Blogging for Books: Northern Lights Trilogy

As a part of the Blogging For Books program, I received a complementary Kindle version of the trilogy in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions are my own.  There are affiliate links in this post.

The Northern Lights Trilogy by Lisa T Bergren

(beware this is a long synopsis)
Set in the late 1800's, this set of 3 Christian historical romance novels follow the lives of Norwegian immigrants as they live and learn in the land of opportunity.

The Captain's Bride - Newlyweds Elsa and Peder Ramstad set out from their small town in Norway to lead a group of fellow immigrants to new lives in Maine.  As a ship captain, Peder has plans to start his own shipyard in America along with his best friend and business partner, Karl.  However, Karl is secretly struggling with a love for his best friend's wife.  Along with them are Elsa's dear friend, Kaatje Jansen, her husband, Soren, who can't seem to keep his eyes or his affections on his own wife, and Elsa's sister Tora, a sneaky, conniving young women who manipulates people to get what she wants.

In an epic story that spans the length of the US and the depth of an ocean, Elsa and Peder learn what true fidelity and faith mean as they learn to live life together as a captain and a captain's wife.

Deep Harbor - Tora Anders is determined to get ahead in life, no matter how much she has to lie, cheat and steal to get there.  Armed with only her good looks and her charm, Tora seeks a job with entreprenuer, Trent Storm as a server in one of his restaurants.  Rising quickly in the ranks while falling in deep for her employer, Tora decides to take measures into her own hands, possibly sacrificing her career and her chance at love.

Elsa Ramstad has everything she has ever wanted - a loving husband, a beautiful family and a fulfilling life at sea.  Then tragedy strikes and she wonders if she will have the strength to go on.

Abandoned by her husband, Kaatje struggles to keep her farm afloat while trying to raise her two young daughters.  Kaatje must choose whether to accept the help of those around her or to try to do it all on her own.

The Norwegian immigrants journey farther west, to the rugged lands of the Montana and Washington Territories.  New heartaches and new help arrive as they each struggle to make their way.

Midnight Sun - Soren has been gone for 7 years and Kaatje is desperate to know if he is still alive.  Following his trail and led by guide, James Walker, Kaatje makes her way into the Interior of the wild lands of Alaska.  But will what she finds there ease her mind or leave her more confused?

Elsa has learned to live and to laugh again, but when on old friendship sparks into something more, will she have the strength to embrace it?

Tora has turned her heart over to God and has found the love of her life.  But before they can start their new life, she must finally find relief from the demons that have chased her.

In the conclusion of the Northern Light Trilogy, can Kaatje, Elsa and Tora finally find the peace and happiness that they have been searching for?

My Thoughts:

Whew!  I'm tired after writing about the plots above.  I know you must be worn out reading them.  Let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed these books.  Overall they were wonderful stories.  The settings were creative and unique and the reader gets to follow the characters all over the globe.  The books flowed well together.  In fact, I had to go back and review where one book left off and another started because the three books read more like one big story.

The characters are multi-faceted.  They face real-life situations, like adultery, rape and babies born out of wedlock.  They deal with grief and homelessness.  They must make real-life choices on ethics in the workplace and whether or not to be a working parent.  I thought the author did a great job of not placating the reader and not coming up with a pat story that we had all read before.

(I feel that it's my job as a book reviewer to give you both the good and the bad in a story.  Just because I critique the book, doesn't mean that's it's not worth reading.  I am more interested in you, my reader, knowing everything there is to know about a book so you can make an informed decision on whether to read it or not.)

So, the downside to this book...it's a total soap opera.  Honestly, as I was reading it, I could see this as a show with episodes.  I could see where one episode would end with a cliffhanger and the viewer would think they knew what was going to happen.  But as soon as the show came back again, you find that the writers have taken it a different way.  It's frustrating at times to read because characters that you think will stay and become an important part of the story seem to just disappear (i.e. get written off the show).  And new characters are introduced all the time, some that play an important role and some that don't.

Probably because of that, I felt like these were very long books.  I read the Kindle version, so I didn't have page numbers, but it took me all month to read this trilogy.  I am a pretty fast reader and I felt like these were never-ending books.  (I looked it up on Amazon and the trilogy is 991 pages.)  You get to a point where you pretty much know how it's going to end.  It just takes a long while to get there.

Overall, I really liked these books.  They were entertaining and never dull.  The characters were well-rounded and develop as the story goes on, both in their personal lives and in their spiritual lives.  The story ends well, even if I was somewhat frustrated at times in getting to the ending.  If you enjoy historical fiction with a lot of romance, then these will be great reads for you.

I give these books 5 out of 5 stars.

Alternative Medicine: One Month Detox Diet

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?

After talking to the Osteopathic doctor, deciding to go forward with testing and getting way too much blood taken at the lab...

Finally, all my testing was done (at least all the testing they do there in the office).  Next on the agenda was talking to the Naturopathic doctor.  I really liked that doctor.  She was down to earth and she asked some great questions.  She asked about my eating habits, my sleeping habits, how much energy I had at different times during the day and how I felt at different times during the day.  She really delved deep into what a typical day was like for me.

I also learned a lot of things from her.  80% of your immune response, including your inflammatory response, comes from your gut, your digestive tract.  If there are problems in your gut, there will most likely be problems in other places in your body as well.  So for a holistic doctor, their first order of business is to get your gut in good working condition.

She also said that eating a food today could affect you 5-7 days later.  So you could eat a piece of cheese today and 5 days later have a headache.  That headache could have been caused in some way because you ate that cheese, but because the response is so delayed, you wouldn't necessarily associate those two things together.

You could also have a response to a food because you eat too much of it or you eat it too often.  For example, you could be just fine with eggs, but if you eat an egg every morning for breakfast, it could start to bother you just because you are eating it every day.

In light of all those things, they decided to put me on a very restricted diet for a month.  I am on a gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, peanut-free diet.  This accomplishes two things.  First it cuts out the 4 foods that are the top allergic foods.  More people have food allergies to these 4 foods then to any other foods out there.  If my body has an allergy or an intolerance to these foods, then I am giving my gut a chance to relax and to get all of that out of its system.  Its kind of a detox for the digestive system.

Second, it gives me a baseline to go by.  Once the month goes by, I go back to the clinic and we get the results of all the tests.  Some of those tests might reveal food allergies that I didn't know I had.  But even if they don't, I can do some testing on my own.  I can add those 4 foods back in one by one and see if there is a change in the way I'm feeling.  If, after giving my gut a break for a month, I add a food back in and my gut goes crazy, then I know I'm intolerant to that food.

I'm sure the question you are wondering right now is, what in the world will I eat for a month?  That was my first question too, because I really don't like to be hungry.

My last stop of the day was to the dietitian.  She was great too - friendly, willing to answer questions and just full of knowledge.  She gave me lists of things not to eat and lists of things to substitute instead.  She also gave me ideas on where to find foods to eat.  On the list to eat is any kind of meat, vegetable or fruit.  Whew!  No fake meat for me :).

Dairy-free:  There are a few dairy alternatives out there, but they don't recommend patients replace dairy with soy products.  Instead of cow's milk, there is almond milk or coconut milk.  Instead of cow's milk cheese, there is a cheese-like alternative used for melting (a brand called Daiya) or there is cheese made from goat's milk, sheep's milk or buffalo's milk (I'd hate to be the person who had to milk a buffalo!).  My mom and I visited an Earth Fare grocery store earlier this milk and found some great tasting sheep's milk cheese.  It was crazy expensive...but it's good and for this cheese lover, it's making all my food taste, oh so much better!

Gluten-free:  Ah, there's the biggie.  Gluten is in almost everything - breads, bakery products, cereals, soups, sauces...the list goes on.  The dietitian recommended Kroger for gluten-free products.  They have a lot and they are all grouped together which is very helpful.  I found gluten-free pasta there and GF bread.  At Earth Fare, I got GF barbecue sauce and GF teriyaki sauce.  I was amazed that those things have gluten in them, but apparently wheat is a cheap filler.  Rice and potatoes are naturally GF, so I have been eating a lot of those as well.

Egg-free:  Gluten-free is hard but this is the one that really got me.  Gluten holds foods together and when you take out the gluten, you have to use something else to hold it together.  Guess what you use?  Yup, eggs.  So finding GF products that did not have eggs in them was tricky, but I did find one brand of bread that was GF and egg free.  And, surprisingly, I found one brand or frozen pizza that was GF, egg-free and dairy-free and it didn't taste too bad either.  "Vegan" is a key word to look for if you are eating egg-free and dairy-free.

Peanut-free:  No biggie.  I just can't eat peanuts or peanut butter.  I did buy sunflower seed butter to use on my GF bread or my corn cakes (turns out rice cakes are off the list - don't remember if they have gluten or eggs, but they are not on the diet).

My typical food for this month:

• Breakfast - protein shake (tell you all about that later), piece of GF bread with real butter (that is on the diet, margarine is not)
• Snack - GF pretzels, fruit
• Lunch - salad with Vinaigrette salad dressing (ranch, etc, has eggs), a couple slices of lunch meat, a piece of fruit
• Snack - corn chips and salsa or corn cake with sunflower seed butter
• Dinner - meat with GF BBQ sauce or GF teriyaki sauce, veggie, and rice, potato or GF pasta
• Snack - GF cereal or GF waffle

I'm happy to report I am not going hungry.  The first few days of the diet, I was very hungry, but now that I know more what I can eat, I'm doing good.

Stay tuned.  I'll tell you all about the dietary supplements they have "prescribed" for me.

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.

I'm a day late this week, but we all get grace, especially in April and May when things get crazy :).  When life does get so crazy, I like to be thankful for the mundane, everyday resources and services that we tend to take for granted.

(from Feb. 11)

• I'm thankful for Walmart.  It's close and I can get pretty much anything I need there.
• I'm thankful for our public library - for the free books, free books on CD and for the friendly staff.
• I'm thankful for my bank.  The tellers recognize me and my kids, are very friendly and are always helpful.  They also supply free suckers to everyone who wants one (especially the under 5 foot crowd.)

What everyday places and services are you thankful for today?  

Alternative Medicine: Testing

Dreamstime stock photo - source

I always thought that if I went to an alternative medicine practitioner, the testing they did on me would be something weird - like finding the amount of chi in my body or something.  I never thought they would be testing something normal, like hormones and food allergies.  But that's just what they did.

When I first got to the clinic in Atlanta, I went in to talk with the Osteopathic doctor.  He took a full medical history.  Now keep in mind those principles I told you about in the last post.  This doctor is looking at me holistically, meaning he looks at everything that is wrong with me, not just at abdominal pain.  So, literally, we talked about every medical condition I have had as well as all surgeries I've had and the current problems I am having.  He also did a brief exam, but he was focused more on the history than the exam.

After all that (about 45 minutes), he determined a whole bunch of tests that he wanted to run - thyroid function, adrenal function, food allergy panel, heavy metal screening, etc.  There were a lot.  In true doctor fashion, he said he had no clue how much any of that would cost me, he "just orders" them.

Then comes the fun part...they send in their financial advocate.  She tells me the whopping total for all those tests the doctor "just orders" - $11,000.  (Mouth drops open.)  Yeah, that was my response too.  But...after my insurance comes into play...and after the "special deal" they offer to their patients...the total came down to a much more reasonable amount.  Still a lot, but doable.  Because, believe me, $11,000 is NOT doable.

Tim and I talked and agreed to go ahead with the testing.  So they sent me to the lab to drain me of all my blood.  Not really, but they took over 10 vials of blood.  They kept having to retie the tourniquet tighter to keep it flowing.  I had to fast for this visit and this was about lunchtime, so I was starving and having all my blood taken out...I wasn't very nice.  You probably didn't want to be around me at that point.

Then they did this test to see what my stomach acid levels were like.  They had me swallow this capsule with a little camera-like thing on it.  They put a big box on my stomach that hung around my neck.  The box talked to the computer and to the little capsule which was measuring my stomach acid levels.  Next was the fun part.  I got to swallow a squirt of baking soda and water - tasted nasty!  Why baking soda?  As the tech told me (the tech who had a thick accent and sounded just like Count Dracula), they know the ph of baking soda so they can easily measure the ph in my stomach and see how long it takes it to bring the ph back to normal.

As if that wasn't enough, after that test was done they loaded me up with take home tests - everything from saliva tests to urine collection to stool samples (and yes, I think this is the first time in my life I have typed out the word "urine").  All those fun things get to be done at home and mailed back to a lab.  They want to use those to measure levels over time.  For instance, for the saliva test, they measure adrenal function and hormone levels over the course of a day.  Four times during the day from the time I wake up until 11 at night, I chew on a cotton plug then put it back in a test tube with the time written on it.  Then I stick all 4 tubes in an envelope and mail those back.  Some of the other tests are a lot more detailed and a lot more gross, so I won't go into detail here.  Needless to say, you need to be glad you aren't doing them.  They aren't fun.

We are hoping and praying that all of this extensive testing will give us some answers.  I have been impressed with the detail this clinic has shown.  No other doctor has ever looked at my hormone levels or my vitamin levels.  No other doctor has spent 45 minutes in the same room as me.  Yes, some of these tests are high up there on the ick scale but when we are done we should have a very detailed look at my biochemistry.  If there are things out of whack that we can fix, then maybe it will make me feel better.  That's the goal anyway.

Later I'll tell you about the diet (not for weight loss) and the nutritional supplement portion of the visit.  Stay tuned.

Did you miss the first post in this series?  You can  find it here.

Spring Cleaning: Week 3

I am following Money Saving Mom this month in the 30-day house cleaning challenge in an attempt to clean up my house (it really needs it).  You can follow my progress all week through Instagram (#cleanin30), Twitter (#cleanin30) or Facebook.  You can also join in the challenge fun.  Download the 31 Day House Cleaning Guide that we are following and you, too, can have a sparkling, or at least somewhat cleaner, house.

Days 13 and 14: Surface clean extra rooms and deep clean bedrooms

Once again, these chores fall on the weekend - thankfully out of the scope of the challenge.  (Do you get the feeling that I really just don't like to clean?)  Last weekend was just such a whirlwind of things - first baseball game, last minutes errands to get things we didn't know we needed for future baseball games, 2 different birthday parties for 2 different kids, and a trip to Atlanta - that there just wasn't time to clean anything.  And that's OK.  Some weekends are just like that.

Day 15:  Surface clean living room and kitchen

Since I wasn't here on Monday (appointment in Atlanta), I got to this chore later in the week after I got home.  I chose to clean the kitchen for Day 15.  I looked around to figure out what was most in need of cleaning and I saw the toaster, full of crumbs, just a fire waiting to happen (seriously, this does happen, our last toaster caught on fire because we didn't clean it out).  I unplugged it and cleaned out all the crumbs from the crumb tray and from all over the top.  Then I buffed all the fingerprints off.  Now it's pretty and shiny again.

Day 16:  Deep clean bathrooms

Yes, my bathroom needs cleaning, but that's not what I did.  I did the more urgent thing, which was switch out all my winter and summer clothes.  Since my closet is in my bathroom, I figured this counted.  

It's times like this that I realize that I have waaaaay too many clothes.  Especially too many shirts.  I take a sweater off the hanger, fold it, put a T-shirt on and hang it up...over and over and over again.  All the off-season clothes go up on the top shelf in the closet.

Oh, and this took me more than 20 minutes, in fact, I did it a little at a time over the course of 3 days.

Out with the cold stuff

In with the warm

Up on top it goes

Day 17:  Clean switch plates, door knobs, etc

With all the germs we've had in our house since January, this was a much overdue chore.  I used a Lysol wipe and cleaned door knobs, light switches, toilet flushers, cabinet pulls, the refrigerator handle, the stove handle and the dishwasher handle.  This chore went fast and was no trouble at all...I should do this one more often.

Day 18:  Clean out fridge and pantry

With the new diet that I'm on (you'll hear all about it next week), I really have to take stock of what we have and what ingredients are in those things.  And I will...next week.  Because I just don't have enough hours this week to do it.

Day 19:  Clean the car

Oh, my, yes, this really needed to be done.  I threw away trash (mostly empty snack bags and straw wrappers - gotta get on the kids about that one), brought myriads of little toys and jackets inside and put them where they belonged.  Then I dusted and cleaned the trim and washed the inside of the windows.  Julie came and helped me with the those.  I'm glad that she was willing to help, but I did have to redo some very smeary, very Windexed windows.  I did not vacuum the car.  Believe me, it still needs it.  But I didn't have the time to do that today.  Maybe it will be an extra, money-earning chore for one of the kids next week.

Kids are in the van before cleaning.

Kids are after cleaning

Front seat before

Front seat after - it doesn't really look much different, but trust me, it's cleaner.

Another week down.  I was much busier this week so I didn't get to do everything as thoroughly as I would like, but anything I do is cleaner than before, right?  Have a good weekend and happy cleaning!

A New Doctor: Naturopathic and Osteopathic Medicine

Dreamstime stock photo - source

I kind of left you guys hanging yesterday... telling you that something possibly life-changing had happened.  That wording may have been a bit overly dramatic.  I toyed with whether or not to use those words, but then   I decided to go with it, because it all feels life-changing to me.

This Monday I traveled 5 hours down to Atlanta to visit a new doctor.  As you know I've been dealing with pain in my ab muscles for a year and a half now.  I've been to beaucoups of traditional, Western, allopathic doctors.  Doctors who treat symptoms with prescriptions but don't necessarily get to the root cause of the problem.  Those doctors have been great within their specialty to try to figure out what's wrong with me. But if they can't find the cause within their set of specific organs or systems, they either pass me off to another specialist or they give me a drug to help mask the symptoms.  Now, I'm not knocking traditional medicine because those prescriptions have helped me function somewhat normally for the past year.  But I have been frustrated that everyone seems to have given up looking for a cause, essentially telling me that there is nothing else to do except live with it.  I don't give up that easily.

So I decided to go a different route.  At the suggestion and encouragement of a friend who lives in Atlanta, I traveled down there this week to visit a naturopathic doctor.  I went to the Progressive Medical Center, a clinic which has both osteopathic doctors and naturopathic doctors.

An osteopathic doctor is one that has a "D.O." after their name instead of an "M.D."  A D.O. is trained very similarly to an M.D.  They have the same rights to practice medicine and the same license to perform the full scope of medicine and surgery as a medical doctor.  And in most cases, they take the same classes in medical school as an M.D. would.  So what's the difference?  An osteopathic physician has a holistic approach to the human body.  They look at the body as a whole to see what's wrong.  And by treating the body as a whole, they hope to alleviate the specific symptoms you are experiencing.

Alright, so that's an osteopathic doctor.  What is a naturopathic doctor?  Naturopathic medicine is based on three principles - the body has the power to heal itself, disease is your body trying to remove things that are obstructing it from its normal function and disease affects the whole person.  The first principle essentially means that a naturopathic doctor tries to use natural substances (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc) to help your body return to normal function without the use of synthetic drugs.  The second principle means that when you experience something wrong in your body, it's your body's way of reacting to things being out of whack.  The third principle refers to the same holistic approach to medicine that a DO uses.  An ND is very concerned with your body's biochemistry, with getting the amounts of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals back to an optimum level in your body.  They believe that fixing that will fix most of the common ailments that people have.

OK, so all that is background for you to know what kind of clinic I visited this week.  Since this is a long post already, I'll tell you all the specifics of my visit next week.  I get to leave you hanging again. :) I have to give you a reason to keep coming back, right?

Busy, busy, busy

Poor, little neglected blog.

It's been a busy week.
Busy, very overwhelming and possibly life-changing.

I will definitely be telling you more about all that once I get some time.  I'm still playing catch up after being out of town for a few days.

That and baseball started last week.  It's 3 days a week. David loves it, but it's 3 days a week.  That's a lot.  Yeah.  Fun stuff but busy.