I am currently reading Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp and came across a wonderful quote about faith and repentance, and I wanted to share his powerful, convicting words with you.

“Repentance and faith are not rites of initiation to Christianity. Repentance and faith are the way to relate to God. Repentance and faith are not acts performed one time to become a Christian. They are attitudes of the heart toward ourselves and our sin. Faith is not just the way to get saved; it is the lifeline of Christian living” (pg 52-53).

How often in my life do I see “faith and repentance” as merely a one time occurance that ushered me into the family of God? Rather, my entire life, heart and attitude should reflect these each and every day!

God, open my eyes to the sin which blinds me and soften my heart to your truth that I may daily repent and live by faith in your word and your promises!

Another week, another menu! At the risk of sounding nerdy, I am really excited about our menu this week! I have a couple new recipes to try, and yesterday even though it was just Ryan and I at home, I couldn’t help but plan a fun dinner for the big game. We were going to have chicken wings made in the crock pot, but I forgot to get them going in time, so it turned into this yummy Football Dip (I’ve also heard this called Rotel Dip). One day this week a college friend of Ryan is coming over, so that night we’ll have the chicken wings and steak (sounds like a guy-friendly meal, doesn’t it?).

Breakfasts: yogurt parfaits, Lazy Granola w/ milk, peanut butter toast + yogurt

Lunches: dinner leftovers, turkey sandwiches (Ry), tuna sandwiches (Em)

Dinners:

Sunday -  Yummy Football Dip (crock-pot) + veggie tray w/ ranch dip + chips & guacamole + smoothies

weekday meals -

Steaks + Sweet & Spicy Chicken Wings (crock-pot)+ baked potatoes + steamed broccoli + corn

Bean Bowls w/ fixings (still haven’t gotten to this meal yet) + spinach salad + orange slices

Mexican-Style Salmon Cakes w/ Garlic-Herb Sour Cream + spinach salad + smoothies

Peanut Butter Noodles  (add chicken) + veggie + fresh fruit

What will you be eating this week?

Last week I introduced a short series on why my husband and I have decided to give birth to our child at home (barring any unforeseen circumstances). Here is the first post on What This Series is Not.

When the topic of home birth arises, the first concern on most people’s minds is safety. Isn’t it dangerous to have a baby at home? What if something goes wrong? I realize that these are very legitimate questions; every parent wants their child to be born safely and in good health, and Ryan and I are no exception. Today I’d like to address the safety and risk factors of giving birth at home versus giving birth in a hospital.

A Risk-Free Labor is Impossible

First of all, we need to dispel the myth that birthing at home is careless and dangerous, while birthing at the hospital is totally free of any risk factors. Complications can arise during labor and delivery, regardless of the setting. While birth is a very natural process–designed by God–there are always dangers that can happen, and often times there is no way to know when they will or won’t. Just because you have your baby at a hospital, doesn’t mean there is no possibility of something going wrong.

Truly, the best prevention for most complications during labor is taking proper care of yourself and your unborn child during pregnancy: good nutrition, exercise, etc. But even women who have a perfect diet and exercise regime during pregnancy can experience complications during labor and delivery. Simply put, there are no guarantees.

Giving Birth is a Completely Natural Process

Women have been giving birth to babies for thousands and thousands of years; it is nothing new. While there are always inherent risks involved (as discussed above), labor is a natural process that God designed the woman’s body to go through in order to birth offspring. When labor is allowed to progress naturally, a safe and uncomplicated labor will result, more often than not.

Despite how it usually seems in the hospital, a birthing mom is not a sick patient; giving birth is not a “medical condition” to be treated in most cases. The mom is simply there completing the difficult and laborious task of bringing her child into the world.

Studies Back the Safety of Home Births

 As far as the safety of birthing at home, there are multiple studies showing that home births are just as safe (if not safer) than hospital births. Both maternal and infant mortality rates seem to be lower at midwife-attended home births than at hospital births. This article cites that “In the five European countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, midwives preside at more than 70% of all births. More than half of all Dutch babies are born at home with midwives in attendance, and Holland’s maternal and infant mortality rates are far lower than in the United States.”  Here is another article entitled Meta-Analysis of the Safety of Home Birth comparing women who birth at home versus the hospital, and the babies born at home had a lower frequency of low Apgar scores and the moms had a lower rate of medical intervention. The evidence is truly compelling!

I firmly believe that a well-planned, midwife-attended home birth (my jury is still out on unassisted births, but that’s a another story entirely!) is a safe and viable option for most moms. Ultimately though, as Shonda mentioned, our top priority is having a healthy baby, and that can and does happen at home and in the hospital. Like I said, my aim is to inform, not preach or persuade.

For the third and final post in this series, I’ll share on a more personal level how my husband and I reached the decision to have a home birth. And as always, I appreciate your input and thoughts on this subject!

A few weeks ago, I shared with you about my first stab at freezer cooking, and I had a number of recipe requests for the homemade pizza pockets I mentioned making for my husband’s lunches. Obviously, these aren’t gluten free, so I can’t eat them; but they work beautifully on days when I need something to throw in my husband’s lunch and there aren’t any leftovers from dinner.

These hand-held pockets are so easy to make and even more convenient to eat. Plus you can switch up the filling ingredients to personalize them: ham & swiss, meatballs & marinara (my husband’s idea!), chicken, broccoli & cheese, whatever you can think of! I can’t vouch for these personally because I didn’t try them, but they smelled delicious and my husband enjoyed them. Although his one comment was that they were a tad on the doughy side; next time to fix this, I”ll probably divide each batch of pizza dough into eight or ten portions instead of six. Make sure to roll them as thin as possible.

Homemade Pizza Pockets (makes about 16)

1 recipe for my homemade pizza dough (this dough mixes up beautifully in the bread machine!)

pizza sauce (I used storebought, you can easily use homemade)

pepperoni, or any other pizza fillings you’d prefer

shredded mozarella cheese (I used a mix of mozarella, parmesan, asiago and romano)

dried Italian seasoning

cornmeal, to sprinkle pizza stone or cookie sheet

Preheat the oven to 425. Sprinkle a thin layer of cornmeal on a pizza stone or cookie sheet; this helps give the bottoms of the crust a nice texture.

Divide the pizza dough in half, then divide each portion into eight equally sized pieces. Roll out each piece into a circle, until the dough is very thin. Spread pizza sauce on half, making sure to leave a 1/2 inch border so you can seal the edges. Sprinkle on the cheese, seasonings and any other desired toppings. Fold the other half of the dough over the filling and use a fork to crimp the edges.

Place on the prepared stone and bake in preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, until tops are golden brown.

To freeze, wrap the cooled pockets individually in aluminum foil, place in a freezer bag and put in the freezer. To reheat frozen pockets, heat at 400 for 10-15 minutes or microwave for 2-3 minutes on high.

Enjoy!

This post is linked to Pennywise Platter Thursday!

Did you hear our big news? We are so excited!!!

After a few discussions with my husband, I’ve decided to make more of an effort to include a vegetable side dish with each meal. Over the past few months I’ve grown really lax about it, and it’s time to change! To make things simpler, I compiled a list of side dishes we enjoy and divided into three categories: vegetable, starch and other. Unfortunately, corn doesn’t count as a veggie, but as a starch; it’s my favorite! For each dinner, I’ll try to include a veggie and either a starch or “other.” This week we’ll be having quite a few spinach salads at dinner in order to keep a half bag of spinach from getting slimy and nasty in the produce drawer. Here are my complete lists:

Veggies: broccoli (Ryan’s favorite!), green beans (fresh, not canned), spinach salad, carrots (usually raw w/ ranch dip), snap/snow peas

Starches: mashed potatoes, oven fries, corn, lima beans

Other: fruit salad, fresh pineapple, smoothies, orange/apple slices, coconut flour muffins

I’ve also decided this week to just have a list of meals and not assign them to specific days, although I’m pretty sure we’ll have tomato soup & sandwiches on Tuesday because we need a quick dinner before a 7:00 prenatal appointment. Sunday we’re eating at my parents’ house, and Saturday we’re taking a meal to friends who recently had a baby, so I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. Here’s what I have planned for the rest of the week:

Breakfasts: fried eggs + sausage or bacon + coconut flour muffins, yogurt parfaits, Lazy Granola w/ milk, peanut butter toast + yogurt

Lunches: dinner leftovers, turkey sandwiches (Ry), tuna sandwiches (Em)

Dinners:

Black Beans & Rice + spinach salad + corn

Tomato Soup + turkey sandwiches + spinach salad

Sloppy Joe Bowls + broccoli + fresh fruit

Coconut Flour Cheese Pizza + spinach salad + kettle chips + fresh fruit

Pork Fried Rice w/ veggies + fresh fruit

Visit Organizing Junkie for menu planning inspiration!

…..little baby BOY!!!!! 

We are so thrilled and so thankful to have this precious little boy to raise! Thank you God for blessing us with a son! May he grow up to be a godly man after your own heart, who lives all his days for you!

I have sung butter’s praises before, and today I will do it again. For the longest time, I would read about Kerrygold butter and how fabulous it is. Naturally, I was intrigued and looked to one of the best research tools for tasks such as this: the internet! On their company website, I learned that Kerrygold uses milk from grass-fed cows to make their butter (they also make cheeses).

The milk made by cows who eat grass is far superior in terms of its nutritional composition, although even conventional butter is a far cry better than margarine, not to mention the taste is so much better, too! Grass-fed butter has a higher concentration of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), fatty acids that have been shown to help prevent cancer, fight inflammation and reduce the risk of heart disease (read more about CLA here and here). Plus with Kerrygold butter, you don’t have to worry about ingesting milk that comes from cows who are given antibiotics and growth hormones. It comes from healthy, happy cows who spend their days grazing on lush, green pastures.

Now that we know the health benefits of this butter, onto the real question: how does it taste? To put it simply, Kerrygold butter is the best butter I’ve ever had. It is rich and creamy and has the perfect touch of saltiness (they have an unsalted version, too); it’s as if it stands up and says, “This is what I’m supposed to taste like!” The color is a beautiful shade of yellow which is, amazingly, achieved without any dyes or coloring!

The price is a bit steep compared to regular butter. Everywhere I looked, it was priced between $4.00 and $6.00. Yikes! That was simply too much for 8 ounces of butter! But I found it at Trader Joe’s for $2.69/8 oz, and that seemed more reasonable to me and my tight grocery budget. Since it is so pricey, though, I have only used it for topping breads, veggies, etc. and not in baking or cooking. I’ll use my regular (and cheaper!) butter for those purposes.

All in all, I highly recommend Kerrygold butter if you really enjoy your butter and don’t mind paying a little more. And if you have a Trader Joe’s near you, I’d suggest checking out their prices because they usually can’t be beat anywhere else!

Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking has published a beautiful and very convicting article on Letting Go of Unrealistic Expectations in marriage. I would encourage you to take a few moments to pop over there and read what she has to say; it is so very true, and something I certainly need to repent of and work on in our marriage!

Oh, and I’ve updated yesterday’s pregnancy update with a picture; it is from my husband’s iPhone, so not of terribly great quality. But you can certainly tell that baby is growing!

We now have a picture! It’s from my husband’s iPhone, so it’s not the best quality, but you can get the general idea. Oh, and please forgive my atrocious looking hair; I had a long day at work and an evening of laundry and washing dishes, so I obviously wasn’t too concerned about it looking great!

Incredibly enough, this week marks the halfway point through this pregnancy. Less than five months from now, our sweet little baby will have joined our family! We still haven’t purchased any baby stuff (and probably won’t for awhile yet), but baby did get a couple Christmas presents from family members to start our stash. And we have about six or eight weeks worth of diapers that I got free from my work (what a blessing!). I am hoping these will last us until we start using cloth, but we’ll see.

As much as we love our unique and spacious apartment in Over the Rhine, it simply isn’t very conducive to a baby so we are planning on moving when our lease is up April 1st. If at all possible, we’d like to stay in downtown Cincinnati, or at least very close by, and have a couple prospective places that we will hopefully check out in the next month or so.

We have now heard his (or her) heartbeat a few different times, and each time it is such a special, touching moment. On Christmas Eve, I felt the first few flutters, which was such a wonderful Christmas present from baby to mama. And in the past week or two, I’ve really felt him a lot. Now they are more kicks and punches; I joked to Ryan that our little one is training to be a gymnast! In the afternoon especially, this baby is always on the move. It is such a delight to feel and to be reassured that the baby is growing and doing well. Although lately the baby’s favorite activity seems to be using my bladder as a punching bag!

This Friday, we have our first ultrasound and are hoping to find out the baby’s sex! I know many people like to have it be a surprise (at least in our circle of friends), but as Ryan says, it’s still a surprise, you just find out a few months sooner! It will also be nice to know if we should refer to baby as a him or her, and we can start calling him by name, too. The names we seem to have settled on (although there is still a possibility for them to change) are Schaeffer for a boy (after Francis Schaeffer, one of my husband’s heroes) or Evangeline for a girl, which means “one who brings good news.” Rest assured, I’ll let you know as soon as I can if we are having a son or daughter!

My iron issues seem to be improving, as they should with all the supplements I’m taking. I haven’t heard the results from my blood work yet, so we’ve yet to see if going gluten-free has made any kind of impact. Although, I have been feeling better overall since cutting out gluten; my ezcema has improved (although not cleared up entirely), my IBS hasn’t flared up nearly as much, and for the most part, I feel a lot more energetic.

All in all, everything is still going very smoothly, and I am continually amazed at how quickly the time is going by. The weight of what it means to be a parent and to be wholly responsible for another person is beginning to settle in as the birth day grows closer and closer, but we are confident that God will equip us to be parents and that even (especially!) when we fail Him and our child, that His grace will sustain and save us.

This week I am taking advantage of food we already have on hand and a few really good sales at Kroger. I’m also using the crock pot a couple times and having a fried rice night to use up leftovers, which will keep meal time simple (hopefully!).  Here is what we’ll be eating this week:

Sunday: Max & Erma’s after visiting a new church

Monday: Herb Roasted Pork Loin + garlic mashed potatoes + steamed broccoli + fresh pineapple

Tuesday: Pancakes (I want to try a brown rice & oats combo) + fried eggs + sausage + smoothies

Wednesday: Quinoa & Black Beans + veggies w/ ranch dip + smoothies

Thursday: Bean Bowls (CP) + chips & salsa + smoothies

Friday: White Bean Soup w/ Greens (CP) + coconut flour muffins

Saturday: Taco Lasagna + salad + corn

See what the rest of the blogosphere is eating this week at Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday!