May 14, 2008, 11:02 am

un jeune fille sur un cheval...

• Andy is in Yakima again. For two weeks.
• I'm typing while drugged on migraine medicine. So that's my excuse if I don't make sense.
• I'm learning French.
• I'm pretty good at learning new things, such as languages, and I've been meaning to become multi-lingual for quite some time.
• It feels good to be using my brain again. It had been a while since I really tried to learn something new and useful.
• Not that speaking French is going to be especially useful to me. But whatever.
• To say that I'm frustrated with my health progress, or rather - non-progress, is a huge understatement. Trying to figure out what's causing the latest setbacks.
• Last week, Darby was a 'cute chick' in a first grade play at school. She was cute in it. A cute 'cute chick'.
• There are 29 days until school gets out. 20 of those are actual school days.
• We had neighborhood friends from Texas here this past weekend. The kids had a blast playing with their old buddies.
• I'm thinking about chopping my hair off again. Even though I regret it every time I do it.
• I'm ready to move again. Washington is gorgeous, but it's not 'home'.
• Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever actually find 'home'.
• Brittany got a sewing machine. She's loving it!
• I read 'Escape' a few days ago. Good book. Makes me think those kids from YFZ in Texas should never go back to their real parents, especially the fathers. But the older ones are probably already completely brain-washed. Maybe not though.
• Justice and I are totally into 'Lost', and are about halfway through season two.
• I should nap while Jacob is napping. But will I? Probably not.
• I have mixed feelings about having more children. Most of the time I think we are done, and am deliriously happy with five, but there are times that I just loooooong for another tiny baby.
• When I am under the weather, I secretly wish for a live-in maid and cook. When I'm feeling good and energetic, it doesn't even cross my mind. The past week and a half? I've been having long daydreams about cleaning crews and chefs.
• Jacob got one of his two year molars that have been trying to poke through for EVER. 3 to go.
• This is starting to be a really long random list.
• Brittany took me to see 'Iron Man' for Mother's Day. It was awesome. Though I don't know why they INSIST on including sexual scenes in movies that are obviously going to be frequented by many children. Drives me crazy. I mean, even if they want to include that in the story - there are ways of insinuating what is going on without actually SHOWING the half-naked-frolicking-on-the-bed, ya know?! That one scene in the beginning makes me not want to let my boys watch the movie, even though the rest of the movie is great... I seriously need to check out that clean films website where they take those kinds of scenes out of otherwise awesome movies.
• Darby drew a ninja turtle for me, and it's hanging near my desk. It makes me laugh every time I look at it. :)
• Justice had his finger x-rayed and it has healed up very nicely. Can't even tell it was broken. Obviously I should make homemade splints for a living - I rock. And he was all 'I need to go to the hospital' and I was all 'eh - it'll be fine; I can wrap it up'... does this mom know her stuff or what?! Okay, either that or God totally just healed it right up for us in spite of my abusive neglect. ;)
• Jacob decided he likes to sleep with me and has been waking up at night yelling 'wanna seep mommy's bed'. It usually works. I like the cuddling. And all my kids know that they can get pretty much whatever they ask for when I'm half asleep because I'm not awake enough to say no.
• We lost another library book. It's a Thomas the Tank Engine one. Anyone know where it is? We found the one Darby lost about a week after I paid TWENTY-SIX bucks for it (late fees and replacement fees combined). Though she did chip in about 15... all she had. I'm pretty sure it's buried in one of the massive MESSES in Darby and Jacob's room and I just need to get in there and dig for it.
• I think I'm gonna take that nap before Jacob wakes up.

May 12, 2008, 6:55 pm

Had another setback with my health. I'll be back soon, hopefully, with some updates and more photos. I hope all the mom's had a great Mother's Day. :)

May 5, 2008, 11:06 am

Weekend review {with photos}...

We had an incredible weekend around here. We received our tax rebate on Thursday - yay. On Thursday evening, Jarvis had his soccer banquet, where he got his trophy:

On Friday, Jacob and I did some cleaning (okay, Jacob made messes while I cleaned if you want to get technical), then we headed over to Fort Lewis to hit the case lot sale at the commissary. First we stopped in to see Andy, who was at the gym watching 'combatives' (a.k.a. wrestling matches) - and Jacob was inspired and wanted to fight right then and there, but got confused looking for Daddy because everyone there was dressed in the same outfit as Daddy. He nearly punched three guys before he got to Andy. ha! It was a beautiful day to be outside browsing the case lot sale. I ended up getting $374.78 worth of food for the low low price of $257.25. Saved over 120 buckaroos. And got stocked up on things like Tide, Bounce, and Gatorade. Woo.

Then, on Friday afternoon/evening, I played on Scrapsupply, celebrating National Scrapbooking Day. Fun stuff. One of the things I did on Friday evening was to complete a photography challenge. One of the challenges was to take a photo of your fave body part of someone you love. Jacob was MORE than happy to interrupt his play and show me his belly!!!

I often find Brittany asleep in weird places, clothes or positions. On Friday night, she fell asleep in her clothes before getting ready for bed... I had to wake her up so she wouldn't wake up at 3 a.m. wondering why she was still dressed and hadn't washed her face!

Saturday morning, Jacob decided it would be a good idea to get me up at 6:02 a.m., and I had a headache. I couldn't figure out why - I hadn't eaten anything with gluten... then I realized I had been wearing makeup on Friday. Non gluten-free makeup. I ordered samples of gluten-free mineral makeup, but they haven't arrived yet. So on Friday, I wanted to look purty, so I just wore my old makeup. Yeah - I need to not do that anymore. Even the slightest bit of gluten affects me. Obviously, I wasn't eating the makeup (duh), but I touch my face a lot, I touch my mouth alot... it gets ingested in small amounts. And yeah, headache on Saturday. I managed to make it through the day without it turning into a full blown migraine though, so it was okay - just didn't have my usual energy and had to take Excedrin Migraine to get through it. It's amazing how sensitive I am to gluten and never even knew what was making me so ill. Still blows my mind! And I'm still SO very thankful to have figured it out!!!

It was opening weekend of the Farmer's Market, so Brittany, Kylie, and I headed down there for a little girl's time out. There wasn't much in the way of produce (lots and lots of plants though), so I just got a big jar of my favorite local honey, and we hit a new restaurant that I just found out about for a little brunch. It's called the Organic Comfort Food Cafe and it was so awesome! They always have something 'gluten-free' on the menu, which is why I wanted to try it. They even made my sandwich on a different pan to avoid any cross-contamination with the wheat sandwiches. Here's my reaction:

Yeah, I just cry all the time now. Ha! Okay, so I was posing for the camera (without makeup, by the way... and also with my hair in two little knots - yes, I'm a funky, crazy girl). Seriously, though, I was so happy to be eating this:

The first sandwich I have eaten since I went gluten-free! I have bought mixes to bake bread, but yeah - that hasn't happened. A toasted cheese sandwich on cheesy, gluten-free bread. So yum! And organic cranberry-lemonade. Double yum! The gluten-free buckwheat cookie? Eh - it had nuts in it, so I gave it to Jacob later. It came with my meal. OH!!! AND... they told me there is a gluten-free bakery in Kent (about 45 minutes from here) and it serves PIZZA and CINNAMON ROLLS! I'm in heaven!!

...Kylie enjoyed her french onion soup (and surely all of you know by now who Kylie is?),

...and Brittany loves chocolate shakes (and is turning into SUCH a beautiful young woman!).

The rest of Saturday was spent SCRAPBOOKING and I had loads of fun! Andy and three of the kids went to a birthday party for a guy he works with while I scrapped, and Brittany scrapped and helped me with Jacob. Here are links to some of the things I got done on Saturday (the 2nd one is a mini album, which, if you click on it, you can see all the pages)...

On Sunday morning, I woke up with a full blown migraine. The headache never quite went away, and I didn't get enough sleep, and Jacob woke me up super early again. So I took my migraine drugs and went on my way (one thing about only ingesting a little bit of gluten now - when I do get the migraines, they don't always knock me completely on my rear as they did when I was eating gluten all the time. I can usually still function a bit as long as I take my medicine). So back to scrapbooking I went. Meanwhile, Andy washed my van for me (yay! It was dirty!), and he took Justice to a friend's birthday party, and he took Darby out for a little bit. Oh, and he and the kids did some cleaning. I'm a lucky girl! Here are links to the layouts I did on Sunday...

Then, after I had won two rounds of scrappy bingo and a layout challenge (via random drawing) which = $35 in Scrapsupply gift certificates, Brittany babysat so Andy and I could go on a date.

We were going to go to Kent and eat at Chipotle, but decided we didn't want to drive 45 minutes just for food. We were debating about where to eat dinner around here, since not many places offer tasty gluten-free options, and Andy had the idea of trying something new (something I don't do too often when it comes to restaurants - I stick with what I know - but the gluten thing has rocked my dining out world). So, we headed to Mr. Greek Mediterranean Grill. I have never, ever eaten at a Greek restaurant... wait, I take that back - Torino's in Springfield was Greek, and yummy... so I have only eaten at ONE... until now. And let me just tell you - it was DELICIOUS, and they were SO accommodating to my dietary needs, checking ingredients on several different menu options and being very careful not to 'contaminate' me. Andy and I BOTH loved our food, and even their house salad dressing was gluten-free and soooo mouth-wateringly delicious. I have leftovers to enjoy for lunch when I'm through with this blog entry. YUM! Did I mention it was delicious? We'll definitely go back!!! Then we hit ColdStone, which was in the same shopping center - Andy got a tasty gluten-filled treat, and I stuck with the plainest thing I could find - which was still so yummy. Then, we headed to Wally World and did our part to stimulate the economy with our tax rebate. And I'm about to install my new scanner/printer (the one I got last summer is CRAP... okay, it works, and the scanner is great, but when one color of ink goes out it won't let you print anything else until you replace that one color - even if you aren't USING that color... and the ink is impossible to find, and expensive... and the quality for printing photos just isn't even that good... So I went back to the ole HP standby and after lunch and entering receipts into MSMoney, I'll be installing this (which, when looking for an image, I discovered is 20 dollars cheaper if you order it off the Wally World website, but it was 40 bucks cheaper at the Walmart store than it was at Best Buy so at least I have that consolation):

And then this morning, as I realized I had turned off my alarm in my sleep, and my kids were all still sleeping 25 minutes before the bus would arrive, it dawned on me that Jacob was also still asleep. On Monday morning, he decides to sleep in. Not on Saturday or Sunday. Go figure. So I threw pop tarts at the kiddos, and they got ready and out the door on time... and Jacob was still asleep. So I went back to sleep! Until TEN O'CLOCK! TEN!!! And it was awesome. Thank you Jacob for the extra sleep. I needed it.

p.s. My migraine was still there today (sometimes they last 3 or 4 days), but my medicine took care of it and I feel okay now. I think I need to catch up on some rest (been going, going, going - even during the scrapbooking time), and I need to make SURE I do not get contaminated with gluten again!! :)

And that was our weekend (with a little extra on each end since I included Thursday and this morning). How was your weekend? What did you do???

Note: I edited these photos in Photoshop with some tips from Kay, DT'er at ScrapSupply. Tips that she shared over the scrappy weekend. I like how they turned out. :)