Ben decided that I needed to mention the weather in our blog, so that we can remember this amazing summer/fall. It made me think that we have a lot of little things to mention and update about. (Sorry, prepare yourself for more words, less pictures—this blog is our journal of life that we want to remember—and of course pictures to showcase those cute twins of ours!)
The Weather: I read in today’s paper that we’ve had a record for no rainfall in the Portland Metro area. There has been no measurable rainfall for all of July, August, and September. Today’s October 12, and it’s our first measurable rainfall!! Wow! Portland fall, you have out done yourself! It kind of feels good to be snuggled up on the couch in sweats and sweater listening to the rain on the roof. I finally broke down this afternoon and turned on the heater for the first time since this spring, because our house was a frigid 63.5.
Football Season: Not kidding you: Sam and Seth took half an hour to get on all their “gear” to go outside and play football (helmet on, oops, forgot my jersey, helmet off, jersey on, gloves on, oops, can’t put my helmet on with the gloves, gloves off, helmet on…etc…etc..etc.). Then they played for less than five minutes. And all the gear got taken off and strewn around the house. Silly boys. Their newest addition to their football uniforms: mouth guards as illustrated by this picture:
The Best Daddy Ever: I know I’ve mentioned it a lot, but it words never seem to suffice in telling how great a father Ben is. The other evening he was relating to me how awesome it is that he can go outside in the evenings as it’s getting dark, to play football and wrestle with the boys. (He is following in his Dads’ example, because he has amazing memories of doing this himself.) He comes home from commuting and long days of work, and plays, and plays, and plays. I love the sound of laughter, bull rides, wrestling, and general boyness in our house each evening. I tried to take an artist picture of the view out my window while I was doing dinner dishes the other night, and this not-so-great picture was what a I got:
Food Allergies: I had mentioned that I was going to do an entire blog post on food allergies, and I had a partial post written up. You know what, though? A couple weeks into the whole process, I had a turning point where I decided that I would not let it rule my life and wasn’t going to complain about them. Food allergies doesn’t deserve it’s own blog post. So the short version: I have food allergies to wheat/gluten, all dairy, and egg. I’m going on 9 weeks of not eating even a single bite of any of it. And life is still going on just wonderfully. My body is starting to heal, I’ve cut my reflux medicine in half, my excema and acne have improved, my energy is better, and I’ve learned a lot about food. In fact, in many ways I’m thankful for these food allergies because it’s opened my eyes to many of the pitfalls of the commercialized, processed, preservative food world (would you believe that Mrs. Butterworth’s maple syrup doesn’t have an ounce of maple in it?). As a family we’re now eating as little processed goods as possible, and I’m working on adjusting to buying as much as our pocket book can handle of organics. We also got the boys tested for food allergies, because Seth’s been on reflux medicine for about 6 months now and was still having tummy aches as well as behavior/concentration problems (and because sleep issues are another symptom of food allergies and we’ve had a myriad of them!). Their test results came back a couple of weeks ago, and surprise, surprise: they are both also allergic to wheat and gluten. My husband I laughed that we can tell how far we’ve came as a family on food allergies because we were rejoicing that it was “just” gluten! Trust me, having a gluten free house is MUCH easier than giving up dairy! Anyways, we have food allergies. I spend lots of my days on allergy free cooking blogs and in the kitchen cooking new things. We’ve made a lot of changes. But God is good and so much bigger than food!
Playing in the Dirt: The boys have been in one of my favorite stages: the making dirt into food stage. They spend literally hours making pretend food out of dirt, rocks, grass and leaves. I had saved a whole bag of old food containers, spice jars, etc, and you would have thought the boys were in heaven with new food stuff! It makes for some VERY dirty little boys, but I love it!
The Tattling Phase: “Mom, Seth said…” “Mama, Sammy’s pretending to spank me…” Ugh. Questions and tattling all at once? Can I handle this? One thing I’ve found intriguing about the tattling phase in our house is the roles it’s created. Sam is 90% of the time the tattler, which indicates that Seth 90% of the time is the bugger. It’s the first time that these kind of roles have been so defined for the boys as twins.
Canning: This fall has been the most food preserving I’ve ever done. I ended up with around 15 quarts each of pears, peaches, and applesauce. That’s a lot of food cutting! I’m so thankful that my dear friend Katie Willard was there to do a lot of it with me! We had a blast chatting while cutting, and laughing as we we tried to get through canning while continually forgetting to do things and parenting three toddlers.
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