Saturday, March 10

day 5 - some improvement

Hello, there.  How's the facebook time-out treating you?

It's going well around here, I've been able to focus on some things around the house that I've been slowly working at getting better at.  The two that have been my biggest improvements this week?

Laundry and Dinner.

Usually, how it works around here, is that the boys collect the laundry from around the house throughout the week, and Jeremy and I run the loads through.  The boys rotate the clothes (not always, but about 1/2 the loads in a week) from the washer to the dryer and start it.  Then all we have to do is put a new load in the washer.

Jeremy folds them.  And I would put them all away. Though the boys do their own, and Morgan mostly puts hers away by herself.  Boy, oh boy, do we generate some laundry!!  As I'm sure some of your families do!

But.

I've been feeling like I wanted to take a load off of Jeremy, even though he says he truly doesn't mind folding on the weekends.  He has been working his normal 40 hour work week (with a 3 hour round trip commute) then an extra 8 hour day on one of his normal days off.  He's been doing this for about 5 weeks already, and it will continue for another 6-8.  So the both of us have been so exhausted when we come the end of the longer week.


This is definitely not my laundry room, but itsn't it lovely?

So here's what I've been doing to make sure there has been no laundry sitting around anywhere by the time his weekend comes.  (You all probably have always done it this way.. but I'm a slow learner.) 

Each day, I wash the laundry from one of the three places where we collect laundry:  the boy's room, girl's room, or the upstairs bathroom that collects ours and the babies' together.  Then I wash, dry, fold, and put away that load.  It seems so easy, and takes so little time out of that day to do one room's worth, that I have NO idea why I didn't do this before.  It is so rewarding to see our spot where our clean laundry accumulated all week - EMPTY at all times.  Some days there is none to do, and that's a miracle, except I'm probably running through a load of cloth diapers, which I do every other day.  And that's so easy, it's nothing. 

So, that is my great big laundry improvement update.  :) 

And the other is the dinner thing. 

I've always loved to put dinners together.  But it can be such a chore when unprepared.  The meat is frozen, you don't have on hand what you thought you did, yada, yada...  This week has been so great!  And not by anything I've done, it's all because of a TURKEY. 

We always buy extra turkeys around the holidays and freeze them.  Each year we end up with around three in the chest freezer.  Jeremy thawed one out last weekend for me, dressed it up, and got it all ready for me to pop in the oven Monday afternoon.  So that I did.  I've never dressed a turkey in my life, nor known how to cook one.  Though I'm sure I could figure it out, but why should I if someone else always cooks them for me?  So here's how we used our turkey up all week:

Monday:  traditional turkey din din, stuffing, steamed potatoes
Tuesday:  turkey sour cream enchiladas (The Food Nanny cookbook) refried beans, corn
Wednesday:  coconut turkey curry with pineapple and vegetables over rice - allrecipes.com  (of course it called for chicken)
Thursday:  turkey sandwiches
Friday:  creamy turkey (chicken) soup, breadsticks (both The Food Nanny cookbook)

It was a week of good eatin's around here!  I am so in love with pre-cooked meat you can just throw in your recipes.  (And that doesn't happen very often.)  And I used the very last of the turkey tonight in that yummy soup.  We never got sick of it, it was a delicious turkey!

Now if I could be so prepared next week. 

Have you had areas of improvement this week?

I'm sincerely enjoying my time away from the computer.  Facebook is so dispensable for me.  Even though right now I'm missing the front end of our dear friends' trip to Eastern Europe to meet their two new children through adoption and just the day to day interaction with people I know and love...  I really am great without it.  I'm better without it.  So I'm contemplating what I'm going to do with it once this week is up come Monday morning. 

Will you be making changes?

Do I go on sparingly, like on a schedule?  Stay the same as before, just needed a break?  Cut it out totally?  Hmmm...  whatcha gonna do?  I'm going to seek the Lord, and ask him what he'd have me do, wait for his answer, and then I'm going to do that. 


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5 comments on "day 5 - some improvement"
  1. Hey! I'm Laura. I am late, but I'm excited to join you on the Facebook break. I will start today and go for at least a week. I can't wait!

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  2. Great, Laura! Glad to have you aboard ship. :)

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  3. Dear Amanda,
    WOW! You are doing great, Girlie! I'm so impressed and proud of you for making the changes in your life you feel called to make. The laundry schedule sounds awesome. We are trying to catch up on ours because of a busy couple of weeks. The dinners sound fabulous! Doing turkey in different ways for all the dinners is a great tip. I don't wonder that you wouldn't get sick of eating turkey every night for a week, especially since you put different things with it, and cook it in different ways. As for facebook, I don't know. I used to get on through my Mom and Dad's account, but something happened to me with it that I won't ever get over, and God convicted me later that morning that there are some forms of media that I should cut out of my life, so I cut out facebook as a result. It's just too time wasting and there are other things that I should and could be doing instead. Thanks again as always for posting. OH, the picture of the laundry room, I know it's not your's but it's a cute picture nonetheless.
    In Christ,
    Bethany

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  4. While you are fasting from facebook to improve on dinner and laundry, I am fasting from dinner and laundry to constantly update facebook and our blog. I just posted another update for you - and hey, this roasted duck with mint and blackberry sauce we're having for room service is amazing. *grin*

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  5. I've found that I'm missing the social aspect of it, but as discussed before, most of it was exposure to the ones I needed a break from. So, I need to be in the Word, asking for direction and scripture. And then this next week, working on taxes...

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