My Montage 12/29/09 at OneTrueMedia.com

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Holidays

First Thanksgiving and now Christmas.  They both have come and gone, all in a flash.   Seems as though all the days are passing faster and faster.

We had a wonderful time on Thanksgiving.  A day filled with family, friends and delicious food.  It was a fun day that we were sad to see end.

Christmas was much quieter.  A day spent with just hubby and the kids.  We enjoyed the quiet and special time we had together.

Christmas Eve

Making Jesus Birthday Cake

Cutie

Happy Birthday Jesus! We are so glad you came, for us!

Traditional hot chocolate. Yum!

Anticipation

Almost ready

Whipping the cream

Thumbs up!

Mugs are filled and all are ready to settle down to listen to our annual reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Our beautiful tree this year.  My 10 year old decorated it all by herself. :)

Christmas

Two new bikes

a walker for our not yet walker

a new Wii game

new clothes

little dogs

Guns!

the year of the etch a sketch 

Balls and bat for a springtime of family time!

My road to health

I've had some health challenges this past year that just can't be ignored.  So, I found myself at a naturopath/homeopathic clinic, aka Supplement Man. :)  Besides giving me more supplements to take then I ever thought humanly possible, he also did a sensitivity test on me and boy oh boy the results were sobering.

I'm supposed to cut out dairy, any grain w/ gluten in it, which includes grains that are considered "good", eggs and yeast.  What's left to eat, you ask.  Supplements! LOL

While that may seem to be what this particular man pushes, I found a great blog   and then cookbook by the blog's author, that I think will help me along my much needed changes.

With that in mind, I thought I'd give her Red Lentil Soup a try.  I went to Whole Foods, with the entire troop along with me, I might add.  That in and of itself is worthy of a blog post, taking 6 kids to Whole Foods is sort of the antithesis of the "save the earth" folks. LOL  Nonetheless, we all traipsed through the store as though nobody looked at us as though we were a freak show. :)

All my ingredients gathered (minus a few I forgot to buy ;-) )

Prepping the carrots

and the spinach

sauteing the onion and garlic

curry added, yum

Finally, the beautiful red lentils go into the pot

At this point the recipe says to simmer for 60 minutes.  My stove is kind of temperamental.  It takes forever to boil anything.  So, I walked away thinking it would be fine and come to a nice simmer.  Of course I was wrong. LOL  about 50 minutes later I asked my daughter if she thought it smelled like the soup was burning.  I walked into the kitchen expecting to find the soup had bubbled over a little bit onto the burner.  Instead I found that the soup and been BOILING for the majority of those 50 minutes and what I was smelling was the burnt lentils all over my pot.  Blech! :p  The smell was truly horrendous.  Two days later and my pot is STILL soaking, trying to get out the burned on mess that was supposed to be my healthy dinner!

The soup was a big gloppy mess.  I fed the garbage disposal the contents of the pot and have since been scrubbing and soaking that stinking pot!  I was so disappointed and disgusted w/ myself for not checking on it sooner.  I didn't even bother w/ a photo, although it probably would have amused you all. lol

Even though my first foray into healthier (for me) cooking was a complete and utter disaster, it will not taunt me from trying my best to work my way back to health. :)

Stay tuned for more installments of "My road to health" that will hopefully be soon to follow!

Traditions

Instilling traditions into your family's life is a wonderful thing.  There is, however, a draw back.  When life gets in the way and you want to skip one of those traditions, you have all these little reminders telling you to do it, now! LOL

Coming soon, pictures of our traditions. :-)