Happy Birthday sweet Nora.

I will never forget the day that I was told I was going to have a girl! I honestly did not believe it! Growing up I always figured when I had kids, I figured I would have two little girls just like my sister and I. But when you are old enough to realize you don't really have a choice, I wasn't too concerned. I was through the roof happy when I found out Noah was a boy. That's what Jason and I wanted. We wanted a boy, then a girl. I couldn't not believe Nora was going to be mine. Anyone who really knows me, knows that I am all girl. I spent the next 4 months staring at that ultrasound thinking it may be wrong. I kept every receipt just in case. Then the day came and as long as I live, I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on that face. How did I get a baby girl so incredibly gorgeous. Dark skin, dark hair, and flawless. I may be a bias, but she was just beautiful. The perfect combination of Jason and I. Being the second baby, she was just  so much easier to deliver which accounted for how flawless she was. Nora came at a perfect time in our lives. I was losing my mom. I had no idea how much time I had left with her and the stress from that was unimaginable. Nora was a perfect baby. I'm not lying when I say that from her second week of life with us, she was sleeping over 6 hours at night. She never fussed and was incredibly happy. God knew exactly what I needed at the time. She felt like a little angel that was healing my heart everyday. I cannot believe how she has turned into such a funny, sweet, independent, feisty little girl. Every day of my life she does something that makes me say " I cant take it she's so cute".  The love that her and Noah have for each other is awesome to watch. I'm pretty sure they spend 75% of their day together fighting, but they are black and white. When they aren't fighting, they love each other. They hold hands, hug, and say "I Love you". I am blessed. I am Blessed beyond measure with what God has given me. I cannot wait to meet their baby brother in a few months. But for right now, Ill just keep him safe and warm while I spend my time loving on the sweetest little monsters that I know. Happy Birthday Baby Nora, I love you to the moon.

 



Bedroom re-do!

Hi friends! Its been a little while. We have been keeping pretty busy making things a little bit more "ours" recently. Luckily our land lord was pretty good about paint, and since we tend to stick to pretty neutral colors, we have been able to do what we have wanted. So, I only found one picture that I had taken of our room when we first moved in. It really wasn't that bad, but I wasn't loving the yellow color, and I was kind of  burnt out on our furniture. With the cost of furniture being not so cheap, we decided to paint ours with chalk paint! A friend told us that Lowes had a chalk paint recipe on their website, so I got it. Less than $200 later, we had a new room! I wanted everything to look clean and fresh. I wanted it to feel like that when you walked in the room. I also wanted a little pop of color so we went ahead and painted the nightstands a fun orangey red. I LOVE it! Got a few yards of fabric from hobby lobby and made the pillows also. The duvet is a set from target that I got on sale. So, over all , it was incredibly easy and very cheap. I love the way it turned out. NOW, we get to work on moving the kids into the same room! YIKES!

 

 

BERORE

 

 

AFTER

 

 

 

You may be wondering..

 

 

For those of you that may be wondering how the 21 day sugar detox is going...well, its not. Now, before you go and get all judgmental on me, hear me out. First of all, this was a pretty hard thing to do. It doesn't help that I am 12 weeks pregnant and hungry. But in reality, that is not why I decided to quit.

The reason that I decided to go ahead and stop the detox, wasn't because I could not go another day without sugar. That actually got easier! A ton easier by day 5. The reason is because I really don't know what I'm suppose to be eating! "Well read the book and follow the directions silly!" You may be saying, but that isn't it either! Jason and I decided the other night to watch a food documentary "Forks over knives". I think I may have talked about it in a former thread. It was an eye opener to me about meat! Having two parents and multiple family members, friends, neighbors, you name it, die from cancer, its incredibly scary to watch after you have just been told that you need to consume a TON of meat every single day for 21 days. Not to mention that the meat you should be eating is preferably grass fed, free range, antibiotic free whatever else free meat. It is incredibly expensive. The list I had in my book was about $300 a week in meat alone. Then I hear about all of these studies done where populations that don't eat meat have these incredibly low cancer instances or none at all! So, if you know me and know that I am a borderline hypochondriac, I panic! I start to do all of this research on meat, and gluten, and dairy! Full fat vs. low fat, no carbs vs. high carbs, and every single study will give you a totally different answer. So what exactly is the truth? Is there a real right or wrong answer? I believe there is. Take EVERYTHING in moderation. Cut out as much processed foods as possible. If possible, cut it all out! Refined sugar is bad for us! Stop eating so much of it!!! Eat more veggies, more plant based diets with normal meat portion sizes! Read labels. If you cant pronounce it, don't eat it! Gluten is still out there for me to debate with because of how since we cut it out again, Noah has gone back to being more manageable! I really do believe that the gluten we consume today is not the gluten out ancestors consumed! Everything has been so mass produced to save dollars, that they have greatly modified it and some of just simply do not tolerate it. I try to stay away from it as much as possible, but I find I cant cut it out of my life forever. I think we all know that 10 years from now, a lot of the diets that we are eating are going to change even more! I can only hope that it is to a more whole foods way of living and the more processed junk becomes a thing of the past. I believe it will save a ton of lives.

For now, I will go about my daily life without the frustration of trying to figure out what is on a yes or no list and just eat real whole foods that GOD made as much as I possibly can . I know for a fact that I need to cut out sugar, and I have even since stopping this. It is a wake up call. I think we all need to make a few changes in our eating habits! Perhaps not drastic ones when you are 12 weeks pregnant and incredibly hormonal! 

A little secret!!

 

 

Hi Friends!! We have a surprise! Yep, baby number 3! We have prayed about this for along time not knowing if we were ready for it or not. God answered. And we are SO excited!

xoxoCarolyn



Day 4

Today was crap. For lots of reasons. Honestly this morning I was doing just fine. I didn't hate my kids, wasn't crabby, my smoothie actually was delicious. It helped that I dumped real cocoa powder Into it! Also acceptable. It wasn't until something totally unrelated happened. Staph. Yes... For those of you that follow me on Facebook, you know that I cannot seem to escape that crap! This time it's Noah. Took him to the dr and he's on an antibiotic and I'm praying it's better in the morning or it's back to the hospital we go. Later this evening, we found two spots on Nora that look like they could be anything right now. Mostly look like mosquito bites and I'm praying that since she decided to put on a tutu and go commando out In The backyard, that is what happened. Tomorrow morning should answer more questions. As far as the sugar detox goes... Not so good today. Didn't really feel bad, but ate a handful of French fries at chick fil a today. On the no list. I didn't care. It's not like they satisfied the craving...the grilled nuggets were not doing it for me and I kept dipping everything in mustard. I hate mustard but nothing tastes good. I found myself in tears when a lady delivered a milkshake to the woman behind me. I tried to convince Jason that he should tell me it's ok to eat a cookie just this once. He laughed and told me no... No it wasn't. Dinner tonight was tacos in lettuce "shells" while tasty, they did nothing for me. Spent a good hour and a half stressed out from this stupid staph situation and talked to myself about maybe going to Starbucks. Decided insted to open up the candy jar in my kitchen. Got out a bag of m&m's , stared at them, then decided to go to bed before I lost it. This is silly!! Do I really crave this that bad?! I just hope that if I can get anything out of this, it's the horrible need for it. I really do just need it. I can think of three things I would have eaten tonight had I not been on this detox and I would not have thought twice about it. Oh well. On to day five. I'll need some prayers tomorrow if y'all don't mind for me and mostly the kids!! Praying that they are both doing just fine tomorrow. Until then.. I'm off to bed to dream of doughnuts with sprinkles.

Day three

Well, it really was as bad as I thought it would be. Woke up absolutely starving and on the brink of a headache. Made myself a smoothie and went back to bed... Or at least got in bed. Can't go back to bed with a 4 and 2 year old. Spent my morning not really liking my kids. For no particular reason really, except that maybe I wanted a doughnut and they were not getting me one. Found an interesting vegan cookbook on another blog this morning and decided to hit up the barnes and noble which resulted in a flat tire on the side of the road👎. My headache was getting worse and honestly I'm not sure it it was because of the detox, or tension. Perhaps both. Came home for lunch literally nauseous. But not nauseous enough to eat say.. A chocolate cake!? Settled for a avacado, tomato, and cucumber salad and then made myself some rice when I decided that wasn't going to last long enough. Sent out a few random text messages to friends using a few more random curse words about doughnuts and cookies. Then I took the kids to the pool in an effort to ignore the hunger. Came home feeling incredibly tired from sitting in a chair and getting a tan. I started panicking because i decided I was going to get bored with the same snacks and needed to find some recipes to mix it up some. Got on Pinterest only to exasperate the cravings. Am I the only one that finds Pinterest kind of evil? Doesn't everyone want a double chocolate pie at 1130 at night? Anyways.... Had a healthy dinner then off to small group. Had an awesome time laughing and hanging out with some super fun couples. Used every ounce of will power I had left to say NO to the salted chocolate brownies and cupcakes there. I'm not going to lie. I for real thought about giving up. All in all, today was a lot harder. I just kind of didn't feel that good either. Tomorrow isn't suppose to get any easier. So I'm saying some prayers for some creativity so that I dont get bored and give in!! Until then...:)

Day two...

As I write this, I'm realizing it was a terrible idea to wait until this morning to write it. I'm learning this morning about the meaning of "brain fog" and I'm having a terrible time trying to focus on what I even ate yesterday. Ugh... Anywho, I'll do the best I can. 

Yesterday wasn't so bad. Big breakfast of eggs and a smoothie with the kids and it kept me good and full for a few hours. A couple healthy snacks and a delicious lunch that made me think of an miss my dad like crazy. A green salad with home made dressing and cold steak! Ha! I totally remember walking into the kitchen and my dad was leaning against the counter munching on the last nights dinner... Some kind of left over meat. Of course I would walk by and he would shake a bite at me and I would of course eat it. Haha! Miss it!  Anyways, the afternoon started getting a little worse. I got a bit of a headache and started craving something crappy. So i ate a green apple with almond butter and cinnamon. Pretty good! Dinner was salmon, cauliflower rice, and peas. The salmon was amazing!! After dinner I was almost nauseous with the need to have something sweet. So I grabbed a handful of macadamia nuts and a small piece of dark chocolate. I felt better after that. Surprisingly, the nuts were sweeter than the chocolate. I think mentally I was just happy I ate chocolate and knew it wasn't bad for me! The rest of the night was good. That is until Jason and I decided it would be fun to watch a food documentary on meat and all of the hellacious diseases we are all dying from. "Forks over Knives". Anyone seen it? My sister told me about it and I kind of brushed it off. Well, I only watched the first half and went to bed terrified that I was going to be dying of cancer soon and that I need to be a vegetarian. Stress. We both came to the conclusion that our meat consumption should go down, and our whole foods should go up, but the idea of never eating meat.. or DAIRY!!! ever again makes me want to cry like a baby. For now, just going to down our portions on it. So, that's about it for yesterday. I'm not going to lie, today has not been good so far so I'm a little worried about day three, but hopefully we can find lots to do today. I see a pool in my future! Have a yummy day everyone!!😉