A Walk In The Park

After being quarantined for 5 days with the worst stomach bug in the history of stomach bugs this mamma ready to get out of the house for some fresh air. It was of course beautiful outside the entire time I was sick and all I could do was lay in bed and pray I would eventually feel the sun on my face again. By day 5 I felt somewhat normal again we jumped at the chance to visit our local botanic gardens which has an AMAZING children's area.We had a blast playing with friends and breathing in the non infected air!

Do you think she was excited to finally be outside?

Our children did not place these bottles and it wasn't until I was looking back at my pictures and realized that it said F U.I about spit out my coffee I was laughing so hard!

I am still cleaning sand out of my car and house.

Cute baby and a rough looking mamma.

 I'm on a boat!

Everything must be touched!

The Sensory Garden is one of my favorite spots.

I love her fascination with nature.

One legged skip.

She wanted to collect every, single, needle!

 Head East

Mckinley sit by the fountain and let me take your picture.

 Look at me Mckinley.

 FINALLY!

A Quick Food Update

Let's rewind to March 2013 when I started feeling very sick and started suffering from pain on my head and my neck. After a few months of being in pain I finally listened to my precious husband and made an appointment with my family dr. to see if she could help figure out what was going on. We talked for quite a while and then she checked me out and sent me home with some antibiotics due to the inflammation on my scalp. After a few weeks I experienced no change and went back for blood work to see if that gave us any answers. My dr. started to act pretty concerned about this time, but she was very happy when my blood results came back because when lymph nodes are concerned the first thing they check is for cancer! So after a process of elimination, lots of antibiotics, a few blood draws, and ruling out lymphoma (The scariest day of my life!) my Dr. sent me home to experiment with an elimination diet to see if my recent jump from eating a complete Paleo diet (no wheat, dairy, etc) back into a full blown pasta  and bread everyday habit had anything to do with my issues. Low and behold my head stopped hurting and my neck got better because my lymph nodes were not swollen anymore. I felt great for a while but started experiencing swollen eyes and lips and I was having more stomach issues than I already had. These aren't new issues for me because I have have dealt with this for most of my life, but they were becoming more and more prevalent.It finally took breaking out in hives all over my face and chest for me to finally go see an allergist.
 Here I am icing down my face to try and calm the hives all over my eyes, cheeks, and chest.

Long story short the allergist pricked me 80 times all over my back and his diagnosis after 15 itchy minutes was a black pepper and orange allergy. So I had some answers and stopped eating processed foods all together, because pepper is in EVERYTHING! Fast forward almost a year later and I am still dealing with swollen eyes and lips. I didn't really care for the first dr. I saw so this time I decide a new allergist might give me a few more answers. Fast forward again to another skin test and a blood test to confirm I am actually not allergic to black pepper and oranges, but I still have no clue why food hates me. 

It has been a few months since I was undiagnosed with my pepper and orange allergy and since then I have been pretty lax with my eating especially when it comes to cheese because I freaking love cheese! Sadly cheese and dairy does not like me. I am officially 100% gluten and dairy free and am officially back to my Paleo ways and I already feel better. I was planning on completing another Whole30, but being too restrictive with food has been such a huge part of my life the past 2 years that I just want to focus on being healthy and not focusing on every single bite of food I put in my mouth.

So that's where we are today and hopefully someday soon I will have more answers on my health. For now the focus is on eating healthy and delicious food for myself and my family.

Christmas 2015

This Christmas felt like a complete whirlwind! We were out of town so much it is a miracle we got our tree up before the actual day! I have to say this may have been my favorite Christmas with Mckinley so far because I think she actually understood everything this year. We went light on our Christmas decorations this year and really made it Mckinley friendly with her penguin countdown calendar and her chocolate advent calendar Jen Jen got her. These really helped her to be able to understand that we had to wait until we counted down to Christmas Day before we could celebrate and open presents.

 

 We had put up her Nativity over the past few years, but this was the first year she really enjoyed playing with it and it melted my heart when she would talk about baby Jesus and how we are celebrating his birfday.

We decorated cookies for Santa

We ( I ) begrudgingly attempted the Elf On The Shelf, but it was a bust from the beginning. I knew our Elf wouldn't be very naughty since I always used him in my classroom in  positive way. Instead of running off and telling Santa if the children had been naughty I had the children show the Elf all of the good choices they could make. Our Elf adventure started off with him perched on top of the Christmas tree hanging from the star with his book below the tree for us to read. Well this did not go over well and MCkinley did not even want to read the book or name her Elf which is funny because she is a bookworm and she usually loves anything Christmas. After a while she finally decided to name her Elf Bubbles. The next day her Elf was on the hand sanitizer in the bathroom and she was VERY upset he was touching her stuff. Last, but not least Bubbles the Elf was resting in a bowl of candy canes which Mckinley considers as her candy and after that she lost it and said she wanted the Elf to go away. 

 

We had a BLAST at Zoolights 

 

 And  we of course visited Santa so Mckinley could whisper what she wanted for Christmas. I hope he can find a yellow soccer ball.

 We started our Christmas celebration on Christmas eve like we always do at Christmas mass and then we headed over to Nonni and Car Car's for some food and fun.

Christmas morning arrived and after drinking 2 cups of coffee I finally caved and had to wake Brent and  Mckinley up around 7 we we could get the show on the road.

 

After we wrapped up our celebration we loaded up the car and headed to Yaya and Papa's house for breakfast and gifts. 

Next stop was my aunt's house for lunch with my family

And last, but not least we headed back to Car Car and Nonni's house  for our annual Christmas Day BBQ pajama party and a few more gifts.

It was definitely all a whirlwind, but it was the best Christmas yet! 

Finishing Up

It has been quite some time since I posted around these parts so I thought I would catch up on what has been going on around these parts.

In October we celebrated our favorite book characters at school. Mckinley was Eloise and I was Mrs. Frizzle from the magic school bus.

Daddy came to school and was a helper at Mckinley's class Halloween party

And we celebrated Halloween with our besties Team Hampton

 One of the biggest events of November was being part of my dear friend Nicole's big day.

 It didn't hurt I got to spend the entire weekend with my girl Hayley.

 I am a very lucky girl!

We spent a weekend with our friends at their families cabin. We ate a lot of good food, sipped a lot of wine and basically relaxed all weekend by the fire.

 Mckinley celebrated her first school Thanksgiving party.

We made these super cute Turkey cookies for the event

 I love being right down the hall so I can always be there for her important events

We spent 4 days in Mt. Nebo Arkansas with Brent's family over Thanksgiving and it is my new happy  place

As you can see Mckinley had absolutely no fun

We have been on Christmas break the past 2 weeks and have all been sick off and on for the past month. Mckinley had her first round of strep a few weeks ago and I had what was diagnosed as a cold, but I was so sick I am still convinced it was the flu. Brent thankfully has stayed well because I could not function for 2 whole days! Not to brag, but my husband is amazing! Not only did he take care of his two ladies, but he cleaned the house spotless and raked 30 bags of wet leaves.

Thankfully when we weren't sick we got to have a little fun.



We threw an AMAZING ugly sweater Christmas party!

Visited friends in Nashville

And celebrated Jake and Nuria's wedding

To top it all off we ended this amazing year  with a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!