Praising the Lord!

On Tuesday night our little Eliott had a close call. He was supposed to be getting ready for bed, and for some reason was running across the living room. He tripped on something and went headlong into the glass top of our coffee table, shattering it.

It could have been SO bad! There was blood pouring from his face as I scrambled to pick him up and raced to the bathroom, grabbing my phone on the way through. I made a quick call to Jere, who was at the shop at the moment, as I couldn't deal with Eliott AND keep an eye on the other two who were in the living room with all that glass. He came on the run. By that time I'd gotten some of the blood washed up, to the tune of three wailing children. After some inspection, Eliott had only a laceration on the inside and the outside of his lower lip, and a scratch and bruise up on his cheek near his eye. We were extremely grateful that it wasn't worse--he could have easily lost an eye, some teeth, or split a cheek wide open. We're praising the Lord for His protection of our precious little man!

As far as my headache, we think we've found the cause. Over the last month we've been modifying our diet to cut down on sugar and refined flours. I didn't think that our diet was SO bad, or that we made such a drastic change. But we're thinking my headaches are being caused by sugar withdrawal/detox. I ate a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup someone sent for me, and my headache was much improved after that. I had some more sugar on and off since then, and my headaches have almost completely disappeared. So, not sure where we're going to go from here... My body obviously needs to clean house, but how to deal with the intense headaches meanwhile? (For more information on the dangers of sugar, see my other blog http://thehealthyfamiliespage.blogspot.com/.)

Leanna is growing up SO much lately. She's been trying hard to talk for a long time, but the only thing that made sense was "Mama", which she uses whenever she has a desire, no matter what it is or who she's talking to. :-) She also has a sound she uses for "Teddy", her precious stuffed toy that she is addicted to (if he's missing in the night she'll wake us up crying for him!), and "belly". But just this week she started saying "hot" pretty clearly. It's fun to see her really try to say real words! She has a very tender heart, and if one of her brothers is crying she'll often join him!

Jaron has just a little more than a month left of K5. He's reading rather well, spurred on by a new book I just bought to encourage his reading--members of my family will recognize "The Fly Went by"! :-) I've noticed his fluidity increasing almost daily as he pulls out the book of his own accord and reads as far as his patience allows, which is also increasing dramatically. I think I need to invest in a few more easy readers for him to try! He's also gobbling up his First Grade math book, since he finished his K5 book early. I'm pretty impressed with him!

Headaches and happiness

First, let me clue you in on the headache part. For about two weeks or so I've been struggling with a continual headache, sometimes getting bad enough that I can hardly function. My favorite essential oil, Lavender, which usually knocks any headache quite out, hardly touches it, and pain killers don't do a thing. My chiropractor suggested a trip to the eye doctor, which I did yesterday. After over an hour, one thing was quite clear: my eyes were strong and healthy, with no reasons there for any headache. So I have another appointment to see my chiropractor tomorrow, then one to see our family doctor on Monday. It acts much like a tension headache bordering on a migraine with bright light making things much worse. We're not sure if it's tension, detox from recent diet changes (nothing too major, but still...), or possibly an allergic reaction to mold? Anyway, please pray that as I walk through these days of pain, that God will give me grace and strength to meet the challenges of motherhood with a sweet spirit, and that housework won't get too behind. :-)

And for happiness, well, what could be better than a sweet new niece? Ana Karesse joined the family on March 21, born to Micah and Amy. What a special little girl! Everything went well, and she is bright and healthy.

And in case anyone is wondering, spring hasn't shown up at our house yet! It still feels very much like winter, with more snow on the ground now than we had all year last year! This week it looks like it's supposed to finally begin to warm up a little, and maybe even hit 50 by this weekend!!!!

It's spring tomorrow! So says the calendar...

The calendar says the first day of spring is tomorrow. Are we supposed to believe that?!!!

 

 

"The day before spring."

There IS a driveway under there... somewhere!

 

 

A new family picture!

We needed a family photo for our church's directory, so last night Jon and Lisa came for supper. After supper was the photo shoot! We struggled getting the setting right, and the lighting decent, and all the little subjects looking at the same time with something akin to at least a pleasant expression on their faces! Here's the result:

The one we ended up using.

One of the ones that we didn't use!! :-)

Spring is coming! Maybe?

We were very excited to see running water this week! Of course that means ice and slush and mud, but it also means that spring is soon to come. With the temps in the 40's a little, and sunny, we could even let our fire go out during the day and stay warm! I always like that time of the year. :-) Well, sadly, the running water froze in place Sunday evening, and we got more snow. And yet more snow today. Things still look mushy in places, as though there's water underneath that snow. But it's supposed to get up above freezing again toward the end of this week, and we're all looking forward to that! 'Specially as Jere is now done in the woods, and will be working at the mill for awhile. We're looking forward to having him back for lunch again! :-)

Other than the weather, this week was pretty much the same old. We got a few days ahead with Jaron's school, which was really nice. Hard to believe in about 8 weeks we'll bring our first "official" school year to a close! That's exciting!!! And then it will be time to plant the garden... I did get my tomatoes and peppers planted this week, and the onions are doing well. For some reason this year most of my spreading petunias died as wee plants. I'm used to losing one or maybe two, but I only have 3 left, and one of them isn't looking too happy. Oh well. The regular petunias look fabulous, so not sure what went wrong.

On Saturday we were doing some shopping in La Crosse, then went to Luke Widowski's benefit supper in Wautoma. It rained and rained and rained some more! And I discovered my shoes had a hole in the sole. Meaning, wet feet for me. Oh well. Guess it's better to have it happen now rather than later when we're camping or something. :-) We missed a turn on our way home from Wautoma, and got home rather late. Then we were faced with Daylight Savings on Sunday morning, plus Jere had the first message at church and I had to make food for a fellowship meal! McBains invited us for the afternoon, so we took them up on that. We left in fairly good time as the weather was supposed to be turning nasty. And it did. We at first drove through rain, then sleet/freezing rain, then heavy snow. Praise the Lord we made it safely! But again, we got home late. Not a good idea trying to adjust to the new time. But we'll just take it easy for a couple of days till everyone's clocks reset. :-)

Another week gone by...

It's been another whole week since my last post, and now I'm wondering what to write to update again! Not that this week hasn't been busy, but, well, it's mostly just little everyday things!

We did go to La Crosse on Thursday to bring the boys in for a dental check-up. Everything looks good. And Leanna charmed a new toothbrush out of the hygienist! ;-) I was amused. We did some more shopping, including most importantly, stopping at Play It Again Sports to buy ice skates for Jaron. He's been begging for skates, and we decided it was time to get him some. We walked out with two pairs of skates, since he really wanted hockey skates, but the smallest ones they had were too big and we bought a smaller pair of figure skates just in case. Well, the figure skates were promptly dubbed Eliott's skates, though they were far too big! So, that's all I've heard about ever since. Hockey, new skates, ice skating. :-)

So, unable to resist his pleas very long, Saturday afternoon we headed to the ice skating rink in town. The outdoor rink was obviously let go for the season, as no one had bothered to clean off the ice with the blower. However someone had taken a shovel and cleared a section, so we decided to go ahead and try it instead of waiting 1/2 hour for the indoor rink to open. We put the skates on both the boys, and headed onto the ice. And were promptly amazed! Our clumsy little Eliott very quickly was moving out on his own, and in about 10 minutes had figured out how to bring his feet back together when he was about to do the splits without help. Of course not really skating yet, but doing remarkably well for being a clumsy 3 with skates 5 sizes too big and his first time on skates at all! Though he did tire of it after about 20 minutes and we replaced the skates with boots. The more cautious Jaron needed a helping hand for at least 10 minutes, but by the time it got dark enough to quit, he was "walking" quite well, picking himself up without complaint and without help, and shooting the puck with remarkable speed, distance, and accuracy whenever he got close to it with his new hockey stick. He did NOT want to go home! All the way to church yesterday he talked about skating, he had to tell everyone he talked to at church about his new skates, and almost all the way home all we heard was questions about skating and wondering if we could maybe go skating again now? One track mind, little guy! I told Jere we're going to have to move north now, and live next to a hockey rink! :-) Then this morning he informed me while he was getting dressed that he was putting on two pairs of socks, so we can go skating today. I had to inform him that skating would not be a possibility today. Poor little man!

Sounds like we're going to get dumped on here in the next couple of days. 8-12 inches of snow! Wowie! Just when we were beginning to think spring... Oh well. I won't complain about extra moisture, and I always like to see the fresh, clean, new snow piling up! But I looked at the forecast today, and I'm not complaining either about the temps toward the end of the week reaching the 40's!! That extra snow won't be around for long. Though Jere's got a worried look about him, knowing he has to finish this logging job NOW, before the field he has to drive across gets too muddy and the road bans go on. I'm wishing I could go help him out! :-) He'll be working long, hard hours as long as the weather holds out...