Meat day!

Today we stocked our freezer FULL of good grass fed beef from a local farmer. I'm so excited about it! Today feels like Christmas. Here's how it worked. Our friend had the contact with the farmer. She knows how they care for their cows and what they feed them...all good and healthy things. We decided to share the cow 3 ways...I don't think a full cow would have even fit in our freezer! This will be plenty of meat. All three of us got together at my house this afternoon...kids and all! We divided all of the cuts based on type and then began putting them into three piles...well, large coolers. I just put our meat in the laundry room until I had time to get it out to the freezer. I'm so surprised at how much meat there was!! I'm really hoping this will last us all year. In fact I made a list of all the cuts we have and how many pounds of ground beef so that it will help me meal plan as the year goes along. Here's the run down of what I got: 38lbs of ground beef, 3 pot roasts, 2 Boneless cross rib roasts, 1 boneless rump roast, 1 Brisket, 1 tri tip, 3 sirloin tip steaks, 3 tenderized round steaks, 5 Ribeye steaks, 3 soup bones, 2 boneless stews, 5 tenderized steaks, 3 top sirloin steaks, 4 NY steaks Believe it or not, between the beef and my summer berries we are FULL in the freezer. Ahhh this makes me feel so good! I'm really getting more and more excited about eating food that is grown in my yard or by people I know. In many ways it makes me feel better about what I'm putting into my family. We've watched a lot of documentaries lately about food and the affects they can have on you and I've been reading some books about farming organically. All of these sources have certainly made me think twice, even three times about what I'm putting on our plates at home. It's a very long journey to eat fully off your own land, but I'm hoping someday we can get there. This is just a small start to that goal.

All by myself

I hear this all day long...."all by myself?" Charlotte is becoming more and more independent. And I'll admit it sure makes things both easier and harder all at the same time. Easier because it gives me more time to help out a more needier child - Olivia. Harder because it's not always a success to "do it all by myself." Charlotte enjoys getting things right on the first try. Don't we all! And sometimes she does! Well I realize I have not posted in a really LONG time...so here are a few tid bits of Forbes news...in random order and in random all togetherness... 1. My new favorite Pandora station is "Jazz Essentials"...grab a cup of coffee and turn this on...you will feel like you are at your own coffee shop 2. We bought grass fed beef! In our meager efforts to try to eat better we are making small simple changes to our daily diet...first change...grass fed beef. 3. We spent last week visiting with Carmen and Leo. They were here to take pictures of our cousin Rachel's wedding. What a great wedding it was too!! Such a fun evening. Pictures to come I'm sure. 4. I've joined MOPS....mothers of preschoolers. It's a group that gets together once a month to encourage each other in motherhood. Today was the first day and I really enjoyed it. I think I mostly enjoyed that both girls did really well in child care! I always worry about them in new situations. 5. Olivia is rolling over and scooting around. I am pretty sure she will be crawling at the end of the month. We started her on solid foods too. Although I don't know why they call them solid when I could eat them through a straw. 6. I have a big desire to get rid of all our living room furniture and start fresh with smaller furniture that actually fits in our living room. 7. We had a garage sale and got rid of 1/3 of what was in our garage. AHH!! I love to purge stuff!!! And while we were out there we decided to paint the inside of the garage and add shelves...so we did. 8. Charlotte is doing a VERY LOW KEY preschool at home with me. We are working on our letters (phonics), numbers, our names, and potty training. Here's hoping some of it soaks in! Any advice for teaching these things...mostly the letters would be greatly appreciated. Oh I'm sure I'm missing some big stuff...too tired to think...this Jazz essentials is putting me to sleep!