JUST FOR FUN

I might have already posted a video similar to this a few months ago, but I couldn't resist posting this one! :)

Elizabeth LOVES counting these days...ironically, it has been easier to teach her to count from 1-10 in English than in Mandarin. In both languages, she always skips 1 or 2 numbers. In Chinese, it's almost ALWAYS "4" and/or "5"...In English it's almost always "5" and "7" and for this video she added in another number after 10 in Mandarin...not sure but I think she said "10" in Mandarin and then "8" in English! :)

she has such a joy and excitement about her -it's fun watching her learn and succeed at new things. :)

A DATE WITH MOMMY

my mom took Andrew, Rebecca, and 2 of the cousins to a children's play this morning, giving me a morning free with Elizabeth.

She LOVES having 1 on 1 time with John and I, so I thought she'd LOVE spending the morning with just me.

nope. I thought wrong.

When we dropped Andrew and Becca off at grandma's and Elizabeth realized she wasn't going with them, she began to cry.

not an angry cry.

not a pouty or fake cry.

this was a genuine, "I'm so sad" cry.

My mom and I were both surprised! We wouldn't have guessed this kind of reaction from her....ever!

I even told her "Elizabeth, you and I are going to get to do something special and spend the WHOLE morning together..just you and mommy".

she replied, "no go with mommy..go with them".

I felt so bad for her. poor little girl!

I held her and she just sobbed...big ole tears streaming down her little face.

There is a St*rbucks close to my parents so we drove over there and I got her a milk and donut and we sat and read some books together.

She must have asked me 8 times in that first hour "where Andoo and Becca?"

By the end of our little time at St*rbucks she had perked up and was doing better so we ran some errands together. Amazing how much faster errand-running goes with just 1 child in tow instead of 3! :)

She was super happy to have them come home, just 3 hours after leaving...but to her, it was an eternity without her brother and sister. :)

BOW GIVE-AWAY!!

how cute are these?!

My dear friend Jeanette, over at Sara Beth Bows, is giving all of these away. seriously!

there will be 2 drawings so you have 2 chances at winning for the March Giveaway.

Hop over to her blog and make sure you enter!

and make sure you tell her I sent you! :)

CHICKS, COUSINS, AND DENTIST

We decided to skip church Sunday morning and instead, ended up over at my sister's house. We only planned to be there a short bit, but a short stay turned into about 4 hours. :)

these precious little girls are why we visited them in the first place!
My sister's family bought 17 little hens Saturday night...they'll be laying fresh eggs in about 4 months. When you have 8 kiddos -you need alot of eggs -so they figured these hens were a good investment!

I'm hoping we get to sample a few fresh eggs too. :)


they have a trampoline so of course that's where Andrew and Jordan went right away to wrestle. :)

between baby Jameson and Mia the chihuahua, Becca is in heaven when she's at my sister's :)

sleeping peacefully in my arms.

if you can see in the pic -Jackie has a chick in her hands and of course Becca has Mia safely tucked in the shopping car. :)

7 of the 11 cousins


And today -all 3 kiddos had dentist appointments. They were SOOOO excited to go. :)

I had to be with the girls while they cleaned Andrew's teeth so I didn't get a pic of him in the chair, but I did think this one was adorable. :) look at the way Elizabeth is looking at him!


Becca is doing much better already. Her coughing fits today have been significantly reduced, thanks to the breathing treatments. why didn't I start those sooner?! :)

now if I can just keep the other 2 well!!!!

DEJA VU

ah yes...the site of Rebecca and her breathing machine.

all too familiar around here.


Becca has been sick since that time we took pics of her sleeping on the floor next to the pool table 3 weeks ago. She seemed to get better after that episode, but within a few days a deep cough developed. We kept thinking it would go away, but it only got worse. So I bit the bullet and took her to the peds office yesterday....sure enough, she has strep throat AND a "croup like" condition in her lungs (some wheezing and not moving enough air).....so she's on a round of antibiotics for the strep and breathing treatments for the croup-like condition.

nights have been really rough for us -Becca has had 3-5 major coughing episodes every night for the last week or so and I usually get up with her....last night she had 1 around 10pm when we were going to bed...and that was it! She slept thru the whole night -and so did we! yay!!!

the doc said she should be much better by Thursday...I sure hope so -I'm ready to A) have my little one healthy again and B)sleep thru the night again! :)

HEALTHIER LIVING

ok-this post has been in my "file" box for 2 months now! just keep adding pics and trying to find time to write!

Over the last year or so I've been striving to make better, healthier choices for my family...especially in the area of food.

I have been wanting to share the little things I've done to change my family's diet, so here goes. :)


It started with John allowing me to invest in a grain mill and a Bosch mixer so I could make bread (and other various breadish things!). We bought 2 different types of wheat and now I can freshly grind wheat whenever I need it. Freshly ground is SO much better for you than grocery store white flour (white flour is completely devoid of any nutrition!) and still better than grocery store "wheat" flour cuz that is just white bleached flour with wheat bran added back in, it still doesn't have all the nutritious wheat properties.

Now I make everything bread-ish with fresh wheat flour so everything is "from scratch" -waffles, pancakes, breads, foccacia bread, pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, regular rolls, etc.

it's a little bit of extra work, but for me, it's SO worth it knowing I'm feeding my family the freshest, healthiest (and really high fiber!) breads.

Then I started reading a blog The Nourishing Gourmet.

The gal that writes it has done quite a bit of research on living a healthier lifestyle, especially in the area of food. I love reading her blog and trying out her recipes!!

Nourishing Traditions is a book by Sally Fallon (and some other folks) and it has been a resource for the gal writing The Nourishing Gourmet. I borrowed it from the library and found it fascinating!

One big aspect of using a nourishing ingredient is using coconut oil! yep-it's not a "bad fat" like it was made out to be a few years ago. :)

Coconut oil is something we should all add into our diet. Do some research! It has some amazing properties...anti-bacterial, immune system boosting properties! it's a "good fat"!

you can read about it HERE -you REALLY should take 5 minutes and read it...you'll be amazed!

I decided to slowly add it into our diet by baking with it...using it in place of butter or oil in recipes. If you buy the high grade, properly expressed kind, it barely even has a coconutty flavor!

I also often use a mixture of coconut water/coconut milk in place of regular milk in recipes like pancakes and waffles..again, with barely a coconut flavor but with a great added health benefit!

I also started making my own chicken broth to use in soups/rice/noodles/etc. It's SOOO easy. I have no idea why I didn't do this earlier..seriously!

I often cook a whole chicken in my crockpot...just throw it in there, cover it with water, you can add veggies or not, and cook on low the whole day. The result is super tender yummy chicken meat. I then use the chicken meat in recipes -casserole recipes mostly. After getting all the meat off the bones, I throw the bones back into the crockpot still filled with chicken water. :) I keep it on low, pop the lid on, and it simmers until morning. By doing this, I'm getting the minerals and goodness out of the bones and marrow. In the morning, strain out the bones and any meat/fat..and you have yummy, healthy, chicken broth.

another tip I read on The Nourishing Gourmet was the use of Rooibos tea. Rooibos is actually an herb from South Africa and it has some great antioxidant benefits. Since it's an herb, it's naturally decaffeinated..so you can drink it anytime of the day.

I LOVE this vanilla rooibos tea. It's SUPER yummy iced. I use THIS recipe often. Rebecca and Elizabeth love it too. :)

Butter

I have switched over to exclusively using butter in our house. yes, it has more fat in it than margarine. but it's made of natural ingredients..margarine is not. I read about how margarine is manufactured in Nourishing Traditions. My stomach turned. seriously. it's disgusting. g**gle it. I dare ya. :)

a brief synopsis is cheap (and NOT healthy oil) is processed with heat, chemicals are added in to the mix..the mix is grey which would be too gross for consumers to eat so it is bleached out and then a more appealing yellow coloring is added back in. mmmmm..yummy huh?!

butter is simply churned cream...and sometimes salt is added. that's it.

I read a book years ago about getting back to basics, getting back to a more natural way of eating...eating non-processed foods...and one of the BIG things it talked about was eating REAL food...REAL butter, REAL ice cream..stuff that only has a few ingredients...ingredients you can pronounce! :)

that information always made sense to me so in some degree, I tried to do that, but not very well....but then after reading about how disgusting margarine really is...well I just had to stop using it :)

I bought a little butter crock which safely keeps a small amount of butter at room temperature for spreading purposes..and then I just stock up on butter at the stores when it is on sale and freeze it.


Other simple changes I've made:

*I've also switched us over to using sea salt instead of regular iodized table salt

*I make my own salad dressings (Italian versions...John and the kids love store bought ranch dressing to much right now. :) ) ~the recipe I use is THIS ONE and I just vary up the vinegar and spices I use.

*I make my own bean dishes instead of buying them in the can. I didn't realize how super easy it is to do so, just by using the crock pot! check out a recipe HERE . yes, I know you can just boil them or use a pressure cooker...but what I love about doing it in the crockpot is that I don't have to be right in the kitchen monitoring them. It totally frees me up!

I'm sure some of you are thinking "wow! I don't have time to do all of that!"
or, "my family would never go for all of those changes!"

I was a bit overwhelmed too, at first. But I just took things slowly, changing a little bit at a time. Like I said, this process started nearly a year ago!

Thanks for letting me share! and maybe it's motivated you to look at how you can integrate something "healthier" into your family's diet. :)

JUST CATCHING UP....AGAIN!

I'm actually out flying -so have some uninterrupted time to update the blog!

here are just a few pics from the last few days.

my first home-made pizza....TOTALLY home-made. I ground the wheat to make the flour then made the dough. OHHHHH so yummy! I love knowing EXACTLY what is in my family's food!

next up is making my own pizza sauce. :)

we had a little b-day party for my dad last Sunday. here is only 1/2 the 11 grandkids, trying to help grandpa blow out his candles. :)

my sister's oldest 4 and Andrew decided to play "The Am*zing R*ce" in my parents' backyard after grandpa's b-day lunch. it was hilarious! but very creative!!

this is "team brown" -the 2 boys, Andrew and Jordan. :) apparently they won the Race. :)

(don't worry-we re-tied Andrew's bandana so it didn't look so dorky! )


and just a beautiful sunset God graced us with Monday night. this pic doesn't do it justice-the blues, pinks, and purples were so pretty. the kids were out riding bikes so I snapped this pic..if you look REALLY close, you can see the outline of Elizabeth on her tricycle in the left 1/2 of the pic...she kinda blends into the bushes though. :)