It has certainly been a fun and crazy week! As is the case with most families, we've had fighting and laughing and everything in between.
But did your family have this this week?
1. Dress-up and tea parties
So posh.
2. Book of the Week
This was such a sweet little find at the library this week. ALL the girls loved the love and sweetness in this lovely picture book.
3. Baby Names
In case you missed it from an earlier post, we did a baby name consultation with Kate at Sanctanomina.com for fun this time around. Definitely check it out and tell us your thoughts! So far, I believe the top suggestions from people center around Zoe, Zelie, and Tessa for girls and Blaise and Jude for boys, but there are seriously a TON of great suggestions both on her list and in the comments section too.
4. Family walks
We took one every night this week (and planning on a nice one tonight). One evenings walk was to a concert at a nearby park. 2-4 miles every night and the kids slept great.
And we all enjoy the beauty of God's creation all around us. So beautiful.
5. Craving?
I don't know if I'd call it a craving yet, though it probably will be as soon as this bag runs out...
These Boulder Canyon sea salt and cracked pepper chips are my new favorite thing. I ate 3/4 of a bag of them yesterday...
6. Freezer meals
In this post last Sunday, I mentioned a few freezer meals I'd made. Well, I had a whole list and had found some great deals at the store, so this week I made a bunch more....
Beef Roast with Carrots from here and a slightly different version of Cilantro-Lime Chicken found here (minus the corn). I actually made two recipes of that and threw one in the crock pot for dinner that day. It was really good. I made rice to put it over, but you could obviously make it into burritos/tacos too, and I had a bunch of salad greens, so I made my meal into a big salad (just add tomatoes and avocados and it gets even better).
2 bags of meatballs (I used a similar recipe, but I'm gluten-free, so used almond flour instead of bread crumbs and there was no ketchup in the version I used)
I made like 4 lbs worth of meatballs, and used some of them to make this Meatball Soup as well. Additionally I froze 4 cups of homemade chicken stock to add to it when it's time to cook and eat.
Teriyaki Chicken (though Kayla isn't a huge fan of pineapple, so I omitted that and added a cup of water and a little ground ginger and a heaping tablespoon of honey)
So far, I've got 16 meals all ready and I think I'll make a few more as well since we have the freezer space (a nice benefit to having a fridge of our own and renting a place that came with one).
7. Smoothies
I'm also freezing up bags of fruit mixtures to make into smoothies for an easy and healthy breakfast/snack after baby comes. Thanks to some awesome fresh and frozen fruit sales at Sprouts this week, I have well over a dozen baggies already and tons more fresh fruit cut up in the fridge for some healthy goodness now.
I haven't done quicktakes in awhile, but I feel like this is a good week for it. The week went by SO quickly for me that I feel like everything literally was a quicktake. 1. Reading is still our jam!
Kayla reading during the Super Bowl. She watched some, but she was mostly engrossed in her book since it was not the Bengals. :)
The other morning, the girls all came into bed with me in the morning and grabbed books. I got up to make Chris' lunch and came back to find Kayla reading "How Things Work" (Thanks, Grammy!) to her sisters. It was sweet as sweet could be.
And this one I snapped a couple days ago of Chris reading to Kayla, Elise, and Ava from a book all about teeth. I love this scene and it's one I see often around here.
2. Kayla's One-on-One with Daddy
I mentioned that Chris plans to take one girl a week on a one-on-one during Lent. Kayla got to take her first little Daddy Date on President's Day. We loaded everyone up in the car and we dropped Chris and Kayla off at the beginning of a nearby trail. Their plan was to just hike until they were too tired to go any further and then we'd pick them up again. The trail goes on for miles (it's the same one that, as a family, we've been hiking in segments). Camelbak strapped on, we waved to our adventurers and headed home to have some fun at home ourselves.
(these are all the pictures that Chris took on their adventure- it appears that they had a pretty good time) :)
We picked them up around lunchtime. They'd hiked over 6 miles and ended at a park that's not too far from our house, so I packed a lunch and we met them there for a little picnic before taking them home to get some rest after their fun date.
3. Gorgeous Weather
We live in SoCal, so it's not surprising when the weather is lovely, even in the winter, but it was wonderful to have such sunny, beautiful weather after a few weeks that were rather dreary, cooler, and scattered with quite a bit of rain. It's still gorgeous, but most of these pictures are from earlier in the week when I took the girls out front to color with sidewalk chalk and ride bikes and scooters. I got some nice time while they played to just soak up the Vitamin D and read. Truly lovely.
4. Cleaning the Patio
Speaking of playing outside, the girls also love playing out on the back patio and making a mess. They have fun, so I don't mind it much, but at some point, we do have to clean up the patio from the dirt they've pasted all over. One of their favorite past times is "painting" the back fence with a mixture of dirt and water. The other day, we had a cleaning party with a scrub brush and clean water....they still had fun, so perhaps I should suggest that activity in the future and we could skip the "dirt painting" altogether....
5. Trip to Sprouts
Today at Sprouts, I was paid a very nice compliment, which doesn't need to be shared, but as a mother was very nice to hear. Not more than 5 seconds later, I caught Ava with her hand in one of the bulk food bins grabbing a tasty treat for herself. The deed had been done, but I snatched the handful of raisins from her and gave them to Sophie instead. But when I was grabbing my last item, she tried her naughtiness again, and this time it was worse. I was further away so couldn't grab her or the food, but I gave her the look, and shook my head because she hadn't yet actually grabbed it. She looked me in the eye, grabbed a square of chocolate, and stuffed it in her mouth. She lost some treats and privileges at home, and screamed until she fell asleep for her nap because of it, but wow--that was a first, and not one that I ever want repeated again. But we survived the trip to the store, restocked our fridge and pantry, and the yuckiness of that experience is a few hours behind us now. Thank goodness.
6. Valentine's Dance for Adults with Special Needs
My godfather's band played for a Valentine's Dance event earlier this week, and we attended. It was for adults with special needs, but all were welcome, so we joined the fun to dance with the sweet folks and all the volunteers (a big group of whom were students at St. Michael's Abbey boy's school). It was a lot of fun to spend time with a group of people that the girls do not often see or have a chance to interact with. It was definitely a bit awkward for them at first, but they soon lost their fear and had fun dancing around with everyone. Sophie even tried to share her water with one young man who could not use his legs, but was dancing wildly and happily with his arms and torso with a bright smile on his face. He was not exactly happy to be interrupted, but it was heart warming to see her being so friendly and sweet with him.
Plus they were offered ice cream sundaes. Best night ever.
This video of Sophie dancing is the best. You will laugh. I promise. Her moves are amazing.
7. My health
I thought about writing a much longer post about this, but I don't really want to. In December, I had a bunch of blood work done. I've had blood work done in the past, but this was very extensive and covered a lot of different things. What I found out is that we still have some more digging to do to because my body showed signs (in the numbers) that it's been fighting something for awhile. I was also formally diagnosed with the thyroid autoimmune disease Hashimoto's. I have been having thyroid problems for several years at this point, but up until now it's always just a vague "hypothyroid" diagnosis with no questions answered as to why or what happened, so this series of blood tests were a step in the direction of getting more answers and solving some problems instead of just throwing medication at something and calling it "fine". I was also very deficient in a lot of vitamins and minerals, so I'm taking lots of supplements and we are trying the more natural Armour Thyroid medication at the moment. The hope, of course, is to find more answers and perhaps be able to get me off medication completely eventually if we can solve some of the problems that caused this to happen in the first place. I could go into it more, but frankly, it's somewhat personal so I don't want to share all the details with everyone, it's exhausting, and it's rather emotional for me. What most people need to know is that I will be gluten free from now on and am also staying away from sugar for the most part as well. I am not terribly sick and confined to a bed. My body is just having some troubles and we are trying to figure out exactly what it is. I am grateful for a wonderful, supportive doctor, supportive and loving family and close friends, and I'm thankful that I've kept my body as healthy as I could throughout my life because I'm certainly not in a super bad place and I think that has a huge part to play in my current health being quite good despite there being these underlying problems.
Now, that was a little heavy, I know, so simply scroll back up to #6 and watch that video again. Perhaps twice. :)
Many people ask the question, "Coffee or Tea?" I've always answered neither. I mean I'll enjoy an iced coffee about twice a year or a cup of tea when I'm feeling a little under the weather, but I don't drink either regularly or with much devotion.
Then I met my friend, Crystal. She is on a really strict diet to help combat an auto-immune disease, so many foods and drinks are on her "no-no list". But herbal teas are thumbs up!
Several years ago, I was diagnosed with (some form of very vague) hypothyroidism and since then my world has been rocked in many ways.
I'm a do-er. I've not always been at a place where I'm happy and comfortable with my body and weight, but I have always tried to eat pretty well and exercise frequently. In fact, it was a smack in the face with humility when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism just after running my first (and only to date) half marathon. Whaaaat? I was not even 30 years old and I was falling apart. Me, who actually stayed active and tried to eat a balanced diet. Me, who is actually at the best weight for my height and body build that I've ever been at. Whaaaat? Additionally, I almost never get sick. My kids and even Chris, get colds or a stomach bug and usually I am the one that somehow remains healthy (enough) and nurses the rest back to health. Why am I the one with this random diagnosis-- and one that, according to the doctors I had been seeing, has no cure and the cause is "unknown".
Needless to say, that information has never been enough for me. Recently, I met Crystal, who is seeing a doctor interested in investigating further into your health to see if more answers can be found. I saw this doctor this past week and first off she looked at the blood work that had been done to test my thyroid in the past and ordered a bunch more that would actually give more information. Thyroid and adrenals are often linked, so she ordered a test to see how my adrenals are holding up too. And I met with a nutritionist at the office to discuss my diet. In general in America, we eat total crap, so my diet, even without a health problem could have used a bit of a re-vamp, but she wants me to take things a step further. I started an elimination diet yesterday to see if my body might have some intolerances to some of the foods that I'm eating as well as to flush the (probably many) toxins that are hanging out in my body, especially my gut.
So now, I am joining my friend, Crystal on a diet (mine is less restrictive than hers, so not truly comparing because hers is a lot harder to do) to improve my health and hopefully give more answers and hope for the future. And we'll see what the extensive blood work will show too. I am excited to get more answers and to take better care of me.
And I am excited to drink tea, which is allowed on the diet and has actually been a nice way for me to also take a few minutes for myself at day's beginning and end and
SIT DOWN and REST and THINK and PRAY.
Yes, we have all of 2 actual mugs in our home and both are Christmas ones. So I guess I need to invest in some others or put some on my Christmas list. :)
I am so grateful for the wonderful people in my life supporting me, especially in this next phase of my journey towards better health. So grateful for my (then) OB who was the one who caught the thyroid problem in the first place several years ago. So grateful for my friend Crystal, who is inspiring me to really take charge and make the sacrifices necessary to ensure that I can enjoy my life with my kids and husband more, both now and in the future.
