Refinancing Your Mortgage

LMS really wants a dog and she felt she just had to have a picture taken with this blue metal dog

This is kind of random, but have you taken advantage of the low interest rates and refinanced your mortgage?

We'd thought about it, but it seemed like a lot of work, and I kept seeing things about the costs involved and making sure you'll be in the house long enough to recoup the costs. We don't plan on being in this house forever, so the whole thing seemed kind of pointless.

Then we got a letter from the mortgage company we worked with when we bought the house almost 2 years ago that changed all that.

They were offering a streamline refinance with no out of pocket expenses, a lower interest rate, and a lower monthly payment. I called to confirm the details, since it sounded too good to be true, but it was legit. The problem was that Mr M was due to head back overseas in less than 36 hours, and he was currently half way across the country doing drill with his National Guard unit. A few emails and phone calls later, and he was able to get a power of attorney form signed and mailed to the mortgage company before he headed to the airport. (We used a POA when we bought the house too, since he was out of the country for that one also.)

Last week we closed on the refinance, and I think we did pretty good. The credits from the lender more than covered the cost of the refinance, and we actually ended up with $800+ that the lender will pay on our principal. And we'll get a check for $20. I'm not sure why the two are separate, but I'm not complaining- especially since they're actually paying the equivalent of part of a mortgage payment for us. In addition, our interest rate was lowered by 1.5 percentage points, which in turn lowers our monthly payment.

The whole thing was very easy and painless, too. We gathered some paperwork and took it in to the mortgage company, and then a few weeks later I went to the settlement company's office and spent 45 minutes signing all the paperwork. Easy peasy, no hassle, except for some hand cramps :) We're loyal USAA members, and love everything they do for us (and it's a lot!), but when I checked into their refinance options- for comparison- all the reviews talked about what a hassle it was and how difficult the whole process was. Dealing with a local company made the difference for us.

We'll also get to skip March's mortgage payment as everything is transferred over to the new lender. We considered saving it and doing a double payment in April, but decided the better option would be to finish paying off a credit card (it has a higher interest rate than our mortgage does).

Our monthly payment has been reduced, but we will continue paying the old amount. It's a line item in our budget, so if we leave it unchanged, we can start making extra payments on the principal of the loan. Over a year's time, we'll end up with the equivalent of a couple extra mortgage payments, but it'll all be applied to the principal, and we'll be able to start making faster progress paying down the mortgage. Yay!

Last couple thoughts: because the refinance was a streamline, we didn't have to have the house re-assessed, but we also couldn't change the length of the loan. We had talked about moving to a 15 year loan, but that wasn't an option with the streamline. In the end, it didn't really matter, since we'll still be paying it off quicker by continuing to pay the old, higher amount.

Have you refinanced? Was it a huge hassle, or smooth sailing?

Mud Run Results

Saturday I ran in my first mud run. I had registered for it before I found out I was pregnant, and had been debating whether to go through with it or not. My doctor said as long as it feels good to keep running, I can, so despite the cold and possibility of freezing rain, I decided to give it a go.

But what do you wear in a race of indeterminate length when you're going to be crawling through the mud, splashing through puddles, maneuvering obstacles, and climbing a 6' wall and a 12' pile of hay bales?

I opted for the old running shoes I've been wearing when I paint, old long johns I purchased as a college freshman from an Army surplus store, a running skirt for modesty, a tech shirt that I think is ugly (it was on clearance, and looked a lot cuter on the rack), and an old fleece I picked up at Goodwill. I wasn't sure if any of my clothes would get ruined, so I only wore things I wouldn't be too sad to lose. As it turned out, my clothes fared a lot better than I was afraid they would.

I can only guess that the organizers of this race scheduled it in February because it would add an element of fun or adventure. I'm not so sure about that. I think we were all trying as hard as possible not to get too wet or muddy since the temps were in the mid-30s. If it had been summer, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Once I arrived, I finally found out that the race was a smidge longer than 4 miles (I couldn't find anything online saying how long the race was, so I was going into this blind). Overall, the race was fun, with most of the obstacles in the first mile and a half. Unfortunately, they didn't stagger the beginning and those of us not at the very front ended up having to wait our turn to go over the first 3 or 4 obstacles. All told, I probably lost about 20 minutes standing and waiting. I wasn't too concerned though, since I wasn't going for a time, I was just trying to finish.

I will say that those who are taller had an advantage over those of us who are short. Luckily people were nice and helped those around them (including me) get over the obstacles that were too tall for us.

I didn't get too muddy till the second mile, but most of it washed off when we went through a culvert under the highway (!) at the third mile marker. I collected a bit more mud during the third mile, but not much.

This puts my total races for the year up to 3: a 5k, a half marathon, and now a 4 miler.

Will I run this race next year?
I don't know.

Will I run a mud race when it's warmer?
Most likely.

Have you run a mud race?

Sunday Funny

picture found on Amazon

We bought No Stress Chess for Christmas so LMS and I can learn to play chess. For some reason, I never learned when I was younger. I think keeping the rules and movements of each piece straight never made sense to me.

No Stress Chess is finally changing all that. There's several levels of play to get you familiar with the rules. In the first level, you pick a card from the stack, and it tells you which piece to move, and how to move it. Obviously, you miss a lot of opportunities to capture your opponent's pieces because you didn't get the card to move a certain piece, but it reinforces names, movements, and strategy.

In the 2nd level each player draws 3 cards to start, then another on their turn. You then play one of the cards in your hand.

The 3rd level is similar to the 2nd, except you draw 5 cards to start. I think having more and more options of pieces to play helps you consider which one would be the best to move, and where.

From there, you move on to standard chess rules.

Honestly, those cards make it so much easier to figure it all out. Having a visual aid to tell what each piece is allowed to do is just what I needed.

It's helped LMS, too. She keeps asking to play it, but she asks to play "Stress Chess"- which is exactly what it's not :)

The other day she played a game with a friend at our homeschool play group, and they were discussing the rules as they played. Too cute!

Pregnancy Trivia

I've been thinking about all the similarities and differences between this pregnancy and the others.

1st- no nausea or fatigue, ended in miscarriage
2nd- nausea and fatigue, LMS born healthy
3rd- no nausea or fatigue, ended in miscarriage
4th- nausea and fatigue, cautiously optimistic about the end result

Since I didn't experience nausea or fatigue with either miscarriage, I'm feeling hopeful that this pregnancy will go well.

Here's my chart comparing pregnancies, because I'm OCD like that :)

Little Miss Sunshine	This Pregnancy
Nausea, aversion to smells	Worse nausea, severe aversion to smells
Told Mr M by sending a pic of the pregnancy test via email (he was on a training mission in Korea)	Told Mr M by sending a pic of the pregnancy test via email (he was already back overseas)
Very sedentary- had been sitting at a desk for about 3 years (with minimal exercise), which caused shortening of some ligaments and messed up my pelvis.	Much more active- I ran a half marathon a week after conception! I’ve continued running and will do so as long as possible. There’s a couple races I plan on participating in, but I won’t be “racing”. I’ve also been skiing while LMS is having her lesson- nothing too wild and crazy though.
Was doing Atkins and had lost 10 pounds when I got pregnant. (I went back on Atkins a couple years later but didn’t lose weight or get pregnant)	Was doing GAPS and had lost 20 pounds when I got pregnant.
Fatigue was there, but manageable. Not gluten free yet, so still in survival mode when dealing with health issues. I was used to being exhausted all the time, so it wasn’t too hard to deal with a bit more.	Fatigue much more noticeable- I’m 7 years older, and I’m no longer in survival mode since I’ve been gluten free for almost four years now. I’d forgotten how exhausting it is dealing with fatigue.

Another reason GAPS is what I need right now

Remember how I said we'd made progress just in the 7 or so weeks we did GAPS before Christmas? We were able to eat things over Christmas and at Disney that usually give us problems, but with fewer problems.

Something else happened too. My cycle regulated enough for this to happen:

Super crazy, right? After all this time (almost 6 years since my last pregnancy, which ended in miscarriage), I'd pretty much given up hope of getting pregnant again. Though I knew in the back of my mind it was possible my body could heal enough for this to happen, I certainly wasn't expecting it or counting on it. And definitely not this soon.

I had my first appointment this morning (after waiting impatiently for 3 weeks) and so far everything looks good. They did an ultrasound to see how far along I am (which I already knew, based on when Mr M was home) and I got to see the heartbeat. I hadn't realized just how important that was to me till I was looking up at the screen and saw that tiny movement. Because of the timing of doctor visits over the years, I've been able to see the heartbeat of each of our babies, even the two that didn't make it. That is something I treasure.

I am still concerned about miscarrying, but praying about it has calmed my fears significantly. And I didn't have the symptoms I'm experiencing now with either previous miscarriage, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm 8 1/2 weeks along, so I have a few more weeks before I'll feel like I'm out of the woods. My due date is Sept 29, which means I get to experience the hot and humid summers here while in my 3rd trimester (not looking forward to that one- good thing we have AC!).

Staying on GAPS should ensure my intestines continue to heal and that I get the nutrients I need. Unfortunately, the constant nausea and severe aversion to smells that I'm currently experiencing is making it impossible to stay on GAPS.  I experienced this when I was pregnant with LMS, but it's worse this time around. Mr M took over all cooking duties when I was pregnant with LMS, but unfortunately he's out of the country again (only for a few more months, thankfully).

So I'm reduced to eating as little as I can get away with (things that I can't smell) and letting LMS nuke various gluten free convenience foods for herself. I'm very grateful she's able to do this, and she's loving the independence. It's not great for "family meal time" since I have to leave the room while she's warming up her food and eating it, but it should only be for a few more weeks. The resulting intestinal issues and meltdowns (from eating things she shouldn't) were expected, but not welcome.

The nausea cleared up around the end of the first trimester with LMS, and I'm praying that's the case this time. As soon as the nausea clears up I plan on getting both of us back on the GAPS wagon.

Cub Scout pony bead neckerchief slide

I wanted to do something presidential for February's neckerchief slide, but just couldn't come up with anything quick and easy.

In the end, after a good amount of time searching online for ideas, I found one here, using pony beads and boondoggle cord. The tutorial was very easy to follow, so I won't re-cap it here. The only thing I would change is the number of rows of beads. The tutorial said to make 10 rows, but I found that loose on my neckerchief, which is bigger than the boys' neckerchiefs, so I had them do 8 rows, and it worked much better- the slides stayed in place.

This proved fairly easy for the boys, with my supervision, but I did the knots for them. I did stripes, but some of the boys did checkerboard or other patterns. It was nice to do a slide that didn't involve paint :)

Built in bookshelves for our library

I've wanted a wall of bookshelves for a long time, and when we bought this house I knew exactly where I would install them: the small formal dining room.

It only took me almost two years, but I've finally finished them. Part of the reason it took so long for me to finish them was that it took me awhile to figure out how to make them look built in, without actually making them built in. Since we know we won't be in this house for the rest of our lives, we don't want to do anything too permanent. While we might love our library with its shelves of books, someone else might prefer having a dining room. 

As a result, I left all the trim and moulding in place, and had to work around it. I built four boxes with cross braces in the middle and at the top and attached thin plywood to the back. I built a base of 2x4's to rest the shelves on and give a place to attach  the baseboard. 

I put spacers between the outside walls of the shelves and the walls of the room, compensating for the chair rails. The outside box of the shelves only goes to the lower edge of the crown moulding so it doesn't cut into it. I marked off the studs and screwed the cross braces in the middle and top of each box to the studs. I also screwed the sides of the boxes together and screwed the base of the boxes to the 2x4 base. It's very solid! It'll be a pain to take apart, but it will be doable if it's necessary. For perspective, the wall is 10' wide by 8' tall.

 
The other reason this took me so long is that the materials were not cheap. It took awhile to buy all the materials, and I bought materials as I needed them, which helped spread out the cost. I didn't keep exact  track of the costs, but here's the materials I used:

4 sheets of 3/4" oak cabinet grade plywood
3 sheets of 1/4" pine plywood
2x4's were recycled from the kitchen cupboard demo- they were previously used to support the cabinets on the ceiling
12' length of crown moulding
3 - 8' lengths of trim (I used various sizes and types of trim to give a nice finished look to the shelves)
2- 8' lengths of trim
3- 7' lengths of trim
3- 8' lengths of trim
1- 8' length of baseboard (I already had a 2' piece to make up the difference)
1x2's for cross braces= I already had them
1x3 for curves at the top of each box= I already had it
two tubes of caulk
1 bottle of gorrilla glue wood glue
box of 2" screws
box of 3" screws
box of 1 1/4" screws- I already had
can of white paint
can of primer (I had a partial can that wasn't enough)
16 lengths of 7' metal shelf strip things
6 pkgs of clips for shelves
1 more sheet of 3/4" oak cabinet grade plywood for more shelves

I did consider taking the easy way out and just using some shelves from IKEA, but they're made of mdf, and I really don't think that mdf holds up well in the long run. It would be a bit cheaper in the short run, but in the long run it would not have been as satisfactory. I also thought of using pine boards like I did for the basement shelves, but pine is softer than oak and the boards warp easily. So I ended up  using cabinet grade oak plywood.

All trimmed out and caulked. I used our Dremmel to sand down the edges of the crown moulding to make it match as closely as possible. It's not as good a match as it would be if both pieces were cut to fit, but it's pretty close. And caulk camaflouges a multitude of sins :) I did the same thing with the pieces of trim that go over the chair rails.

I made the shelves out of the same oak cabinet grade plywood that I used for the boxes, and I used screen trim on the outside edge to give it a nice finished look.

I used the same metal strips and shelf clips that I used in the shelves I built in the basement. I considered other options, but I wanted to be able to adjust the shelves to accomodate different sizes of books.

The most time consuming part was painting all the shelves: 27 to start with, 9 later on. I primed and painted both sides of each shelf- two thin coats of primer plus 2-3 thin coats of semi-gloss. I propped the shelves on the clips (without actually inserting the clips fully since they’re a bear to get in and out and I knew I’d need to move them) so the paint could cure. I left them to cure while all the furniture from the living room was crammed in the library while I painted the living room.

When we finally got the furniture out of the library, we were able to get the books onto the shelves. It’s so nice to finally have the stacks of books off the floor! It only took a year and a half to get too that point…. I posted about sorting all our books here.

Once I sorted all the books and got them on the shelves, I realized I needed some more shelves. Ugh. So I had to cut more shelves, prime, paint, and wait for the paint to cure. Then I could finally finish organizing the shelves.

(the fabric at the window is a scrap tacked up so I could see if I like it for a curtain)

looking into the library from the kitchen

looking into the library from the front entryway

As you can see, we have a ton of books. The shelves are almost all full, so I didn't bother trying to "style" the shelves. I just put a few items I've collected in the few open spaces and called it good. I've seen some walls of shelves that were so "styled" that there was maybe a hundred books total and lots and lots of decorative items. Totally not my thing.

I moved the loveseat in here, but I'd like something a little smaller, like a fainting couch or chaise lounge. This works for now, though. The loveseat will go to my sister when she moves this summer, so I'll figure out something different then.

It’s so nice to finally have the library looking so much better and functioning as I’d like. I still need to hang pictures and curtains, but that's true for all the rooms.

I love how it turned out!

The library is north facing, so it doesn't get great light, so it's a little difficult to get pictures that are clear and well-lit.

Linking to Made By You Monday at Skip to My Lou and Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog and

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Mud Run

any ideas what this is a picture of?

Have you ever run a mud race?

I'm signed up for one this Saturday, and I'm a bit nervous.

1. I've never done a mud race
2. It's February!
3. I'm not actually sure how long the race is- they just talk about the different obstacles we have to get through

I was going to do this race last year, but my physical therapist wanted me to stop running for awhile while we focused on strengthening my muscles, so I wasn't able to.

This is just a small, local race. I saw that one of the big, national races was being run here last year, but the cost was ridiculous. Even spectators had to pay to get in!

I plan on wearing old clothes and old shoes, and just having fun- my goal is to finish. That being said, any tips on how a 5' person can best climb a 6' wall would be greatly appreciated!

Sunday Funny

 Look closely at the air compressor- do you see something that looks a little off?

How about now?

One day I went into the main floor powder room, looked down at the air compressor, and saw the toilet paper. Apparently the Little Miss felt the air compressor needed some decoration :)

(what, don't you keep your air compressor and miter saw in your powder room?)

Valentine's Ruffle Skirt

Remember the Halloween candy corn skirt? I decided to make a Valentine's version for LMS.

I bought red, dark pink, and white t-shirts from JoAnns (3 for $9) and used an old white t-shirt of mine for the base. 

 I had only intended to do three ruffles, but I didn't re-read the instructions very well. I ended up sewing the white one on first and then the red one. After the white I should have done the dark pink one, then the red one. Since I didn't do that, the space between the white and red was too wide for just the dark pink ruffle. So I dug through my scrap bag and found an old pink sundress of LMS'. It had some stains, but I was able to cut them out and still have enough fabric for a light pink ruffle. I think the light pink actually makes it all work.

I think it turned out super-cute! And it's big enough that she'll be able to wear it next year too :)

Gluten Free Food Storage

(our previous food storage set up, but the curtains made it too hard to easily see what we had)

Several months ago we bought a Shelf Reliance Food Storage System (that I finally set up a week or so ago), and I started looking into finding gluten free food storage items.

A lot of foods that are naturally gluten free (like freeze dried fruits, veggies, and meats) are packed in shared facilities, so there's the potential for some cross-contamination. Since this has proven to be an issue for me in the past, I knew I had to be completely anal and find a company with a dedicated gluten free facility.

I only found one: Auguson Farms. They have a couple packing facilities, and one of them is a dedicated gluten free facility. Unfortunately, they don't offer their full range of products as gluten free, but they do have a decent selection, and it's much better than all the other companies I've looked into.

We decided to do a bulk order to start with, and several weeks after placing the order, FedEx brought 16 boxes of buckets and cans of dried and freeze dried foods (poor delivery guy!). An advantage of placing a large order: we got free shipping, as well as some free food items.

We'll continue to place orders, but not so much at one time. Now that I've finally rearranged the basement workroom (a workroom no longer) and set up the Shelf Reliance system it's so much easier to get to our food storage and see what we have.

(a sneak peak of the basement bedroom that used to be the workroom and is now our storage/exercise room- more pictures coming soon!)

I know we're told to store what we eat, but that's not really an option for us right now. This summer I plan on doing some canning and dehydrating, but for now the bulk of our food storage is dried and freeze dried fruits, veggies, meats, beans, rice, and lentils. I'd like to have food we could actually eat without having problems (like if our food budget were to be drastically reduced), but at this point, most of it would only be good if we were in a true emergency situation with no access to other food. If that were the case, we'd be able to eat, but we'd have problems.

We stopped building up our food storage for awhile because of this problem. Since most of what we eat now is fresh or frozen, it's hard to store what we eat. As I googled around, looking for ideas, I found that the best source of info for real food (how we eat these days) food storage are preppers. You know, the people who are preparing for the end of the world? Not all of them eat a real food diet, but I have found several bloggers who do, which has been helpful.

For us, focusing on self reliance in addition to food storage seems to be the answer. This means getting a garden actually producing veggies (unlike the complete failure last summer), and getting some chickens. I keep debating whether we want to keep them for eggs (which we still haven't added back into our diet) or just for meat. I'm thinking meat chickens this year, layers and meat chickens next year.

We also need to make the space for a larger freezer. We have a small chest freezer, but it can only hold 1/4 of a cow, with no room for any fruits, veggies or other meat. If we want to store food in the freezer, we need to have the space. Now if we could just figure out where to put the freezer...

What's your approach to food storage?

Sunday Funny

Nanny and Princess Minnie. LMS isn't yet sure if they'll be friends :) 

I think they look pretty friendly, though.

The other day LMS was talking about something and she used the phrase "with a pang". 

i.e., "she said with a pang...."

She first heard the phrase while listening to one of the Penderwick books and has started using it. 

The first time she got it right, but the second time she didn't, so I had to explain what it meant, and she's been using it properly since. It's so funny to hear her use phrases you don't usually hear coming from a 6-year-old.

Orchids

in full bloom

A year ago I bought an orchid because it was very pretty. The blooms lasted for quite awhile, then died off.  After the blooms die, you trim the stalk and wait for a new one to grow. At one point I hopped online to research the care and feeding of orchids since I wasn't sure how to care for it. I read that they can bloom twice (or was it three times? can't quite remember now...) a year and you should fertilize with special fertilizer. You shouldn't trim the "tentacles", as they are roots and it's fine for them to cascade over the side.

If you haven't guessed, I really don't know that much about plants, and I did the research almost a year ago and have forgotten a lot of it since.

A few months ago, I noticed a new stalk finally growing between the leaves. As it got longer, I trained it up one of the support sticks. It grew enough each day that I had to adjust the clip at the end of each day so the stalk would stay straight.

The first buds bloomed before Christmas and the final one bloomed just before we went to Disney.

Unfortunately, LMS didn't read the warning I read about leaving the roots alone, and decided to "help" and give them a trim. Luckily, she missed a couple of them, and now we're waiting to see how the plant responds to having its roots trimmed.

Why do I bring this up?

I am notorious for killing houseplants. I either water too much or too little and then they die. Keeping an orchid alive for more than a year and having it bloom again is a huge step for me!

Now we have to see if I can keep a garden alive this summer....

Pinewood Derby Neckerchief Slide

January's neckerchief slide was a little car in honor of the Pinewood Derby.

This one is very self explanatory- I drew a car on a piece of paper, cut it out, and traced it onto a piece of 1/4" oak. If we had a scroll saw, that would have been the ideal tool to use for this, but we don't have one so I used our jig saw instead and followed by using our Dremel to sand the pieces {mostly} smooth.

I painted the car and used a silver paint pen for the windows and black sharpie for the details. After everything was dry I hot glued the car to a piece of conduit.

Thoughts on seasonal decorating

This is the second year we've hung our Christmas lights on the house.

My ideal house would be tastefully decorated, with a few things here or there changing with the seasons. Wreaths on the front door would reflect the current season and we'd hang Christmas lights on the house.

While I have more decorations than I used to (the early years of our marriage we were too poor to buy unnecessary things like decorations), I still don't have very many, and I don't have wreaths for each season.

I think fall and winter are the easiest seasons to decorate for, but this year my fall decorations never came out of the bin and only a few Christmas decorations made it out. But that's ok since all my energy has been focused on getting the house painted. The big stuff is mostly done, so now I'm thinking more about things other than paint.

I find myself waffling back and forth though. I think too many decorations look cluttered, plus you have to dust and keep them all clean. On the other hand, if there's no decorations it looks cold and blah. Finding a good balance is a challenge, especially since my practical side tends to be a bit too strong sometimes.

Do you decorate for the seasons, or do you not even bother?

Pics from Christmas

Snow Angels!

Last year my sister joined us for Christmas, but this year her schedule didn't allow it, so we went to her place.

While driving to my sister's house we ran into a snowstorm. I was driving slowly to account for the roads not yet being cleared and the car in front of us decided to move from the middle lane into the right (unused) lane. It immediately started fishtailing. I'd been watching it since I knew moving into a snowy lane isn't the smartest, and as soon as it started fishtailing, I backed off. It continued fishtailing a bit before spinning out across all three lanes, coming to a stop in the left lane. We were close enough that it spun out across our lane, we passed it, and then it came to a stop in the left lane. 

Let me tell you, that got my heart rate up! Everyone behind us stopped while the car got started up again and went on it's way. Since we were already past it, we just continued on, though I continued driving cautiously.

This reminded me of the incident that happened after our trip to California, though this one was definitely more dangerous.

Sunday Funny

Our homeschool play group went to a children's museum awhile ago and I took this picture of them playing on the giant sand worm. It's Dune, the kids' version! 

(ignore the smiling gingerbread man in the background- he rather spoils the effect)

Chiropractic care

Cool photo of the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom- Thanks Uncle R!

Back when LMS was a baby, Mr M hurt his back while doing PT (they have some stupid exercises that don't use proper body mechanics). As a result, he ended up in physical therapy, followed by visits to the chiropractor. The pt and chiropractor helped, though he still has problems with his back depending on what he's been doing. When we moved here, he was asking around and got a recommendation for an awesome chiropractor, who's been able to help Mr M so much.

A few months later, Mr M convinced me to go the chiropractor also. Not that I don't believe they can help; I was more concerned about the cost. I knew a visit or two could be helpful- I'd gone when I was pregnant with LMS and experiencing excruciating hip pain (I couldn't walk without massive amounts of pain- even cleaning the house was too much for me till I got an adjustment by a chiropractor), but it can get pricey since our insurance doesn't cover chiropractic care.

In the end, I decided to make room in the budget because I couldn't handle the migraines anymore.

When I went for my first visit, they took a couple x-rays to see if there was anything going on that could be helped by chiropractic work. They showed me the x-rays, and Wow! My skull was out of alignment front to back and side to side. No wonder I was getting migraines all the time. My neck muscles were all out of whack and causing problems.

After a lot of thought, the only trauma I could come up with that could have caused my head to be so badly out of alignment is the accident I was in in 9th grade. I haven't been in any other accidents since. And when I tried to remember, I've had headaches at least since my early 20's (and probably earlier), and they've gotten progressively worse (becoming migraines) and more frequent as I've gotten older.

I started going to the chiropractor 3 times a week for a couple weeks, then tapered from there. I now go about every 4 weeks. We've tried going longer between visits, but I start getting headaches again and end up having to call in for an earlier visit. I think a lot of that has to do with all the things I do: painting walls and ceilings, building things, sleeping in uncomfortable hotel beds, etc. If I didn't insist on doing these things that mess with my neck muscles I could probably go longer between visits.

Before I started going to the chiropractor I was getting almost daily headaches and more and more of them were migraines. I was also taking more and more painkillers in an effort to deal with them and I was not functioning very well. These days, I rarely get a headache, let alone a migraine, and going to the chiropractor takes care of it if I do get a headache. I'm also off the painkillers, which I shouldn't be taking while on GAPS.

I had an appointment yesterday, and LMS had her first adjustment. She's been complaining about her back needing to be "popped", so we talked to our chiro last time we were there and he said he could do a simple adjustment on her. He did a "pretzel" adjustment on her and got quite a few cracks. She was happy :)

Have you ever been to the chiropractor? Was it helpful?