Moving fun

Last week we moved all our stuff. We spent several days moving the smaller things (thanks to friends with mini vans!), then used a U-Haul to move everything else. Despite getting rid of a lot of stuff after we moved here a year ago we still have a lot of stuff. How does this happen? This means we'll be doing another round of sorting and purging.

Everything is moved, the rental house is all clean, and now I can focus on our house. Getting settled, figuring out where to put everything, painting (the walls turned out to be in worse shape than we initially thought), deciding what to get rid of, and so on.

Despite calling way in advance Comcast couldn't/wouldn't give me a straight answer about transferring our internet service. We've been without internet since we moved Saturday, except for when we've been at the rental house cleaning. Not ideal at all. Luckily we found another service provider and hopefully we'll have access by Monday at the latest. Still not ideal, since I would have liked uninterrupted service, but what can you do?

Sunday Funny

A recent conversation:

Me: "Don't wipe your fingers on your shirt"

LMS: "I didn't. That was my fingers"

"What was your fingers?"

"They fell down"

"Your fingers fell down on your shirt?"

"Yes"

 Noodles and Co has little plastic thingies you put on your chopsticks to make them easier to use. LMS loves them and is quite adept at using them.

Eating gluten free, dairy free garlic shrimp noodles. Yum!

Sunday Funny

Since getting her glasses, LMS likes to say "I'm just like you now mommy!"

She doesn't just mean wearing glasses, though. She thinks she's all grown up now :)

She's also learned how to swallow pills (our probiotics and digestive enzymes come in capsule form only), which has further convinced her that she's all grown up :)

Being cool at 5 Guys the last time we went before we realized potatoes don't agree with us at all.

RV show and a road trip (or two)

This summer we're going on a road trip, but before we go, we need to buy a travel trailer.

Why is it a need and not a want?

Because LMS and I like to eat :)

Seriously, though, trying to find safe places to eat while traveling is very difficult (we're down from 3 restaurant options to 2, and even those are a little iffy as to how "safe" they are for us), and cheap motel rooms are not equipped so you can prepare your own food.

The trailer we'll buy is small, we don't need a behemoth, but it does have a frig, freezer, microwave, and two burner stove top. Everything we need to cook our own meals. Well, except our rice cooker and crockpot, but we'll be bringing those with us.

It also has a toilet and shower, which will be great for showering after a long day driving. Even if I don't do anything I feel grungy after spending all day in the car.

The beds mean we can park in a truck stop and go right to sleep (we experienced this a couple years ago with Mr S's parents and their trailer, and it was an epiphany). So much more flexibility as to how far you go and when you stop. And you don't have to pay for a hotel room every night.

Last week I researched travel trailers to find out what our options were and what would work best for us. I was able to narrow it down to 8 or 9 models, some of which were very similar to each other. I then realized that an rv show would be held in just a few days. It was several hours away, but would give us the opportunity to check out some of the trailers on my list and talk to some of the dealers across the state (there's none close to us).

So we took a road trip to the rv show and had fun walking around looking at the trailers and rvs. LMS wanted to go inside every. single. one. I managed to distract her enough to do every other one :)  After you look at several, you realize that the floor plans don't vary that much between manufacturers- the basics are the same, it's just the details that differ. There are some cool ones though- the coolest was the fifth wheel with the elevated porch that folds down from the side of the trailer. Very cool.

We also realized that a lot of the rvs and trailers are bigger than our first apartment, which was tiny  :)

The show was close to the coast, so we headed to the beach the next morning. LMS was all ready to start building sand castles, but I convinced her it was too cold and windy for that.

We walked along the waterline, instead, looking for shells. We found a few, along with some crab parts, which made for an interesting discussion on the life cycle of a crab. We also noticed that seaweed on the east coast is different from seaweed on the west coast. East coast: short and stubby, green and red. West coast: long and ropey, green and yellow. I'm sure that has something to do with differences in water temperature.

It was a fun little road trip and we narrowed our search down to one trailer. Now the hard part is finding one we can afford: it happens to be a popular floorplan, and there's not a lot for sale, new or used.

Help please!

image

Does anyone have cute ideas of things to do for Easter?

We can't do the hard boiled eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and chocolate eggs and bunnies thing anymore, and I'm at a loss as to what to do this year.

What do you put in an Easter basket when you can't eat eggs, milk, or refined sugar/corn syrup?

(and we don't need any more stuffed animals)

I'm totally open to cute craft ideas or anything else you can come up with. Whether it's something you've seen online, or something you came up with yourself, I'd love to hear about it!

Sunday Funny

Back in December LMS wanted to watch a movie, and I told her no, we were listening to pretty Christmas music.

After a few minutes of mumbling and muttering to herself, she told me "I don't want to listen to pretty Christmas music."

She'd rather listen to ugly Christmas music?

Playing in the only snow we got this year. It melted off within a few hours.

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

I read Black Heels to Tractor Wheels this week. Have you read it? The Pioneer Woman had posted parts of it online a while ago, and I read them a couple months ago. Awhile ago she stopped posting it online, finished it writing it, and published it in book form.

If you haven't heard of it, it's the story of how she met her husband, their romance, marriage, and first year of marriage. I enjoyed the story, but I'm soooo glad I never had morning sickness like hers.

After I finished the book, I got to thinking, and realized that we each have a story to tell. How we met, the funny/sad/quirky things that happened along the way to the altar, first apartments, etc.

So I've started writing the story of Mr M and me. It was actually already on my list of goals as part of my life story, but I'll stick with this part for now. I think it's especially appropriate since we're approaching our tenth anniversary this summer and it's nice to revisit the beginning of us. It's also a good activity for me to stimulate my brain and dig up memories that have been hidden in the fuzzy cobwebby corners of my brain, stuck there by years of mental fog brought on by undiagnosed celiac disease.

Anybody else want to write their story?

Siblings

LMS has decided she needs siblings.

She's talked about it before, but she's holding onto the idea a lot longer this time around. In the past I told her she needed to talk to Heavenly Father if she wanted siblings, but that was it. This past week when she brought up siblings again, and I gave her my standard answer, she headed off to her room to pray that Heavenly Father would send her a sister, a brother, and a baby sister :)

The next day we had a discussion about prayers, mainly that we should pray in the morning and at night, and she has now taken to saying her own prayers in the morning. I believe this is so she can pray for siblings. Though she's now just praying for a sister and a baby sister. She told me she didn't need a brother because he would probably break her toys.

She's in for a rude awakening when she realizes that sisters break toys too :)

She was requesting an older sister, by which she means a sister close to her age that she can play with, and a baby sister, but then she decided she didn't need a baby sister, just two sisters to play with.

We've talked to her about adoption and she's asking more questions about if we're going to adopt some sisters for her. Luckily we're getting closer to the point where we can start the process, but we're still not quite there.

When we were at the grocery store the other day she told the checkout people that we were going to adopt some sisters for her.  :)

The main question we need to answer right now is should we pursue an adoption through LDS Family Services or a local agency. If we go with LDS Family Services we'll be paying a big chunk of money, we won't know when we'll get a baby (birth moms do the choosing), and infants are usually the only ones available for adoption. If we go through a local agency the cost should be less (we need to do some more research on this), we won't know when we'll get a baby/child, and we might be able to adopt a sibling group, which we're open to as long as they're younger than LMS. There could also be issues such as abuse or neglect that we would need to help them deal with. Lots of things to think and pray about.

If you know anyone who's thinking of putting their baby up for adoption, let us know!

Little Miss Sunshine's glasses

In January I took LMS back to eye doctor for a checkup. I was more than willing to do so, since she'd been complaining that her left eye was blurry, even with her glasses on. I was concerned that she needed her prescription changed already.

The eye doctor checked her eyes, then we discussed how her eyes are doing. He said that LMS noticing that her left eye is blurry is a good thing, since before she wasn't even seeing out of that eye. The eye patches are re-training her brain to use her left eye, so now she can actually see out of both eyes, even if one of them is blurry.

I hadn't realized that she wasn't using her left eye before- I just figured everything was blurry in that eye. So I'm really glad we went in and discussed the situation.

The eye doctor also said that the prescription in her left eye isn't as strong as it will be eventually, but we have to gradually increase it as she gets used to seeing out of both eyes. So we'll go back in May and again at the end of summer before school starts.

I went home and thought about what the eye doctor had said and thought about some of the things LMS has done.

The major thing that stood out is her clinginess when doing active things. I just chalked it up to normal clinginess, but I think the problem was that her depth perception is off because of only being able to see with one eye. She was ok walking during soccer, but she was always very hesitant about the running part. She was the same with swimming and ice skating. I'm really curious to see if she does better when soccer starts up again in a few weeks. I'm not expecting huge improvement since her vision is still blurry, but hopefully it helps. And we'll probably have to get some prescription swim goggles for her so she can feel more secure in the water.

We tried out a dance/gymnastics class this week and she did really well in it. I was a bit concerned about her falling over or crashing into things, but that wasn't the case at all. I'm not sure if we'll actually take the class just yet as there may be a schedule conflict. She had a lot of fun, though, so we'll see what we can work out.

Sunday Funny

We went for a walk the other morning, and when we got to a 'T' junction, I asked LMS if we should turn right or left, and she said right. She then went on to say that we should always choose the right, because that's what Heavenly Father wants us to do  :)

Guess what they talked about in Primary the Sunday before? Choosing the right.

Throughout the walk, everytime we got to a turn she kept saying "we need to choose the right!"

having fun at the bounce-n-play

Once again I've been lax in my posting. I find that when I'm busy, blogging is one of the first things to go.

So what have I been busy doing?

**  Looking at lots of houses. We pretty much looked at every house in our target area (and some outside it) that came close to fitting our wants and needs that was in our budget (and a couple that were above our budget). We did finally find a house that we like and we're set to close 10 days before our rental contract ends- just enough time to move everything and clean. I was going to paint the bedrooms before we move, but I decided I want to see our furniture in the rooms before deciding on paint, beadboard, board and batten, and so on. Waiting to paint will also make the timeline on moving everything a lot easier.

** Signing lots of papers. We've been signing papers as we went through the process, which meant more visits to the realtor and mortgage offices, but fewer papers to sign at one time, so fewer hand cramps :)

** Keeping the house clean. There's a contract on it now, but I have to keep it clean for all the inspections, the appraisal, etc. It's been good to see the buying/selling process from both sides, but I will be very happy when we're all moved and done with everything.

** Resisting the urge to start packing already. Since we're only moving 15 minutes away I don't see the point in boxing everything up just to turn around and unpack it again. We'll be taking stuff out of the closets and cupboards, putting them in the car, driving them to the new house, and putting them directly away. Since we won't be using boxes, there's nothing to pack ahead of time. Every other time we've moved, I've had everything packed and ready to go in plenty of time.

** Moving in and out of fuzzy headedness. We tried adding nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers), with limited success. LMS had massive reactions (ie, disgusting diarrhea) to the tomatoes and peppers, but didn't react as badly to the potatoes. I didn't notice a reaction to the tomatoes and peppers, but I did notice an increase in mental fuzziness when I ate the potatoes. So we'll be avoiding tomatoes and peppers and limiting potatoes. This one is a pain in the rear- tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers are in a lot of things. For some reason, frozen stir fry veggie mixes all have peppers in them. There goes my easy, go-to dinner idea.

I also checked my vitamins again and found that several of them are made with corn or soybean oil, which is a problem. I can't take most vitamin c supplements because they have rose hips, which make my throat swell, and the only one I've found that didn't have rose hips was a capsule that has soybean oil in it. How important is it that I supplement my vitamin c intake? My Co-Q 10 also has a soybean oil base. I'm not willing to stop taking the Co-Q 10, so I need to find another brand, though I don't know if I can.

There was some mold in the crawlspace under our house, and bleach was sprayed all over the crawlspace to kill it. We discovered this last night when we got home from errands and the whole house smelled of bleach. Can we say instant headache and fuzziness? We should have packed up and spent the night in a hotel, but I didn't think of it (due to the headache) till after LMS was asleep. So we slept with windows open and lots of blankets on. Too bad they didn't do this last week when the temps were in the 70s instead of this week when the temps are in the 30s.

Chocolate

I've noticed something very sad lately.

I remember when a good, smooth Swiss milk chocolate tasted sooo good. Or the yummy taste of a Snickers bar (I do like the taste of a Snickers).

Since the advent of all my food issues, I've had to eliminate first milk chocolate (dairy), then most other chocolates (soy). About the only chocolate I can eat now is Enjoy Life chocolate chips, which taste decent, but aren't as good as what I remember Swiss milk chocolate tasting.

I do still occasionally crave good chocolate and sneak a piece, but it never tastes as good as I remember it used to taste. And I get a massive stomach ache. It's very sad. I liked chocolate.

But it does help me resist the urge to do it again. Why eat something that doesn't taste good and makes me sick?

So I'm curious. Has the taste of chocolate changed because I know I shouldn't be eating it, or because my tastes have changed as my refined sugar intake has drastically decreased? Or is it both? Any thoughts?

Learning to ice skate

At the ice arena where LMS is taking skating lessons, they teach the kiddos how to fall without hurting themselves (fall to the side), then how to get up.

Here they've all fallen, though I will say that LMS is always the last one down- she doesn't like falling, even for practice :)

Assume a puppy dog position:

Bring one leg up:

Try to push yourself to a standing position:

Try again:

Get help from the teacher :)

~~~~~~~~~

And here she's concentrating on skating:

A quick smile for mommy:

Look at her go!

She's only gone to 3 classes (2 more to go), but she's learned a lot already. She's more confident in her ability to stay upright, and she can skate frontwards and backwards. Not long smooth strokes, but she is moving. She mostly has fun, though I think she'll enjoy it a lot more once she feels more comfortable on the ice. I'm curious to see if she wants to stick with it. At this point, we're just introducing her to things she's expressed an interest in and seeing what happens.

Sunday Funny

Awhile ago we were in a parking lot that had a fairly steep slope. I stopped to put some stuff in the back of the car, then turned to open the side door for LMS. However, she had stopped right behind me and I ended up doing some flailing around, trying to keep my balance without falling on her. I wasn't successful, and neither of us were very happy.

After we got in the car I explained to her that that is why I always tell her not to stop right behind me- I could lose my balance. She then reached forward to give me something. I asked what she was giving me, and she said she was giving me my balance back :)

A couple weeks later, she was doing something and I warned her to be careful or she might lose her balance. She put her hand in one of my pockets, and I asked what she was doing. She said she was giving me her balance so she wouldn't lose it  :)

A few weeks after that, we were messing around and I lost my balance again (it's a frequent occurrence for me). She reached up and touched the neckline of my shirt. I thought she was going to hang on it, then realized she wasn't. I asked what she'd done, and she said she'd put my balance back :)

I love how in her mind balance is an object that can be lost, traded, held....

Playing in the inch or so of snow that we finally got this week. It's all melted off already, unfortunately. LMS had fun while the snow lasted, though.