A week in review
By Heather Ledeboer | Category: The Journey of Motherhood
For the last week my husband has been in Mexico doing work to help some communities there. His parents graciously have been visiting in his absence and provided some much appriciated adult interaction as well as support and help with the kids and household duties (for instance, I have been very thankful that I have not had to haul in the firewood for our stove). Amazingly, I have been able to be productive despite Trent’s absence (largely and likely exclusively due to the fact that Trent’s parents have been here).
Organization:
-I have re-organized the panty and used my label writer (which was MIA for the last few years and recently rediscovered) to label my jars of dry goods and baking items.
Side notes on my pantry: If you look closely you will see a container of yellow flakes labeled “yeast” which is Nutritional Yeast and until just recently Ashlyn called “Beast” (which was so adorable I never thought to correct her). That stuff is a family favorite on pasta, potatoes, pop corn, rice, vegetables. . . and it is full of vitamin B and a complete protein. Keep your eye open for it in the bulk food section of your grocery store and try out a tad if you are feeling adventurous! Our family LOVES the flavor. Did I mention that Ashlyn will request a small mound of “Beast” on her plate so she can eat it straight up? To the left of the Yeast are Chia Seeds which are brand new to my pantry but I have found it easy to add them to fruit shakes, oatmeal and yoghurt just to name a few. Among many other benefits, they are a rich source of Omaga-3. They don’t have much flavor so it is more of an added texture. I have been told that they can also be soaked and apparently used in recipes to reduce the sugar but I haven’t experimented with this yet. I buy mine from Azure Standard (this is a fantastic place to buy whole food and organic items at a great price and have it delivered (with free shipping if your order is at least $50) to a local “drop point” for your area. Unfortunately, you can’t view their prices unless you create a free account but to give you a few examples: I just placed an order for a 20 pound box of pink lady organic apples for $20.40. I am also getting 25 pounds of Organic Hard Red Wheat (to grind into flour) for $10.50.
I was excited that in my organization I made enough room for a second row of my storage containers for my bulk baking goods (shown below) and am hoping to purchase a few more containers so I can eliminate the random bags and boxes on that shelf. To bad Costco doesn’t still carry them. . .
-I organized and cleaned out the toy closet, Hunters room and Ashlyn’s room.
Before:
After:
Food:
-I tried a few new recipes including homemade Angel Food cake
-Homemade vanilla pudding
-and of course we can’t forget the graham cracker victory!
The cake and pudding were both really easy but a little more on the time consuming end requiring a lot of mixing and/or stirring.
Writing:
-I worked tirelessly on my manuscript in the evenings with the goal of finishing up by the 15th of January so that I could enter it into the Women of Faith Writing Contest. I succeeded in my goal and submitted it on the 14th. I can’t even estimate how many hours has gone into that manuscript, nor can I express how good it feels to have it completed. I am sure I could still find errors and tweaks if I tried, but it is finally at a stage where I can confidently say, “Here, this is it, read it. You shouldn’t be distracted by errors in formatting or grammar.” Although the topic of my book (grief) may not be wide spread enough for a general audience to gain the win of the judges, having a deadline was really helpful in motivating me to finish it up and it felt amazingly good to press “send” to that email! I will find out the results of the contest on March 1. So now that I am not staying up until midnight to write, I feel totally freed up to do other things (like write this blog post at 12:31AM–not sure if that is progress or not 
)!
Ultrasound:
-I had my mid-pregnancy ultrasound. Everything is looking good with the baby (PRAISE GOD) and the gender has been identified. However, since my husband is away, the sex of the baby has been concealed within a sealed envelope and is currently known only to the ultrasound technician. Once Trent returns, we will all discover the exciting news! I would be lying if I said the envelope has not called out to me on occasion but I am a woman of self control and will not be persuaded by paper pulp to give in before he returns.
(I just realized I haven’t provided any “belly shots” of my pregnancy. This one below was taken on December 29th during my 15th week of pregnancy.)
It has been a busy week! Let me know if any of you want more details on the Angel Food Cake or Pudding. I took photos as I made them just in case I decided to blog about the process.
Heather Ledeboer
I am a Christian, wife, mom and the owner of Mom 4 Life. I have a passion for helping moms and encouraging them in their journey through motherhood. I invite you to journey along with me!
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You are a motivation! Thanks for sharing your life. Love the baby bump!
[Reply]
Heather, I love your blog and have made many purchases from your store. I just have to ask you, when do you put your feet up? I’m a mom of 2 little ones and 17 weeks pregnant with our 3rd and it just seems like fatigue often keeps me when accomplishing all I’d like to in a day. Just wondering how a mom of 3, with one the way, and her own business can do so much. Do you think you just require less sleep than most? Have you always been so productive? Hope you don’t mind the questions. I’d just would love some insight into how to stay motivated and find the strength to accomplish my goals. As a side note, I appreciate your faith and witness for Jesus. You model the Proverbs 31 woman. Thank you for your time and encouragement. God bless!
[Reply]
mom4life Reply:
January 17th, 2011 at 1:20 pm
@Lana, you are so cute. Sometimes I fear that I will give the wrong impression when I blog things like this. I am happy to answer your question. First of all, I am SUPER BLESSED because my husband works from home and is able to start working at 5:30AM which allows him to be done by 1:30PM so when my schedule is “normal” I spend the morning with the kids, taking my son to school, playing, reading, cleaning, cooking, etc. In the afternoon my husband takes all the kids and picks up Hunter from school. It is about an hour round trip so during this time I answer emails and do my “Mom 4 Life” work. I also have a few employees who add new products to the site, handle the customer questions that come in through the website, process the orders, etc. In the evening I am with the family. After the kids go to bed I have often been working on my manuscript but now that time will be freed up so I will be using it to read, cook, relax etc. My personality (and my husbands) tends to have a hard time doing “nothing”. I enjoy being productive, I enjoy organizing and trying new things so a week like I mention above feels great to me and was one that I totally enjoyed. I am sure that for others it would have been WORK and perhaps stressful too. Ideally I would go to bed around 10PM and wake up around 6:45AM. Sometimes (like when I was finishing up my manuscript) I got to bed much later but this is my normal goal. I hope that helps give you a better feel for my routine. I know it would look MUCH different if my husband worked away from home and got home in the evenings like many do (or if I was a single mom).
Blessings!
[Reply]
Lana Reply:
January 17th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
@mom4life,
Thank you for giving me insight into how you manage your time. Wow, that is so great that your husband has the work schedule he does. My husband leaves the house by 7AM most mornings and gets home between 5:30-6:30PM. He helps when he can but about all he can do in the evenings is eat supper and play with the kids alittle. I think it would help if I’d get up earlier in the morning and get things done before the kids get up but I’m not sleeping very well with this pregnancy so that makes it hard to get going in the morning. I know we shouldn’t compare ourselves to each other as we’re each wired differently but I can’t help but pray for more of your ambition. Please keep the informative blogs coming to help us moms better our lives and the lives of our families!!
[Reply]
mom4life Reply:
January 18th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
@Lana, Yes that makes a HUGE difference that your husband is away so late into the day
! I can also totally understand how hard it is to get up earlier. I have wanted to do this too from time to time as I don’t like getting up at the same time as my kids. It feels so much nicer to be up and dressed and ready when they get up. I can “welcome” them to their day so much better that way. But it is hard and when pregnant, not always how it happens. I understand too how it can be a struggle not to compare. I pray that when I see a mom doing something well that I want to do better I can be “inspired” but not feel discouraged. I pray that will be the case for those who read things here that they are maybe not doing but want to. Together we can hopefully spur one another on toward “love and good deeds”! Thank you for your kind words, you are so encouraging.
Loved this post! I love your cooking posts so it would be fun to see more of the vanilla pudding and the angel food cake.
I have you and your pregnancy in my prayers!
[Reply]
mom4life Reply:
January 18th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
@Nell, Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers!! I will be happy to share more about the process of the pudding and cake. You can be looking for that soon:)!
[Reply]
Nell Reply:
January 18th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
@mom4life, that sounds GREAT!
[Reply]
[...] up on the lower right to receive posts via email. Thanks for visiting!After replying to a comment in my last blog post from a mom asking about how I manage my time, I started thinking about some of the little things [...]
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