spark 3…oh i can’t wait…

For those of you who would love a little two day get-away, I have the perfect fit!   
Spark 3 will be Oct. 21-22 in Lindon, UT this year…a two day creative event and artisan market…with meals and snacks prepared for you…all you have to do is enjoy the beautiful ambiance, and the fun things to make with everything set out for you and easy instruction.  Not to mention Mindy Gledhill will be performing, who I absolutely love.

So meet me in Utah, we’ll share a hotel room, and have some fun…just the girls!  Alex my oldest gets to come with me this year, she’s working hard to earn her tuition(it costs $350 for two days full of everything(which I probably brought back home half that much in supplies, not to mention all the stuff I made and brought home-they really spoil you!), and I hope it sparks her creativity even more…she’s already amazingly creative! 

If you want to see some pic’s of what to expect…copy and paste link below, then scroll down just a bit. 

http://chocolatechipsandpeanutbutter.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-10-26T12%3A53%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=499  

You’ll see beautiful inspiration eeking out from every room…it was so inspiring, and it did spark my inner crafty self, I can’t wait to go again!!!

Copy and paste the link below to get a peek at what will be goin’ on!   
Come on, you know you want to come!

http://www.sparktheevent.com/

the opportunity to use and better my talents…

may 2011

I was called to be YW President in May, and it has been a wonderful opportunity.  I have gotten to know such wonderful women in our ward now that we serve together.  We have such sweet young women too, such driven and talented great girls!  Plus, I get to do fun activities with Alex, and see her interact and grow as her own self.  What a wonderful thing for me to be apart of.

I thought it would be fun to spotlight a girl and a leader each Sunday, and give them a necklace, which makes me solder jewelry every week.  I otherwise probably wouldn’t do it very much as life has gotten busy and a bit more complicated.

p.s.  I wore one of my necklaces into the salon where I get my hair done, and my stylist loved them, and wanted some personalized and made for her and some gifts for friends, so I was able to exchange jewelry for three salon visits…not bad I’d have to say!!!



our lovely 2nd outdoor movie night…

may 28.  2011

Our second outdoor movie night was a hit, thanks to all that came(around 60-80ppl.) and those that helped out.  One of my Young Women is a chef like her mom, and she came and made three different kinds of cupcakes with three different kinds of frostings, all of which were “gluten-free.”  Thanks to the awesome flour I have found through Authentic Foods, we can bake cup for cup and it tastes great!

We also were able to get ahold of a vintage popcorn machine, and I found cute vintage popcorn boxes, which made it so much fun! 

It’s just great hanging out with friends, eating, chatting, and getting to know people better.  We are just so very grateful for this wonderful ward we are in.  Sitting on blankets under the stars is so very calming, and brings a wonderful peace and appreciation for this beautiful place!

 (nadia with her nursery teacher…so sweet!)
 (mariesa, a good friend-i made her a necklace as a going away present…she was moving to boston)
 (ohhhh…so cute when the boys have fun together!)

(I guess where the teens were hanging out:))

virginia beach lds homeschool conference…

may 9.  2011
oh, how I absolutely love the lds homeschool conference!  How I love meeting other mothers and families that homeschool, and I love learning from them how to better myself and our family and our schooling.  The spirit is so strong there.  Such a wonderful keynote speaker was Michael Ballam.  Alex took a class once studying “music and the mind” he wrote, and it was absolutely amazing all that we learned through ways of music!  It was a wonderful experience my friend Juventa had, being on the board, getting him to come and speak.  We were so grateful to meet a world famous opera singer(he’s performed at the Vatican and The White House), professor, and wonderful man that he is!
We got to meet old friends, play on the beach, walk the boardwalk for miles, and even though it was the middle of the week when the girls and I drove up, jarom got to join us for the weekend, which was wonderful!



(the girls found Alex in the youth group and loved running and hugging her!)

 (I love Nadia’s 40’s swimsuit…I’m not sure what girl we had gotten this for first, but I love the hand-me-downs!)

mother’s day…

may 8.  2011

mother’s day was lovely!  I had a healthy omelette and oj brought to me in bed…roses…dinner was made without my help…and a fun scavenger hunt that the girls did for me around the house.  I’m so grateful for this amazing man I’m married to, and these sweet girls!  It was a lovely day!

perspective…

august 13.  2011

I have come to love Ferris Wheels…Jarom and I rode one in France last year outside the Louvre…and I have come to appreciate the perspective that a Ferris Wheel can give.  Sometimes you are on top, and can see everything so clearly with a far perspective, and other times you are heading downward, and can only see things really close with a very narrow perspective of things.  We swing up and swing down in life.  Things are great, things aren’t going so well, but as we are taught in Sunday School, it’s how you handle the ups and downs that really matter.  I just want to say, as the downs are very difficult, we find the ups to be liberating, we are grateful, and we enjoy them more knowing the downs we have experienced.

So that leads me into our family journey…one might say it sounds like the ferris wheel is heading down, but I beg to differ.  I feel it swinging up…it may get stuck a few times, but it’s heading up.

Looking back on the day, when I would meet someone who had a food allergy, I remember thinking that I just don’t know how they could live without milk, or gluten, or eggsI’m grateful for our process of receiving the news line upon line.  Before testing anyone else in our family, I thought it was just all me, since my symptoms of lack of health were obvious.  But it has led us on a journey of discovering that you can be allergic to foods without even knowing it, and it causing long-term health effects if not treated.  So yes, I am grateful for having had my journey, a hard one as it has been, but now knowing the food allergies our whole family has, has given us the chance to rebuild and strengthen our bodies and hopefully giving us not only longer lives, but more importantly, a quality life.

The answers to a few tests have come in.

Allergies to food:  Alex and Camden are allergic to gluten, dairy, eggs, and each one has a few more allergies individually.  ( We have come to love Almond milk now, but both are allergic to almonds.  So now they have come to love Rice Vanilla Milk.  Thank goodness for so many options!)

Madison only has a few food allergies, which I was very surprised about!  Eggs, bananas, pineapple, and asparagus.

Now as to the test that overwhelms me more than any food allergy, is the lyme testAll three older girls are positive.

So, now what?  Thank goodness for yahoogroups!  The response of one mother who has a 13 year old who can’t even leave the house because her lyme is so bad, responded to a thread of mine, and mentioned besides the salt/c protocol which we both do, they started NAET, a way of relieving the body of allergens, and helping bring balance to the body.

For those of you who haven’t ever been sick, one might say… what?  You just go to a Western Medicine doctor, they say, “you have this or that, or we don’t know what it is”, and then you take the medicine they give you.  Well, one could live that way, and I’m not knocking Western medicine, because it has a time and place to be used, and can save lives in some instances.  It saved our second daughters life as they rebuilt her arch in her heart at 7 days old.  But long term health isn’t healed and resolved this way.  So our next journey, will be what happens, how we respond, and hopefully positive things from NAET.  It’s going to be a tough journey, as your body has to work through healing.  So, here we go