Archive for Family Stuff

Week #3 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Saturdays Top Laughs dentistmelsbbutton-11

It’s time to laugh with the Goulds again! We have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #3 – for us – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. The image below speaks for itself but by way of an explanation, I was working on my grocery list for a monthly order I place online at Azure Standard – I have forgotten to click submit for the past two months, that’s not the humorous part, that’s the sad part. The funny part is when I asked my daughter to double check to see if we needed anything else so I could check my list she handed me this:

FFR B's Grocery List_

It cracked me up! That’s what I get for asking a child to help with the grocery list, except she’s not so much a child anymore.

4. “The SHIELD helicarrier fell on my back!” (Inside family joke from Spiderman). “The wheel of excuses!”

3. Our 13 year old daughter was laying on the floor throwing a basketball up in the air and it fell on her face. She cracked up laughing.

Yikes, I am struggling this week, even with my children’s help.

2. When we went to dig up asparagus crowns at a local organic farm, the joke was on me. For some reason I was expecting them to be small. Wrong. They are huge! Good thing we didn’t take trowels or else we would have been there all day. Not really because they did have shovels available.

1. My husband made us laugh this week by speaking in a funny accent. ;)

Whew! That was hard. Gotta work harder at keeping track of funny things as they happen or it’s chore to come up with something.

Anything funny happen at your house this week?


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Yummy Swap Snack Bars

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As much as our family tries and struggles to eat healthy, we all have a sweet tooth. We like our baked goods and chocolate that’s for sure. Enter…Yummy Swap Snack Bars. Yummy Snacks consist of Peanut Butter Blast and Chocolate Blast Yummy Bars. Seriously, they were yummy. These would make great stocking stuffers for Christmas, snacks for school and home, or even family get togethers.

FFR Yummy Bars_

Everyone loved the Peanut Butter Blast Yummy Bar. It was a chocolate bar with a chewy peanut butter center.

Jr. with Peanut Butter Blast Yummy Bar_
Jr. enjoying his Peanut Butter Blast Yummy Bar.

Everyone but my husband loved the Chocolate Blast Yummy Bar. My husband doesn’t like coconut and the Chocolate Blast has a chocolatey coconut center. I find coconut flavored chocolate very addictive, what about you?

FFR Chocolate Blast Yummy Bar 1_

FFR Chocolate Blast Yummy Bar_

As far as ingredients go, Yummy Snack Bars were created to be used to “swap” out junk food for something healthier. Yummy Swap’s motto is “Dump the Junk” to make the transition from junk food to healthier snacks easier on kids.

Chocolate Blast Ingredients:

chocolate-bar-ingredients

Peanut Butter Blast Ingredients may be found here.

Yummy Snack Bars are high in fiber, contain 100mg of Omega 3s, real coconut, cocoa, flax seed and almond butter. They are gluten-free, contain no high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, trans fats, artificial flavors, preservatives or food dyes, which all pass our reading label test.

The only problem we found is the price is more than a chocolate bar, but you get so much more for your health so it’s money well spent in the end.

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.
― Wendell Berry

So…..Yummy Snacks are here to stay at our house!!

Yummy Snacks may be purchased online as single items or as a subscription – get them shipped to your house on a schedule of your choosing! When you buy a subscription you automatically save 10%. You can find Yummy Swap on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on new products.


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Kittens, Kittens and More Kittens! – Wordless Wednesday

Ok all you cat and kitty lovers….I couldn’t resist posting an all kitty post after the photo shoot we did for the SHEBA post yesterday. I just kept snapping and snapping hoping to get some good, non-blurry photos of them! They are at such an adorable age. I don’t get to observe them like the children do but I love it when the children come tell me stories of all the antics and things they are up to. Like tonight, my son came to tell me that Badger is sleeping inside one of my husband’s old ratty running shoes! Why wasn’t the old ratty shoe tossed when he got his new ones? Guess they were meant to be here for the kittens! Too bad the garage is so dark or else I would have taken a photo of the kitty in the shoe!

FFR Freckles washing herself
Freckles washing herself.

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Sweet little kittens.

FFR Sev and Badger 110513
Severus is our Tom cat and you can see the resemblance between him and Badger, eh? Oh and Sevy is our only male cat now since all his kittens appear to be females!

FFR Badger with tongue out_
Badger licking her lips.

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Freckles sitting pretty.

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Badger sitting pretty too.

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Selene sitting pretty.

Amazing that I got a shot of each one of them sitting so nicely. Full bellies helped! So remember that as a photography tip! These are their six week old photos.


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Keeping Your Cat Healthy – SHEBA

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Do you have a cat? We have six. We started with two and now have six! Needless to say we go through a lot of cat food! A huge part in keeping your cat healthy is the diet you feed them. We feed our cats a mostly raw diet of fresh Guernsey milk from Miss Moo, chicken, chicken livers and giblets. They will be getting treated with turkey trimmings on Thanksgiving! With winter weather around the corner we want them to have enough to eat so they can maintain proper body temperature to stay warm; that’s why we usually supplement their diet with cat food.

I don’t think we’ve ever fed our cats canned cat food before, until now. We usually buy dry cat food. This time we bought them SHEBA cat food. They LOVED it and gobbled up their SHEBA entrees. You can see from the photos how much they enjoyed their SHEBA meal!

Selene eating SHEBA Cat food by herself#shop_

Selene wouldn’t eat until we served her own portion by herself! Look at her ears…protective of her food…though she did allow her mama to join her. See the video here on Instagram.

Freckles saying yummy SHEBA BRAND #shop_
Freckles is saying yummy SHEBA!

Princess says yummy SHEBA BRAND #shop_
Princess says yummy with her tongue and Badger thought the meal was so good she had to sit on the plate with her SHEBA entree!

Sev waiting for more SHEBA Cat Food #shop_
Severus cleaned his plate and is patiently waiting for more.

Pumkin eating SHEBA cat food #shop_
Pumpkin barely breathes as she devours her portion of SHEBA cat food!

Walmart has a roll-back price on SHEBA right now – just $0.50! Plus SHEBA has a Buy 6, Get 1 FREE coupon on their website: http://www.sheba.com/home

SHEBA BRAND Walmart #shop #cbias

Our cats are barn cats, but not in the traditional sense because they are very people-fied and are our pets, though they do serve a purpose in keeping the rodent population down on the 16 acres of land where we live. Our landlords do not want us keeping any pets in the home we are renting.

FFR Playful Kittens after eating SHEBA BRAND #shop_
After their bellies were full, the kittens were in a very playful mood!

When our female cat, Princess, had kittens over six weeks ago we moved her and her babies to the garage for safety mainly but we also knew they would be extra warm in the garage because our dryer vent releases into the garage. We wanted Princess to feel safe and not be threatened by anything in the barn or by the other cats. This was how we kept Princess and her kittens healthy for the past six weeks. We just started letting her take the kittens outside. She gave a hint by having them all sit at the garage door with begging little faces!

Another part of keeping our cat healthy is worming them. We worm them on a regular basis to keep them free of parasites.

Regular vet visits and vaccinations all play a part in keeping your cat healthy too. Check with your vet on their recommendations. Each vet will be different.


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Fall Clean Up

Now that our vegetable CSA is over and summer has come to an end. It’s time for fall clean up. I don’t know about your fall clean up list, but ours seems to keep growing and I fear we will not get everything done on it.

FFR Red Maple_

Here’s what on it so far and there’s only a little over a month left of fall:

1. Plant 15 lbs of garlic.

2. Clean up garden beds.

3. Till.

4. General pick up of garbage, etc.

5. Go to a local organic berry farm to dig up asparagus crowns they are giving away so we can add to our own little patch.

6. We have a 1/4 acre that we have to weed because we allowed it to become a patch of tall overgrown ugliness. Our intention was to plant root crops there but we never got to it. Now it’s a project and a half no one wants to touch. :(

7. Clean out chicken coops.

8. Store unused coops for winter.

LoonyAcres Mini Greenhouse 2

9. Possibly make one more small hoop house to grow veggies in over the winter.

10. Barn clean up. This will be ongoing as it was originally a mess when we started renting it in February.

11. Move Miss Moo to new pasture. This is an ongoing task.

Plus, whatever other projects we decide we need to accomplish….and this is just outside projects. Don’t even get me started on what needs to be done INside. Sigh.

So tell me, do you have a lot of fall clean up to do?


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Jif Sandwich Contest

Magnificent Mole Chicken Torta
Magnificent Mole Chicken Torta

I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting (#MC) for Jif. I received a promotional item as a thank you for participating.

Do you know what one of our favorite go-to meals is at our house? One that we reach for on busy nights or busy weekends? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Do you know how many sandwiches our family can eat in one sitting? There are ten of us and on average most of us eat two sandwiches, a few will eat three. That’s 20-30 sandwiches!! Yowsa! Talk about needing to buy stock in peanut butter and jelly. We also like deli ham and turkey. Just today we had grilled cheese for lunch. Sandwiches are such an quick and easy meal. We love them. Sandwiches usually mean very few dishes too, which is a definite bonus! ;)

Now through November 8th, Jif Peanut Butter is running their Most Creative Sandwich Contest – challenging families across the country to create an original sandwich recipe that includes two tablespoons of your favorite Jif products! Parents and children with 6-12 can submit their original sandwich for a chance to win a $25,000 college fund and a trip to New York City! The photo featured above is one of the winning sandwiches from last year’s contest – Magnificent Mole Chicken Torta.

You can enter the Jif sandwich contest too by going to www.Jif.com/Promotions/Most-Creative-Peanut-Butter/

Have fun!


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Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Saturdays Top Laughs dentistmelsbbutton-11

This week’s funnies from the Gould children are as follows. If you want to read more laughs from other families, visit The Mommyhood Chronicles Saturday Top Five Laughs and join the fun!

5. This week our three year old son, the youngest, put on a bra and said, “Me have boobies, me have boobies.” (Thanks to a certain someone for teaching him a slang version of breasts! ;0 ) Sorry no photo.

4. Our nearly 30 year old horse coming up on the patio for his grain. Our daughter was carrying the grain and Blaze followed her right up to the house when she came to tell me something at the patio doors. I only managed to get a photo of them leaving the back yard!

Blaze and O 110213_

3. I told our three year old to take a wipe and wipe his face and he wiped MY face!

2. Miss Moo was in heat this week and stalked our oldest son by running around after him and mooing loudly! She must have smelled the testosterone! lol! Needless to say our son was freaked out and not at all amused.

1. Our three kittens think they are brave stalkers and jump on their mama! More cute than funny, unless you are watching them!

One last one….my 14 year old daughter and I went to an exhibition to promote our farm. We were selling milk soap and had free samples sitting out for people to help themselves to. One of the very first people picked a sample up and promptly went to eat it because they thought it was candy or fudge!! The person joked with us on and off throughout the day about it and we all laughed. ;)


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CaringBridge Contest

I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting (#MC) for CaringBridge. I received a promotional item as a thank you for participating.

It wasn’t too long ago that I posted about CaringBridge. Just to jar your memory the post shared about a family we know who used a site like CaringBridge to keep friends and family up to date on how their child was doing just after she was born with a rare condition. They still use the site today for the same reason since their child is still going through treatment several years later.

This post is to celebrate and support caregivers, the strong personal heroes who tirelessly help families get through one day at a time when experiencing a hardship, CaringBridge, the nonprofit caring social network, and Hallmark Cards are kicking off the “Caring Messages” card contest during National Family Caregiver Month.

UCC_CardContestImage

From October 28th through November 17th, the “Caring Messages” card contest encourages participants to draw on personal experiences as a caregiver or as someone receiving care and create a message of love and support appropriate for a caregiver. Participants can submit one card idea in each of the following categories to www.hallmarkcontests.com:

Support and Encouragement: What can you say to lift someone up or help them get through the day? Let them know you’re thinking of them, send happy thoughts and cheer them on.
Compliments and Appreciation: Let someone know how much you admire them: What they do and how they do it. Words from the Wise: If you’ve experienced something yourself you understand what it’s really like. Write a supportive message for others based on what you’ve learned or what you needed to hear.

This partnership aims to provide patients, caregivers and supporters with love, hope and compassion. Winners announced in February will receive a cash prize, and their entry will be sold at Hallmark.com with in-store sale to be determined.


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Miss Moo is…..

FFR Miss Moo 10-18-2013

Miss Moo is….not expecting a calf. :( Sniff. Sniff.

On Monday our vet came out to check to see if Miss Moo bred, but unfortunately the August AI (artificial insemination) did not take. We were disappointed but we are trying again. This time the vet gave Miss Moo a shot to bring on her heat cycle, which should occur any day now. Once we see signs of her heat we will call the vet and he will come out and AI her again and give her another shot, if I am understanding correctly. All of this is new to us so forgive me if I get a few things mixed up! Trying to keep things straight but somehow think it may take another time or two of going through AI before it sticks in this brain of mine.

Now….here’s to hoping for a 2014 fall calf.

The vet was impressed with how much weight Miss Moo had put on since late August – yay for the new pasture and the extra grain portions! We really couldn’t take the credit…but we are very, very happy that he noticed the difference. He said she was in “working condition” and could probably still use another 150-200 lbs, so we will keep her grain portion the same and feed her our hay, which is better quality than the stuff we previously got. She was hardly gaining anything on the old hay but our hay is “gold” ;). Seriously, Miss Moo doesn’t even want to eat the old stuff anymore, that’s saying a lot for a cow because cows usually are not so picky. And she really does prefer our hay.

Unfortunately, our second cutting just got cut last week and was baled on Monday. The weather conditions were not the best so our hay did not dry as it should have, but it’s ok for cows. Our horse does not eat hay due to his teeth. Older horses like him (29+ years) often have poor teeth, if any at all. That’s why we feed him mush. More about older horses in a future post though!


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Milk Unleashed

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Milk Unleashed helps moms get their kids to drink more milk –anytime –anywhere!

Just because busy families are often on the go, they don’t have to sacrifice nutrition. Thanks to Tetra Pak cartons, milk has officially been unleashed! Milk is packaged in the same shelf safe cartons as juice boxes and not requiring refrigeration until they are unopened. Moms can take milk to the beach, the park, sporting events and picnics – anytime, anywhere. It is the same nutrient-rich Grade fluid milk – but packaged for convenience.

How is this possible? The milk is flash-heated at higher temperatures (ultra-pasteurization) to eliminate bacteria and then put into Tetra Pak shelf safe cartons, which protect the milk from air, tight, and other contaminants. Shelf safe milk stays on the shelf without preservatives until it is ready to chill and drink.

Here are a few tips from Milk Unleashed website for getting kids to drink more milk:

  • Stock the refrigerator (and pantry) with flavored and white milk in single serving cartons for a healthy snack on the go.
  • Put in the kids’ lunchboxes. If it’s there they will be more likely to drink it.
  • Try offering flavored milk. It has the same nutrients and only a little added sugar.
  • Appeal to their eyes by adding a drop of food coloring to make milk fun!
  • Be a role model. Kids will be more likely to want milk if they see you drinking it.

 

The Milk Unleashed website is packed with information for moms on the go, ideas for increasing milk in their families’ diets, nutritional facts about milk, plus promotions, contests and information about the various brands of shelf safe milk and where to buy.

Tetra Pak’s shelf safe milk boxes enable milk to retain its quality without refrigeration for several months. Families can purchase large quantities and store it safely in their pantry until they are ready to chill before opening, if they choose. For more information visit www.milkunleashed.com

 

Our Review:

We LOVE milk in our house we go through 3 sometimes 4 gallons a week! I was excited to try the options from Milk Unleashed in the Tetra Pak containers. The containers are a very nice size (larger than a normal juice box). We received various brands and flavors from milk unleashed. We received Organic Valley Farms White and chocolate milk, Hershey’s chocolate and white chocolate milk, TruMoo vanilla and chocolate milk, and Cow Wow Chocolate milk. All of the brands and flavors were a hit… except I have to say the children did not like the Organic Valley farms regular milk, they did not mind the chocolate flavored milk but honestly hated the regular milk. I tasted the Organic Valley milk and it did have a differently flavor to it… not sure if this was because it is organic or because of the pasteurization but it did taste different. But that was the only one that was not a hit.

The milk was so popular that the kids drank it down before I got to take a nifty picture for the blog of all the flavors and packaging that we received (sorry!) but here are some stock photos of the packaging…

trumoo

Hersheycow-wow-cereal-milkbrands_organicvalley

I LOVE the idea of safe shelf milk… this is a great alternative to juice boxes. We do not do juice boxes often, we opt for water bottles instead…BUT now we have an even better option with the new Tetra Packaging of milk!

We also visited milkunleashed.com for more information about the available products and information about shelf safe milk. There is a wealth of information on the website so PLEASE if take some time to peruse the website it will certainly be informative!

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WWW.MILKUNLEASHED.COM


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