28 inches??

"Well the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire furnace is so delightful;
And since we've no place to go,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

Yes that song was actually playing on the radio tonight.

I'm sure most of you have heard, even if you don't live close to the east coast, about the snow storm that has hit us. It started snowing this morning at 8am and has continued all day and is supposed to continue all night and thru all day tomorrow. We are told to expect around 28 INCHES!!!! Okay, now that's a lot of snow anywhere you live, but ESPECIALLY in a place where highways are hilly and curvy, snow plows are scarce, and people use brooms to 'shovel'.

One thing I do have to say is that it is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS outside right now and I wish I could take a picture that would do it justice. It's dark out now but I snapped a couple a few mins ago.







We only have about 5 inches out there now, so it should be quite to scene when we wake up tomorrow! I'll keep you posted.

I'm so thankful that I went to town yesterday and did some successful shopping for the week! Since the storm was coming, everyone and their cousin was out 'stocking up' since they knew they'd probably be trapped in their house for awhile. I stopped at the farm to get some meat and eggs, another place to get some milk, and the grocery store for meals for the next week. (And Target to get the bare necessities like toilet paper...wouldn't wanna run out of that!)

For now I am going to enjoy having my husband home ALL weekend, without having to show up for work, (They called the whole weekend off), and relax knowing that I have a warm camper and lots of food to tide us over until we can get out again.

Stevia & Club Soda

Okay, before I post what I originally was just going to post about....I just hafta tell about the SNOW here!! Last post I said we got about 8 inches. Well, the other day, we got 5 MORE! So I took this pic out of our window.


Then we hear that tomorrow we will be getting a storm through here that they say will be comparable to the Dec 19th storm that brought 2 ft of snow! As of this morning they are estimating 12-18 inches OR MORE!!!! They said the "more" part is definitely likely. UGH!!! You've GOT to be kidding me!!! We can't GET AWAY FROM THIS STUFF!!!!

It is nice out today, sunny and mid 40s, so I'm getting ready to head to town to stock up because I think we will be snowed in for quite awhile!

Okay, back to the main post.....

So I had this dilemma....two actually...1)I really like drinking pop, but I hate all the ingredients in it! Corn syrup (and high fructose corn syrup) is one of the most harmful ingredients and it's in pretty much everything you can buy that's prepared or boxed (mercola.com is a good place to start if you want to learn more about HFCS) and 2)I know I need to drink more water than I do but I hate plain water.

So here's what I came up with!

For the pop thing....I knew that I liked pop because of the "bubbles" but didn't want to keep buying "natural" pop because even though it doesn't have an HFCS or artifical coloring in it, it still has LOTS of sugar. So how could I get some bubbles without drinking pop?? I bought some of this...

which is like the popular V-8 vegetable juice but it has fruit in it as well...with NO ADDED SUGAR! So it's basically veggie and fruit juice (no artifical colors either, or preservatives, etc). And I mixed it with some club soda which is just carbonated water (which I think is totally disgusting by itself!). And then I had a bubbly drink that has NO SUGAR and NO HFCS and NO artifical colors!!! Yippee!! Drinking a little of that every once in awhile completely took away my 'craving' for pop!

And about dilemma #2...I know adding lemon or cucumber to water makes it taste yummy too but I don't always have those on hand. So what did I do? I bought this....

okay, the pic quality isn't great so I'll tell you... It's a bottle of Liquid Stevia. What is that exactly?? Well, stevia is a NATURAL sweetner derived from the leaf of the stevia plant. That's it. Nothing added. Nothing taken away.

But you wanna hear the AWESOME part of stevia??? It doesn't affect blood sugar levels like sugars or sweetners do, it's ZERO calorie, it doesn't rot your teeth like sugar, and it's POTENT so a tiny goes a LONG way! What more could you ask for in a sweetner?!?

This is a very small bottle, only 2 oz and was about $12 BUT it will last FOREVER! It has a dropper on the top and I only add about 3 drops to a large glass of water to make it sweet and GREAT to drink! I also add it to tea, whipped cream, pretty much anything you want to sweeten! It does come in a solid form too if you want to use it in cooking/baking etc. but you need to read the directions because it uses WAY less than white refined sugar. (ex: I wanted to sweeten a big bowl of whipping cream for some fruit salad and I only used about 6-7 drops!)

So there ya have it! Add a little stevia to your water and you'll be drinking a cool, sweet drink that is oh so good for you and just oh so good in general! And add some club soda to some REAL fruit juice (not the stuff with sugar in it!) to get some FIZZ in your drink!

Snow

JUST when I post about it being in the 60s, hanging my clothes outside, and listening to the birds chirp, it SNOWS...A LOT!

We got about 8ish inches here the other day and the snow plows in VA are NOT like the snow plows in MN!! Stuff was closed and canceled BEFORE it even started to snow, in anticipation that it was possibly going to start! Crazy!!

And since we are in the mts up here, the roads are nothing but up and down and up and down and around and around, which doesn't mix too well with snow and not really knowing how to plow the snow!

We tried to stop at a friends house on Sunday to get some milk (yes! we found some!..but I'm sworn to secrecy as to where we get it! :) but 1) it took us 2 tries to get up and around a hill with our van and we barely made it...and 2) we couldn't pull in the driveway b/c of the snow so we decided to go back home!

Here are some pics of the snow. The kids loved it! And since we have no neighbors to our one side, we told the kids to stay over there and we just watched from the window! Worked for us!




Areilla watched from the couch :)


This was in the afternoon...it says about 5-1/2 but it continued to snow well in to the night, giving us about 7-8inches.


As you can see, it's dark and still snowing!


We are supposed to get 1-2 more inches tonight...yippee...

finally!

Finally! Bathroom pictures!

Here is from the kitchen looking up the stairs into the bathroom area. The sink is straight ahead (obviously!) and the toilet area is thru the door to the left.


To the right of the sink, you have the shower (yes, full of stuff :) and a floor to ceiling cupboard where we keep extra blankets and ALL of Nathan's clothes! (Our bedroom is in the background)


If ya open the bathroom door, this is what ya get! The toilet and a cupboard above where I keep my make-up, toilet cleaner, and chemicals for the black tank!


This is what you see on the other side of the bathroom...a cupboard above and a cupboard below with typical bathroom stuff in them...toilet paper, bandaids, etc.


Here is the view from our bedroom looking out. I closed the door going into the living room because it was a mess to show you how the door closes to the whole area if you need privacy...of course, unless your little kids come crawling up through the giganic gap in the bottom of the door!


Next...the kitchen!!

Main Bath

No, I didn't forget to give you a tour of the rest of our home...it's just been taking me awhile :)

One of my points of doing this tour was to give you an idea of 'how we make it work'...ya know...how we live with 6 people in a 300 something sq ft home! I didn't really explain our bedroom very well so I'll just go over that quickly and you can look back at the post to see the pics if you need to.

In the closet I have my clothes hanging up, my creative memories stuff on the floor and a storage unit with 3 drawers holding misc stuff (I moved one of the units that was in the pic on the dresser to the closet to make room for our copier/printer on our dresser). Above our closet I have my jeans, skirts and sweatshirts. In the cupboard above our washer/dryer I keep laundry soap, binders with paperwork, etc, a zipped bag with extra blankets, cleaning supplies, and a bin with mailing envelopes, notebook, etc in it. In the cupboards next to the tv, we have books in each one. In the 4 drawers in the dresser we have socks/underwear in top drawers, Nathan's t-shirts in one bottom one and my tank tops in the other. And then under our bed is mostly my sewing stuff...machine, fabric, etc.

And I've tried twice now to load the bathroom pics and it isn't working...so I guess you'll hafta wait til next time to see! I'll try later today...

Before the Store

I decided we should go to the store today to get groceries, rather than waiting until Nathan got home since we like our family time.

Here's how getting ready went....

AFTER breakfast, decide to go to the store. Take Ariella's chair off table so table can come down to make bed. Hang blanket from wall with tacks. Build a cave. Finish putting dishes into sink. Tell Caedmon and Brayan to get off Ariella. Fix the cave. Decide to throw supper in crock. Cut up veggies. Fix cave again. Take garbage out. Tell Brayan not to play swords with the table legs. Finish with supper in crock. Tell kids to get their socks on. Tell Tiernan good job. Help Caedmon get socks on. Help Brayan get socks on. Ask Brayan to get Ariella's socks. Thanks Brayan but your socks are too big. Get Ariella's socks myself. Get Ariella dressed. Put Ariella's hair in pony. Get pants on Brayan. Change into my jeans. Brush my teeth. Brush Tiernan's teeth, brush Caedmon's teeth, brush Brayan's teeth, brush Ariella's teeth...no, wait...she doesn't have any teeth! Tell boys to pick up toys before we leave. Put makeup on...scratch that..go without..don't know anyone anyway! Trip over toys that were supposed to be picked up. Ask if anyone has to go potty. Caedmon goes. Brayan goes. Pull all 7 trucks out of Brayan's pockets so he can sit down. Explain why they need to stay home. Look in mirror. Decide to put earrings in so it doesn't look like I just rolled out of bed. Tell Brayan to quit wrestling with Ariella. Go outside to start the van. Listen to kids cry as I am outside. Come in and decide it's too cold out. Change shirt. Tell kids to quit playing with the heater, again. Tell kids to find their shoes. Put Caedmon's shoes on. Put Brayan's shoes on. Put Ariella's shoes on. Turn lights off. Grab diaper bag. Tell kids to quit playing with the door. Grab Ariella's blanket. Grab Ariella's nuk. Tell kids to go directly to van. Open door. Go to van. Put Ariella in. Tell Tiernan to buckle. Buckle Caedmon. Take 7 trucks out of Brayan's pants, again. Buckle Brayan. Get into van. Hope to come back in one piece!

Daddy's Boots

Those are pretty big boots to fill, Brayan...


probably won't be long before he can actually fit into those boots...