Ramblings...

Life's been very full, but I've had such a great weekend.  Right now I'm sitting outside on the swing while the kids play.  I just woke up from a nap.  It's been great to slow down.

The week was very busy getting back from our Spring Break trip.  In our process or trying to simplify and cut out waste and excess, I spent the week focusing on the food intake at the Sandlin house.  I don't like to brag, but I am a master grocery shopper. You didn't know that existed, did you? I find the deals and I stockpile and I stay within our grocery budget.  I stretch a meal and I make it last.  What I don't do - ever - is look at food labels.  We try to eat healthy, but I never minded my processed, convenient food because I'm all about making things easy and uncomplicated. I'm an all or nothing kind of person and if I open that can of worms, who knows where it will take me?

Well, this week I opened it up and now I can't stop reading labels. I'm obsessed with it.  I'm trying to fight my all or nothing impulse and ease into this attempt to reduce our processed food intake.  I decided to make 1 or 2 changes each week, but went a little overboard. This week I made wheat tortillas (not sure I would call this a success since my kitchen filled with smoke), my mom's pinto beans, peanut butter (easiest thing in the world and approved by JC), and smoothies for breakfast in place of those Nutrigrain bars that are so easy to pull out of the pantry.

We prepared our garden for planting in a few weekends and pulled up enough carrots from our fall planting to fill up 2 bags, one for us and one for the ministry the garden partners with that distributes food.  Since I haven't quite convinced myself to blow my grocery budget and buy organic, my plan is to plant as much as I can in our garden this year.

It was a somewhat successful week, but I was exhausted.  I spent too much time in the kitchen, hardly opened my Bible, and skipped my workout.  I think a little balance is called for this week.

All that to say my weekend away came at the perfect time.  I got to spend it with my sister, her best friend flew in, whom I happen to love too, and lots of her sweet friends. 

I drove to Fort Worth on Friday and enjoyed my drive so much with the beautiful spring flowers covering the pastures and my book on CD.  Lindsey and I had dinner and then sat in line for 2 hours to get seats together for Hunger Games.  I don't know if my sis knows how much I enjoyed those 3 hours of waiting - just sitting and talking with nothing to do and no one needing me.  Her friends joined us and the movie was great and I even enjoyed staying out until 1:30. 

Saturday was great hanging with the girls, eating lunch on the patio, and just getting ready to shower Lindsey with lots of goodies.  The shower was fun and once again I got to stay out way past my bedtime! I love seeing Lindsey so happy.  

To top the whole weekend off I got to spend the night with my Mimi last night and have breakfast with her this morning before I drove back home to my babies.  

I needed the weekend to reflect.  Taylor and I have been talking a lot about things.  There are so many ways we want to make a difference that it gets overwhelming.  We struggled with where to buy our kids' shoes this week and found that there are no easy answers.  Fair trade kids' shoes are hard to come by and trying to buy American made tennis shoes is almost impossible!  I know it sounds so silly to spend my days worrying about such things and yet I've been aware of the slavery in our world for a while and the workers who make next to nothing so we can have our cheap goods and I've done nothing.  I remember hearing that there are more slaves in the world today than there were before the Civil War, but I didn't think I could change anything so I just go along with the mainstream because it's easier.

I was watching The Help again the other night with Taylor.  I asked him what he thought we would have been like living in that time.  Would we have just gone along with everyone else because there was no way we could change the way things were, or would we have been brave and tried to make a difference?    I want to be braver than I've been before so that my life matches up more with my convictions. I know it may not make a difference in the world, but I think it might make a difference in my little family.  I'm going to give it a try anyway!