A Summer Glimpse

Wow, sorry for the extended blog silence. Hopefully everyone hasn't given up on me. 

I was thinking our summer would be a little slower and that just wasn't the case. 

Here are a few of our family's highlights from summer 2015...

 Lots of time experimenting and cooking in the kitchen. I have a great helper! :)

 Fishing time! Kaelyn and her Grandpa are the lucky ones.

Gardening sure takes a lot of time, but it is well worth the fresh, organic produce. This year my garden consisted of onions, butter lettuce, red romaine, garlic, cilantro, kale, collards, spinach, swiss chard, radishes, cabbage, cucumbers, green beans, celery, summer squash, zucchini, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, broccoli, dill and Kaelyn grew peas, ground cherries, sweet corn and a watermelon. I also grew a fair share of weeds... I just couldn't keep up!

Our biggest project was renovating a camper. We love to travel, but when our food issues were posing a real problem with travel plans we decided to find a camper so we could have a kitchen with us where ever we go. The whole process was quite a struggle and a humbling experience. We had no idea how quickly campers went up for sale and were sold right away. We inquired about quite a number but they were all sold before we could look at them. We absolutely fell in love with one and were going to travel several hours to get it. The guy promised to save it for us and wouldn't you know it was sold out from underneath us. It was an emotional roller coaster. We ended up finding an older one with the same layout though and thought it would be a fun, quick renovation project to get it how we wanted it. Ha! I should have learned my lesson by now, wallpaper hides many things really well! In renovating houses I have had a ceiling fall on my head... the wallpaper was hiding the cracks! In the camper, the wallpaper was hiding black mold! Uggh! Hubby spent a lot of time rebuilding and fixing window issues. There were a lot of late nights, sweat, and tears put into this project over most of the summer.

 One of the Bible school crafts I had the kids do. This year we had a safari theme.

K spent a lot of time at the pool. Her excuse was she needed a lot of practice for swimming lessons. It paid off because she passed no problem.

 Fun at the farm!

 EEK! We can tolerate milk! RAW milk that is. Praise the Lord! This will get its own post soon.

 Kaelyn did Plein Air Paint Out with me this year and had so much fun.

It was hard to get much artwork done with this little fur ball running around. For some reason he loved to get his nose in everything of ours. Pretty sure he thinks he's a dog! :)

Me and my girl. So thankful for feeling good! ♥

 Fourth of July... Kaelyn requested we go to the BIG show again.

At the end of summer our camper was finally ready to use for a few outings. 

Out of state we headed and God blessed us with wonderful family time, beautiful views and good weather...

Awe... so much better. Clean, light and airy.

 K loves her bunk bed.

Yes, the hard work was worth it! Being able to stop anywhere, anytime and cook your own healthy food is a huge blessing! The end even made me want to do another renovation project. Guess I will have to find some projects around the house. I already have ideas. :)

Some amazing views while out with the camper on our first trip...

K's first roller coaster experience and she insisted on going by herself. She had the most horrible expression on her face while riding I thought for sure she was in tears and screaming the entire time but when she got off and got her breathe, she said it was fun!

 Back to school. Summer went by way to quick!

Now that my firecracker is back in school and the garden produce is slowing down, I should be able to post more often. Definitely more health posts in the works.

Have a fabulous weekend!

What are You Eating? {Peeling Back the Layers}

Three plus years ago if you would have told me I would mainly be eating only veggies in my future and no cheese, ordinary bread, pasta, popcorn, desserts... I would have laughed at you. But when my health took a drastic turn, and I no longer felt like myself and was scared to death of the cancer word coming out of my doctor's mouth I was ready to eat as healthy as I possibly could. After lots of research, trial and error, and a ton of time in the kitchen I am feeling soooo much better! Thank God for pointing me in the right direction and providing healing, healthy food!
One of the veggies I fell in love with are brussels sprouts. No way would I have touched them before getting so sick. Boy was I missing out on something good! But even with the good, one has to be very careful! Fresh veggies are hard to come by when living in South Dakota in the cold winter months. The best we can get for "fresh" brussels sprouts is from Green Giant. The package says you can heat them as is in the bag. Sounds good and easy in our fast paced world. Well, first of all I wouldn't heat anything in plastic and microwaves are another concern but that is a whole different story. Yes, I may have become a health food Nazi. ;) Anyway when I take these sprout gems out of the bag to cook on the stove I like to wash them again for myself. Here's why...

*** Warning! If you are about to eat you may want to read this/see this post later.

What is supposed to be ready to eat and easy to make in the bag is not so if you start peeling back the layers. Every package I get is similar to this. Some even much worse. You never know what you will be surprised with.

 Do you see the mold? There is also bug/worm like things on there and something that looks like eggs. Gross!!! These are all the bad pieces I pulled off.

 Closer views for ya...

Just to prove when I was making these, February 26 is on my phone, the enjoy by date on the package is crazy; these would have been totally disgusting to eat if we had waited until March 4th! With already compromised health I can't afford more health risks from eating foods that should be healthy for me. So I end up taking lots of time to clean and pick through the yucky leaves. It seriously takes me a good half hour for one bag. And I do this because I love them and they are healthy when you get to the good stuff.

 I always cut them in half before sauteing. This also helps to make sure I didn't miss something nasty.

 Heating them up with ghee, coconut oil and garlic cloves. Yum!

And I could eat the whole pan full in one sitting.

Being a gardener in the summer, I know how hard it is to keep the bugs and worms out of the good garden produce. It would take a worker far to long to inspect each sprout, I get that. But by no means should Green Giant's packaging make it sound like this is ready to eat. It should state to wash the sprouts well yourself even though they have been prewashed. When people are working hard to become healthier they need to know to clean all food thoroughly themselves because someone else isn't going to spend near the time cleaning food they aren't eating.

Hope you find this information useful and will share with loved ones.

August Adventures

August was a good, full month. We spent a good part of the first half traveling & sightseeing around Las Vegas and California. Our adventures continued when we returned to South Dakota. We had to make the most of our family time before school started.

 Here's my bicycle that I found at a curbside sale a couple years ago. I was so excited!

She may be pretty old, but she still works great!

 This kiddo is always up for a race. :)

Ok, maybe she won't race down steep hills.

The sun was at the perfect spot for capturing sunflares. ♥

David's Outland Challenge triathlon got changed last minute to a duathlon since the wind was so crazy. Although it was a ton of work to bike and run against the wind he did awesome and came in fifth place overall!

My garden has been producing like it's on steroids! I am thankful for it especially with our special diets due to allergies/intolerances. I have never grown so many different things before, so it has been a lot of fun (and work). This is just one of the small loads.

Kaelyn was given a tiny plant at the end of preschool and shortly before

kindergarten started it bloomed! It's been fun watching it grow.

More art related posts are coming soon!