A Chuckle

We were driving along in our minivan this past week when a car sped by us, sporting a number of rude bumper stickers, including "B*tch on Board" (just lovely). Adara peered at the car intently, and I winced. What would I have to explain? Then she asked me, 'Mommy, why does it say "Birch on Board"?' I quickly answered that a birch was a kind of tree, so perhaps the person liked trees. Adara agreed, and thought perhaps they had some logs in the trunk.

Whew. Issue evaded for another day. *grin*

That's all for me for now - children with head colds have me up most of the night, so I'm getting as much sleep as I can.

Decisions and Resolutions

So far the eating plan is going well. It's not always easy to make the meal from scratch, sometimes I want very much to buy premade food, but I really want to give this a go, so I'm resisting. I must admit, my energy levels are good and I don't feel at all deprived. It's been harder on Trev in terms of changes because I already had so many restrictions on my diet, but he's being a trooper about it.

The pantry looks so different without any of the junk in it. I bought a bunch of glass airtight jars from Ikea, so all of the grains, rice, nuts, etc look very neat and organized. Every now and then I step in to get something and wonder if I'm in someone else's pantry, which amuses me.

We spent the weekend getting lots of long-postponed tasks done. Finally picked up a bookshelf stereo for the living room, so we have music. Put pictures in the two collage-style frames hanging in the hallway. That sort of stuff. We also made another decision, that wasn't much fun but will let us move forward: we decided to put off finishing the basement for a year or so. We'll put the futon in Connor's room and move him out when guests come, and set Trevor's office up in the little study on the main floor. The basement will serve as a storage area, as well as giving Trev space to work out with his weights. I wish we didn't have to postpone the work, but with the markets being as they are, we figure money in a savings account is better to have than money invested in the house. We'll see how things are next year. For now, we have plenty of room for everyday life, and we can make it work when guests come by.

Monday Trev had the day off to make up for the weekends he's been working, so he was able to go to the viewing for Adara's dance class. There's not much that's cuter than a group of little girls in ballet outfits. Almost all of the girls had younger siblings who tried at various times in various ways to disrupt the class, which was also cute in its' own way.

Right now, the focus is on getting Christmas cards and packages organized, so they can be sent off at the end of the month. Shouldn't be too much more to do there, thank heavens. Then it's on to putting up the tree, making the gingerbread house (decoration only!), and all of that fun stuff. Hurray!

A New Take on Eating

It has been a while! We got back from Saskatoon, and two days later Trev headed up to Fort Mac for four days, so everything's just going by so quickly. I've been pouring my energy into organizing our newest attempt at getting the junk out of what we eat, and now that I've got that pretty much under control, I can tell you about it.

It started when I picked up a copy of "The Eat Clean Diet for Family & Kids" by Tosca Reno; Mom had recommended the author, as she had previously bought the "Eat Clean Cookbook". I had been looking for a way to get us on track to eating in a healthier fashion, and what I read made sense. Here's what we've done:

• Cleaned out anything in the fridge and cupboards that has ingredients we can't identify or pronounce. Pretty much all chemicals, additives, preservatives and the like.
• Banned refined flours and sugars. Period. No artificial sweeteners either.
• Committed to not eating out at all until mid-December. It's way too easy to indulge in restaurants, and if we're going to really get into the habit of eating healthy foods, we need to do it regularly for at least a month.
• Done up meal plans for each week that have a breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, and supper for every single day. All meals (and if possible, snacks too) will be a combination of a healthy protein (lean meat, egg whites, hummus, nut butter, etc) and a complex carb (whole grains and/or fruits & veggies). I've borrowed the cookbook from my Mom and the recipes I have tried so far have been great.
• Drink water most of the time, with the occasional glass of decaf coffee or herbal tea. I'm trying for at least a litre and a half of water a day...Trev probably drinks more than that.

That's about it - the list doesn't seem long, but it's meant pretty big changes for us! So far so good, though. Trev and the kids have liked just about every recipe I've tried, and there haven't been any strident complaints about anything. A little bit of whining that they're not getting the fries they used to at Costco and so on, but nothing major. I guess we've always been careful to have the kids eat in a healthy way, we just haven't been as careful ourselves, so it's harder on the grown-ups. We'll see how we feel in a month's time.

That's really about it, other than I'm making progress in getting the excess possessions out of our house and into the hands of the Freecycle community. So far the vacuum, Adara's old bed, two twin box springs, a picture, three mirrors, our old microwave and a set of dishes have departed. There's lots more to go, but most of the rest requires sorting through boxes and discussion, so we haven't gotten to it yet. Hurrah for simplifying...both in what we eat and in what we own.

Heading to Saskatoon

I keep meaning to post, but the food allergy thing is still haunting me. It's not the oats (at least not just the oats), since I'm still completely exhausted by 8pm. I've done some reading suggesting that corn might be the culprit - I guess it's a common thing to be sensitive to both gluten and corn - so I'm eliminating that from my diet to find out. I hope I'm wrong, though, as that would eliminate a very convenient substitute for wheat-based things, as well as taking away my snacks of popcorn.

Anyway, we're headed off to SK to visit Trev's family for a long weekend. Trev managed to get both Friday and Monday off, so we'll have a nice visit. Since we're planning on leaving at 4 in the morning so that the kids can sleep through at least part of the drive, I'd better scoot. But I wanted to post this, a picture of the results of our first real snowfall:



The snow up north was always so dry, we made one snowman in three years and he was puny. This snow was perfect, and it was so fun to see Adara and Con's eyes light up when we finished the big guy! They still rush to the window every morning to see if he's still there.

Catching Up

I've been having a hard time lately, and a lot of it has to do with the exhaustion I've been feeling. I've been so tired, all of the time. I've been going to bed pretty much right after the littles do, and even then the next morning I've still been dragging. No blogging, no emailing, no anything really. I couldn't figure out why. Then I read a blog post by a dear friend regarding how much more energy she felt she had when she cut out the carbs from her breakfast, and a light went on in my brain. One of the major symptoms I'd had with reacting to gluten was how tired I had been. And oatmeal is one of the 'iffy' grains for those sensitive to gluten. And I'd been eating oatmeal almost every morning lately (the kids love it). I cut out the oatmeal, and voila! All of a sudden I can stay up past 9! What a relief.

So to catch you up on my week, the most exciting thing that happened was that Mom and I took the kids to Banff on Tuesday. It was an unusually warm day for October, and we figured we'd better take advantage of it, especially since the mountains are only an hour away. The drive went well, and the scenery was lovely. We even came across a herd of mountain goats wandering along the path we were following. Connor was so excited, he kept following them and yelling "Sheep! Sheeeeeeep!", which made them quite nervous, poor things. Anyway, here are a few pictures:





It was a fun trip, and I'm glad we went. Looks like winter weather will be hitting us starting next week (highs of zero predicted) but that's alright, we've had a lovely fall.

Other stuff? Well, I got my hair cut yesterday, quite a change in style. I'll have to get Trev to take a picture. I didn't lose much in length, but it's all layered, very different look. What else...we're still weeding through the stuff in the garage, posting things on Freecycle, taking stuff to the dump, donating clothes to charities, all that jazz.

I'm really getting serious about cracking down on the amount of junk we eat. I got a few books on the subject, "In Defense of Food" and "What to Eat", which take you through how much processing most food is subjected to, and how to avoid the worst of it. I don't want a book to tell me what or how to eat, I just want to inform myself on what's in the stuff we eat regularly, and how we can avoid the additives. I'm sure I'll be doing more posting once I've done some more reading.

That's about it, I guess. Trev is putting up the Christmas lights on the house this weekend, while it's still nice, and we'll be trying to get more done in the garage. Hi-ho, hi-ho, but at least I'm not falling asleep doing it! *grin*