which was really insightful, but I would love to hear where everyone else is getting their information... what can YOU do? what SHOULD we do?

• oh, and please be curteous. the golden rule here people!

Free Easter CD

So this last weekend I was emailed an offer by http://www.deseretbook.com/ that if you order more than $5.oo online and then enter the code EasterCD in the promo code part of the checkout, you get this cd for FREE, the Stories of Jesus. I have it now! it is about 35 minutes long and uses (great) children's voices who sing about the Savior's life, from birth all the way to the ressurection. The tunes are catchy, and after not even 1 day, sb and tj are singing most of the songs on their own. I love the primary songs, but some of them can be quite annoying at times, i don't find that with this one. in fact there are a few that i could just sit and bawl my eyes out (i'm such a boob) and feel the spirit so strongly from. I so seriously encourage everyone to do this and add this cd to your collection. You SO won't regret it! i think that promo lasts until this saturday? i don't reallly know, but it's an easter promotion, sooooo, i would think that would make sense?

A Give Away!

Thanks To Shanda for recomending this website, http://www.foodstoragemadeasy.net/ ! I don't know about everyone else, but i am a HUGE checklist person (i flutter on flylady.net too!) but i love having things kinda spelled out for me, ESPECIALLY when it comes to food storage. Right now these gals have put together their checklists that they email out every 2 weeks (for free) and they have compiled them into an e-book to get them all at once. it will cost $17, but right now they are doing a giveaway to 10, TEN luck people! (i'm hoping to be one of them;)

• Regardless of their giveaway though, their website has GREAT links, ideas, and tons of tidbits of information! I strongly urge you to check it out! Thanks again Shanda!

I am so glad and excited about everyone's ideas... keep 'em coming!

What's there to eat?

So after this last general conference weekend, i'm really feeling the urgency of getting our family's food storage in order. i have a few friends that are specialists in their wards that send me information here and there, but i'm curious, what do you all do for your food storage and with your budgets???? where do you go? what do you buy? what do you make?

yeha, so here's what happened...

• okay, so i'm just warning you before reading this, some very squeamish things are going on... BEWARE! oh, and sorry about the bullets, i've tried all the suggestions to get the paragraphing and spacing... not happening.
• alright, so last i told you was that i had scheduled my d&c for monday morning. not a big deal. i was actually kinda stressing over the details of kid watching, and how to work it with brad's classes and yadda yadda yadda. but anyways i digress. well we got up on saturday morning to go to brad's french immersion weekend that we were invited to attend at camp mcdowell. well we left and had a really fun saturday with the kids and speaking francaise... and then early sunday morning i was having wierd dreams of having to go the bathroom and cramping so bad in my dreams, (well yeah, wierd dreams of getting to a bathroom but it was on a stage, then running to another bathroom but it was actually a desk in a classroom, then at a church building, but anyways)
• so i woke up in a pool of blood in the bed around 4:30 sunday morning. i jumped up and ran to the bathroom and (WARNING>>> SQUIRMY THINGS COMING) got on the toilet and there was just blood like all over and then it felt like i passed really hot jello about the size of my fist. i yelled for brad and had him call the dr. our poor phones... both beeping from low batteries, and both not really getting much service. mine was actually dead, so brad took kempton? maybe it was tj to the car to talk to the dr. i jumped in the shower and sat on the little bench they had and rinsed off. while i was doing that these clumps of blood just kept falling out. it was THE wierdest thing i have EVER experienced.
• i rinsed out my underwear and asked brad to hang them on the heater to dry, BECAAAAUUUSE, me, i, noel, who is ALWAYS, repeat ALWAYS over prepared with extra sets of clothes and underwear for everyone, just packed the bare minimum this time. it was a 24 hour trip. i figured brad and i would just shower at home so no biggie. i know, i just know that's why this happened... so i waited in the shower till those dried and till brad was just about done packing up the car. the dr had said we needed to get to the emergency room immediately...(we were about 1 1/2-2 hours away from the hospital. )
• after i got out of the shower i tried cleaning of the sheets and the mattress that i bled all over... in the two minutes i had done that i had already bled through the overnight pad i had on (you know the kind, always ultra thin with wings!) (side note... i think buying pads and tampons are completely to complicated now... kuddos to brad who usually gets it right if i tell hime the colors of the package to buy;) so then i'm like GARBAGE, and brad asked what was wrong, i told him and he suggested wearing one of tj's pull ups... (so is this why my 3 year old son is still not potty trained? for emergencies like this???)
• so with the help of james (another friend at the immersion weekend) (who was the only other person awake at that hour on sunday morning) we got off on our way to get to the hospital, me with my pad, pull up, jeans, and i was sitting on brad's red sweatshirt... perfect. not very far into the drive we realize that tj gets car sick in the very back of the van, hmmm, okay, you can just lay on the floor. just don't throw up. (i know we're parents of the year! please please please don't judge us...) also, so i'm having huge waves of cramps, painful cramps and then we just watched as the blood seeped through my jeans. and every time i coughed or sneezed another clot would lodge itself between me and my clothes... ugh, like i said, THE WEIRDEST THING EVER!
• we racked our heads on who to call to watch the kids while we went to do this thing, (thank you kim! and stephanie!) then we spent the rest of the car ride discussing the worst.... what if they have to take out my uterus to stop the bleeding...hmmm, that solves our birth control issues. and then brad asks if i'm ready to die...uhm, let me think on that a moment. uh , that's a BIG FAT NO! no way!
• then we get to the hospital and brad drops me off at the er. (he was going to go meet kim to pass over the kids in the kmart parking lot nearby). i was unaware of how dizzy i was until i actually stood up. i'm not really sure how, but i made it up the walk way to the er entrance. the security guard was on the phone when i walked in then looked at me. okay i want to take a little break here and say something, you know how when it's that time of the month, we (girls) all get worried about leaking...??? maybe a little here or there? that is like nothing compared to this. it was allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll over front and back. i wish i could have gotten a picture of the security guards face... he was like, uh, what happened? i wanted to say something like i was in a fight and got stabbed or something, but i'm not a witty on the spot kind of person. so i just mumble something of how i miscarried and i think i was hemorrhaging. he's all like, just hold on i'll get the nurses. they whisked me back to the same little room i was in the previous week and start tearing off my clothes... saying very sweetly too, it's alright, you're going to be alright....hmmm, that's why you're ripping my clothes off????
• okay. so they give me a little sheet and take some more blood and then brad gets back and the dr comes in and says ok, i'm just gonna do a pelvic exam and we'll go from there. so he gets his gloves on and and the nurse gets the clamp thing with a light on ready to well, you know, its what holds everything open down there so the dr can see if you're really bleeding or if you're just that really over paranoid pregnant lady that over exagerates everything. well, he pulls the sheet up and says, uh, we won't be needing that. there were like already a few clots just sitting on the table. then he feels (i know i know) inside to see how much is left. stops, looks at brad and said, we're going to need to do emergency surgery. some people will be in here to get you ready to go and we'll see you soon! alright then.
• so i get all ready to go and have the surgery and then, well this is what i'm told. i woke up from the surgery and asked for something for pain (i don't remember this at all) and then the nurse gave me some demoral. after that i started convulsing, she thought i was having a siezure and called the team of drs back in the room. apparently i did this for 40 minutes. (i DO remember the end of that 40 minutes) i was fighting to breath and my body was just thrashing, but i could hear them, they were asking me questions like noel, do you know where you are. YES i told them, and they asked me if i knew wny, and what day it was ? (well, i hardely ever know what day it really is, so i flunked that one) but i knew the month AND the year! (YEAH GO ME!) but then i felt really really calm. they gave me something (narcan?) to knock the demoral off the nerve receptors. well that worked, i felt like i had just had a huge aerobic work out.
• AND then i heard the nurse shout Shes' not breathing, NOT BREATHING! and i was thinking, what?! of course i'm breathing, i can hear you guys perfectly fine. what do you mean i'm not breathing. then i noticed i was feeling like super calm and still, then someone said something about code blue and then they put that mask thing on me to breath for me and it's a toss up between that feeling and the hot jello passing thing as far as which one was the most wierd. hmmm.
• so after about 1 1/2 the drs finally conclude that i am allergic to demoral, AND morphine and he decides i'm no longer to have narcotics. sad day.
• all the while, poor brad. the dr came and told him after the surgery that everything went well adn blah blah blah, and told him what room he could go to because they would bring me to that room shortly. well 1 1/2 after that annalie calls him to chat with me (of course;) and he fills her in on what's going on. and then notices it's been quite a while. finally i get to the room and updated him on my near death experience and then the dr re-confirms to him that i am NOT ever to have those medicines. ahhhh, so that is that, and now we're done. i got to go home a few hours later, and was light headed for a couple of days but now i'm good! we are all good. thanks everyone for your concern and thoughts and prayers... it was one heck of a weekend!