Thursday.....Seriously????

Wow!! Spring break has flown by! It has been fun being able to sleep in a bit and piddle around the house with the girls!!

Today Brianna leaves for 3 days to go on a 17 mile backpacking trip with William and my brother. She is so excited! I am soooo NOT!

I keep reminding myself that she is in good hands, God is in control, and it will be a great time for her with her daddy, but I can't stop worrying a bit!

I am mostly worried about the bears coming out of hibernation and that one will eat her! Totally irrational....I know!!

Now to food! Yesterday I made biscuits for breakfast and noticed that the baking powder had a lot of ingredients in it. I had never thought to check it and was a bit surprised to see so many that I could not pronounce (which I have learned is not a good thing!). Anyway, I was surprised to find aluminum in it. But....Sprouts to the rescue!! They carried a no aluminum added brand!!

It was a good cooking day yesterday! Less time in the kitchen, which is always nice!

Breakfast - homemade biscuits, eggs, raspberries and blackberries
Lunch - because our breakfast was so filling we really just had a snack of some popcorn and nuts
Dinner - This was WONDERFUL!!! a huge tray of oranges, apples, pears, pineapple, and berries, yogurt to dip the fruit in, 2 kinds of homemade bread (white and wheat), peanut butter, honey, a variety of cheeses, and nuts. My brother ate with us and kept commenting on the fact that he was surprised how filling dinner was and how much he enjoyed it! We topped dinner off with a pound cake that Tori and I made for dessert!

So far, so good!!

The Grass is Always Greener!

My four girls are growing up. Brianna is 15, Tori almost 13, Emaleigh is 8 and my baby, Kalli will be 5 in a couple of weeks. It seems like just yesterday that they were born.

I just LOVED it when my girls were little! Oh, the little chubby arm hugs and open mouth kisses!!! Sweet, sweet times.

Thinking back, I wish I had realized then how quickly those times pass. How quickly they would grow up.

I remember the struggles of having young children very well. The sleepless nights, not being able to go out when you wanted to, never having a clean house!

If I had it to do over again, I would care less about the house and going out and just spend more time absorbing the girls! They don't stay little for long!

I am trying to make sure I absorb the stages that they are in now though! Learning from the past :) Teenagers are soooo incredible!! I definitely am enjoying sharing that journey with Brianna and Tori! I love watching Emaleigh learn more about the world around her and seeing what her interests and passions are. Kalli just makes it day fun! She is either sooo happy, or sooo upset!!

If you are a mom of a little one and happen across this blog post, I would encourage you to just slow down and take the time to memorize every day! It goes by so fast and before you know it, they will grown!!

Several years ago! A couple of the girls were still in the preschool age group!


Now they are all out of it :( But entering new stages!!

Side Effects!

I have shared how we have been working really hard to eat foods with the least amount of processing that we can. The reason we originally decided to do this was as a desperate, last ditch effort to stay away from medical intervention.

I have had this stomach pain for the last year that has been getting worse. It happened pretty consistently every day or two and has gotten worse over the past year. I originally thought it was the gallstones that I have, but it did not follow the pattern that gallstone pain does. So anyway, every couple of days, I would end up in bed for a couple of hours in pain. Kinda hard to do with 4 kiddos!!

About 6 months ago a friend suggested giving up cheese and dairy to see if it was related to that. I totally did NOT want to go that route, as cheese is my favorite food! In November, I remember going to Olive Garden with a bunch of friends and eating the baked ziti. Within 10 minutes my stomach hurt so bad that I had to go home and miss out on the rest of our fun evening!

Then and there I decided that I would be willing to forgo cheese if it would help, so I gave it up. Well, it worked fabulously for about 3 weeks and then it started occasionally hurting again despite the lack of dairy. So I was stumped!

I kept a food journal and found that it occurred at seemingly random times, so that was no help...until last week.....! I can't remember why, but the thought kept occurring to me that maybe it was a reaction to some chemical in food. Something that was in many of the cheese dished I ate (which would account for the decrease in frequency when I gave up cheese).

So with encouragement from William and the girls, we decided to all give it a go! It definitely has to be a team effort for us just due to the amount of work!

I am happy to report no stomach pain since we began 3 days ago! One of the things I would eat that always, without fail made it hurt was cheese pizza. Well, we had that on Sunday night and I felt fine!!! Woohoo!! Great side effect so far!

Then we have my sweet Emi! She has had trouble with intestinal blockage for the past 2 years. Nasty, yucky, embarrassing problem! Now I am about to get into some gross, mom details, so skip down a couple of paragraphs if you want to! Because of the blockage problem, her bm's have always been liquid. I would take her to the doctor thinking she had severe diarrhea, just to have them tell me she is blocked! I always thought that was weird!!

Anyway, she started having a tummy ache today and I kid you not that girl has gone potty 20 times!!! She was amazed that bm's could be solid!! Sad isn't it? I think that what she was eating before was a lot of the problem. Another great side effect!

Well, now that we have all of the digestive talk out of the way, let me tell you what we ate today!! It was yummy!!!

Breakfast - eggs, homemade hash browns, homemade tortillas (super easy and sooo good!), with apples and yogurt!!
Lunch - a piece of homemade bread with peanut butter and some strawberries
Dinner - spinach/chipotle chicken, spinach salad with strawberries and almonds, corn and homemade tortillas. For dessert I baked these little pastry shells and stuffed them with yummy berries!! That was a hit!

Now, the eggs and hashbrowns were great, but they were kinda greenish! I am pretty sure it was because of the potatoes and potato skins.

I was really nervous making the tortillas, but they ended up being so easy and we just loved them! I was also nervous about the pastries because I have never made any, but that was pretty easy too!

Definitely some yummy food! I talked with the girls about us slowing down our eating and actually taking the time to enjoy the flavors and colors of the food that God made for us to enjoy. As in the other posts, we are still really enjoying working together! The girls are getting a kick out of learning to cook some of the new food!!
I am going tomorrow to buy a heavy duty mixer that should be very helpful!

Happy cooking!!

Cooking up a Storm!

Boy howdy, I feel like I am cooking all of the time! Actually, I guess it really is not that bad!! Breakfast was mostly cooked the night before, lunch was easy, but dinner was a doozy!!! I keep forgetting that I can't just whip together a dish of manicotti! I need to make the sauce first.

Today we had:
Breakfast - granola bars (I had to cook these the night before and let them cool.)and vanilla yogurt (I bought the all-natural tub from Kroger)
Lunch - crackers (I bought the all-natural ones from Kroger), some different types of cheeses, grapes and a variety of nuts.
Dinner - stuffed manicotti, green beans (frozen kind), and homemade garlic bread

I was amazed again by the amount of work that went into dinner! We started preparing at around 5:00pm and ate at 7:00pm!!! I am wondering if I can keep this up once spring break is over and school starts back. The good thing is that I am making extra of the sauces and freezing them.

I have to admit how much I love working with my girls though! We each grab an apron and go to work! Today Tori made the bread (YUMMY!!) and green beans while Brianna stuffed manicotti (this was fun!!)and grated cheese. We had a good time visiting while we were cooking!

Tonight I am thinking about what a blessing it is to have children to work and share with!

Health Nut!!??!!

I know what you are thinking! Health nut is not in the top 10 names you would use to describe me! Okay, more like not in the top 100!!

Well, for the next 30 days I am going to be a health nut. Well, maybe not a health nut, but definitely a healthier chef! We have decided that for the next 30 days we are going to attempt to eat foods that are not processed...at least for the most part!

So today I made my menu for the next 2 weeks and went to the store to buy everything. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did not cost as much as I thought that it would. We did buy some convenience foods, but I tried to by all natural/no additives or preservatives convenience food.

We started the 30 day challenge with this menu:

Breakfast - pancakes and scrambled eggs
Lunch - skipped it because we ate a late breakfast
Dinner - cheese pizza

Now, I have not given up white flour yet because I have not had time to learn to cook with whole wheat flour, but I figure it is better than nothing!!

So pancakes were great and easy because I am used to cooking them from scratch. The pizza was more of a challenge.

I had to find a recipe for the crust as well as the sauce. Something else I found interesting was that a block of cheese has many fewer preservatives than does shredded cheese.

What was really fun about the pizza is that there were enough steps for each of us to help! Tori made the pizza sauce (which was wonderful!), Brianna shredded the cheese, I made the crust and Emaleigh cooked and strained the spinach.

I found that we had a really great time working together and we all enjoyed the meal!!