When You Find A Butterfly In Your Freezer.....

When you find a Butterfly in  your freezer....you know it's time to clean it out!  That was me yesterday.  Y'all are laughing, but I'm serious, as items fell out of my pushed and squished freezer, I pulled out a small zip bag with a perfectly frozen butterfly!  I only pray that the poor thing expired to butterfly heaven quickly!  

Life has been crazy lately and many mundane chores have been relegated to the Twelfth of Never.  But  yesterday was March 12 and it was time to get ahead and march into the mundane and get things done.  I decided to do what I like best first,which was to start with some cooking projects.  Cooking always forces me to clean!  

Breakfast can occasionally cause me to get off track if I'm cooking something special.  Since these days it's crucial for me to stay on track, I cooked all our breakfasts for the week!  I'll give you the recipes for: Egg McMuffins, Breakfast Burritos, Sausage Pancake Muffins and Chocolate Chip Muffins.  

With our chickens giving us almost a dozen eggs a day, I needed to use those eggs up.  So I cracked a dozen eggs and scrambled them well before pouring them into a 9x13 sprayed dish.  I sprinkled half a pound of sausage on top and baked it for 25 minutes at 350.  While they were baking, I toasted 12 english muffins and lightly buttered them.  When the eggs were baked and firm, I sliced them into 12 pieces.  For each sandwich you use a piece of egg, a slice of your favorite cheese and a muffin.  Wrap up and freeze.  They warm up beautifully and are a great quick breakfast.  I freeze all the individually wrapped sandwiches in a gallon zip bag.  That way you don't have loose sandwiches slipping and hiding all over your freezer! I got a version of the recipe from www.thefamilyhomestead.com.  She has many wonderful recipes!

I'm sure that you make your own breakfast burritos.  I used two different sized tortillas.  Some small and some medium. Since I cooked all the sausage at one time, all I had to do was add  half a pound of it to the dozen scrambled eggs and cook them.  When they were done, I put a bit in each tortilla, added some cheese and rolled them up.  I used wax paper to wrap them.  Again I put all of them in a gallon zip bag.  

I hate to waste milk.  We enjoy fresh farm milk and pay dearly for it.  In an endeavor to use some slightly sour milk, I made muffins.  I first read about Sausage Pancake Muffins at   www.HeavenlyHomemakers.com .  She has some of the best healthy recipes.  You can find the recipe for these muffins at her sight.  She takes unhealthy recipes and makes them not only healthy, but tasty!


When I still had milk left, I made chocolate chip muffins.  I have been using a recipe for so long, that I have no idea exactly what the original recipe was.  I use it as sort of an everything muffin recipe. 

Any Muffin Recipe:
2 cups flour of your choice (sometimes I add up to a cup of oats or the bottom of the box of cereal)
1/2 cup sugar of your choice
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
1 egg
1t vanilla
1 cup of milk (if you need more add more)
1/4-1/2 cup fat (oil, coconut oil, butter, etc.)

Then you add in your extras like: chocolate chips, raisins, blueberries, etc.  Think about the combinations you like.  If you like blueberry, then add some lemon zest and perhaps a little more sugar.  For really simple muffins, make them just plain and sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top before baking.  Sometimes these muffins are a little heavy,( especially if I forget to add baking powder!) but most of the time they are just fine!  Use your imagination and get creative, the kids will love you!  I usually make two dozen at a time.  They are great for hungry boy tummies in the afternoon!



After all the baking and packaging, the freezer still needed to be organized.  Organizing makes me feel so productive.  It makes me feel like the woman I really want to be when I grow  up!  That woman who knows where the extra batteries are.  Not like me who will dig around in a drawer to find one lonely battery and lick it to see if it's still good! You laugh, but without my husband, that's what would happen!

Organizing is a beautiful idea and invention, if only we could keep it going  year round!  I think it's like our time with the Lord.  When we are in His presence daily, we feel His presence.  We know that with Him we can do all things, we are confident and and content!  When we slip from our times with Him, everything gets messed up.  Nothing seems right on the inside and everything really does fall apart on the outside, because we are attempting to live without Him. 


I pray that this week, you would enjoy your time in the presence of the only one and true God, that is Jesus!  I pray that the Holy Spirit would lead you and guide you in His ways and His truths.  Blessings, as you endeavor to serve and love your family this week.  


Hilltop Blessings, 
Sheri
 

March 5, 2011 Ben is Twelve!

How did this baby boy grow so fast? He was our joy made perfect!

We dressed our little Ben Boy up in his great, great grandfather's christening gown.  He wasn't too happy about it and I was terrified the ancient fabric would rip!  Getting his pudgy hands through those little bitty sleeves was a feat to be mastered.  The rocking chair was purchased in about 1904 for his great, great Aunt Sally.  Both heirlooms have been passed down all these years.  I wore the dress and had the rocker in my room as a little girl!  With three boys and Katie, it's been put away!  Go figure!

We learned quickly that Ben loved books!  He is a reader to this day.  Often he is telling us some interesting fact that he has read.  Sometimes they are strange boy facts, but never the less, he loves to read!

I had to have just the right cake! I was terrified of actually making a birthday cake!  Boy how times have changed us!  His cake will be homemade today!  Everything had to be perfect on his first birthday!  It was for this silly mama!

He was and is my helper! If there is chocolate involved then he is definitely my  helper!

Ben was in Paul's brother's wedding. He thought he was getting married!  He was so confused and wondered how he was going to take care of the little flower girl!   Ben was told that if he stayed in place during the wedding, he would get the taped dollar bill off the floor where he was supposed to stand!  He didn't move a muscle!

I loved it when he was my my snaggletooth six year old!  Somehow it reminded me of that toothless little gummy faced baby!

You can only imagine the critters the boys have found in our woods!  This was a box turtle that we returned to it's rightful place!  The woods.....

Ben has been so amazingly gentle with Katie.  He could hardly wait to hold her.  One night after the boys had gone to bed, he came in and said: "I just want to hold her and feel how real she is"!  It meant something down deep to him to hold her.  She stole his heart right then and there!

He willing poses every Fourth of July for the "group" picture.  Not his favorite thing, but he does it for his mama!  I'm so blessed to have this young manchild for my son!  God did everything that I had hoped or dreamed when he gave me Benjamin Aaron Lorenz!  Truly he is our beloved son!  Happy Birthday Ben!  I love you!

I  have been blessed to have four wonderful children!  I can't imagine life without any of them.  When I sit and think about Ben's birth, it reminds me how my life changed in a moment!  How glad I am that God gave me the opportunity to be a mother!  At times I wondered if it would ever happen.  I'm so glad that motherhood was better than I could have ever hoped.  Praise Jesus, that God had me wait for Ben!  He was worth the wait!

Blessings from the Hilltop!
Sheri

It's Been Awhile....

It really  has been awhile since I posted last.  Chronic Neutropenia  is Katie's official diagnosis.  She is getting shots twice a week right now.  Yes I'm giving them to her here at home.....no I don't like it!!!  Monday's shot has been relegated to Daddy!  We are in the process of getting the right amount of meds.  Her numbers are still dangerously low, but you would never know it! 


God made this little lamb a fighter and she is doing great!  This week she was given  her "Beads of Courage" at the Oncology office.  Each bead stands for something that has been done to her.  The more yucky the treatment the cooler the bead!  She is getting quite the necklace.  It's so funny to see a little gal walking around telling people about her beads of courage.  I'm teaching her Joshua 1:9 .  She is strong and the Lord is with her!  I'm so glad!

These days have been a lot about just surviving through the emotional turmoil of this whole thing and then I look back and realize "WE ARE FINE".  We've been through a battle, but it's okay.  Yesterday we went to the Dr. for another blood test and her ANC (absolute neutrophil count) had dropped another 100 points!  She should be at about 1500 and instead she is 110! 

Isn't it amazing that she is doing so good with such a low count?!  I'm so thankful.  The Dr. is just shocked that she is so healthy!  He has started calling her little sicknesses "bothersome".  We are so thankful that they are not life-threatening.  Many children with numbers this low are in the hospital behind double locked doors! She still has some of the marker issues like bumps on her face and bottom.  She has some eye issues, but we have just about gotten that healed up too!  Isn't God good?

When I get down, I think about all the other families at Texas Oncology and know that they would give their eye teeth to trade diagnosis with us!  We don't have ports, or chemo, or little hats with big flowers on them to cover a sweet little bald head!  When you walk through those doors and see that, there is no reason not to be grateful for your life! 

It would be ridiculous to even blink at our situation, when you see all those other families.  And you know what?  They have a smile on their face and they are playing with their little ones and they are doing everything they can to survive!  That's walking with grace!  I so want to walk through this murky water season with grace.  I want Katie to not feel like she's the "sicky special child".  She's not a victim or invalid and I so don't want her to have that mentality.  It's hard not to, when we are giving her shots, giving her immune supplements, making sure she doesn't have another fever, etc....

I just continue to tell her we are so thankful that Jesus is healing her body, He is healing her bone marrow and He is making her white blood cells healthy.  I have begun to pray that her neutrohils would live and not die!!!  Katie's bone marrow biopsy showed that her neutrophils die at just about the time they would be mature.  They just don't quite make it.  Our God is bigger!  He has kept her and we continue to believe that she will be completely healed!

I say all this for several reasons.  One so that y'all know what's going on with our girl.  Two so that if there are bothersome issues in your life, look up, it could be worse!  We all have issues and trials, but God is there for to walk with us with His Grace and Mercy.  Blessings to you all and I hope that I can get back on to more regularly blogging.  There are still meals to be prepared, laundry to be taken care of, floors to be swept, school to be taught and lots and lots of  hugs and kisses mixed in!

 Life goes on and the sun still shines!
Blessings from the Hilltop!
Sheri