Some of my favorite pictures...

Brice was so happy this date in September or October, I can not remember for sure. He could finally put his hoop buildings in operation!

Will is very imaginative lately!

I wanted a picture with the birthday girl, and we got a 'photo bomb' from Will!

This picture brings tears to my eyes. Gabbie had a 'friend party' for her birthday. The look on her face here is priceless! I think she was having a great time!

This is a great picture just showing how the kids play-Will is doing his own thing (and barefoot already!) and Henrik has to watch his big sister. 

In awe of the snow!

This was such a funny moment. Henrik kept smiling so fierce for pictures! Well, until I wanted a family picture for the Christmas card...then he was out of smiles!

Brice honored at annual Niman Ranch Dinner

Brice & Hunter. Brice received his 10 year award with Niman Ranch, and Hunter received a scholarship from the company. 

It was a nice weekend! After the event we took Gabbie with us for a tour of ISU!

Will turns 4!

He loved his train cake; although it was not staying together very well :(

His big CHEESE smile! He had a fun celebration with family!

First Day of School, 2015-2016 year

They were all smiles at 6:40 am that day! We'll have to make this an annual picture :)

Chores when she gets home! Feeding a baby calf....the novelty wore off fairly quickly.

Brice-ism's

Well, the first snow of the season hit this weekend. Brice is just so cheery...after it melts. In the meantime we all get to hear about how much it "sucks".
So, this year I'm going to tackle winter with some humor. Brice does read the blog once in a great while. I'm not ashamed nor do I feel bad about writing things he says; its not meant to be spouse-bashing at all. I need to get through this with a smile, and I'm sure he will look back and small as well....right, dear/sweetie/honey/whatever we call each other?


Friday at noon-ish it starts snowing. Historically Brice does not call me to update me on weather issues. And if he does it really does not matter...we are 30 minutes apart and the weather is rarely the same in both places. Well, he did tell me Friday to "head home"....it wasn't bad. But, it did get bad later so I will go ahead and give him credit. Though I still stand by my story that no one ever cared where I was until there were 3 "kinda behaved" children running around.


Nevertheless we made the best of an unexpected afternoon at home. Here are a few things that happened:
1. I haven't been sleeping well lately, so decided I'd take a 15 minute nap. Brice called 3 times. I can not remember the reason for any of the phone calls but the end result was the nap was over.
2. I hear a POUNDING on the window. Loud enough I was certain it would break. I see Brice frantic outside with a cow walking up the lane. That one is a long story but I just prior to that had asked the two older kids to say a quick prayer for Dad's safety in the weather. So, credit to the kids and I on that one.
3. I ran out to help him with the cow in sandals and a t-shirt. It was very windy and snowy at this point. While outside Brice decided we would put the chickens in. Well, they have grown accustomed to not going in the shed. The conversation went like this with everything I'm quoting being things said by Brice. "Oh, screw 'em, then can freeze to death", "Damn it Melanie grab that one and get it in the shed", "Forget it just get them in the machine shed", "Corner that one and get it in the chicken shed". I finally just walked in the house. I mean really, my ears were hurting and I could hardly see anything anyway and he was spewing such conflicting information that my head was hurting.
4. I tried posting a picture here but the computer tells me
"Server rejected".
Even the server could tell it was a 'fake selfie'. So on top of everything else on a cold, snowy day....Brice had a truck coming to load some hogs. It was supposed to be at 5:30, turned out to be 8:00. Meanwhile he's in the house every 5 minutes "has the trucker called yet", "has the trucker called yet", "has the trucker called yet". I don't think he understands that often times in the house I'm apt to ignore the phone altogether. Its usually not for me, or is political. Unless someone specifically asks me to listen for a certain call, I often don't. Well, the trucker called when Brice was no where to be found. No surprize. I started asking questions, like "where are we loading from", and "how many hogs". We were fighting before we even started. I prefer to fight via text message; so there was a lot of "you are ducking annoying me", and "its ducking cold", thanks to auto-correct on the phone preventing me from sinning my life away with swear words. So just to be a terd I made Brice take a 'selfie' with me. I had to ask him to smile. We actually look like we like each other in the picture! The arguing continued, because apparantly I was supposed to be counting the hogs, but I wasn't, so I made a mistake (but is it a mistake when you weren't aware you were supposed to be counting them to begin with?)
5. By the end of the day I was sooo tired of the constant negativity emiting from his coveralls. So I said "you know, you did choose this life and you can always go get a job in town if you don't like it." To which he responds "yeah, I'm sure you'd love that. A consistent paycheck.". Well how does one respond to that? "Oh no, the last thing I want is a consistent paycheck?"


End of Winter Storm number 1. I'm ready to go back to work tomorrow.

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!

Melanie the crazy lady

I wish I were more creative with post titles! This one is appropriate but not very appealing to my soul.
I've decided to write about what I'm calling my 'health journey' the past couple years. It's boring, but I'm hoping to look back in a couple of years and smile that it's all over with.
After Henrik was born I was blessed with what's called a 'retained placenta'. Google it if you find it to be fascinating. It was not fun and actually was about as painful as labor. It went 3 weeks undiscovered, although I had a temperature when we left the hospital with Henrik. The doctor pulled it out in the office to avoid the need for a d & c, then gave me some high dose antibiotics. I made it 3 days before the antibiotics made me sick. The doctor said "no worries, you can quit taking them". Hind site is perfect; I now wish I'd asked for a blood cell count. I continued to bleed for 3 months and was told that was normal.
Skip to 3 months later: I was always sleeping and always sad. Brice went to the doctor with me and told him the symptoms. Doctor said "not likely you'd have a major depressive episode all the sudden, let's check your hormones". Okay, sounds fun.
First test came back. Doctor calls and says "doesn't seem right, let's redo them earlier in the morning". Sure, why not. Only $800 each time. Did the test again, still not right. Got scheduled to see an endocrinologist a month later.
By this time I'm back to work. Doctor had started me on a birth control pill hoping that would clear up the bleeding. We go to Ames to see the specialist. We spend more time filling out paperwork than anything. The specialist seemed nice. But, spent two minutes to say "you are nursing a baby and on the pill, I can't help you until both are done for at least three months". We decide it's not worth stopping nursing the new baby so we accept this news and wait it out.
Fast forward to April this year, about 8 months later. Things still suck. I'm asleep by 830, falling asleep with company here, oversleeping, struggling with leg weakness when I run. Things feel worse. Our labs that we are required to get yearly from our insurance state my triglycerides are 18 (very low). A friend who works in cardiology states "you need to get that checked out, it means malabsorption". Back to the doctor who basically says "you are a mom of 3, you work, you will be tired" and prescribes an antidepressant. So, I guess now he's decided I'm depressed, but last year that wasn't possible :) I had done my own research that cholesterol/triglycerides are necessary to produce hormones, but the doctor said he couldn't comment on that and sent me to another endocrinologist in Iowa city. I asked if he was sure the infection from the placenta was gone, and he said yes. I was having tendencies to wonder about that due to the 2 root canals and 2 sinus infections I'd suffered in the meantime.
So away we went again, but not until I'd seen my eye doctor to rule out pituitary involvement. There was another $200. Off to Iowa city, where we were told my chart would be thoroughly reviewed before our visit. It wasn't. I was told the labs I had abnormal, namely the hormones and cholesterol were probably ok because "those are based on 95 percent of the population; you may just be that 5 percent". They checked vitamin D and a thyroid marker and home we went. We were told there was nothing more they could do, but that we should see a rheumatologist to rule out multiple sclerosis and/or rheumatoid arthritis. Hmmm, really? Now I was feeling like everyone thought I was nuts and a hypochondriac and I was just going to get shoved around in the system. I gave up and started doing a few things on my own. Gluten free diet, essential oils, a 10 day cleanse, less running and more weight lifting. Tons of reading about our health, some changes we'd already implemented including butter and no margarine, coconut oil and no canola oil, making more homemade bread. Others need worked on but as I continue to educate myself thru 60 minutes a day of podcasts while I'm driving we'll keep implementing all natural changes. But even with everything I've tried it still hasn't gotten rid of the muscularity fatigue and occasional numbness in my hands.
So at the encouragement of a friend I looked up 'Functional medicine doctors'. I liked what I read and found a guy in Des Moines. In the meantime my bill for $849 arrived from Iowa city, all out of pocket as insurance put it all towards deductible. Hooray :) even better the guy in Des Moines is an all cash basis; so although the I was tempted to cancel due to the mounting expenses, I kept the appointment. I have lots of things I still want to accomplish and I need to fully enjoy these years with my young children instead of just existing each day. So I paid the initial lab and consult fee.
I saw him this past Tuesday. The labs had tested for 25 different things.
The main standout was a ferritin level of 9. Apparently that is the main storage form of iron in the body. It's 78 percent lower than it should be, whatever that means. Only 15 percent of my iron binding sites are occupied by iron. Apparently this has never been checked. When donating blood my hemoglobin has been good but that test isn't completely sensitive to iron. The other revelation was the presence of a bacterial infection. Not sure where of course, that necessitates more expensive testing :) the final standout was extremely low triglycerides and cholesterol. Meaning the presence of hypothyroidism, inflammation, or liver dysfunction. The combination of these things apparently means the presence of an autoimmune disorder. The likely culprit is a disease called "hashimotos thyroiditis". I asked all 3 doctors (my regular dr and both endocrinologists) about this and they refused to test for it because they only see it in heavyset people. It is possible it would stem from the retained placenta. It's possible it's totally unrelated.
Now I get to send my poop in to see if the infection is in my gut. I get to take lots of iron. I've been told this is called "iron deficiency anemia" and is different than just anemia where the hemoglobin is low. If the pills don't help I'll need infusions but the question at this time is why I'm not holding iron and where is it going. The doctor suggested a paleo diet to try to normalize the gut and minimize the effects of the autoimmunity.
So after a couple years and several thousand dollars later I don't feel so much like a crazy lady anymore but I do feel annoyed that it took so long to get answers. Anymore it's hard to even work in the medical field due to the poor success of conventional medicine. But everything for a reason. I've learned so much and hopefully the nutrition and chemical education I've gotten will help the kids and make us an even healthier household. I hope to get the iron up, feel better, and go back to the life where I didn't go to the doctor unless I was pregnant!