Some Joy To Spare

So, the Walmart Challenge has officially ended and the big question looms: Did I succeed? Did I manage to shop for groceries and household items exclusively at Walmart for 31 days?  Drum roll please..... Almost. Y'all I made it to the very last day. I'm talking Halloween, October 31, dia del fin. I'd purchased all my groceries for the week, including Halloween candy and special Halloween meals (my weekly dinner menu is at the end of this post) . . .  and then we decided last minute to carve pumpkins. No problem, I thought. Surely Walmart will have pumpkins, right? Wrong. Super Walmart: out of pumpkins. Walmart Market: out of pumpkins. Seriously, one day they had pumpkins as in yesterday, Monday, October 30 and the next day gone. All gone. How about Funkins I thought? Uh, nopety nope nope no.  Alas, in my best effort to preserve my status as perfect mom and not disappoint my kiddos  myself, I begrudgingly went to Fry's and purchased pumpkins, of which, point ...

Heal my heart and make it clean Open up my eyes to the things unseen Show me how to love like You have loved me Break my heart for what breaks Yours Everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause As I walk from earth into eternity ~ Hosana, Hillsong United It's the question, as Christians, we all ask at some point and, often, the one to which there never seems to be a satisfactory answer. The other night, in the wake of the tragic shooting in Las Vegas, the devastating fires in Northern California and hurricanes in the Gulf and Puerto Rico, my youngest daughter asked me this question: "Why does God allow so much pain, death and destruction in the lives of so many?" I knew the standard "churchy" responses that I'd heard over the years. I told her things like, we may never know the answers and we have to trust God and we don't have the privilege of seeing the big picture. I told her the only and best thing we could do was pray for everyone ...

Okay, so I'm a little ( a lot) behind in getting my week two ( and three) challenge update posted. In my defense, we went out of town for the girls' fall break. Which, in and of itself is not an excuse to not post. However,  when I mention we were at our cabin, in the middle of nowhere, with no Internet and no cell service it becomes the perfect excuse. For some, I know, this sounds like torture. For us, including our two teenage daughters, it is simply glorious. Alas, last week's grocery haul was mainly reserved for cabin food. This cabin, nestled on 40 acres in a mountain canyon, has been in my husband's family for roughly 30 years, the actual land for much longer. As such, my little family has been visiting and staying here for 22 years. In those early visits, when my babies were babies, cabin food consisted of donuts, crackers and easy cheese, Fritos and bean dip, snack cakes, hot dogs and s'more supplies. Although tasty and inexpensive, our culinary prowess w...

Okay, it's officially underway, people. As I previously wrote, I am shopping for groceries exclusively at Walmart for the whole month of October. To find out why I would accept such a challenge you can read all about it in the first post in this series. This week I did a grocery pick-up and an online order. With Walmart's free two-day shipping, the combo of store site pick-up and ship to my door, the convenience is pretty hard to beat. I am thrilled to report, not nearly as much as the hubs, I came in under budget. Well, I'm under budget right now. By the end of the week and few runs to the store for one or two items here and there I may actually end up on budget. Still a victory in my opinion. My weekly grocery budget is $150. I realize this is more than some and not as much as others. However, after doing a little research I found the average SNAP benefit per person per month is $125. Thus, for my family of four, the government recommends a budget of about $125 per w...

I turned 40 two weeks ago. Birthdays like this tend to illicit some reflection on and assessment of one's life. Indeed, I spent the week leading up to and the last couple of weeks thinking over my life, choices I've made, where I'm at and, as I used to say, who I want to be when I grow up. This reflection, conversations with my family, plenty of internet browsing and a healthy dose of comparison caused me to make some changes and ponder directions for my life. It was time to make decisions, I thought. I scolded myself for my inability to make decisions and so, began making them left and right. Some of these decision include recently, as I've mentioned in previous posts, giving up work outs for the month of October. I agreed to shop exclusively at Walmart for thirty days in a pseudo-stewardship challenge. I announced to the fam I was going to take a stab at the Whole 30 challenge. As I looked over the series of decisions I made I noticed one commonality: I was decidi...

I love all things fitness and nutrition. I love reading about food & exercise, finding new, healthy recipes for my family to try and pushing myself to try a new workout or finish a a run just a few seconds faster than the day before. This stuff floats my boat and makes me giddy. For reals. For the hubs? Not so much. Don't get me wrong. He loves to be outdoors, he likes riding bikes and he'll do the occasional strength training routine if he has the time. When it comes to food, he doesn't just tolerate my healthy recipes, he actually likes them. And, if we're honest, as taste is his only criteria for a good meal, this is high praise from my guy. However, he really could not care less if it's low carb, Paleo, Whole 30, clean eating, real food or macro compliant. Seriously y'all, if it's straight up McDonald's, my man is happy. And, come on, who isn't happy with McDonald's every now and then. Golly, I do love me a bacon McGriddle...I ...

"She's fat." Writing those words even now feels like a fresh wound. They were words I overheard spoken by a girl with whom I attended high school and with whom I had previously been best friends. She uttered them to a mutual friend of ours not knowing I was just a few steps away and could overhear. Only, that evening, I didn’t just overhear them. The moment those words crossed her lips I took ownership of them, put them on and wore them as my identity. The truth is, they were just one more layer to a wardrobe of self-deprecation and worthlessness I had donned for years. From the time I was in junior high, I cannot recall ever not feeling less than, fat, unwanted and certainly not beautiful. As many teenage girls do, I compared myself to the images in the magazines and on television and quickly surmised that I did not measure up. As early as my sophomore year of high school I began skipping meals and avoiding certain “bad” foods to keep my weight under control. Des...