Our new seven year old

Late last week we celebrated Flannery's birthday. She is now seven years old! She had chosen her birthday dinner-steak, potatoes, and cranberry sauce. She also picked out a princess cake. I am thinking we may go back to just having a homemade cake. We were all a bit sugared out after just one piece. It gave me a headache from being so sweet. Flannery was thrilled to be the birthday girl. I didn't have time to upload all of the pictures from the day, but I have a few to share now, and some I'll share later.


Flannery looking into her princess mirror. All the girls were waiting for a turn.

Before she could be the princess she needed to clean off her crown :-)

Three happy girls, ready to indulge in some yummy cake.

Flannery posing with her cake.

Flannery and her birthday sign. This year Isabella made the sign. The birthday girl gets to offer what type of drawings she would like to have on her birthday sign. Flannery chose collies and Australian shepherds. I'm not sure why the picture is so dark, they all turned out that way! Bummer.

That is all the birthday fun I have for you.

I went to court the other day to see if I could get excused from jury duty. I am excused for one year. I am not sure if that means that in 12 months I will automatically be called back, or if in 12 months my name goes back into the system. I have a feeling it is the former. But I think a year will be enough time to make it easier for me to be away. Only time will tell. I am thankful for the extension and I thank you for praying for this situation. I know it is minor in the scheme of things. I think there is more wonder in the small answers to prayer sometimes. Don't get me wrong, the big prayer answers are wonderful and amazing. But the small answers are just a wonderful reminder that God cares about the small details of our lives. I just have to be mindful of bringing the small matters to Him, as I am more inclined to "make things happen" on my own.

I wanted to let everyone who has made comments on my blog to know how thankful I am for your encouragement, suggestions and kind words. I have really wanted to write back to each one, but I am finding time to be short. I write here on my blog because I use it as our family's journal. I have had limited time to surf freely. Which is a good thing, I just wish I had a wee bit more time to let others know I am thinking of them and thankful for them. Right now my time is being spent looking for new recipes, homeschool resources and homesteading how to's. I stop by my regular blogs still, I just have not had time to leave a comment. On one of my favorite blogs there was a link to a wonderful homeschool resource. Take a look!

Bounties Rich and Free

Ok, off to do some work. I have been having a hard time getting into the swing of things these days. Part of it is that a lot of little things have popped up that need to be done. Those little things add up!

bean burgers

I just wanted to pop in here and give you all the link to the black bean burger recipe. I will be trying others out over the coming months. But this one seems to be the best I've had so far. I made a big batch and froze them in patties to be used for a quick lunch or dinner. I have really been enjoying them. Let me know if you try them and how you like them, or let me know if you have a tried and true recipe. In the recipe I left out the green peppers, and went light on the hot sauce.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Homemade-Black-Bean-Veggie-Burgers/Detail.aspx

Jed's homeopathic appointment, food and stars

Good day all! We've had a busy week. I have a few pictures to share for this post. Yeah, for pictures :-) I also have another post that is in draft form of some "visitors" that we "hosted" here a few days back. No pictures for that one, and trust me, you will thank me! Ok, on to the posts topics...

Homeopathic visit: So we finally got to see Dr. Mueller in person. It is funny how you imagine what this person looks like that you speak to only by phone. He was totally not what I had imagined! I loved talking with his wife before the visit. The visit itself was productive. He is positive that Jedidiah's vomiting was from the chlorella that he was taking and he needs to be off of it for a while and we will have to use food instead to slowly, oh so slowly draw out the mercury. I have to tell you it was hard on my ears by what I heard I had to feed him......white flour, sugar and eggs. Shudder! We will be changing his remedies as Dr. Mueller saw another symptom that he wanted to address. I thought what in the world does he see? It was Jedidiah hiding. Jed hid the entire time we were at the appointment. Jed prefers to back himself in some little cubby. Behind furniture, in a cabinet, under things. And this is a symptom. Symptom of what I am not sure. I had to back off of all remedies over the past week due to being just overwhelmed by things here. And ya know what? Jed only ground his teeth two times, for about 2 minutes each time!!! A total of only 4 minutes of teeth grinding the whole week!!!!!! This is HUGE!!! Jed has at times spent at least half his waking hours grinding his teeth. So this is no small matter. The progress may be slow, but I am very pleased that we are getting somewhere. With homeopathy the things to be resolved first are the most recent "illnesses", and it continues to work backwards towards the beginning of all your problems. Jed started with the weight loss right in the womb and has since had other issues come up (reflux, teeth grinding) so the weight will be the last to be resolved. That is hard to deal with when you want to get right to the main problem. But like I said, it is nice to see we are working in the right direction, as slow as it may seem to be.

Ok, on to other things. How about some food? MMMmmmmm yummy stuff this week. I made these tasty morsels the other day and they didn't last long. The funny thing was I made them up and waited to post about it, then on another blog I saw someone do the same thing! She stole my idea :-) I made, what I call, lemon thumb prints. I have been making chocolate nut balls, but was looking for something else. As I rummaged through my flavorings I found lemon. Sounded really great. I put just a very tiny bit in the mixture and it was just what I was looking for. Here is what I used to make them:
3 handfuls of almonds
1 /2 handfuls of walnuts
1/2 handful of pumpkin seeds
1/2 handful of sesame seeds
a couple of TBS worth of flax seeds

I whirl that in my food processor until it is finely ground. Then I add:

5 medjool dates (if I have them)

if no dates I give a good swirl of honey and agave nectar to the mix
a wee bit of lemon flavoring
a bit of vanilla flavoring

As I process that I usually have to add a little bit of water. Better to add a little at a time than too much as you would have to grind nuts to make the mixture the texture you need. It should be able to be rolled into balls and stick together. So roll, then press your thumb, finger or small spoon in to make an indent. I added some all fruit jam to most, and others I added some chocolate fudge sauce. Here is how I make my fudge sauce...

about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder (I have one that is very fine powder)
about 1 TBS of agave
mix the above til the agave is spread through--it will still be dry
then add enough water to make it a fudgy sauce, as thick or thin as you like

Oh my, these were so good.




On the menu this week was bean burgers. Bean burgers are great. But they are "hard" to eat. By hard I mean that it looks like a burger and so your mind keeps thinking "beef" but it doesn't taste anything like beef. It tastes great, but you keep expecting to taste beef. I made two kinds, and prefer the first batch that I made. I will have to try to find the recipe. I made a bunch and froze them. They made great quick lunches!




This week Jedidiah's swing was put up. He is LOVING it. Really loving it! When we were at the appointment the other day there was a small climbing structure outside that Jed got to play on and I had to almost pry him off of it! He loved being able to go up and down the stairs all by himself. Our outside stairs are to hazardous for him to go alone on yet, but he wants to be a big boy and go down them himself. So he was very proud of himself the other day going up and down, up and down....repeat 50 times :-)







Jeremiah's parents came for a visit this past weekend. We were able to celebrate Flannery's birthday with them. Isabella made a cake, and everyone got to decorate it. Flannery turns 7 today!!!!! Wow, seven! She will be having her birthday dinner of steak, potatoes and the very beloved cranberry sauce. Plus she will have another cake!

I got a bit crafty the other day. I have seen these window stars (better known as Waldorf window stars) on other people's blogs and really wanted some of my own. I didn't want to buy the kite paper (too impatient for it to be shipped), so I got some tissue paper while at the store. It worked great! Here they are in all their starry glory.

I suppose they would shine more bightly with the kite paper but I am happy with these :-)

A few pictures of Jonah in all his chubby cuteness. I don't think he is feeling too well right now. Hard to put a finger on it, it's a mommy thing. So he's a bit fussy than usual. But I got these the other day when he was more chipper.

Got chocolate? LOL Some little kiddo gave Jonah a share of their chocolate and this is the end product:

And last, we have a picture of our kids and kids. Baby goats love to climb! They love to climb on anything. So as a baby they will climb on their mother, but the other goats in the herd will not allow them to climb up on them. So when a baby goat climbs on you (and you allow them too) it means you are "family". Lily is like our Flannery...go, go, go! Honey is still quiet, but she will surprise us by becoming frisky and playful during short bursts. She is just more cautious than her sister.

Got milk!

Well, sorta! We WILL have milk in about a year. Here is our cute little milk packages:

The names are not set in stone yet. But so far this is Lilly.

This one is honey.

This is what Jedidiah does when he hears the goats bleat:

The poor fella is scared silly every time he hears them. He will look at them just fine, until they make a noise. Then he closes his eyes and holds his hands over his ears. Nothing we say is helping. We will be having a busy, busy few months ahead of us. We are treading into new

territory with the goats. We also plan on getting a few chickens and maybe two or three Guinea hens (they eat bugs! Lots of them!). AND we are putting in a garden. Although if I don't get my act together and order the seeds we won't be having a garden LOL. We will also be putting in a small green house. So LOTS and LOTS of new things going on over here. LOTS and lots of learning opportunities. AND lots and lots of work to be done. Our children need work. Seriously, children will be so much better off if they have lots of work to do. That is one very big mistake I have made with the girls in the past. We have been trying to remedy that. It is an uphill battle. So fellow mommies, start them working young!

Jed's GI appointment, and other happenings

It has been a very, very busy few days. It started out on Monday with Jed's GI appointment. I would tell you all the little things that happened before we even got there to help with the "feel" of the day, but that may take forever. Suffice it to say we had a hard time getting out of the grocery store, and the parking garage was full at the hospital. Yeah, no fun. BUT the kids were really being great. They saved being "bad" for when the doctor/resident came in :-P But of course! For any of you who have read here long enough you know that I have not been too happy with Jed's GI doctor. I have held off going elsewhere only because all of his "stuff" is at Duke. I hated the thought of starting over with someone new. But I must say, with a recommendation from Jed's speech therapist today, I plan on looking elsewhere. I expected his visit to go like all the rest have, hearing, "He looks good, everything is good, good, good..." All the while I sit there telling them, no, things are not good, he still has a tube and we are not getting any closer to getting him off of it. This time things were different. The resident who came in was one of the residents that had Jed's case when we spent two weeks at Duke two years ago (I can't believe it's been that long!). I got the uneasy feeling that she was not pleased with how things were going. That would be a good thing IF it was directed at the fact that I have been trying everything I can think of and nothing is working (save the homeopathy at this point). However I got the feeling that her thoughts were that it is "I" that is not working. When the GI doctor came in, instead of his usual all is good routine he told me that he wanted me to talk to the nutritionist (about his homemade formula, which I already told him about 6 months ago and he had no problem with it) and he wanted to do blood work to see how his vitamin and mineral levels were, and he was going to use some silver nitrate to take care of the granuloma (stomach tissue that grows on the outside of the body) he has only had for the past YEAR. Hmmmmm, and who put you up to all of this Mr. GI doctor? Now on the outside this may look like a good thing. And in the end it may, I am more upset by how it was all handled. It wasn't in the spirit of: [Wow, you are really doing a lot to help Jedidiah out, it is really great to hear that he isn't throwing up now that he has been on the homemade formula. We just want to make sure that he's getting all the correct nutrition from it. Would you mind if we took a blood sample to see where his vitamin levels are?] Maybe that is their intent and they just came off in the wrong spirit, but I didn't get a good feeling from it. Plus there was NO mention of ANY steps I should be taking to work towards getting him off the tube. Just, see ya in six months! Roll eyes....

To top things off I got a juror summons the following day. Ummmmm, yeah, like that is going to work! Do you know how upset I was to find out that breastfeeding is NOT an exemption? Hello????? My child has never had a bottle, nor is there plans to introduce one, and I don't plan on him weaning early due to jury duty. Not to mention Jedidiah's care. I asked my doctor for a letter to hand to the judge when I have to come in person to get an exemption. Since I am the full time caregiver of Jedidiah (feeding tube) I should be exempt. Please pray that I am. Jedidiah's chealating process is stirring up old symptoms like I was told it would. He has thrown up three times this week. Me being gone for a possible week will NOT settle well with his overall care. In the past emotional upset, physical upset or the like lead to Jedidiah throwing up. We have been very careful in the past to make sure not to make a deal out of it when it happens, lest Jedidiah use it to his advantage. But the reality is that he is still medically fragile. He has made HUGE improvements from where he was, but he has a long way to go. Being away for a week will not help at all. Please pray that there is no questioning from the judge on this and that I am granted an exemption without any further problems.

On a good note we will be buying a bunch of milk today. Like gallons and gallons. It won't be kept in a freezer. It will come in cute little packages. You'll have to check back here to see what I am talking about, I'll make sure to take pictures :-)

I remembered the other benefit from our diet. The two younger girls have been complaining of stomach pain almost daily. It isn't something that prevents them from doing their daily things, they just complain about it. Well all the first week (until we ate "forbidden" food) they were pain free. And that is nothing small! So onto some food pictures. I haven't been too good with the camera lately. Too much going on. So no kiddos in these ones. I have a feeling we will have a lot of new pics with kiddos and our gallons of milk :-)

Here is a breakfast smoothie. Not exactly green as I put a lot of blueberries in it. I have been making smoothies with juiced carrots, romaine lettuce and a couple of apples. I take that juice and poor it into the blender. I add some ground nuts and seeds and give it a whirl. Then I add in the frozen fruits (bananas, strawberries, blueberries, maybe some pineapple or cherries) and add a bunch of spinach and a little bit of spirulina. Making it this way gets some more veggies in. Jedidiah doesn't care too much for the smoothies, but will guzzle the juice. So I give him some juice before I pour it into the blender.

Here is a very yummy bowl of oatmeal. I love mine with bananas, walnuts, flax seeds, apples and raisins. I add a bit of vanilla and agave as well. I am drooling just thinking about it. :-)

Here is our beloved flat bread. We all love this! I take a can of tomato sauce and add some spices (onion, garlic, pepper, Italian seasonings, and basil) to dip our bread in. The bread is made from my whole wheat pizza dough. I roll it out thin and rub it with olive oil and sprinkle on some minced garlic, dried onion flakes and some coarse salt. I put it on my preheated hot baking stone to bubble up. YUM! We eat this with a very large salad. When we have a dinner that is simple like this I make our salad with a lot of extras (broccoli, carrots, avocados).

Here is our not so flat bread from a side angle. This is an easy dinner to make, but it takes a bunch of time as I can only cook one flat bread at a time.

Here was our very scrumptious dinner last night, roasted veggies over rice. Oh, it smelled so good cooking. Lots of great color. I flavored the rice with some bullion. I mixed the veggies with some olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them.

Off to start our busy day.

An update on how things have been going...

Good day all. I wanted to pop in here and give a bit of an update on how things have gone this week. I'm sorry I don't have more pics of the food I've made. Well after the first week we already see some changes. The first being about the food....I need to simplify it more :-) Not that it was complicated, but it was too different than how we were eating before. So I have revised my menu to this:

(breakfasts and lunches will remain the same)

Mon: Veggie, bean, noodle dish--something cold/fruit pizza

Tues: Roasted veggies over rice

Wed: Chicken salad

Thurs: Flat bread or focaccia and a salad

Fri: Bean burgers

Sat: Taco salad (meatless)

Sun: Soup

We will keep with that line up for the rest of the month, putting in a new recipe if it sounds really good. The girls, in particular the younger ones, have eaten a lot of fruit :-) I'll just keep serving them the food and they have to keep trying it. I'm hoping over time they will acquire a taste for it.

For other changes....I've personally noticed that Jeremiah's face doesn't look so puffy. Not that I thought it looked puffy before, but today I really noticed a difference. Moira has been having her allergy cough. It had been getting pretty bad in the past few weeks. She was having episodes of very loud snoring as well. On day two of the diet she stopped coughing. And then on Thursday I was running behind and decided to use up something in our "old food stash", a box of mac and cheese. By evening she was coughing! Since then, it's stopped. So there ya have it, Moira has issues with dairy! We have all seen improvements with our intestines! I'll leave it at that :-)

I know there was one other change but it escapes me at the moment. I'll make sure to write about it when it pops back into my brain!

We have a busy week ahead of us. Jedidiah is supposed to have his 6 month appt. with Duke GI. I'm thinking of canceling. Mostly because we know what they are going to tell us, which is nothing new to us. We don't have any concerns about his tube and I feel that going ALL the way out there with ALL the kids is just more than I want to do to hear what I heard six months ago. But part of me feels like I should. Hmmm, we'll see. We have our wheat order to pick up, we'll have 5 young men over for dinner that same night, Jed has his speech therapy, there is a marriage conference Friday and Saturday and then Jeremiah's parents come for a visit on Sunday. Ok, I need a nap now :-)

I found this great little crochet sponge pattern online. I have tried the knitted and crocheted dish clothes, and I do not like them. They are too big, get heavy when wet and I just didn't like them. But these fit in your hand and are a dream. The only down side is that they do not dry very quickly....at all! So you would have to make sure to wash and dry them often. But I am making a bunch of them because I love them so much, and they are really easy and fast to make! You can find them HERE.

I had originally found that pattern from another site where they have a really neat free downloadable garden planner. You might be interested in it and you can find the planner HERE.

There has been some interesting things going on with Jed this week. I am not sure if it is coincidence or not, time will tell. We started him on the chealating protocol for the mercury. His homeopathic doctor told me that the reason he was waiting to start him on it was because he wanted to see improvements first as the chealating tends to bring out old symptoms since it is bringing out the thing that is causing his symptoms to begin with. I hope that made sense. Anyways he told me what his dosage would be but that I needed to start him off at a very (very) low level first and build up. I asked how I would know if I was giving him too much too soon and he said I would see symptoms flare up. OK, easy enough. So the first week I started with a very small dose. This past week I thought I would increase it. And by golly it was too much! This week he fell asleep twice during the day (one was when we "lost" him), which is not like Jed at all. He has been off his prilosec for two months and the first month we had to use a homeopathic remedy to help him with his reflux. But this past month he hasn't needed to take anything for his reflux! BUT the past two days he has started doing his reflux cough. And he threw up the other day. He hasn't done that in ages!!! Something he did all the time though in the past. So I backed off on the dosage yesterday. His doctor said this would be a slow process, but I never figured it would be THIS slow. The amount that we are supposed to work up to with one of the chealating agents is 1/2 teaspoon, but he is only getting ONE drop!! ONE. I upped it to two and he started having issues. I also started giving him two capsules of the other agent and he has to work up to 5 or 6. Did I say this is going to be a long process?

OK, must get going. I need to hook up Jedidiah and play a game with Flannery. I did want to say before I get off that I would really recommend everyone listen to the sermons that we have had at church on the ten commandments. I can almost guarantee you that you have never heard the ten commandments taught like this before! I know better than to think, "What could be said about (blank) that I haven't heard before....?" But with the ten commandments I have to admit I wondered what could possibly be said about them that I haven't heard yet, especially when I found out that only one commandment was going to be preached on per week! But let me tell you, it is a must listen. Go to my side bar and click on my church link (Hope Baptist) and go to the sermons page. I think you will come away with a new understanding of the commandments and the height, length and breadth of them!

Blessings!

videos, clarification and a "new" found gadget

VIDEOS
I uploaded the other three shorter videos. I put a link to our channel on my sidebar under favorites, Southern Peaches Channel. One video is of Flannery attempting to balance on her bike. She is learning to ride it. The other is a silly little video of some Indian girls :-) And the last is a little game the girls and I have been playing lately. We memorize large selections of scripture as a church. We have not been diligent with the most recent selection, the ten commandments. The girls and I had memorized the ten commandments themselves in the past, so I haven't been too concerned. But this time we are memorizing the whole chapter, which includes a bit of an introduction before you get to the commandments themselves. We have been reading the whole chapter each day and then saying a verse or two at a time, multiple times. The other day one of the girls wanted to see who could say the first two verses the quickest, and this was our little game. So that is what we are doing in the video, racing to see who could recite the verses the fastest. It was fun, and by the next day all the girls had those verses down pat!

CLARIFICATION
I believe I need to clarify a few thoughts about my post on our new diet. I believe I do only because even my dear hubby did not understand what I was saying with my spoken words, and I know with out a doubt that my written word is even more muddled. One of the reasons that the post focused on meat was because in my conversations with people over the years about diet meat is always the hot topic. You could tell someone that your family is cutting back on sugar and they will nod saying how they really should do that too. You could tell people that you need to cut out caffeine and you'll get people telling you that they really wish they weren't dependent on their daily cup(s) of coffee. But if you mention that you are cutting back on meat.....lets just say that it brings a different sort of response. It usually has people raising their eyebrows, bringing up scripture that says meat is OK, or they will defend why there is no problem with meat, that their great grandfather ate meat everyday and he lived to be 120. So I naturally talked a whole lot more about our meat change than anything else because of that. Now I am probably going to even mess up my clarification :-)

I believe in the sufficiency of scripture. What that means is that I believe that God speaks to every area of our life in His word, whether directly or in principle. And I try, although I know I fail miserably, to bring all that I do under scripture's light. That goes for whether our girls get their ears pierced, what house we bought, what clothes we wear and even what food we should eat. Scripture is clear that God gave us meat to eat. Period. So therefore meat is a good thing....at least it should be. The points I addressed were that I don't believe meat was intended to be eaten at every meal, nor everyday. Now this is where we may differ and that is fine. Because no where are you going to find in scripture that you should eat "X" amount of ounces of meat per so many days. We are not going meat free, just drastically cutting back. This may seem totally off topic, but hang in there with me. My friend Bethany had a great post recently on head covering. She made some great points at the end. She said that we can both read the same scripture and come away with a different conviction. And that is OK. But there are many people who won't even think about the issue, never the less look into it once the topic is brought up. My point here is that I did look into scripture about this, and my take on it may differ from others, but I am at least making an attempt to see this issue in light of God's word. That doesn't mean I am right though! I am going to use an illustration. And as illustrations go they always break down at some point. I can already hear the objections in my head on using this illustration, but it is the only one I could think of. Lets look at meat and marriage. Yes, I said marriage. God gave us both. He said marriage was a good thing. However if you look at society and sadly even at the church some may say otherwise. Marriage IS good, it is just what WE do with it! And so it is I believe with meat, God gave it to us, so we must assume it is good, it is what we do with it that makes it bad. I know I mentioned a bit of that in my original post so I am not going to repeat it here. So the natural conclusion may be to just eat organic meat. And that is something we will be doing. Just much less quantities. We have bombarded our bodies with a host of chemicals and junk and I am attempting to heal our bodies from that assault. By the way there are other "big guns" of assault on our health, probably much worse than meat by far, and yes, I am ridding them from our house as well. Some of those being refined sugar, white flour, food colorings, food preservatives, MSG, and other such things. Again, meat was just the one thing I knew that people would make an issue of. As far as trying to heal our bodies, fruits and veggies are the best options. I am sure you could probably get some pills to do that, but that would be a whole other post, because as some of you know, I'm not really into pills :-) Now you need a lot of fruits and veggies to really improve your health. Again, we are trying to heal, not just maintain. There is only so much room in our tummies so something things in our diet will have take a back seat so that the veggies and fruits can take the front seat. Some of these things won't be making a comeback into our diet....such as the sugar and food processing chemicals. But we are planning on getting some milking goats and chickens, for eggs and I think it may be cheaper to raise them for meat as well, we'll see. But again, fruits and veggies need to be the mainstay. Meat will start coming into play more after the allocated year of healing, but more as a side dish and not the main fare. And some may be wondering what we will do if we are invited to other people's homes, or in the case where our church puts on functions and we each are to bring a certain dish...some of which may be meat dishes. I would never tell anyone that we don't eat meat if invited to their home. Whether they are eating pork, fried food, or are dishing up a wonderful tasting (white sugar laden) dessert, we would eat all of it, love it and be thankful for it :-) If we are asked to bring hot dogs to church we would do so without question. This is not something I plan on making an issue of outside our home. But, here in our house, I will be attempting to make our meals as healthy as possible. We just have too many health issues for us not to make it an issue! I do hope this clears any up misconceptions. I am hoping I didn't make any more misconceptions in the process!

"NEW" FOUND GADGET
With our diet we adding in more nuts and seeds. With children who don't always know what's best for them I have to be sneaky and add them in so that they do not notice. Nuts and seeds can be ground up to be added to many things. My blender does not do the best job of making it into a powder. I had heard of people using a coffee grinder for this purpose. While at Walmart I figured I would check them out. At 15-20 dollars I wanted to see what went into these things. And by golly it was a mini blender!!! One of which I already had!!!! My Magic Bullet!! I got home whipped it out and by golly that thing was great!!! It ground my nuts and seeds to a fine powder. I am a wee bit excited, can you tell? :-)

OK, off to whip up breakfast. Although the girls are having a blast with the Magic Bullet, whipping up their own breakfasts.

food, outside time, and a scare

Here are a few things that went on the other day. We "started" our new diet yesterday. Although I hesitate to say we started yesterday as this has been a journey for us. But non the less we have huge changes that we are making. So yesterday we started with a not very green smoothie. I am going to work our way up to more and more greens as the girls were a bit skeptical of it, even though they've had them before. But there are so many other changes that I thought it would be only fair to go slow in some areas. For snack we had some nut balls and fruit. For lunch I made this very, VERY scrumptious hummus spread. I roasted some garlic and red bell pepper to add to the chick peas, olive oil, tahinni and lemon juice. It was great! We spread it on whole wheat tortillas and then topped it with salad, and a bit of Italian dressing. Oh, my, the oldest two girls are begging that it be for today's lunch as well. Then we had some popcorn for an afternoon snack, with olive oil, salt and nutritional yeast. I thought that the girls didn't like the yeast, but I was wrong and they wanted to eat all of mine! For dinner we had "mac and cheese". But totally not the real thing. However it was quite good. The girls kept sneaking bites of it.

We spent some time outdoors as it was 60 degrees out. They had a lot of fun. I took a bunch of pictures. You'll see them below.

As for the scare.....well, in we came from the great outdoors. Daddy had just come home and he decided to get started on the girls history right away. Jedidiah had gone into the back room where the play castle is located. I was cooking dinner. Right before Jeremiah sat down to read I asked him to go check on Jedidiah. I noticed I hadn't seen him come out of the room, nor did I hear him playing. We called out to him, and we fully expected him to answer us back. I had worked on that for quite a while, teaching him to answer us back to us when we call him. But we heard nothing. So we called again. I looked very quickly to see that my bedroom and the back bathroom gate were closed. He loves water....too much sometimes. Thankfully they were closed. Jeremiah said, "Don't worry, I know he's still back in the play room as he hasn't come out of there yet." So he looks, and comes out saying, he's not back there. We call again, and again!!!! Still nothing. The girls assured us that the doors to the outside were closed as well. Jeremiah and I were both getting worried. Where in the world could he be? Our hearts were pounding, and I was starting to shake. We told him we were not playing hide and seek and that he needed to answer us. Still nothing. And then we saw this, behind the puppet theater:




I wanted to scoop him up and hug him tight!! He is still in his outside gear as Jed has a bit a time transitioning between activities sometimes. After his nap, and dinner we headed out to get him some new boots as he outgrew the ones he is wearing above. Poor Jonah was a basket case! That poor baby cried all the way to the store, then at least for half the store trip and then half of the way home. He was off to bed the minute we stepped into the house :-)

I am in the process of uploading some cute videos to my youtube channel. Because we don't have the right type of format it takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r..........to upload. Seriously, the three videos will probably take at least six hours to upload. But when they do I will post here to let you know they are ready for your viewing pleasure :-)

Isabella would like you all to know she will be having a new post ready to be read soon!

Isa and Moira in their newly built tent.

Moira being all girly :-)

Flannery working on some "dirt cake".

Saoirse and Flannery looking cute.

Flannery still working on that cake.

Saoirse came outside with my hooded sweatshirt on and I had to take a picture.

Isabella was unaware at first that I was trying to get her picture, but when she saw me she flashed me this pretty smile.

I took about one hundred pictures of Jed, but he didn't stand still long enough for me to get a good one. This is the best one of the bunch.

Saoirse looking up and being a camera ham.

Our lovely dinner. Yummy.

Our fabulous lunch. I can still taste that hummus! I need to go make me some hummus, veggie wrap :-)