Not here anymore…

Over at my new blog Homefront Hubbub. Yes, I change blogs too often! ;-)

Love one another!
Yvonne

Joshua’s blog…

Joshua has his own blog now! If you want to visit him, he’s at Pooh Bear’s Adventures.

New recipe blog…

I have started a blog just for the GFCF recipes that we have tried and loved. It can be found at My GFCF Recipe Blog. Not an original title, I know, but I couldn’t think of another to save my life. I’m open to suggestions. LOL!

Love one another!

Goodbye to our old friend…

We had to say good-bye to our old friend Zoey today. Zoey was our beloved Lab, she would have been 13 on Valentine’s day. We have had her since our daughter was 3 years old, she can’t even remember a time without Zoey in our family.

This picture of Zoey was taken in October, on her way to the vet’s office. October was when she started going downhill, but it’s only in the past few weeks that she really took a turn for the worse. She loved going in the car, and even to the vet’s office!

My sweet Hubby took her to the vet today, in the car (her favorite) to have her put to sleep. He got the toughest job. I just stayed home and sat on the couch with Christine, all snuggled up, while cried together. Joshua was down for his nap during most of it, but he was up for the beginning of it. Christine crying, and Joshua laughing.

Joshua laughs hysterically when someone is sobbing. I don’t know what it is about it that he finds so humorous, but he laughs his booty off. It’s mainly a good thing though. It’s tough to be sad with Josh there laughing and so happy. During one of her sobbing spells today, Christine said “I wish I was like Joshua!”. He is our boy who is always happy! He does, of course, get hurt and cry, and he worries when mama leaves him with someone, but he’s oblivious to to stuff like the dog dying. He’s oblivious at this stage in his life, I don’t know if he’ll remain that way or not as he grows.

She was such a sweet girl, we’ll miss our Zoey!

Love one another,

Giving while receiving…

Give food to the hungry while improving your vocabulary. What could be better than that?

Love one another!~Yvonne

Do you have Celiac?

Very informative article by one of my new favorite bloggers, Gluten Free Girl; Do you have Celiac?

I am in the latter category that she mentions. I have not yet been offically tested for Celiac, I just went off gluten and found a new lease on life, therefore I don’t feel I need to be tested. I have, however, called a GI doctor that a friend of mine sees, just out of curiosity if the bloodtest will show what I know. The soonest they could get me in was June! That tells me there are a lot of people out there dealing with some kinds of gastro-intestinal stuff. How sad! My nephew sees a GI doc for his acid reflux, which by the way has almost ceased since being put on a gfcf diet. Hooray for Eli!

There is so not only a lot to learn but a lot to unlearn!

Love one another,

Isn’t it beautiful?

Christine sewed this whimsical apron for herself, with the help of her wondeful sewing teacher! Thanks Lindiepindie for your guidance, we are both so grateful to you, for your help and for the picture! :-)

Spring rolls…a yummy GF treat!

Christine and I made vegetarian spring rolls for dinner tonight, and they were oh so yummy! I actually found the spring roll wrappers at our local Kroger. I had no idea how to use them though, and I asked my friend, Cindy, and she told me to soak them in water first, but not too long or they get too mushy. I still needed some direction on how to actually wrap the spring rolls, and, of course, I found a video on the internet. We stuffed ours with rice noodles, lettuce, cilantro, carrots, avacado, and sliced ginger. I also found a recipe for a peanut dipping sauce, and while it was good, I think that I’ll try another one next time. If you have a peanut sauce recipe that you love, I’d sure love to have it!

I also wanted to share this recipe for Frosted Banana Spice Cake that I made last night. I didn’t make the frosting for it though, but I can’t believe that it could be any more delicious that it was. We are bare naked cake eaters over here though, but it really was awesome! It is gluten and casein free, but I would have devoured this whole cake even before I was GFCF, it’s soooo good and so moist!

My camera is fried. If I had it I could show you how beautifully they turned out. Pretty good for our first try we thought. ;-)

I am hoping that Santa has a new digital camera for mama this year. I hate not being able to take pictures and videos of my babies! Wah!

Off to bed! Love one another~Yvonne

Back to the blog and gluten free…

I’ve gone gluten free. I’ve said “adios” to gluten, sayonara, bon voyage…you get the idea!

I am almost two months into my gluten free lifetstyle.

Why gluten free? The story goes like this…

My nephew, Eli, is on the autisic spectrum. Many kids on the spectrum have benefitted from going on “The Diet” (gluten free and casein free~ a.k.a.~ GFCF). My sister decided to give it a go and see if it made a difference for Eli, and lo and behold…she started seeing some pretty dramatic changes in him. Within days he started trying to use words he had never used, he only 3 or 4 until then. He also was more in the “here and now” and not in his own little world, and many of his stimming behaviours lessened. It was pretty amazing!

I decided to try Joshua on “the diet” and see if I could see any differences in him. Not near as much as Eli, but I do feel he has a bit more focus and his diarrhea has subsided.

Then my sister decided to do it, and well, we always do the same things, so I had to do it to! I started researching the signs and symptoms of gluten intolerance and was just blown away at how many of them I had! I definitely had to try it out!

After one week, I felt clearer headed than I had in a very long time, I had more energy, the joint pain I had experienced for the last year was GONE, and the diarrhea and bloating were so much less. Two weeks later, the intestinal stuff was also GONE! I felt so alive. At that time my anti-depressants, that I have been taking for 7 years ran out, so I decided, after talking to my family and asking them to keep and eye on me, to try and go without them and see what happened. I was shocked that after a couple of days of not taking them, I was not huddled in a crying puddle as I have been after previous attempts, instead I felt wonderful. It’s been two months now and I feel just wonderful, more me, more free, than I have in either decades or my whole life, I can’t decide! :-)

The only negative that I have noticed from going off of my “meds” is that now that I am not taking something with an anti-anxiety med, my old buddy acid reflux has come to visit. I think I get going and going during the day, running around doing my busy mom stuff, and I feel like I forget to breathe sometimes, or breathe as shallow as you possibly can and get by. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but that’s the only way I can think of to describe it. I find that I actually have to remember to take deep breaths, breaths that are cleansing and relieving. I also have discovered ginger and peppermint tea as a way to help my reflux. It’s really soothing to my stomach and seems to help. I am just starting this and read that I should drink a cup after each meal. I’ll update on how that’s going in a week or so.

That’s my story. I could sing, Sound of Music style, from the highest mountain top, how good I feel. Lucky for you, no sound comes through the blog, or you’d be plugging your ears and running about now! Aren’t you glad I’m back now? :-)

It was fun…

I am leaving my blog, for a very long while, maybe forever…I will still be helping Joshua out with his blog: Pooh Bear’s Adventure’s, but the time of the personal blog is over for me. Life is just too busy, good busy, crazy busy, but busy.

I have enjoyed meeting many new friends in the bloggy world, and appreciate all the prayers and support that you have all given me over the last two+ years. I am going to be cutting back on all blog reading also, but I will definitely drop in and say hello now and then!

Keep on loving one another!~Yvonne

I’ll be trying my best to keep us with these precious “babies” of mine! :-)