Lots to catch up on!

Henrik & Rollie enjoying the TA Easter Egg Hunt

Easter Dinner at G'ma Linda's

Henrik had such a cute outfit for Easter! I'm disappointed in myself...Easter was my holiday to work this year so I didn't get a picture of all the kids dressed up.

He can't get the food in fast enough sometimes!

April 27th; Brice is 34 and Gabbie is 6.5!

I enjoyed joining Gabbie's class for their Kindergarten field trip; until I got a phone call about Henrik having a 104 degree temperature at daycare :(

Will's PreSchool graduation!

Gabbie's last day of Kindergarten, already

Gabbie did a great job at Dance Recital this year!

The Grandparents enjoyed watching!

Above and below are my favorite 2 pictures from Summer 2015...

I didn't realize how far behind I was on catching up on the 'blog'. Its fun to look back at the summer pictures now that the school year has started.

I'm so proud of the kids; they have adapted to an early morning schedule and haven't missed the bus arrival at 6:45 yet. I 'think' they are both doing well in school; other than Will being a jumping bean on the school bus and not being able to zip his coat to earn a sticker in his classroom. He seems to really enjoy being "weather reporter"...the days I pick him up I get a full weather report, mostly letting me know if its "partly sunny" or "partly cloudy". Gabbie's goal was to get 20/20 on her spelling tests, which she finally achieved this past week after several weeks at 19/20.

I am enjoying a slower October. In September my Monday afternoon and Tuesdays off were filled with PRN work at various facilities, covering therapists who had had surgeries and one whose father was in a very debilitating accident so she needed to be with him. It was nice to get through that and spend time at home; mostly to get caught back up on basic housekeeping and get reorganized with the kids bringing home all kinds of paperwork and projects from school.

I've learned the results of my food allergy test that I took a few weeks ago. Apparantly my system does not tolerate gluten or kaisin (?sp) which is the protein in dairy. Before I knew this I was transitioning myself to a gluten free diet without much problem. Now all the sudden I want it all the time! Cookies, muffins, toast. Oh well. Hopefully this is the answer to my low iron situation.

This month I agreed to help a friend who is earning another degree from the University of Arizona. She will be doing health coaching. Her background is in nursing; but she found as she worked that she felt the Western model of medicine wasn't working, and felt the need to do more. Her coaching incorporates 6 pieces of the 'pie' of our lifes: nurtition, sleep, exercise/activity, relationships, spirituality, and something else which I can not remember right now. Anyway, she needed to gain 100 hours of coaching, so I agreed to 10 hours. I had no idea what to expect...but what she is doing is so amazing! The piece of my 'pie' that I rated the lowest was spirituality; finding meaning in daily life tasks and living in the present moment. Every week we talk for an hour about setting goals to achieve this, strategies to use in daily life. After we talk she sends a 'menu' with the stated goals for the week and an action plan. A couple weeks ago we had discussed how I hated the evening rush of trying to get the kids to bed. So the goal we set was finding 20-30 minutes before I lay the kids down to just be together, no phones or TV. She even suggested finding a name for it, so Gabbie came up with the "Hundling Huddle". It was cute of her to pick that! Now she asks about it in the evenings, and what the plan is for it. Some things the kids pick are board games, legos, or books. Its been nice to have that to look forward to after supper and bathtime. My friend has so many great strategies; such as during the day just stopping what you are doing and thinking about where your mind and thoughts are at. If you are dwelling on something from the past, take the time to push it out and recenter in the present. Yesterday we talked about perfectionism and she read an awesome statement about how our worry of judgement prevents growth. We should strive to be our best, not to be perfect, and then we will find we are internally driving for the right reasons, not for outside approval. The statement she gave me to think about this week is:

pain x resistance=suffering

I wish I'd taken the time to write in here every week that we've talked, there's been so much good information about nutrition that she's helped me with as well. Her and I both agree with the type of nutrition we strive for for our family; she just has a much larger knowledge base than I so its been fun to have that as part of our discussion. Thanks to her I was able to get my whole family to eat, and enjoy, liver and onions :) That was a success for sure!

I'll keep working on updating this, especially since I have some great pictures of Brice's newest hoop buildings finally being used!