New name

I changed the name of my blog to "Homesteading Dreamer" because, well that is what I am.  I am dreaming of one day owning property & leaning more towards living a self-sufficiant lifestyle.

Some people lean more towards a homesteading life for religious or political reasons, me...I have dreamed of living a homesteading life since - geeze watching my first episode of Little House on the Prairie or the made-for-tv movie The Wilderness Family.  To lead a more simple, quite life.  I know though, being a city girl, a life like this is easier said than done.  Long hard hours are needed to live this life, along with a lot of sacrifices so I plan on easing myself, and hopefully family, away from our kick back city lives to this simpler more quiet dream of mine.

I've spent the past 2 years reading and watching a ton of vlogs about different ways of incorporating "homesteading" into our lives and have tried to start implementing a few already.  I make soap, garden, trying to cook from scratch more, make my own cleaning supplies and washing detergents...and on my to-do list once we are able to move from the city life of busy San Diego to a quieter community in Heber City, Utah next year I'd like to get a few chickens and see where we can go from there.

This blog will continue to document the many adventures our family goes through, but also one of those adventures will obviously be homesteading.

Another week gone by

It's Sunday evening, the week is almost officially over and a new week begins.  It will be an exciting week, I get to finally meet my IPs (the couple I am trying to have a baby for) at the end of the week.  Tomorrow morning I have an early morning appointment at the IVF clinic.  Then off to the grocery store and home for what I hope will be a quiet rest of the week.  :)))  Oh I need to email over my resume/application for the job on North Island as well.  Who knows where that will lead me.

Today we had another really nice day.  Jamie and I finished Zac's Christmas shopping (ok well Jamie did) and got some of Summer's done.  I'll finish hers up later in the week/month.  :)  Then it's getting the extended family members small gifts and I'll be DONE DONE DONE.  Yay!!!!  Then Jamie took Summer and I out to ramen followed by stopping in at one of his favorite Korean markets.  Wow now that was a MADHOUSE in there!  But I will admit he is right, the produce there is unbelievable in pricing.  10 heads of romaine lettuce for $1!!!  Holy mackerel!!!  Afterwards I ran over to AutoZone to get the parts we needed for the car headlight, license plate lamps, and the air filter.  Jamie and I will do the repairs tomorrow after work.  :)  Then home again to start up laundry, clean up my disaster of a kitchen, make dinner and put away our yummy produce.  :)

It's nice having a clean kitchen again, makes for an easier week to start off with.  I do need to mop though, but will do that in the morning before Scoots gets here.  We sat around this evening as a family and watched our favorite television show "Once Upon a Time".  I have to say it's a pretty good show for the family, what a difference from usual.  Nice wholesome family show and amazingly one we are ALL interested in.  Now that in-of-itself is amazing!!!!!!  We can never agree on ANYTHING!!!!!  Jamie likes it because it reminds him of Skyrim, Zac likes it because it always has action in it, and Summer and I like it for the fairy tales/love story!!!  :))))  What a wonderful evening to end a tough week!

Let's hope next week is much better.  It has to be, I get to meet my IPs finally!!!!  :)))))

A rambling week

So it's been quite the week around here!  It started off pretty normal, just seemed to go slow for me.  I think I enjoyed the long weekend a little too much.  Thursday ended up being a tough day for me - I found out I'll be losing the baby I watch during the week in January.  I've had her since she was 6 weeks old and love her to pieces.  Of course my love will not die for her, she'll always hold a special place in my heart as every child I've ever watched has/will.  It came 8 months earlier than I had actually mentally prepared myself for so along with my crazy hormones right now I took it pretty hard, but I'm getting over it and just going to enjoy what time I do have left for her.  There's always a reason for things happening in life, I think the reason for this one is so I can really prepare and focus on the surrogacy.  At least I hope that is the reason.  Time will tell.  :)

Friday evening Summer spent the night at a friends so it was just Jamie, Zac, and I.  We had a lovely quiet evening.  Zac played video games most the night while Jamie looked over the kids Christmas lists and I gave pedicures.  Hahaha.  No it was quiet a lovely evening as I said.

This morning Jamie and I got up early to run some holiday errands.  Then Jamie dropped me off and went to get the oil changed.  I hate finding out I've been over charged for oil changes, after being told I needed to pay for synthetic oil!  Urgh...well now I know!!!  Jamie however got equally frusterated with Mossy Toyota today as they started to quote him all that needed to be done to the car.  Most of it we can do ourselves so Jamie will be doing some home maintence tomorrow.  He got some more holiday shopping done while he was out, while I stayed home waiting for the Time Warner Cable guy to come over and fix our wireless signal.  Yay, it's fixed so I have internet access in the bedroom again!  :)))

Tomorrow is another errand day - grocery shopping.  I actually like grocery shopping, I just dislike menu planning.  :))  I also need to catch up on my laundry tomorrow so everyone has clean clothes for the week.  :)))

Weekly Goals Nov 29-Dec 4

Let's see this past week I did fairly well...I got the bathrooms done - woohoo!!!  Still a work in progress on decorating the house, but the tree is up!!!  Yay!!!  Shining sink and dirty dishes cleaned up every night?  Uh, still need some work there, but they are all done tonight!!!!  Opps forgot about the soap making stuff...on my to-do list this week.  And finally, still reading "The Help" lol!!!!

This week let's see if I can accomplish the following:

1. Homemaking - Zone this week is Bedrooms!  Mainly the Master Bedroom, but if I have the time and patience I'll work on the kids rooms.  I'd like to get Summer's closet organized better for her.

2. Family Time - I am going to plan a "Family Day" to go see the new Muppets movie.  :))

3. Me Time - get out of bed every morning this week and do my exercises again!!!!  Also drink my daily water intake!!!!  Plan my Thursday night out with my girlfriend Andrea!!!!  BREAKING DAWN AGAIN!!!  Woohoo!!!!  Hope there aren't any squeeling girls!!!

4. Creativity - moving the soap goal back down since I completely flaked on that one last week!

5. Reading - continue to finish "The Help".

Lovely Sunday

Today started out a bit chaotic.  Zac had two friends spend the night last night, oh what joy it is to moderate 3 pre-teen boys picking on 1 pre-teen girl!  Oh what fun days!!!  :)  They all quieted down and fell asleep between 1-2am this morning and got up at 10:30am.  I took them both home around 12:30pm.  My house was a complete disaster after the holiday decorating, baking & cooking, basically 2 different parties, and kids sleeping in the livingroom!  It was a mess!!!!  I was not really looking forward to coming home to clean it, so I took my time driving right at speed limit all the way to the boys houses and home!  I swung by the Mexican place to grab some lunch and then home to what I expected would be 2 hours of hard cleaning.

But fortunately for me I didn't have to.  I walked into a sparkling clean kitchen (floors were even swept) and a picked up and clean livingroom!  WOW I was so shocked and surprised.  It really made for such a nice afternoon and evening!!!  Jamie and I sat and watched tv for a little bit, then the kids came in and took over for a bit.  Then we decided to pull out Hogwarts and play that.  Then Jamie and I started dinner (steak, potatoes, and artichokes).  We ate dinner while watching America's Funniest Videos until Once Upon a Time came on.  Then it was bedtime.  What an awesome, relaxing evening!!!!  I love my family and especially love evenings like this!!!!

Tomorrow shall be an interesting day.  Scooters will undoubtably keep me on my toes with the Christmas tree and not sure how she'll like the new livingroom changes.  Then I have a Surrogacy doctors appointment and hopefully be reassured not only that everything is going as planned but that my giant bruise I gave myself today from the Lupron shot is normal and ok (see my post on my Surrogacy blog).

Decking the halls

Summer and I spent the morning today decking out our new Christmas tree! Last night she and I ran over to Home Depot to pick up a tree, we loaded it into the car and headed home! Girls rule!!!! Jamie helped pull it out of the car and set it up. Then this morning Summer and I started the decorating process. I couldn't find our tree lights so we ran over to the NEX real quick to pick up lights. We had lunch together and then came home and got to work! She and Zac had decided yesterday they wanted a red and silver tree, so a red and silver tree it is!

I can't seem to find all my ornaments. It will be so nice when we own a house and I can put ALL my Christmas decorations away together for the next year! We've typically moved every 3 years and it takes me 3years tofind everything again! But then we pack up and move again and It is never put in similar boxes! So our tree is missing a lot of our personal touches this year! :(. Oh well, I guess I just need to start rebuilding!

I like the tree though! ;). I think we did a great job on it. Tomorrow we'll finish with the indoor touches and move onto the outside. summer put the little artificial tree up on the patio with a little tree skirt, it looks cute. I'll wrap some empty boxes for presents and hopefully Jamie will be able to get the lights up along the house. We don't have a lot of outdoor decorations but I think we can still make it look nice out there. ;)

Zac has two friends spending the night tonight! Oh dear it's been a crazy house since 4:30pm! 3 pre-teen boys and Summer! Just think about that for a second and you'll understand her and our plight this evening! Jamie brought the XBox into our bedroom to play Skyrim all night long. I'm going to go off and read for the evening instead! ;). So until tomorrow!!!

Holiday Kick-off

'Tis the Season!!!!!  Thanksgiving has come and past.  It was a beautiful day for our family!  For the past 12 years, when we didn't go to Utah for the holiday, I've been the primary meal planner and chef for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  But this year, with me in full blown surrogacy mode, my mom didn't want to cause me any undue stress and asked to take it back.  I loved the idea of not having to spend days upon days of cooking and baking but as the day drew closer I began to not only feel guilty I wasn't busy making bread for stuffing, doughs for cookies and pies, sauces, and prepping the other goodness we call Thanksgiving dinner.  I also felt bored, it was hard to get into the season not doing anything...so I begged mom if I could bring something...anything.  She finally relented and said I could bring 2 pies (pumpkin and pecan) and the cranberry sauce.  So Wednesday afternoon after Scooters left for the long weekend Summer and I started our pie making.  I love sharing the moments with her in the kitchen, teaching her how to cook and bake, hoping it will set in with her for when she has a family!

We got two pumpkin pies done and the dough ready for the pecan, but I needed to rest and ended up falling asleep.  I woke up bright and early Thursday morning to finish my pies and make the cranberry sauce.  Geeze I never realized how much sugar is in a pecan pie!!!!  It's a good thing I don't really care for  it!  :)  After my pecan pie was in the oven I called mom to see how she was fairing in the kitchen.  She had the turkey in and was getting ready to prepare the stuffing.  I asked if she had bought rolls because I just wasn't feeling like I was contributing enough and wouldn't mind whipping up some sweet dinner rolls if she would like.  She said if it wasn't too much she'd love it.  So I popped the ingredients in the bread machine as we continued to chat.

Dinner was scheduled to be ready between 2:30-3pm so I kicked ~J off Skyrim around 2pm to get his shower and get ready to go.  Then the kids and I loaded up the car with my giant rolls, 3 pies, and cranberry sauce.  The dog jumped in the car as well and we were "Off to Grandma's House".

Dinner was of course behind schedule.  Mom did pretty well after not cooking much in over 12years.  She got a new Thanksgiving Cookbook from Williams-Sonoma and found some delicious recipes!  The brie wheel was to die for!  Jamie missed the green bean casserole, but I really enjoyed the fresh green bean dish made simple with just garlic and tarragon.  All-in-all though it was a terrific feast!

After dinner we had some lovely conversations with my brother-in-law Billy and sister Randell.  My brother and sister in Kansas City, KS called and we all had a chance to speak to them as well.  The kids played hide-in-seek and shot mini-marshmallows from the marshmallow shooters mom & dad had gotten them.  They had a BLAST!  The dogs had fun running in the yard as well together.  :)


When dessert had been cut and everyone had settled down mom and dad presented Jamie and I & my sister and her husband with an early Christmas gift.  She had told us both she was giving us something early as she really wanted us to use it this holiday season and hopefully build a tradition onto it.  So we opened it and WOW we all loved it!  It is the best Christmas gift we've all gotten in a long time and something I've wanted for quite awhile but never really went out and bought one.  An Advent Calendar!  Jamie had never heard of one but once we explained it to him he thought it was the coolest thing ever!!!  :)

The tree folds up and is stored in the side compartment of the box while the garland and tree skirt are stored in the Santa box.  Each little drawer has a new ornament to hang each day from Dec 1-25.  Next year we'll add small gifts, money, and treats for the kids to discover.  This year however pulling out the new ornament each new day is a surprise enough.  :)  I am absolutely in LOVE with this gift!!  It is perfect and beautiful!!!!  Mom and dad did AWESOME!!!!!

The kids ended up staying over the night at my parents with my nephew Ethan, so Jamie and I came home alone, to a quiet house.  He went straight for the XBox to continue his Skyrim game, while I went to the bedroom to rest, relax, and watch the traditional "Peanuts" holiday cartoons and Lifetime holiday movies.  :)  It was an awesome Thanksgiving!!!!