Piano recital 2013

The craziness is almost done for the year.  We are on the last week of school - Hooray!  Life is calming down a little bit as we are almost to the end of our end of year activities.

This week was Julie and David's piano recital.  Growing up, I was in a piano recital every year for 10 years. I remember the excitement mixed with the nerves, wanting to play every note just right but never actually accomplishing that.  It's different being on this side of the equation, being a proud parent even when my kids don't get every note correct.  I understand a lot more why my parents would tell me they were proud of me even when I wasn't perfect.  I'm proud of my kids just for trying, for being brave and vulnerable in front of others and for learning a skill that not everyone can do.  I'm proud of them for practicing hard even when they didn't want to.

I'm so proud of them that I can't wait to share their accomplishments with you.

This year's recital was a little bittersweet as it's the last one with this teacher.  David has decided that he would rather play drums than piano, so next year we will be starting him in drum lessons.  Julie has become so advanced in piano that her teacher feels like she would do better with someone else, someone who can better show her piano technique.  So Julie will be starting with a new teacher in the Fall.

We have loved having you as a teacher, Mrs. Christy, and we will miss you!

The Gratitude Project

My one word for this year is Gratitude, being thankful to God for all he has given me.  Join me in the Gratitude Project every Thursday.  I list what I'm thankful for and you tell me what you're thankful for.

Spring is here, flowers are blooming and school is almost done.  We've got so many things to be thankful for.

• I'm thankful that I got some unexpected flowers to plant in my yard.  I just hope the frost this week didn't kill them.
• I'm thankful for sunshine and no wind the last few days - finally Spring warmth has arrived!
• I'm thankful that there are only 5 days of school left - only 5 days of waking up early.

Update on April cleaning challenge and April books

In April, I was following Money Saving Mom in her 30-day house cleaning challenge in an attempt to clean up my house.  I did great on weeks 1, 2 and 3.  But week 4?  I flopped.  I did pretty well keeping things clean that I had previously cleaned, but I didn't do any new Spring Cleaning.

And books in April?  Besides the Northern Lights trilogy which I already reviewed, I didn't complete any other books.  There are about 3 that I started and am still in the middle of, but the trilogy were the only ones done.  That should bring my total up to 25 for the year.  Maybe once school is out, I'll have more time to read.  Maybe...

Glimpse into last week

I finally have some downtime, some breathing room, some time to think and blog.  Last week was entirely too crazy.  Three big events went on that required lots of logistics and planning and lots of running around.  Luckily, I was only in charge of two of them (as if that wasn't enough!).  The third I wasn't in charge of.  I just had to help with it.  So here's a little glimpse into that crazy week.

Monday was filled with last minute errands and decorating projects for Tuesday's big event, the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon at school.  While my kids were at school, I went to get some donated flowers from Kroger, vases at the dollar store, and a gift basket from the gift basket place to give to a retiring teacher. Oh and did I mention that our family was completely out of food, so a large grocery run happened somewhere in there too.  I also had to fit in a trip to school to talk to the substitute janitor about setting up tables and chairs for Tuesday and to pick up checks from PTA.

In the meantime, I double checked on catering, and made sure my flowers to be used as table decorations and teacher gifts were still alive.  I cut apart cheap leis and hot glued the ends and covered LOTS of flower pots with checked fabric to use as table decorations.  Since Tuesday's lunch wasn't my only event of the week, I also checked on the ice cream truck and inflatables for Wed night's event.  Then I took my kids to piano lessons after school, made dinner, helped with homework, and got the kids ready for bed.  More decoration preparation (say that 10 times fast), loaded up the van, then fell into bed.  Phew!

Tuesday was the big day.  It was Teacher Appreciation Luncheon day and I was in charge of the whole shebang.  Thankfully, it went off without a hitch.

The food was good and there was tons of it.  The tables were simple but pretty.  Most of my helpers showed up (I've been doing this long enough to know there's ALWAYS people who cancel at the last minute), and I didn't get a single complaint from anyone.  At the end of the day, I was completely worn out, but very happy that it went well.

Tuesday night David had a baseball game that I really hoped would get rained out.  But, alas, no, they just played in the pouring rain - boys!

He makes a cute catcher, doesn't he?

Wednesday was my second big event of the week.  Why I planned these for the same week, I don't know.

The day started out with a VBS craft workday.  Since I'm in charge of VBS crafts this summer, I had to be there and tell everyone what they needed to do - cutting, paper mache, sorting, etc.  That lasted all morning.  I came home, ate lunch and thought I would lay down for a quick nap.  I ended up sleeping an hour and a half.  I was that exhausted.

On to the evening activities...I have been our Awana Commander for the last two years and Wed evening was our big Awana end of the year party.  The kids rotated around between an ice cream truck, inflatables and a movie.  Originally they were supposed to play kickball instead of watch a movie, but, of course, it rained, so we had to do some last minute scrambling to bring everything inside.  Once again, besides the rain, everything went well.

Thursday - Ah, relaxation day.  And as everyone knows, there's no better way to relax than to get a little blonder.  Highlights for summer?  Check!

Friday was our school PTA's big event of the semester, Family Fun Night, and I spent pretty much all day helping to set up for it and helping to run it.  We had a lot of things going all at once.  Like every good children's event, we had inflatables and food.  There was also face painting, popcorn and a cake walk.  We added in there a Talent Show (I might be biased but my little girl did GREAT in the Talent Show, showing off her mad piano skills) and last, but not least, our newest event, an art auction.

For the art auction, everyone in school created a unique, very nice piece of artwork.  We displayed them all and allowed parents to buy their child's (and only their child's) artwork for any donation that they wanted.  We also had each class create one large piece of artwork as a class and we auctioned those off to the highest bidder.  Those big pieces turned out fabulous!  Unfortunately I didn't win either of my children's big pieces, but I did get pictures of a few of them.

A fifth grade class's painting.  I thought this one was the best!

Julie's class painting - loved it, but bidding against some fierce competitors and didn't win.

Between baseball, running errands and Mother's Day, our weekend was no less busy than our week.

But today and tomorrow I can relax.  And blog.  And breathe.

The Gratitude Project

My one word for this year is Gratitude, being thankful to God for all he has given me.  Join me in the Gratitude Project every Thursday.  I list what I'm thankful for and you tell me what you're thankful for.

Another busy week here - end of school will do that to ya.

• I'm thankful that my two big events this week - Teacher Appreciation Luncheon and Awana End-of-Year Party - both went off smoothly.  They were fun but I'm glad they are done.
• I'm thankful that I got to get my hair highlighted today.  I needed it and it looks so much better now!
• I'm thankful that there are only 2 weeks of school left.  Then we can sleep in and swim the summer away.

Alternative Medicine: Supplements and Shakes

Dreamstime stock photo - source

Other posts in this series:
What is an alternative medicine doctor and what do they do?
What testing do you get when you choose alternative medicine?

What is a detox diet and why do you do it?

So what do you do when you are eating a very limited diet and you need more nutrition than you can get through food?  You add in a whole bunch of nutritional supplements.

Besides giving me a new diet, the Naturopathic doctor also "prescribed" nutritional supplements for me.  I say "prescribed" in quotes because she wrote them down as if they were prescriptions, but they are all over-the-counter items and they are all natural, non-synthetic vitamins, minerals and amino acids that are normally found in your body.  There is really no prescription needed.

The first set of items I mix up together in a shake every morning:

• Foundation Gut Enhancement - Remember how I said 80% of your immune response comes from your gut? This mixture of vitamins, minerals, protein and plant extracts is to help repair damage in your digestive tract.
• Glutamine - An amino acid given to people on a limited diet.  Heavy duty weight-lifters use this one as well.  Also helps with gut repair.
• Pro-biotic - Helps increase the amount of good bacteria in your intestines.  Helps especially with people who are on antibiotics a lot or who have been on them a lot in their lifetime.

Thankfully, on my way home from Atlanta, I stopped off at a good friend's house in Chattanooga.  She sells Advocare products and is much more wise about nutritional supplements than I am.  I had her look through all my stuff to make sure it was normal, non-quacky products.  She assured me that it was.  

Her husband was also invaluable because he showed me how to mix all this up into a good tasting shake.  Personally, I had never made a protein kind of shake in my life.  But, thanks to Jon, I can now whip up a shake every morning for breakfast.  The secret?  Add frozen strawberries and some honey.  Makes it super yummy.  The Foundation Gut Enhancement itself is vanilla flavored and would probably taste OK without the strawberries, but it is yellow and all I can think about when I see it is that it looks like I'm drinking pollen.  I just can't stomach it by itself.  So I add the strawberries to make it pink and I put it in a dark glass.  Then I can't see the pollen looking yellowy parts as much.

Also on my list to take are a bunch of supplements in pill form:

• Ultrazyme - A digestive enzyme to take with each meal.  It just helps the food to be digested easier and for the digestive tract to get a little break.
• Liver pills - Integrates vitamins and minerals to improve liver function.  Your liver helps detox your body from any drugs you may be taking.  Since I am taking a lot, my liver has been working overtime.  So she prescribed several things to aid liver function.
• Pro-adrenal - Helps provide support for your adrenal gland, the infamous stress hormone gland.

There are, in total, 12 pills to take every day.  It's a lot to remember.  I have 3 pills containers now - one for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner.

The last set of supplements are those I take at bedtime.  I have been on sleeping pills for over a year now and have been having a hard time weaning myself off of them.  In light of that the doctor prescribed me something to help me feel sleepy more naturally:

• MaxRelax - A mixture of several amino acids.  This causes you to relax and keeps your mind from racing when you are trying to go to sleep.
• Natural Calm Magnesium - Magnesium is used for a lot of things, but in this case, it is used for liver repair.

These two are both dissolved in water.  The MaxRelax is cherry flavored and, by itself, just wasn't very good.  So instead of having 2 glasses of water for 2 different things, I decided to just mix them together.  The magnesium is raspberry-lemon flavored and together, they are much better.

This list is very overwhelming to add to my daily regiment.  To make it easier, instead of adding them in all at once, I added them in slowly over a few weeks.  I started with the Foundation Gut Repair and added in a new item from the list every 2 days.  That allowed me to see any adverse effects from any of the products.  For instance, the glutamine taken in the recommended doses made my stomach hurt, so I had to play around with a lower dose of that until I could handle it.

I also made up a chart to put on the fridge to tell me what to take at each meal. And, as I told you already, I found 3 separate weekly pill boxes to use, one for each meal.

I didn't like the fact that the appointment ended with them ushering you into their store.  They make sure to tell you that you can buy your supplements from anywhere, but they, conveniently, provide a store on site and knowledgeable sales people to aide you with your purchases.  At that point, I had been there for almost 4 hours.  I was hungry and tired and I just wanted to be finished.  So I handed the list over to their saleslady and she went and collected everything on it.  $300 later, I was ready to go.  Yes, $300 for a one month supply.

The good news is that, since then, I have had time to look around at other places that sell this stuff and I am more knowledgeable for next time.  I can have a list of other prices and other ingredients with me to compare and decide where to buy anything that I need to continue on.

As you can see this was a BIG doctor visit for me.  I'm sorry for the long posts, but I process things by blogging about them and it took me about 3 weeks to process everything.  I just finished my last take-home test.  Hallelujah!  Fingers are crossed that all the results will be ready for my next visit on May 16.  I'd really like to find some answers and a treatment plan that will work well for my pain.

I've provided links to each product that I bought so you can see the ingredients.  I am not being compensated in any way for those links. 

The Gratitude Project

My one word for this year is Gratitude, being thankful to God for all he has given me.  Join me in the Gratitude Project every Thursday.  I list what I'm thankful for and you tell me what you're thankful for.

Today is the first day this week that I haven't had to be somewhere immediately after taking the kids to school.  It's the first day that I've had an afternoon "off".  The first day to enjoy the sunshine and the breeze and the chance to plant some flowers.

• I'm thankful for Spring and all the beautiful green life I see outside.
• I'm thankful the school year (and the craziness that goes with the end of the school year) is almost done.
• I'm thankful for the craziness - for baseball games that David loves, for field trips and field day, for awards nights and piano recitals.  I'm thankful that we can have fun and show off the things we've learned all year long.

What are you thankful for today?