'Bin'ing and purging

So I've spent several days reorganizing the storage shed and sorting all our crap. How is it possible that we have so much stuff? Even more amazing is that it's all been in storage for the last year and a half, and we haven't really missed it. Ok, so we are using my parents' furniture and kitchen things, so if we lived in our own place, we would definitely need our own furniture and kitchen things. And it is nice to be able to go out and get camping stuff or biking stuff out and use them. Now that they're easily accessible. As for the rest of the stuff? While I have gotten rid of a lot of unnecessary things, I know there's still a lot that could be tossed/given away/sold. Unfortunately, I don't think I can make the best decisions regarding everything till we have our own place again and I reevaluate how often we actually use each item.

In sorting through the 3 massive bags and one bin of my clothes, I tossed some in a rag pile for my dad, the majority went in one of the big boxes (I really need to post a pict of these boxes so you can appreciate their size) to be donated, and a small portion stayed in a bin. Most of those were winter clothes, with a shirt and pair of pants that I don't fit into yet, but will. All the rest of the clothes that I was hanging onto for when I lose weight got tossed. I realized I've been hauling them around for the last 5+ years, and they've been taking up closet and storage space, but I haven't worn them. Why keep them? When I do lose weight, I want new clothes to celebrate, not old clothes I haven't worn in, well, let's just say it's been too long. When I tackled the project with that mindset, I was able to be quite ruthless in my purging. It was so nice to see just the small bin of clothes that I decided to hang onto.

I used the same thought process when sorting the 3 big boxes of misc. stuff, and was able to winnow them down to a bin half the size of one of the boxes. Some of the things did get put in their proper boxes (baby stuff, bedding, etc), so it didn't all get tossed, but I was able to get rid of a lot of useless little doodads that always seem to collect in odd drawers or baskets around the house.

We still need to sort Hubby's 5 or 6 bins of clothes, and we also need to sort our closet and dresser. Since we only have one of each, space is at a premium, and if we're not using/wearing shoes/clothes, they shouldn't be taking up valuable space. I'm really liking the 'less-is-more' philosophy.

Now if I can just keep my desk clear. For some reason, there is always a stack of papers on it, and I can never seem to completely clear it. It doesn't help that Hubby's things are now finding their way to my desk also. He really needs his own desk that he can do his homework on (he's started his master's degree and has lots of reading and writing to do). He could use mine, but I'm not willing to give it up- I like being able to log on and check something when I think of it (if I don't, I'll forget about it and only remember when I'm far away from the computer), and if he's at my desk, I can't do that. I've found one that looks good on craigslist, we just have to wait and see if it's still available and if I can talk them down a bit on the price.

Beautiful weather is here, let's see if it stays...

We've managed to start exercising again. Last Wednesday we went for a just-under-3-mile run/walk. Yesterday we went for a bike ride, and today we went for another just-under-3-mile run/walk. Both run/walks felt good, and today we drove our route so we know where the 1.5 mile mark is (for a full 3 mile run), as well as the 2 mile mark so we can work up to 4 miles. We need to improve our run to walk ratio, but so far we're doing good. The bike ride yesterday was tough. We did 2.75 miles, and I could definitely tell it's been awhile since I was last on my bike. And it's been who-knows-how-long since I rode with Little Miss Sunshine behind me. Nothing like pulling an extra 60 pounds (LMS and the trailer) behind you to give you a good workout.

After the walk today I spent 5 or 6 hours reorganizing our storage container. That's 5 or 6 hours of lifting and moving heavy boxes and bins. Hopefully I burned lots of calories. I still have more work to do tomorrow: sorting 3 really big boxes of misc. stuff and sorting through 6 bins and 3 large bags of clothing. Most of the stuff will be donated or chucked, so that will open up a bit of space in the container. I've also moved everything around, so hopefully the space is better used now. I also need to sort through 30 boxes of books and 4 trunks of Hubby's stuff. I can hardly wait...

My OCD side was definitely exerting itself today. I went through each of the boxes that have already been opened and moved everything to its appropriately-labeled box. I've been tossing everything into whichever box was open and had space. While convenient, this did not reduce clutter and chaos. I'll still have some decluttering to do when we move into our own place, but at least I'll be able to find things easier in the meantime.

Party time!

I spent several days last week working on two parties. We had Little Miss Sunshine's birthday party on Saturday, and since a bunch of family was coming for that, we had Hubby's graduation celebration also.

Graduation party

Since Hubby's official graduation commencement is on the other side of the country, he won't be attending. So we had our own graduation ceremony and party with family. I made a cake and some treats for the party. I got the ideas online (the source for most of my inspiration these days), and I think they turned out pretty good.

Graduation caps made out of a miniature Reese's cup, a milk chocolate Ghirardelli square, a mini Reese's Pieces, and some yellow frosting. Yummy!

Little Miss Sunshine did not want to cooperate for this round of picture-taking, so this is the best we managed.

Birthday party

Last year I made a Nemo cake and pinata for LMS.

This year, between two parties to plan and prepare for, not feeling great because of the meds I'm on, and general stress from everything that's happening, I made the cake and bought the pinata. So much less stress in that one simple step.

I found some photos of castle cakes online and modified them to my abilities and available materials (regular frosting rather than fondant). It took awhile, but I had fun doing it. I think I'm going to experiment with some white chocolate fondant for next year. Hopefully it won't taste as blah as regular fondant.
LMS really liked her castle cake.

And she had a lot of fun whacking at the pinata.

For one of the activities I had the kids decorate white paper bags with handles. These served the dual purpose of bag to collect pinata candy and take-home treat bag. At the end of the party, I gave each child a bag with a make-your-own edible necklace kit and a bag with Hershey's Kisses with stickers on them and some larger character stickers (Cinderella for the girls, Cars for the boys). I can't claim credit for any of the ideas: the small round stickers I found on ebay and the edible necklace kit idea came from a magazine (Parent, Parenting, one of those, I can't remember which right off).

LMS modeling her necklace.

Progress going gluten-free

Yesterday we went shopping for gluten-free food items. I still need to figure out some menus, so we just bought some basic stuff, and we'll have to do some more shopping in a day or two once I've got a menu figured out. I did find out that just because something is wheat-free, doesn't mean it's gluten-free, so one more thing to be careful of.

We also shopped for stuff for Little Miss Sunshine's birthday party and Hubby's graduation party. We're holding them both this Saturday. I'm making cakes for both of them, and we won't be gluten-free that day. I'm curious to see if I can tell a difference. Last year I made a pinata for LMS' bday, but I bought one this year. I was going to make it, but am just feeling too stressed and crummy. I'm taking metformin again, and while it has the side effect of regulating insulin and helping with weight loss, it also makes me very nauseous, which in turn makes me really tired. Not great overall, but I really need to lose weight and nothing else has worked, so I'm willing to put up with it.

We took advantage of the beautiful weather today and went for a 3 mile run/walk. I haven't gone running since getting my orthotics (just walking), and I felt good. No problems while running, other than being out of shape. Hopefully there won't be any pain tomorrow.

Our busy weekend

Last week we drove around, looking at properties in the area where we might end up moving. Found some possibles, and one we really liked, only to find out a couple days later that it had already been sold. Oh well. The right place will be available when the time is right. We did find out we need to be looking at larger properties: apparently we need a domestic well to water cattle (we want a couple cows), and properties under 35 acres only get permits for residential wells. So we're now looking for 35+ acre lots, which unfortunately cost more and don't have quite the terrain we're looking for. But again, we'll wait and see what's available when we're actually in a position to buy.

We also finally got Hubby's job application finished: 24 pages of very detailed information, going back at least 7 years. Tracking down some of the info proved to be rather difficult. Some we had, some we might have but it's in storage somewhere, and some has gotten lost in the various moves we've made over the years. Made the whole thing quite an ordeal. Now we have to wait 3-4 weeks for it to be processed before we find out if he moves on.

Little Miss Sunshine got to spend the weekend with Hubby's parents while we went to a post-deployment reintegration thing. The setting was nice (a ski resort in the mountains), and it was good to talk to friends we haven't seen in awhile, but the meetings were fairly boring and stuff that's already been covered (suicide prevention, Tricare and VA info, communication, etc). I checked the weather before we left, but neglected to take into account the fact that we were going to a ski resort in the mountains. Just because it's the end of April doesn't mean it's done snowing...

It snowed Saturday evening and all Sunday morning, so instead of taking the tram ride before we left like we'd planned, we headed straight home. Once we got out of the mountains it wasn't bad at all, though we did encounter intermittent rain and snow on the trip home. We made good time and got home just before the snow started falling in earnest. We woke up Monday morning to another 5-6 inches of snow. It's all melted and today was absolutely gorgeous, just like spring should be.

Planting trees for Earth day

I ordered some Blue Spruce trees from the Arbor Day Foundation a while ago, and they arrived last week, just in time for Earth day. Little Miss Sunshine had lots of fun helping to plant them.

Wonderful snow!

We finally got hit by a massive snowstorm! It snowed all day Friday and most of Saturday, dumping around 2 feet of snow on us. It was great! Of course it started melting on Sunday, and by this evening most of it was gone. On the way out the door to go to church Sunday morning, I took a couple quick pics, trying to capture the amount of snow we got before it started melting. Some of Little Miss Sunshine's toys got buried.

Because of the snow, I wasn't able to get into the library in town till yesterday. I picked up a stack of books about PCOS and gluten-free cooking, and have been working my way through them. Two down, six more to go. One of the ones I've read so far wasn't useful, the other was very inspiring (Gluten-Free Girl: How I found the food that loves me back... and how you can too). The author, Cecilia Ahern, is very passionate about food. Finding out that she had celiac disease made her re-focus how and what she cooked, and she's come up with some great recipes. She also has a blog, gluten-free girl, where she posts recipes and talks about all the great food she finds. She lives near Seattle and has lots of great farmer's markets to shop at. Almost makes me want to move there. If it wasn't for all those cloudy days...

I'm hoping to get through enough books to figure out an easy menu for next week. We have a re-integration thing this weekend with my husband's unit, so no point getting started on anything till we get back. Who knows what we'll be eating this weekend.

PCOS and a Gluten Free diet

Today I had an appointment for an ultrasound at the OB/GYN office. I've had this done about 5 years ago, but it didn't show much. This time around it showed that my ovaries do indeed have cysts. So that solidifies the PCOS diagnosis from five years ago. I had enough of the other symptoms usually associated with PCOS that my fertility specialist felt comfortable giving the diagnosis. Below is a picture (not mine, I didn't get copies of my ovaries) of an ovary with cysts (the dark spots). Lovely, huh?

Anyway, the tech doing the ultrasound mentioned that a girl with similar issues had been in yesterday: weight gain, inability to lose weight, infertility, irregular periods, etc. She had first come two years ago, and when she came back yesterday, she had lost a lot of weight. Turns out she went gluten free and yeast free, and combined with the meds (which I will also be taking), she was able to lose the weight and keep it off.

In researching PCOS some more, more and more people are seeing a connection between their PCOS and gluten issues. When they eliminated gluten, they were able to alleviate a lot of their other symptoms. I've requested a bunch of books from the library and will be reading up on gluten free eating. Once I've got that down, I may go yeast free also. I don't think it will be too difficult to add that on.

At first glance, a gluten free diet seems rather restrictive (no wheat, rye, or barley. The grains aren't too hard, it's all the packaged foods that have some form of gluten in them- as a thickener, modified food starch, in soy sauce, and so many other things- that you have to watch for), but in checking out other people's blogs, it's not all doom and gloom. The more fresh, unprocessed foods you eat, the lower the chance of accidentally eating gluten. And we're supposed to be eating fresh and unprocessed food anyway...

I've found several sites with yummy-looking recipes (and they don't look too time consuming, either), so I need to work on changing my thought processes and change how I shop and how I cook. It will take effort, but it will be worth it. I'm supposed to be eating yeast free anyway, so hopefully this will make it easier to get there. I am definitely a sugar and carb addict, which has always put a wrench in the works before. Others have said that cravings disappeared once they went gluten and yeast free. Hopefully that proves the same for me. It will be a journey.

Easter Pix

Saturday we colored eggs and had an Easter egg hunt with Hubby's family.

Little Miss Sunshine munching some crackers and hamming it up for the camera (a rare occurrence- she keeps looking down or turning away to avoid having her picture taken).

Unhappy about something. I think she wanted to go out and look for eggs but was told she had to wait till everyone was ready.

Finally outside and looking for eggs. The bunny ears only stayed on for a few minutes: it got too windy and they kept blowing right off her head.


Sunday we took some pictures before church of her in her Easter dress. This one turned out pretty good, except she wouldn't let go of nanny (who is starting to look very ratty from being carried everywhere).

We went outside to try again. It was snowing, so there's some snowflakes floating around in her hair. I really like this one.

We weren't sure how the previous tries had turned out, so we tried again once we got to church. I'm holding her hand, trying to get her to stay still long enough for her daddy to take the picture.

After church, we found the Easter baskets my mom and brother (dad was still at church) had hid for us. There's a long-standing tradition of finding the most obscure places possible to hide the Easter baskets. Unless you're little, in which case, it's really easy to find. LMS's was in plain sight and she had no problem finding it. Here she's snuggling the bunny that was in her basket.

She immediately handed me the peeps, she didn't even taste them, just decided she didn't want them. Perhaps the unnatural neon yellow tipped her off that they weren't really edible. Smart child.

Job search

The last couple days of March we took a quick road trip to an out-of-state job fair. Hubby got to talk to talk to several companies and the FBI. The FBI wants him as a linguist, but the hiring process is at least 8 months. Not exactly something we can just sit around and wait through. He also talked to a State Patrolman from our state who had traveled to the job fair to recruit people.

How's that for a coincidence? Add that to the fact that most of the resumes we've sent out (those that were attachments, rather than cut and pasted into the sites) can't be opened, and it kind of makes us think we need to be looking closer to home, rather than the ones we had been looking at (which are across the country).

We hadn't previously thought about working for the State Patrol, but it definitely looks good. The Academy training period is paid for, and Hubby would be eligible for GI Bill money as well (he'd get an Associates in Criminal Justice at the end of it). He would have several choices available for posts (we'd find out before classes actually started), so we could hopefully end up somewhere in the mountains. We can buy some land and build our cabin in the woods. We have to get a few questions answered and do some more praying before making a final decision. The only drawback is that classes don't actually start till July, which means we have to come up with a short term money source. We have almost enough in savings to cover basic bills, but we wouldn't be able to finish paying off the credit card (almost done!), so things would be tight, but we could do it.

Happy Easter!

Today we re-did the cousin photo (Hubby's parents brought back shirts from Hawaii for all the grandkids and wanted a group photo), which turned out a lot better than the first time (no lost kids for one thing). We went to a different studio, and they did a much better job working with the kids and were better equipped to handle a large group.


On the left: the first attempt, after the lost child was found. No one was in a good mood at that point.


On the right: the second, much more successful attempt.



We also did family groupings of the kids. Since Little Miss Sunshine still doesn't have any siblings, we did a picture of just her. I thought it turned out pretty cute.
Then the kids colored eggs while I went and got my orthotics (finally!). When I returned, we hid eggs and the kids got to find them, which they had fun doing. The whole thing was chaotic, but not as bad as it has been in the past. Not sure if that's because the kids are doing better, or I'm getting more tolerant. I'll post picts from that later, gotta get them off of Hubby's camera first.

Couples retreat

We've been busy lately. We've finally gotten several snow storms, though of course they came right when we were traveling. We left early last Sunday, during a snow storm, for a couples retreat. On the way back on Thursday, we traveled through more snow. Can't really complain though- we really need the moisture.

The retreat was awesome. It was started by some guys who wanted to thank soldiers for their sacrifices. They talked to people, who talked to others, who talked to others, and they started things moving. Various companies in the area donated their services. One of the guys is a National Guard Chaplain and a psychologist, and he did some stuff with us: color tests, and such. Those were really interesting, especially since they were quite accurate. There were three couples in this session, which was actually the first one, so we were the guinea pigs to see what would work and what wouldn't. It was a great experience.

Monday we went to a destination resort in the area and we all got massages. Afterwards we had a meditation/relaxation session with Tibetan bowls. We all fell asleep during that one. It was nice to relax and get pampered.

Tuesday we went on a hike guided by guides from the destination resort. I haven't been on a hike that strenuous in quite awhile. It wasn't super tough, but it certainly wasn't a walk in the park. Beautiful scenery, nice warm sunshine, gorgeous day. In the afternoon we went out on the reservoir in a boat owned by the guy who came up with the whole idea for the retreat. The water was cold, but most of us jumped in quick and hopped right out again, which felt really good after the hike that morning. Hubby spent 45 minutes trying to get up on a surf board and almost made it several times.


On the left: Hubby and me

On the right: The 3 couples plus the chaplain








We spent most of the day Wednesday out on a golf course, which turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be. We started out with some instruction from the resident pro, then we each got to practice with a bucket of balls. After that we did the 18 holes at the putting green. I managed to get a hole in one on a very difficult hole! Then we headed out to the links course and did 9 holes. We played best ball (everyone tees off, and you play from whoever's ball went the furthest. you do that every time, so everyone ends up getting a great shot sooner or later and being the best ball), which is totally the way to play golf. It was a lot of fun and no one felt pressured or anything. It was quite windy and I had left my jacket at the hotel (the day before was so nice and warm, I didn't think it would be so bad the next day), but luckily I was able to borrow a jacket. Unfortunately it was quite large and looked like a tent on me, so the pictures weren't the most flattering.











On the left: everyone practicing their form. On the right: check out that swing! (before I got really cold and put the voluminous jacket on)

Thursday we wrapped everything up, and were videoed for testimonials, which will be used to get bigger sponsors (so the programs can be greatly expanded) and to put on the website to show potential attendees what a great experience it is.

It was a great experience for us. We were able to spend time together without Little Miss Sunshine (who we missed a lot), but it was good to do things without her and focus on us. 5 days without her is by far the longest time we've been away from her (a bit less than 24 hours was the previous record), but she did pretty well and had fun staying with her grandparents.