Can't wait for that little babe to love the moccasins too. Be sure to share a photo when the baby arrives and is decked out :)
Here I chronicle the struggles, blessings, and daily life of our family.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
A Fresh for Spring Giveaway!
I was provided with moccasins for this review and giveaway. All thoughts/opinions are my own.
It also served to build my confidence and gave me the push to reach out to a company I admired and ask for the opportunity to review and giveaway their item.
I've admired Freshly Picked moccasins for a while now, so I was thrilled to partner with them for this review/giveaway!
The hardest choice to start with was the color.....bold or classic? Well, they have both, so choices, choices, right?
We went with Sweet Pea's color of choice, a nice rosy pink. When we got the package, I was so enamored with the packaging, I took a shot of it. A sweet little cloth bag (and a button) with her little moccasins waiting inside.
The first Sunday we had warm (enough) weather, Sweet Pea and I did a photo shoot. Her little moccasins worked perfectly with her poofy skirt and ostrich feather hair clip.....let me tell you, from head to toe, this girl was getting smiles and chuckles at mass last weekend!
Before all the shots of her enjoying her new shoes, the details: the shoes are made in the USA (yay!), they're made from a soft, comfortable leather. True to the moccasin style, they're made with a soft leather bottom as well. The way the shoes are designed in the front, they had no problem staying on her feet as she
Another bonus (aside from how cute she looks in them) is that she can pull them on her own feet.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Spring Happenings
The days of March have brought the thaw, and with it, days of longer sunshine and more doing.
Today, we went to the gym so I could get my miles in (the goal is 4 miles at least 5 days a week - today was 4 miles and 2000 m rowing)
After the gym, we took a trip to our local science and history museum.
After the gym, we took a trip to our local science and history museum.
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| Checking out air flow |
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| Blurry, but she's SO happy! |
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| Bubble Girl in a Submarine! |
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| Thor-a bringing down the lightning |
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| Girl on a squid |
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| Robotics Engineer |
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| In a tree! |
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| Feeding the air tube |
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| Action shot |
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| She kept dragging this bucket around asking where the water was |
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| Banging the drum! |
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| Trying to follow the dance steps with SP on drum |
After our morning of play, we took a couple hours to regroup and then headed off to volunteer for the Million Trees Project. While we have brutal winters, we also have a rich, diverse eco-system. Living on the Mississippi River and seeing bald eagles flying all winter makes the cold a teensy bit more bearable.
We also have many wonderful volunteer/ecological opportunities, Million Trees Project being a part of it.
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| Wetting down tree roots |
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| Splashing all the other volunteers |
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| Showing off their water bottle swag for volunteering |
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| Our muddy boots at the end of our shift :) |
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Supporting Adoption: Barker Family
I've often felt the pull to adopt, but we're in a season of healing and it's not time for us to embark on this journey, although I pray it will be in the future soon.
In the meantime, I've felt called to support and share the stories of families seeking support, both in prayer and funds, to grow their family through adoption.
So, how can you help?
You can read more about why the Barker family is adopting.
You can visit their adoption fundraising page.
You can stop by the online auction that's live now!
While you're there, please go bid on the cowl I made.....I'm going to get a complex if it doesn't do well....and as of posting now, NO ONE has bid on it.Help my self-esteem, maybe win something, support a family in their adoption process.
Winning all the way.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
How NFP Saved Me
When Hubby and I married, nearly 11 years ago, we took the NFP class offered through our parish. It was the Sympto-Thermal Method. It ended up not being the best fit for us, but it was the beginning of exploring how my fertility worked (or didn't).
I was listening to Jennifer Fulwiler speak a couple weeks ago and she said something I've said myself, the Catholic Church is the owner's manual to being human. Nowhere has this been more true in my personal life than Natural Family Planning. Especially since finding Creighton. While I won't claim to being the best of pupils and an emotional residual of infertility is that I'm a little crabby and resist doing all the observations because my frustration says what's the point, I do see the help and value of it in my life.
Since puberty, I've really struggled with my weight. Really struggled. While I eat my feelings on occasion, diet and exercise has never been able to produce proportionate results on my frame. During certain times in my cycle, I struggled with keeping a handle on my emotions....which is a really nice way of saying I was a rage-a-holic at the end of each cycle. Sequestering myself was really all I could do to keep the peace while I felt like that.
In the last few years, I've felt tired all the time. All of it. I thought perhaps it was having two toddlers at once, then maybe depression over losing one of them.
So there I was, January 2014, out of control weight, enraged and exhausted. Then, a friend introduced me to Creighton Model Natural Family Planning. The benefit of Creighton was advertised as being able to diagnose and treat reproductive health problems. A big selling point when doctors hadn't been able to give me any answers over the years of infertility.
Five months into the process, after charting, many, many blood draws and driving my own blood serum two hours away for analysis, the numbers came back. My progesterone was dangerously low. Very bad. Like possibly contributing to the ectopic rupture that nearly killed me and the growth delay Sweet Pea had in utero bad.
The solution was less than palatable, but effective. Four subcutaneous injections each month timed to provide my body with what it should have been doing on its own. All to create a normal, balanced cycle.
All those years of cycling, and I finally experienced a release from the rage, less pain and a generally improved quality of life. That was more than 20 years of suffering, soothed by scientists faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church and unwilling to take a band-aid approach to a real problem.
Because it's not about forcing teachings onto women; it's about honoring our own unique chemistry and fighting for answers when that chemistry is unbalanced. It's about loving us enough to know our reproductive system is not a disease, but a part of what makes us uniquely woman. It's about treasuring us enough to work with our bodies, not against them. It's about giving us answers, solutions, and support. It's an owner's manual for how we work, and help when things don't.
Now, we still haven't conceived, even after many months of injections. But here's the thing, that may or may not ever happen again. Part of my Lent is making peace with that. Still, those injections are slowly healing me. Now, exercise does show results where even the most disciplined routines showed no progress before. I still have to work harder than the average person, but working hard now does something, which is new for me. My emotional health is slowly being restored as well. With the hormone support I receive via injection, I am no longer a slave to the rage that used to overtake me. Sure, sometimes I'm crabby, but it's a shadow of what once was.
The pain of menstruation was no small thing for me. There are still months where I might have some discomfort, but for the most part, that's unusual now. From debilitating all the time to uncomfortable occasionally is a huge leap, friends. Huge.
There's also a piece we may never fully know how it's affected me. My previous hormone balance put me at great risk of breast cancer. Every month, my body was bathed in hormones that would support the growth of cancerous cells, with no balance of those that were hostile to them. I was a petri dish just waiting for the opportunity to grow cancer. Now, a proper balance of hormones makes me a less promising host. Maybe someday I'll get cancer. I know I'll be more vigilant about it than I might have been otherwise. But, maybe I'll have years longer before the cancer than I would have otherwise. Maybe it will be less aggressive, maybe it won't happen at all. It's not something we can measure and know exactly what this new balanced level of hormones is doing for me. But, it's giving me better odds, and I'm in favor of that.
All of this, all of these health benefits because I wanted our family to be blessed with more children, so we sought answers to why it wasn't happening. That right there is a blessing in our openness to life; my improving health.
This improved health is based in bio-identical hormones that add nothing toxic or synthetic to my body. It creates order in what was the chaos of my infertility. Creighton sometimes feels like I'm part of a science experiment with the research they collect, but really, at the heart of it, nothing speaks more truly of love for woman, respect for woman than the honoring of her body and its natural processes.
Nothing has shown me quite so personally the love the Church has for me, the beauty of creation and the wonder of how I am made than the researchers, faithful to the teachings of the Church, who have worked to heal me. They have worked in cooperation with God, using science to restore, build up and heal women. I am so grateful to be one of the women benefiting from this work.
If you're suffering from severe mood swings, infertility, or fertility that you would like a better insight into (and options that also support the health and well-being of our environment), I urge you to prayerfully consider Natural Family Planning, especially the Creighton Model. I didn't know there was a solution to the pain of my cycles and the rage of my pre-menstrual phase for so, so long, until a friend had the courage to hand me a book about Creighton. There is help, there is healing, there is a way to work with the beauty and magnificence of your body while you seek to limit or increase your family to the place where God is calling you.
I was listening to Jennifer Fulwiler speak a couple weeks ago and she said something I've said myself, the Catholic Church is the owner's manual to being human. Nowhere has this been more true in my personal life than Natural Family Planning. Especially since finding Creighton. While I won't claim to being the best of pupils and an emotional residual of infertility is that I'm a little crabby and resist doing all the observations because my frustration says what's the point, I do see the help and value of it in my life.
Since puberty, I've really struggled with my weight. Really struggled. While I eat my feelings on occasion, diet and exercise has never been able to produce proportionate results on my frame. During certain times in my cycle, I struggled with keeping a handle on my emotions....which is a really nice way of saying I was a rage-a-holic at the end of each cycle. Sequestering myself was really all I could do to keep the peace while I felt like that.
In the last few years, I've felt tired all the time. All of it. I thought perhaps it was having two toddlers at once, then maybe depression over losing one of them.
So there I was, January 2014, out of control weight, enraged and exhausted. Then, a friend introduced me to Creighton Model Natural Family Planning. The benefit of Creighton was advertised as being able to diagnose and treat reproductive health problems. A big selling point when doctors hadn't been able to give me any answers over the years of infertility.
Five months into the process, after charting, many, many blood draws and driving my own blood serum two hours away for analysis, the numbers came back. My progesterone was dangerously low. Very bad. Like possibly contributing to the ectopic rupture that nearly killed me and the growth delay Sweet Pea had in utero bad.
The solution was less than palatable, but effective. Four subcutaneous injections each month timed to provide my body with what it should have been doing on its own. All to create a normal, balanced cycle.
All those years of cycling, and I finally experienced a release from the rage, less pain and a generally improved quality of life. That was more than 20 years of suffering, soothed by scientists faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church and unwilling to take a band-aid approach to a real problem.
Because it's not about forcing teachings onto women; it's about honoring our own unique chemistry and fighting for answers when that chemistry is unbalanced. It's about loving us enough to know our reproductive system is not a disease, but a part of what makes us uniquely woman. It's about treasuring us enough to work with our bodies, not against them. It's about giving us answers, solutions, and support. It's an owner's manual for how we work, and help when things don't.
Now, we still haven't conceived, even after many months of injections. But here's the thing, that may or may not ever happen again. Part of my Lent is making peace with that. Still, those injections are slowly healing me. Now, exercise does show results where even the most disciplined routines showed no progress before. I still have to work harder than the average person, but working hard now does something, which is new for me. My emotional health is slowly being restored as well. With the hormone support I receive via injection, I am no longer a slave to the rage that used to overtake me. Sure, sometimes I'm crabby, but it's a shadow of what once was.
The pain of menstruation was no small thing for me. There are still months where I might have some discomfort, but for the most part, that's unusual now. From debilitating all the time to uncomfortable occasionally is a huge leap, friends. Huge.
There's also a piece we may never fully know how it's affected me. My previous hormone balance put me at great risk of breast cancer. Every month, my body was bathed in hormones that would support the growth of cancerous cells, with no balance of those that were hostile to them. I was a petri dish just waiting for the opportunity to grow cancer. Now, a proper balance of hormones makes me a less promising host. Maybe someday I'll get cancer. I know I'll be more vigilant about it than I might have been otherwise. But, maybe I'll have years longer before the cancer than I would have otherwise. Maybe it will be less aggressive, maybe it won't happen at all. It's not something we can measure and know exactly what this new balanced level of hormones is doing for me. But, it's giving me better odds, and I'm in favor of that.
All of this, all of these health benefits because I wanted our family to be blessed with more children, so we sought answers to why it wasn't happening. That right there is a blessing in our openness to life; my improving health.
This improved health is based in bio-identical hormones that add nothing toxic or synthetic to my body. It creates order in what was the chaos of my infertility. Creighton sometimes feels like I'm part of a science experiment with the research they collect, but really, at the heart of it, nothing speaks more truly of love for woman, respect for woman than the honoring of her body and its natural processes.
Nothing has shown me quite so personally the love the Church has for me, the beauty of creation and the wonder of how I am made than the researchers, faithful to the teachings of the Church, who have worked to heal me. They have worked in cooperation with God, using science to restore, build up and heal women. I am so grateful to be one of the women benefiting from this work.
If you're suffering from severe mood swings, infertility, or fertility that you would like a better insight into (and options that also support the health and well-being of our environment), I urge you to prayerfully consider Natural Family Planning, especially the Creighton Model. I didn't know there was a solution to the pain of my cycles and the rage of my pre-menstrual phase for so, so long, until a friend had the courage to hand me a book about Creighton. There is help, there is healing, there is a way to work with the beauty and magnificence of your body while you seek to limit or increase your family to the place where God is calling you.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
The Body-Soul Connection
Greetings if you're visiting from Jenna's where I'm guest-posting today! Congratulations to Jenna on the newest addition to their family!!!
Recently, I wrote about how much my grief has been weighing on my physical frame. With the beginning of Lent came a renewal to calorie counting, lots of exercise and a focus on whole foods and low/no sugar.
That's all well and good. Those are necessary steps to put in the work and get fit(ter).
But, there's more. It snowed last night, so I didn't make the trip to the gym I would have in the early hours of the morning. So, I caught up on some shows on Hulu while I did the treadmill in my basement.
I was watching a show where a mother looked at baby pictures and reflected back on a growing daughter. It caught me off guard and I choked up a bit. My reflex was to cut off the crying. I'm not good at crying and I try not to do it if at all possible. So, my instinct is to squelch it back down.
In that moment though, I felt something click. Here I was working my grief weight off my body, but I still wasn't letting myself cry. Some days it feels like I've already cried more tears than I should have needed for a lifetime. But, I'm still holding on to pain, and with it, weight.
As I watched some actress well up on the show, the words ran through my head, "I'm going to have to cry a lot more to lose this weight." More, I'm going to have to allow myself to cry.
Last Saturday I went to a wonderful retreat (that I hope to find some time to write about later). As a part of the day, I was able to sneak in a trip to confession between a break and Jennifer Fulwiler's talk. A topic that came up was the root of anger; how hurt is behind that anger. That rang pretty true for me.
All this hurt I'm bottling is manifesting itself on my body in extra pounds and in my soul as anger. Think about the truth and beauty of the Theology of the Body, how we are taught the inextricable link between body and soul. I've heard these truths, I've talked about them, but truly, in that moment on the treadmill trying to stop myself from crying it all lined up.
Where my heart is damaged, my soul feels the weight, and my body carries that weight. It's all connected.
Maybe that's something you've known all along. Maybe you're like me and your head knows it's true, but your heart is just getting the message. We are body and soul. We cannot harm one without the other; we cannot heal one without the other.
After today, I think my path back might involve more tears than I'd like. So, if I start to cry at some weird interval in a conversation with you, please, just go with it. I'd rather not be crying, but more than that, I want to be whole again.
P.S. If you like this cowl, you can bid on it in an upcoming auction at the Barker Family Adoption Auction. Click on the link to like their page and see when this and other items will be available for auction. Read more about their story here.
Recently, I wrote about how much my grief has been weighing on my physical frame. With the beginning of Lent came a renewal to calorie counting, lots of exercise and a focus on whole foods and low/no sugar.
That's all well and good. Those are necessary steps to put in the work and get fit(ter).
But, there's more. It snowed last night, so I didn't make the trip to the gym I would have in the early hours of the morning. So, I caught up on some shows on Hulu while I did the treadmill in my basement.
I was watching a show where a mother looked at baby pictures and reflected back on a growing daughter. It caught me off guard and I choked up a bit. My reflex was to cut off the crying. I'm not good at crying and I try not to do it if at all possible. So, my instinct is to squelch it back down.
In that moment though, I felt something click. Here I was working my grief weight off my body, but I still wasn't letting myself cry. Some days it feels like I've already cried more tears than I should have needed for a lifetime. But, I'm still holding on to pain, and with it, weight.
As I watched some actress well up on the show, the words ran through my head, "I'm going to have to cry a lot more to lose this weight." More, I'm going to have to allow myself to cry.
Last Saturday I went to a wonderful retreat (that I hope to find some time to write about later). As a part of the day, I was able to sneak in a trip to confession between a break and Jennifer Fulwiler's talk. A topic that came up was the root of anger; how hurt is behind that anger. That rang pretty true for me.
All this hurt I'm bottling is manifesting itself on my body in extra pounds and in my soul as anger. Think about the truth and beauty of the Theology of the Body, how we are taught the inextricable link between body and soul. I've heard these truths, I've talked about them, but truly, in that moment on the treadmill trying to stop myself from crying it all lined up.
Where my heart is damaged, my soul feels the weight, and my body carries that weight. It's all connected.
Maybe that's something you've known all along. Maybe you're like me and your head knows it's true, but your heart is just getting the message. We are body and soul. We cannot harm one without the other; we cannot heal one without the other.
After today, I think my path back might involve more tears than I'd like. So, if I start to cry at some weird interval in a conversation with you, please, just go with it. I'd rather not be crying, but more than that, I want to be whole again.
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| A nearly head-to-toe shot from yesterday :) |
Friday, February 20, 2015
See Me Homeschool - A Blog Hop
Take a peek at our day. It's a temptation to caption - but you can scratch your head on the vignettes provided, much as I do throughout the day. My homeschoolers are 9 and 2 :)
After looking at these shots, I'd just like to say, pajamas much? Homeschooler cliche over here :)
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