Just a Little Deeper

 Just a beginning note...this picture has noting to do with this post...but one of these cute girls was insistent...

I am going to just come out and admit it......I didn't even make it 24 hours before I had bent (okay...broken) one of my goals for shopping and eating local, but I had good reasons.....

I was serving just beans last night...and I had already fed the husband oatmeal for breakfast...and now I was going to be serving him meatless tostadas..so I bought avocados....

Yes, I know avocados are good for us...and I could eat a whole one with just salt and pepper....

but they are neither in season or local.....

but it was the lesser of two evils (not really evil...until you have to listen to everyone complain about your dinner, yall know what I mean, after you have worked so hard)

.....Hear him complain......or give him something more tasty.....

and props for him...he didn't complain......but maybe it was the fresh lemonade that the girls made...sunshine is a glass!

SO....I worked even harder today to try and meet some of my goals.......

let's just say...it wasn't good.....but as Scarlett said....there is always tomorrow!

Instead of ruminating over my failures...I have been going through our 72 hour kits.....

again..not so good.....

let me paint a picture for you....

my six year old has size 2T pull ups in his pack...and the younger three.....don't even have packs....but hopefully by the end of this weekend, we will be well on our way to being prepared.

After all....we live in a earthquake prone area, a flood zone and just a month ago we watched our town ripped apart by 100 mph winds that left a wake of damage and our home without power for several hours.

This wind storm left us realizing that we needed to work a little harder in being prepared, not only or ourselves, but for our neighbors as well. Over the next three days as we started cleaning up on our street ad then through out the weekend as they cancelled church on Sunday so that we could extend service even further and help those that could not help themselves.


Storm Damage News

There were two take aways from this devastating storm.....1) We were prepared...but not as prepared as we need to be, and 2) the trees on the golf course seemed to take the worst hit.

Do you wanna know why? Well I will tell you why?

The trees o the golf courses do not have to work very hard to get water to their roots.  Their roots are surface dwellers, in my humble opinion.  Now many trees were lost on this storm and some seemed perfectly healthy with deep roots and all, and by the forceful power of the wind...they finally fell...but they held their ground for as long as they could.  Whereas the trees on the golf course wee the first to go....ad they took up all that was with them, whether it was grass roots, other trees, bushes...it all game up, roots and all.

I thought a lot about this through the weekend and then preceded to discuss it with my mckiddos....and we all came to the same conclusion....that we go through hard stuff to make us stronger.  That by having to sink our roots down deep in the and sometimes really look for water...aka....knowledge and the truth, and even sometimes going without water for a period of time and that really makes us stretch and look, we appreciate what we have so much more.

My kids got it! Until I reminded them a few days later and asked.....how deep do you want your roots? Not very deep at the moment....but I hope that through the coming years this story will burrow under their memories and they will be able to dig down deep and know that anything worth wanting or doing, takes something deep within ourselves.

So now I have to remember that myself, these things that are worth going the extra mile for, or that are hard and sometimes show our failings and shortcomings, like breaking a resolution less then 24 hours later...will take work and practice and searching....but it can be done and that after the storm (whatever the storm is and sometimes a mountain high pile of laundry can seem like that storm) you will still be standing and be even stronger.

So I will try a little harder the next day, sending my roots just a little deeper.

And to celebrate my roots...or rather my husbands....I leave you with a recipe from The Prairie Homestead Blog Marinated and Bacon wrapped venison.  It smells so good!! I didn't grow up hunting or eating venison, so this has been a learning curve for me, but as time goes on, I have realized that it is so much healthier for us and that I am excited to find wonderful recipes that even my kids will eat because even though they have grown up with it...obviously not enough!!  But they will, they will!!