Do you think you are beautiful (or handsome, if you happen to be a guy)?
If you wouldn’t mind sharing, why or why not?
I’ll explain more about this in a bit.
Feeding on Creativity
That post last night comes pretty close to the worst post I’ve written yet. It’s so disjointed, and really has no point, and look….hey…..cookies.
In my defense it was late, I had just made way too many fussy cookies, I was watching a show and chatting with Jon about something or other……all the while dreaming about my bed.
See, I probably should have just gone to bed early again, but I’d been in bed and sleeping the previous 3 nights at 9pm and seeing as we “get things done” after the kids go to bed, I’ve been feeling pretty useless and like I’ve accomplished NOTHING. And so I chose to stay up and “get some things done” and posting was on that list.
But, hey, we’ll just go with the fact that I was able to cross one thing off my list. Sometimes, it can be about quantity and not quality, right?
Even I don’t believe that. I’m much more of a quality over quantity type person, myself…..most of the time.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Not in a bad way, more that I’ve got a lot of thoughts inside my head and I’ve not had enough opportunity to get them all out of me.
I love to be creative. I love to make things. I love to find things to make my life and my family’s lives more healthy and more beautiful, and easier and more enjoyable and if I can do so in a simple manner, then I get even more excited. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to find the energy or the time to be creative. Recently, I’ve been feeling antsy to be able to make and create and while I think this is a good thing…….. with the chemotherapy, and 5 kids and the back load of stress, it’s a little frustrating and has me wondering if I’m just trying to “escape” from things.
I think that it’s important to do things that “feed” you and over the past 5 months, there’s not been too much time or energy for that, and so I’m trying to make sure that I allow myself some time for things that “feed” me and at the same time I’m trying to make sure that it doesn’t become all consuming.
So far, I’m able to work on some things and then put them aside when I need to focus on the kids and family and then to be able to pick them up again. I feel…..well, as corny as it sounds, I feel more alive. I’m excited to try to accomplish as many of my daily chores and tasks in a decent amount of time, but then to be able to stop and give myself a few moments to be creative. I’m trying to find the balance in all this chaos. Most of the time, it’s easier said than done.
But, with Christmas coming up and gifts to be given…….I’ve chosen to work on gifts to give and I’m pretty excited about some of the ideas that I’ve come up with. Some are old ideas, and some are new, but I get to be creative and so for me……it’s fun!
I love to be able to see what other people make and do. I love to look things that others make because I am always trying to see if I can come up with ideas that I can tweak to be able to make things. I like to be able to use things that I have or that I can obtain easily, so I’m constantly on the lookout for new ideas that are fairly simple. I like simple. I’m not so big into complicated. But I guess that’s all relative, isn’t it? What might be simple for you might be very difficult for me. We are all so individual and each of us have our own unique giftings and skills. That’s what makes this world an amazing place.
Some of the things I’ve made I can share and some I have to keep a secret, but I’m hoping to share a few of my ideas over the next little while and then maybe you can tweak my ideas and use them to create things of your own to give or to keep.
ps. those jam thumbprint cookies in the photo above – gluten, dairy and egg free. I used this recipe and used Vegan Becel instead of butter and Ener-G Egg Replacer instead of eggs. I also added about 3 more Tablespoons of Rice Flour than they called for as the Vegan Becel makes the dough a little oil-ier than normal cookie dough. Try them, they are amazing. Almost like shortbread.
MMMmmmmmm
Things have been busy over here in so many different areas.
I keep thinking that I’ll have a moment to update what going on and instead I’ve ended up with a backlog of things to write about and new things just keep on happening. That’s life isn’t it? It just keeps moving forward at a steady, predictable rate; even if you desperately want it to slow down and especially if you want it to speed up.
In case things weren’t already crazy enough, I’ve recently needed to remove gluten from my diet. I mentioned a while ago that Judah was having some gastro-intestinal issues. Removing dairy seemed to help a little and yet it really didn’t help like I thought it would. When I went to the doctor, it seems that his issues are dairy, gluten and yeast related and we are trying to figure out if this is a short term deal or a much more serious situation.
It’s been just over a week since I removed the gluten and while things are not great, they do seem to be a little bit better. Judah seems to be in less pain and that’s a huge deal for me.
I found this recipe for gluten-free Oreo cookies and figured that I’d attempt to alter it to make it dairy-free and egg-free. I baked up a batch tonight and it’s amazing.
Jon figures that they are good enough that you’d never know that they were dairy, egg and gluten-free. They are sooooo yummy and I know the kids are going to flip when they wake up in the morning.
Angelica is starting the 4th stage of the chemotherapy tomorrow morning. She went and got blood work done this morning and when her counts came back this afternoon….they were FABULOUS!
We were hoping that they would be high for the start of this round and they are, especially compared to how low they were last week. They are low for normal, but high for Geli.
Xani has been quite sick over the past week. It was almost like the flu but with no barfing or fever…….she’s had a headache, sore muscles, an all over achy feeling, runny nose, cough, and I think that she’s finally, slowly, on the mend.
Jeremy turned 10 years old yesterday and I’ve got a bunch of stuff to update on him.
Siah has not been sleeping very well and as a result, he’s been a bit of a goofball during the day. Lots of tears and whining and fussing and moaning and screaming….it’s a bit wearing. And I’d love to say that I have some great ideas and plans of what to do with him to work through this rough patch, but….ya…..nope! Nothing! I’m not sure if I’m too tired to come up with something or maybe I need to be just a little bit tired before “it” comes to me. I dunno, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out or maybe he’ll grow out of it all before I have to come up with something.
Christmas is coming and I’ve been baking (gluten-free, of course) and we’re trying to get things ready so that things will be peaceful and calm. I can at least hope for peace and calm, right?
I’m hoping to find a few moments to be able to get a few things caught up on here (and in real life). Should we take bets on whether it will actually happen or not????
Ah well. Life keeps moving along and I keep on moving with it, whether I like it or not.
I’m Dreaming of…..
Not sure what craziness was going on last night, but all 4 of the males in our house were taking part in some crazy sleep deprivation thing.
Yah, Jon, Jeremy, Josiah and Judah….all of them were awake pretty much mostly from 2:30am until 5:30am….That means that basically Geli and Xani got to sleep last night and the rest of us….well, we were mostly up.
And so I feel a bit like a zombie today. I was hoping to accomplish SO MUCH MORE and yet, no. Grocery Shopping it is.
The baby is playing nicely on the floor beside me and the girls are in the basement playing. Jon has taken the boys to run a chore and at this exact moment, I’m sitting on my couch. Counting down the minutes until I could possibly go to bed for the night.
I’m figuring that if Judah goes to sleep between 7:30pm and 8pm then I’m looking at 4.5 hours….maybe I could even just take him to bed with me and make it half an hour earlier….
Yup, that about how exciting life is today. I’m dreaming of………sleep.
And when I’m this tired, there is really no flowing coherent thought, other than…..I just want to sleep and so I shall end this post and keep myself busy until the most wonderful time of the……..day.
It’s all about the Chocolate, Baby!
Living with food allergies can be difficult at times but it’s not the end of the world. Yes, there are definite challenges, but we manage work within the limitations and still live and eat amazingly.
Any effort that we have to go through is SO worth the vibrant health that we get to experience….ya know, minus that whole cancer thing….ummmmm, yah moving on….
Siah has an egg and dairy allergy and to look at him, you would never know that he has allergies. He doesn’t have dark circles and bags under his eyes or eczema on his skin. He is almost never sick and never seems to have “bowel issues”…trying to be subtle here. He is one healthy little boy.
In this picture, if you look, you can see all the little scratch marks on his face. He would claw himself all day and all night because his skin was bothering him so bad….I had already eliminated dairy from my diet at this point
In this picture, you can see some of the eczema on his face. I remember when I saw this picture I was so excited, because he looked SO AMAZING. He was starting to heal at this point. At it’s worst, he was an oozing mess all over the top of his head, down his forehead, into his eyes and all over his cheeks and chin. It was horrible.
The rest of us, don’t eat dairy because it does not agree with us. It’s not an allergy like Siah, but more of an intolerance. When he eats dairy, he gets sick with vomiting and diarrhea and has eczema and it’s nasty. The rest of us might get bloated, or have tummy aches, headaches, or might just feel “off” or “icky” and most of the time, it’s just not worth it, especially when there are so many amazing tasting substitutes.
One thing that I’ve tried to do ever since we found out about Siah’s allergies is to make life as normal as possible. We eat ice cream, and pizza and have chocolate and pretty much anything that we want to eat…..we eat. I’ve just found dairy and egg free substitutes.
Special days like Valentines and Easter and Christmas can be difficult, but I’ve tried very hard to not have my kids feel like they’ve been denied “normal” while keeping things safe for everyone.
With the Christmas season comes Chocolate Advent Calendar’s and in past years, I’ve done many different things, from creating envelopes with different “things” to do or eat. I’ve put Jelly Beans into an Advent Calendar and that’s worked, but the best thing that I’ve done is to just “alter” the advent calendar’s so that they are dairy free.
First thing to do…..Get your Calendar and slice open the flap at the back, trying not to destroy the flap because you’ll want to seal it up again when you’re all done.
You’ll need to open it carefully and pull out that tray that’s inside. It might be glued to the cardboard and so you’ll have to carefully pull it apart and away from the box in order to get it out.
Then you’ll need to dump out all the original chocolates, and dispose of the original’s….I had 2 big girls that were willing to deal with a bit of an upset tummy to be able to eat the chocolates.
Then you need to get yourself a dairy-free chocolate bar. This particular one is from Super store. You can find dark chocolate that has no dairy in it if you search and read a million labels. This one is great because it doesn’t taste too dark and bitter and *the bonus in my eyes* it has almonds in it. YUM!
Break it into hunks and melt it down. I used about half the bar and melted it in the microwave for about a minute and a half.
I used a spoon to drop the melted chocolate into the plastic try.
You take your completed tray and pop it in the freezer to set the chocolate. It only takes a few minutes to set it enough to continue on with this whole ordeal.
While you are waiting, you could clean up the dishes that you’ve used, or just use the time to finish up any of the leftover chocolate…..MMMMMMM Chocolate!
After a few minutes, the chocolate is set enough to carry on. I pulled out my glue gun and heated it up and glued a few strips on the tray…..this will help the tray to stick to the box and then all the chocolates won’t fall out or slide all over the place.
You have to work quite quickly here because you want to get the tray back into the box before the glue cools and hardens….so slide it back into the box and you’ve got to make sure that it’s facing the right direction….one way it lines up with all the little doors and the other way it doesn’t….I’ve learned the hard way. Not fun!
You can just press on it gently to make sure that the glue is stuck to the box…
This picture has nothing to do with anything….I just think he’s very cute and he was sitting watching me with this “What the heck are you doing?” look……
Flip the box over and run a strip of glue along the back flap
and then seal that sucker up…..My 2 big girl helpers managed to shred the top of this flap and so it required a little extra lovin’ to get it sealed up properly.
Here are the calendar’s waiting for the kids to open them.
Opening the special Dairy-Free Christmas Calendar that is totally safe for him……
Everybody is excited about chocolate….
These two have almost the same hair-do…
I think he approves….
These pictures would be so much cuter if he didn’t have that giant booger in his nostril…Oh Well…just keeping it real. I wonder if I coulda photo-shopped that sucker outta there….yah probably, oh well…..
Definately a happy boy with his “daiwy-fwee chawclut”…….
Even the older ones still get excited about their chocolate calendar’s….
I love having my kids be able to participate safely in some of the treats and special things in life, and any extra effort that it might take to make this happen is SO worth it, to me.
A Week Off
So, all of Jon’s talk about Geli starting Chemo tomorrow. HAH!
We got her bloodwork done at the lab out here by our house and found out this afternoon that her counts…….LOOOOOOOW!
Like Really low…Like Crazy low….
Like Postponing Chemo for a week low.
Oh well, it means that she has another week to relax and heal and recuperate and that’s okay.
And….it gives us from December 23rd all the way past New Years off – with no chemo. So that’s a bonus, eh?
We’re praying that her counts come up quite significantly over this next week and that she’ll have an amazing week at home, with no infections of any kind.
I should have some more exciting things to post about tomorrow, but right now….(9pm) I’m going to bed…I’m really tired. Like really, REALLY tired. Like I could sleep for a week tired. Heck, probably a month tired. and yet…..if I’m really lucky, the baby will sleep ’till 2 or 3am. More likely, I’m looking at a midnight wake up call. Oh well.
Night All…see ya on the flip side.
The Week Ahead
Angelica finished her last round of chemo a couple weekends ago. The next round is called “Delayed Intensification” and starts on Thursday. In essence its like a mini version of the first two rounds of chemo and lasts until the end of January. In the first round, she lost her hair and had to deal with blood-sugar (diabetes) issues, and she is on basically the same meds for the beginning of DI.
There are a few things that are different for this round of chemo. 1) There are less doses, 2) the time is a bit shorter, and 3) she doesn’t have leukemia any more. In the first round she had less than 5% of her marrow actually capable of making blood cells and so when something killed her blood counts, it took a long time for the counts to come back up. That fact also played a big part in how the drugs affected her and what side effects she had to deal with.
Right now, her marrow has recovered to over 30% (which might not sound like a lot, but in contrast to 5%, it is. It is enough to make a lot more blood cells a lot faster). So even though we have had these medications before, we don’t totally know what to expect.
We are praying and hoping that she doesn’t have to deal with more hair loss or diabetes or the shots and blood tests that goes with that. We are also praying that she doesn’t have her blood counts completely decimated and that her immune system remains intact.
Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of Angelica and our family.
Getting Away from it All (part 2)
After lunch, we headed back to the hotel and even before we got there, the kids were already asking to go swimming.
So we all got our bathing suits on and headed back to the pool.
The pool had actually been closed for maintenance and had just re-opened all clean and sparkly on the day before we arrived. Between that and the fact that we were the only ones in the pool the entire time we were there…..it was perfect for someone with a compromised immune system.
Josiah was SO excited to be able to be swimming. He spent the majority of the time in the hot tub, and so did I. We typically would go swimming every week, but, back in the summer, we had to cancel our membership to the Walnut Grove Rec Centre because the pool is just not a great place for Geli and we didn’t want the other kids picking something up and bringing it home and so it was such a treat to be able to swim as much as we wanted for a few days.
Jon and Jeremy and Judah hit the weight room before they came swimming…..
I think this was the most exciting part of the weight room – for Jeremy…..
We don’t have cable and so it was such a treat.
Judah worked on some push ups…..gotta build up that upper body strength, eh?
This is the 80 ft water slide that is inside the hotel. It was AWESOME! It’s almost pitch black inside the tube and you can get going pretty fast. It took a while and a little bit of coaxing, but even Josiah went down the slide.
There were lots of smiles….
and a lot of silliness…..
And SO. MUCH. SWIMMING!
It was so amazing to step away from everything. To get away from our house, from school, from work, from cleaning, for deadlines, from everything and to just do something totally fun together as a family. After Swimming on Tuesday morning, Jeremy snuggled up next to Jon and looked close into his eyes and said, “Thank you Daddy. Thank you SO MUCH for bringing us here. This is the BEST EVER!” All the kids mentioned many times, just how thankful and grateful they were to be able to get away and to stay at the hotel and to go swimming.
Everyone relaxed and it felt like everyone was able to catch their breaths and de-stress a little.
It’s amazing how little time it took, once we got home, for everyone to try to pick up the stress again. Xani came to me panicking about school and homework and I actually told her that for that night, we were still on vacation and that she got to relax and take it easy and then tomorrow she could make a list of everything she needed to get done and to then start plugging away at it.
This is kind of where we are at. Times away like this are so precious, because we do kind of have this weight of stress that we are living under. It’s like our reserves for dealing with normal (stressful) situations are all gone and we have barely enough to just hang on in each moment. I know this is not forever, but it does wear on me to see it playing out in my children. Children are not supposed to be stressed like this.
But, not to focus on the negative…..our time away was so fabulous. So needed. Such a blessing. So fun…..it was simply amazing.
We are so grateful to Jon’s parents for coming with us. It drastically reduced the kid to adult ratio…we were only out numbered by one. It was a blast to hang out with and to be able to spend some time away with them.
We are so thankful to the Super 8 in Aldergrove for giving us a great deal. We so hope to be able to come back again.
And we are so grateful that we were even afforded this amazing time away. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The opportunity to escape was such a gift.
If you are interested in seeing the rest of the pictures from our time away, click here...
Maple Taffy
So it’s been snowing ALL DAY and the kids came straight home from school today and I’ve not seen them inside yet….
I was trying to think up a fun snack for them and I wondered if it would be easy to make maple taffy and really….it couldn’t be easier.
You need real maple syrup and snow.
Okay, you need to boil the maple syrup first, but really that’s not difficult. Most of the articles that I read mentioned a need for a candy thermometer but I just winged it and VOILA…….
You boil the maple syrup for a while. It needs to get over 260 degrees Fahrenheit and it needs to thicken up a little, so I probably boiled it for about 10 mins.
Then I took my pot outside and found some clean snow and using a spoon, drizzled some onto the snow. Then I called Jeremy over and asked him to eat some of my yellow snow – which he emphatically declined….until I mentioned that it was maple candy.
Here it is in the snow….
And after a few seconds….it comes out more solid, like this…..
And after you’ve taken a big, chewy bite, it looks more like this…
It’s chewy like toffee but tastes like maple syrup. So Delicious and so easy.
Have you made this before? Am I just really behind the times?
(part 2 of “Getting away from it all” coming soon)
Getting Away From It All (part 1)
Thanks to the unbelievable generosity of some amazing people we were able to “get away” from everything for 2 days and 2 nights. It was so needed and so perfect for us.
We made plans to take the kids to the Super 8 in Aldergrove. They have a fabulous pool and water slide in the hotel. And that made this particular hotel so SO perfect for us. Our kids are the hugest water bugs that you’ve ever seen and we knew that they would love to go somewhere and swim as much as they could for a few days. It sounded like the perfect get away and in hind sight, it was! It was absolutely perfect!
We sent the kids off to school on Monday morning while we tried to get a few things done around the house and to ready ourselves to head out later that afternoon. Jon’s parents were up for “getting away from it all” and so they decided to join us.
At dinner time, we met up with Jon’s parents and we went for dinner and then headed out to the hotel. We got there, unpacked and took the kids down to the pool. We swam for over an hour and then headed up to bed. The next morning we got up and hit the complimentary breakfast. This hotel had the most amazing breakfast. Everyone enjoyed themselves and as soon as they finished breakfast, the kids wanted to head back to the pool.
Xani and Geli were over the 12 year old age limit and so they headed into the pool – just the two of them – but the boys had to wait until I was able to take them into the pool. They were pretty patient through.
Judah got in some good cuddles with Nana.
After we finished a couple of hours of swimming, we headed up to our room to dry off and just relax.
We had picked up some fake mustaches before we headed to the hotel and in light of the whole “Movember” deal….we decided to try them out. I realize it’s not quite the same, but we had a lot of fun…
Judah looked quite sweet in his “stach…..
Jeremy was throwing out his best Rico Suave vibe……
Me and mah boy….rocking our ‘staches…..
Geli rocks the teeny, tiny mustache…
While Siah sends out a little grey action….
Xani just ended up looking a little strange…
We even convinced Nana to get in on the mustache loving…
And finally….here are my men. Looking so, SO sweet!
Looooooooong after the rest of us got tired of the mustaches….Jeremy carried on. He is SO cute.
Judah did pretty good in the hotel. He was happy and easy going. He did have some rough nights. And that meant that I had some pretty rough nights….which ultimately……SUCKED. But other than that….he was amazing.
Xani and Nana pulled out the puzzles. We do love to do some puzzles.
After a bit, we headed for lunch….
Siah LOVES his ketchup. Basically, the fries are a tool to get the ketchup into his mouth.
We had lots of laughs and giggles and after lunch, we headed back to the hotel for more swimming……..
(stay tuned for part 2)