Butter Meltdown...

Step 1: Get cream out of the freezer to thaw.

Step 2: Borrow KichenAid stand mixer from SIL to try out.

Step 3: Let cream go round and round in the mixer. After an hour, it still hadn't made butter.

Step 4: Give up and put the now "whipped cream" into the VitaMix (as done before). Butter separates almost immediately.

Step 5: Proceed to mold butter together, realize it probably needed to mix a little more, but too late. Start rinsing butter out in the ice water.

Step 6: Plop the butter back into a bowl to get new ice water. Buttermilk still left in the bowl, splashes all over me, all over the counters, all over the cabinets.

Step 7: Complete and total meltdown. Crying. Hysterical crying. Screaming about how I can't do this. Hubby comes out and tries to be encouraging, but I'm past the point of responding to encouragement. Tears streamed down my face. I fell to my knees at the kitchen sink and just bawled my eyes out. Not to mention my DD had woken up from her nap and I knew could hear me screaming and crying while she played in her crib. I hate that she could hear me fall apart like that.

Why do I think I can do this? I mess it up. ALL. THE. TIME. I drop things. I put the wrong ingredients in. I mix up the jars of sour cream and buttermilk. I spill things.

I'm not a natural. I don't know what I'm doing. I have to spend at least half my day reading and researching and I still get it wrong. I feel like a failure. I want to be good at this. I want to do this for my family, for my husband.

Don't get me wrong. I'm totally committed to this. I WANT to do this. But it's been almost 2 months and I still screw things up all the time.

UGH. This will get better, right? Someday I will be good at this?

Hubby's Health

While we are no longer in the "danger zone" of hospitalization (Praise the LORD!!), the hubs is still really struggling with his health.

His UC is giving him a ton of grief and pain. He's scheduled to have a colonoscopy on the 28th of the month and we'll see how things are looking. We're still committed to seeing this nutritional and supplement program through to the end.

In all honesty, it's the only option we have left at this point. We've exhausted almost every avenue for healing for him. We're begging and pleading with God for this to help. We know that his poor, damaged health didn't show up overnight - it's been a process of eating poorly, rounds of antibiotics, stress, etc for the past 34 years of his life.

And with that, we know it's not going to get better overnight. We have to give his body time to heal with foods that are nutritious and healing to his colon and digestive system and supplements that will help him improve his condition.

So for now, we keep on keeping on and keep praying. Faith that God knows best is the only thing that is getting us through this mess. Without it, I can't imagine where we would be.

With all of that, I know there are some reading this who do know us personally. I am struggling to find a balance between honest reporting of how things are going and respecting my husband's privacy of how much to share about this horrible disease. If I don't go into details, please understand that I am just doing my best to honor my husband. I hate that my best friend has to go through this. It just isn't fair.

Simple Saturday

Yesterday one of my closest and dearest friends asked if I wanted to go for a hike early this morning. I LOVE hiking. And I LOVE spending time with this sweet friend. So naturally, I jumped at the chance. We were going to go early, before it got hot, and would be back to take care of our littles by the time they woke up.

But I started to realize...I had planned to have a simple, not have to go anywhere, stay-home-and-enjoy day. And yes, it WOULD be enjoyable to go for a hike. But that would require getting up between 4:00-4:30 in the morning so I could meet my friend by 5:00-5:30 so we could hike (it's a bit of a drive to the mountain we were going to hike).

I WANTED to say yes. I knew it was good for me, I knew I'd enjoy it. But I also knew I'd already planned to stay home on Saturday. To make some baby food, cook up some future meals, enjoy a few cups of coffee, maybe even do some reading...and try to keep it simple.

So after I had already said yes, I got back in touch with my friend and backed out. It was hard for me to do, to say no to this friend. Especially after I'd already said yes! But of course being the wonderful person she is, she totally understood.

So now I am here, after sleeping in an hour more than normal (6 a.m. people - that's sleeping in these days!), getting ready to start the coffee and staying in my pj's for a while.

It's going to be a Simple Saturday, and I can't wait.