Christmas 2013

Our Christmas was once again insane this year.  We had 8 family gatherings, 3 Christmas programs, 2 work parties, plus other events in between.  All of us were sick with something last week (Jared and the kids had fevers and I had achiness) but we managed to make it to all of the family gatherings and God worked through the Ibuprofen I was giving the kids for fevers.  We celebrated Jesus in spite of everything else that was going on, which was the most important thing.  On Christmas Day, my sister, brother-in-law and niece flew out and are leaving today, so it has been WONDERFUL to spend time with them!  Christmas always feels more special when they’re here.  I’ll back up and start at the beginning of December:

We made a gingerbread train (well, mostly I did as the kids got really distracted and Haley had a meltdown because I wouldn’t let her eat all of the candy) In the middle of December was our church Christmas program The following week, Blake had his Preschool Christmas program and Jared and I were surprised and delighted to see that Blake was Joseph :) On the 23rd, we had supper and Christmas with Jared’s Mom at our house.

On the 24th, we went to a 4:00 Christmas Eve service, then had supper and had our own family Christmas.  I tried to get some nice pictures with the kids (who wouldn’t stop moving) and these were the best ones: We bought each kid a Busy Book, which is a board book that has a big play map and 12 story characters at the back of each book that they can play with.  Kiera got Dora, Blake got Toy Story and Haley got Bubble Guppies.  Blake and Haley saw them at Wal-Mart one day and wanted to play with them, so I figured they would make good Christmas gifts.  I’m glad the kids like them!

Kiera’s front tooth was practically hanging out of her mouth but she would not let us pull it out, so we convinced her to bite into a caramel.  Success! “All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth…” We spent the afternoon and evening on the 25th at Jared’s Dad + Stepmom’s.  The kids really were excited about their Lego, in spite of their expressions in this picture. I love Kiera’s expression here…Strawberry Shortcake books! Steve + Lindsay expecting their first baby middle of February! TJ + Amanda expecting their first baby at the end of April (which you obviously can’t see in this picture)! Haley napped through the whole gift exchange time (that was the day she was sick), so she opened her gifts when she woke up. At suppertime, we discovered that Jared’s Dad had made name signs for everyone which we all really liked! I liked this little tree in the dining room This was the only picture I got of all 3 kids in their Christmas outfits dressed for a gathering on the 26th.  I love watching them with their Uncle Art. Me and my beautiful sister…one of my favorite pictures from this Christmas season. Playing with one of his new Lego sets (he got 2 bigger sets, one medium set and a small set) I caught her dimple…yay! On the 27th, we went out for supper with Art + Jenene while my Mom stayed with the kids.  That was really great!  I don’t think we’ve ever gotten to spend time just the 4 of us, so for me, that was special.

We drove in this storm on the 28th to go to my Mom’s house for Christmas.  I praise God for safe travels as we gallivanted all over the countryside this past week. Haley got a shopping cart/check-out stand from my Mom. More Lego!! Sophia got a Princess Doctor kit which makes noise. The kids got these great little suitcases that they can also use as backpacks.  They didn’t previously have their own suitcases and they saw these at Wal-Mart, and once again, I thought they would make great gifts. At the end of the night We had a gathering on the 29th and I had a lot of hip pain (no idea why) that day.  2 of my cousins laid hands on me and prayed for me and the pain immediately got way less and today it is gone!  Praise the God of miracles who displays His power and His glory!

Yesterday, we enjoyed our first day with NO PLANS since the 21st.  We stayed in our pajamas ALL DAY and it was wonderful!  I am very grateful that most of our family lives close by and we get to see them all but I’m also grateful for rest after all of the festivities.  I wish you all a wonderful New Year and I pray that we will all see many more miracles as God is working in each of our lives! :)

Food and the Body

As you all know, I’m doing a cleanse, although I don’t know if that’s the right word for it.  I’m on the Healing Diet and I may stay on it long-term.  What do I eat?  Vegetables that don’t have sugar (so no potatoes, squash, carrots or peas), meat (excluding pork), nuts and eggs.  I do make pancakes with coconut flour or almond flour as well.  I use Stevia as a sweetener.  I also use almond milk and coconut milk in baking.

My uncle lives on this diet and he used to have ulcerative colitis but does not anymore!  He borrowed me a recipe book and a c.d.  I have listened to the c.d. twice now and the 2nd time I took notes.  I have learned SO much about how food affects the body.  The speaker is a doctor who has been on this diet for 4 years and these are some of the things he said:

1. Change the meat you eat because the pesticides and antibiotics they use can cause heart disease, cancer and inflammation in the body.  Every disease or condition is caused by inflammation in the body.  When cows aren’t fed grass, the saturated fat gets molecularly changed.

2. Change the fat: man-made fats cause inflammation in the arteries: heart disease.  They also cause inflammation in the cell: cancer, any disease that affects your nerves and muscles, and affects the brain which can cause depression.  Vegetable oils turn into trans fat in the body because they don’t take to heat well.  It takes 102 days for the body to get rid of the negative effects of bad oils. 

Good fats: olive oil, coconut oil (is the best for handling heat), organic butter, avocados, olives, nuts, flaxseed

Bad fats: canola oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, safflower oil, margarine (they are all chemically altered)

3. Cut out the sugar and carbs: these cause insulin to spike and inflammation in the cells and actually take nutrients away from the body

-Every time you see the word hydrolyzed in the ingredients, it makes you want the food more (it’s addictive) and it’s an excitotoxin (which means it kills the cells) and it attacks the central nervous system.

-Anything that ends in “ose” (glucose, fructose) is sugar. Glucose makes your insulin spike, which ages you more quickly.  Sugar combined with protein produces what is called “ages” (it’s an acronym but I forget what it stands for): brown spots on the skin and cataracts

-Coloring is poisonous and especially negatively affects children with A.D.D. and autism (ex. yellow no.5)

-Leptin follows insulin and tells your brain to burn fat for energy.  If your body is using sugar instead of fat, the triglycerides (fat in the blood) stays there.

-Fat doesn’t make people fat, it’s the body’s inability to burn fat that makes people fat.

-The leptin receptors in the brain burn out from overload of sugar and leptin helps control all the hormones in the body and many degenerative diseases, fatigue, depression and sleep disorders are because of this problem.

-If you want to lose weight, you need to cut out all sugar, all grains and then 2-3 weeks after, increase the healthy fats.  Your body needs those 2-3 weeks to change from being a sugar burner to a fat burner.

-When on this diet (I can testify to this), you don’t eat as much because when you receive proper nutrients, you feel full.  Sugar makes you want to overeat because your brain is not receiving the message: I’m getting the proper nutrients so I need to stop eating now.

This last one I found super interesting:

-All of the food that God declared unclean in the Bible had the highest toxicity levels.  God wanted His people to be the best in every area, including health.

So there’s your science and nutrition lesson for the week! ;)

There is a testimony of a lady who has MS and it is going away after starting the paleo diet (it’s more broad as it includes all fruit and vegetables) instead of taking drugs.  Before starting it, she was in a wheelchair.  5 months into it and she is out of her wheelchair!  She got another MRI done and the lesions in her brain have gotten smaller and are almost gone!

People who have fibromyalgia said their pain has massively decreased.  People have said their eyesight has improved (I would LOVE that).  Another man said he had chronic joint pain and that has gone away after only a few weeks.  I could go on and on but I am convinced that clean eating is the key to preventing disease and also can help heal many diseases.  Is there a time and a place for drugs?  Absolutely.  My friend’s husband who has Lyme Disease is being kept alive because of them.  Do we way overuse medicine/drugs in our culture in general?  Yes!  Is it more work and more expensive to eat this way?  Yes.  Is it worth it?  1,000,000% YES!  The improvements in my own body in the past 3 weeks after starting this diet and getting prayer (because none of this works without God’s grace):

-No more diarrhea

-My urine isn’t cloudy anymore

-My energy has returned (I had incredible exhaustion)

-My nerve problems have improved (not all the way gone but they will be!)

-My brain feels clear and sharper

-I have slept through the night a couple of times now (believing that will continue to improve as well).

I am SO thankful to God that He is restoring my health and has provided me with information and the tools I need to stay healthy.  Will I ever cheat? Yes (please don’t be scared to invite us over for supper or dessert).  I do hope and plan to stick to this diet as much as I possibly can, which is more difficult at Christmastime but that’s ok.  I just wanted to fill you in on what I’ve been learning and what I am excited about!

Saturday Night

On Saturday evening, we had Jared’s work party.  Every year it’s at the same high-end restaurant in a private room.  Some of the girls dress pretty fancy and I think I was somewhere in between.  I wore a knee-length black dress that wasn’t very fancy but because it was SO cold outside (I think somewhere in the –30’s) I wore black tights and tall black boots.  It was assigned seating this year and I really liked who we were sitting with at our table of 7. 

Now about the food.  Oh. my. word. The food is probably some of the best food I’ve ever had!!  It is a 5-course dinner and you get options for 4 of the courses.  The first course was garlic cheese toast.  Ya, not so great for my cleanse, but I decided I wasn’t going to worry about it and I was going to fully enjoy all of the food.  YUM!!  The 2nd course we could pick between some sort of shrimp, some other seafood thing and baby back ribs.  Jared + I went with the ribs and I think they were the best ribs I’ve ever had, even better than restaurants who specialize in them!  The 3rd course we could choose between carrot ginger soup (sounded very unappetizing to us) or caesar salad.  After the salad we had the main course.  Jared went with an 8 oz filet mignon, which is what I had last year.  I decided this year I would try the chicken almondine and it was DELICIOUS!  For dessert we could choose between a very rich chocolate mousse cake (I don’t think I even finished it last year because it was too rich) or berry cheesecake.  We both went with the cheesecake.

Our entertainment this year was Matt Falk.  HILARIOUS!!  I was laughing so hard I was almost crying and my face hurt.  I am SO thankful for funny, clean comedy which is very rare.  Definitely one of the highlights of the evening.

Every person got a ticket and throughout the evening, tickets were pulled and the person could choose either cash or they could open a gift from the gift table.  At first the cash amount was $20, then it went up to $50.  Last year, everyone at our table won something but Jared + I did not.  This year both of our tickets were called!  Right before Jared’s ticket got pulled, his boss decided to up the cash amount to $100, so I told Jared to pick the cash and he did!!  That was a blessing!  When my ticket got pulled, I wasn’t given the option of cash, so the present I opened ended up being salt and pepper shakers. ;)

After the dessert, there was a gift exchange between the employees.  It was the stealing game, so once it was your turn, you could open a new gift or steal someone else’s and a gift could be stolen up to 2 times.  At the end, Jared ended up with Doe Estrus spray which attracts does who are in heat.  I was thinking we should go spray it at someone else’s house, ha ha!  Not an overly useful gift but very funny!  It was my idea to pick up a La Senza gift card, since a majority of Jared’s co-workers are male.  I said to Jared, “Wouldn’t it be funny if your boss ended up with it?”  In the end, the person who had #1 could trade with anyone, so she took the boss’s knife and gave him the La Senza gift card!! 

We had a wonderful time and every year we’re very blessed by Jared’s boss’s generosity. :)   

Party Time

So, I got behind again on posting pictures.  Without further ado….

My superhero kids

Decorating for Kiera’s 6th birthday party…we had a great system: she blew up the balloons and I tied them and put them up.

Everyone at the party

She got princess shoes, which she then wore almost non-stop for a few days. They have become basement-only shoes because they are SO noisy on the hardwood floor.

Princess Candy Land which she has beat me at every. single. time. 

She has really enjoyed this pony activity book.

My little princess

After presents, it was cake time.  The blue icing just did not want to cover the chocolate cake properly.  Kiera wanted a cake that looked like her little green teddy bear, so that part of the mission was more or less accomplished.

Some people have a theme party…we had 3 themes: a Dora tablecloth, Princess plates + napkins and a teddy bear cake.

The party ended with a treasure hunt for their goody bags that we had set up the night before.  I think it’s so great that they can read the clues on their own now.  It was a very peaceful party and everyone had a great time!

Tests, a Barn and Undeserved Grace

I haven’t been feeling well lately and not a normal not feeling well, so I went to see my doctor.  She ordered blood tests to test for almost everything under the sun and I am very thankful that she is so thorough.  While I was waiting for my paperwork to be processed before I actually got the blood tests done, I really wasn’t doing well.  I started to pray and speak the name of Jesus over and over.  My name was called almost right away and then I took my paperwork over to the lab.  There were at least 5 people sitting there waiting already and I sat down beside an old man.  I learned that he’s 80 and he was sharing a story with the guy next to him of how he knows about a scientist who worked at NASA as they were preparing for the first trip to the moon.  Once the trip was completed, the scientist was planning to commit suicide.  He told someone and they strongly encouraged him not to.  He ended up getting in contact with Gospel Mission, reading their material and gave his life to the Lord!  I told the man after the story was done that I was very encouraged by that story. 

When he left a younger guy came (I found out he’s 38) and he just made me laugh.  He was an interesting character.  He was saying how it was going to be a white Christmas because he’s getting a lot of white hair in his beard now.  A couple had been at the lab, waited so long that they left for lunch and then came back when they were there.  This guy said, “And you bought a house and paid off the whole mortgage…” I have never felt such camaraderie or had so much interaction with people at the blood lab before and I have been there way too many times this year.  I looked back at how I had called on the name of Jesus and then things changed.  No, my body didn’t feel better but my spirit definitely did.  God placed people in my path exactly when I needed encouragement.  He just poured out His grace.  He is so good.

Later in the evening I went to a “soaking barn” where they have worship music, mattresses, blankets, couches and I just lay down and soaked in the presence of the Lord.  A couple of times people from the prayer team came and laid hands on me and silently prayed and I could feel the Holy Spirit.  I left with much more peace than I had arrived with but it was definitely a battle to choose to praise the Lord and focus on Him instead of how I was feeling physically.  I was talking with my uncle and my Mom afterward (they were both there) and they were saying how the presence of Jesus makes all the difference.  It really does!  I had a better sleep than I’ve had in a couple of weeks and I’m feeling a bit better today, so all glory goes to God!  Oh, and I definitely plan on going back to the barn. ;)

A Full Week-end

4 week-ends ago, I did the Ride For Refuge with my Mom.  We did a cold but beautiful 10 km bike ride on Saturday morning, October 5.  Where we were riding, there were 25 teams which consisted of 235 riders cycling for the vulnerable, displaced and exploited.  Our team raised $6799 for the Crisis Pregnancy Centre, which put us at the 5th highest spot and #40 in North America (top 5%).  The goal for our location was to raise $60,000 between all the teams and $103,705 was raised.  In North America, there were 804 teams, 5657 riders and the goal was to raise $1,300,000.  $1,603, 593 was raised!!  Glory to God!  I was so blessed to be a small part of it!  Here I am waiting in the cold for the ride to start (wearing my shirt over my parka):

Just some of the riders waiting…there were way more behind me yet.

I told Jared that I wanted to be surprised for my 30th birthday, so the day before this (so that I would have time to pack) he told me we were going away for a night!  Friends of our’s were there, too, which was also supposed to be a surprise, but he accidentally let it slip the day before.  He managed to keep the location a secret and also the restaurant they had decided we should go to for supper, so he did pretty good! 

Lobby of the hotel

The rooms were a great size and the ceilings were at least 9 feet tall, so that was nice, too.

We played games in this area later on in the evening.

This was on the bed, which was a very pleasant surprise.

We went to a huge store that we had never been to before and it had a ferris wheel in it!

I have never seen so many guns in real life before.  There was a huge section devoted to them.  It’s safe to say this is the biggest gun I have ever held.  Ya, we did some bear hunting for my birthday…just what I always wanted! ;)

Jared has been talking about getting a clock for a while but I didn’t just want a plain clock.  We were wandering around a hobby store and I saw this clock and thought it was unique and quite nice.  It was $50 and when we got to the check-out, we found out it was 50% off, so it was only $25!  It’s now in our living room.

We went to this fantastic wood fire grill restaurant.  You could see the chicken cooking over a fire and the food was SO good!  The prices were great, too, and I would totally go back!

We saw this driving around the day we got there and when we went out for breakfast the next morning, to our surprise and delight, it was parked at the hotel right next to our’s.  Of course, we had to go take pictures.  Highlight of the week-end right there, ha ha!

Jared and I spent 2 hours at Gordman’s and both got a bunch of clothes.  It is definitely my favorite clothing store.  On the way home, I was really enjoying all of the fall colors.  I have a hard time with fall weather (I LOVE when it’s hot) but I’m thankful there’s so much beauty in this season.

We got to see this gorgeous sunset…a beautiful ending to a wonderful week-end!