A GAPS for Everyone

I was introduced to GAPS by my sister, who's husband and young son were having fairly severe digestive health issues. And GAPS is for diegestive health, but it's for so much more! I personally believe that every person could benefit from GAPS. Everything stems from the gut. That's the premise behind Gut And Psychology/Physiology Syndrome. If you're gut is not healthy it cannot digest the foods you put into it properly and your body will not function optimally. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride believes that we can heal our guts and allow our bodies to function in ways they never have before, but it takes dedication, preparation, and a commitment, because it can be pretty expensive.
Due to the fact that my husband and I are on completely different pages, I have decided to put GAPS on hold for a while. But we are continuing with several of the principals and doing the best we can, because in the 3 months that we've been following this diet I have discovered some interesting and unexpected things.
I knew Wyatt was having issues with dairy, but I guess it took stepping back from it to realize how severe the symptoms were. At my husband's insistance, I allowed the boys to have the sweet potatoes and biscuits I had made for him. I wasn't thinking about the fact that there was a bit of butter on the potatoes. Before the meal was over, Wyatt was complaining of stomach pain and then he had diahrrea for 3 days. While we were on vacation Wyatt had french fries twice. I'm not sure yet whether it was the potatoes themselves, or the rancid oil they were fried in, but he had excessive, painful gas and bloating, so that he couldn't sleep afterwards. No wonder he'd been waking several times a night for well over a year!
I've also discovered that Liam loses complete control and absolutely cannot focus when he eats wheat. I've had some minor concerns about him in the past, and noticed that he had calmed down while we were on GAPS. His schooling had also started to go much better. His attitude was better and he focused on the lesson. We've made more progress in these last couple months than I had in an entire year previous! He tends toward hyperactivity by nature and is still a free spirit, but the change has been remarkable.  I wasn't sure what caused the difference until I allowed him to have crackers one day last week. OH. MY. WORD! The next day he was off the wall. He was quite literally bouncing off the walls! he wasjumping on, and otherwise abusing his brothers. He wasn't angry, in fact he was being silly, but he couldn't stop when I told him to. Even when I disciplined him he couldn't seem to control it.  Our school lesson was full of tears and took over 2 hours to complete. He just hasn't acted that way in months. It used to be a common, every day occurance.
Silas and Shamus I haven't noticed much difference in except that Shamus is not complaining of a stomach ache every night at bedtime anymore.  He did last week, though, but I didn't make a connection to anything in particular.
I have noticed a sharp decline in my severe headaches, but once again, I didn't make a distinct connection to any particular food.
So many people are so used to their symptoms that they don't even notice them, or see them as abnormal, but GAPS can identify them, and heal us so that we can go on to live normal lives. GAPS really is for everyone, or almost everyone :D

Just Let It Go.

I have been married to the same man for almost 10 years.  I have always done his laundry. Wash, fold, put in drawers, hang in closet whatever. I'm pretty particular about things. He jokingly gives me a hard time because I can't stand it if the covers are wrinkled and I'll get out of bed in the middle of the night to fix them if necessary. Glasses and mugs need to be in neat rows in the cupboards etc. So it stands to reason that I'd be pretty particular about how I arrange clothes in the closet and dresser drawers, right? I can't help it that it makes me want to scream when I see two shirts with their plackets facing each other hanging in the closet! It just does, ok? So I always hang all shirts facing to the left. I also arrange them by type, fabric and color in that order. I have a little more difficult time on my side because I have so many different kinds of shirt, but Nathan has oxfords, polos -- long and short sleeved, and then special breathable golf polos. His side of the closet looks like a rainbow. Literally.
I have spent the last 9 years in various levels of irritation and disbelief when I walk into the closet, or open dresser drawers to put things away because something is always out of place. And really. How much effort does it take to reach just a bit further to the right to hang that shirt up with the long sleeved polos than in the middle of the short sleeved ones? And so I would sigh and maybe grumble and hang it where it belongs. But one day, in the not too distant past, my darling hubby was desperately searching for a particular shirt. Finally he called to me in frustration "do you know where my _____ shirt is?" "It should be hanging right there in your closet" I call back.  Still he can't find it. So I walk in and immediately pick it out "It's right here with the rest of your blue polo shirts" I say. He gives me a vacant look. "You mean to tell me, that in all these years you have never once noticed that your shirts are organized and arranged by color?" "They are?" he says staring at the shirts in disbelief. "They are" I say.
And there it is.  He's not doing it to spite me, or to be lazy. He doesn't realize he's making more work for me. It just never occured to him to even notice! He still doesn't notice.  I could harp on him and nag him until I'm blue in the face.  It's not going to change anything. He is who he is.  And so, I just let it go. :) Sometimes I still get irritated, but mostly I just chuckle and move the shirt.
What about you? What have you had to let go in order to avoid hard feelings or constant irritation?

Why I STOPPED Boiling Eggs

photo credit

Boiled Eggs. They have so many, many uses! And we have been eating a LOT of them in the last month or so, since we started GAPS. They are a super easy and nourishing breakfast for my crew, especially if I make them the night before. My kids love deviled eggs. They're great as egg salad, and when we're not eating GAPS I like to put them in potato salad, macaroni salad and more.
My success with boiled eggs, however, has been inconsistent at best.  I don't know if anyone else has this problem or not but if I follow the typical "bring to a boil, turn off heat, cover and let sit for 10 minutes" The yolks typically turn out an unappetizing greenish color on the outside. If I take them off the heat and cover for 10 minutes the whites are usually less firm and I'm picky about how things feel in my mouth. If it's slimy at all -- BLEH! Not happening! Sometimes they're hard to peel, sometimes it's easy, but more often than not lately they've been really hard to peel. For our road trip last week, I put 5 dozen eggs in a stock pot, covered with water and boiled. I do not, I repeat N.O.T. recommend doing that! what a pain. None were easy to peel. and the ones at the top we really soft, while the bottom were fairly firm. BLEH.
So then we stay at a Holiday Inn Express and their hard-boiled eggs are perfect. And obviously easy to peel. How do they do that??? Well, I finally concluded that they use an egg boiler. I'm pretty sure I've seen those before. But they're probably not cheap. And do I really want another appliance cluttering up my countertop? I don't think so! So what's a girl to do?
I think I finally found the answer.
Last the other day I stumbled upon it on pinterest. Don't boil your eggs; BAKE them!
So I tried it out. Two days in a row and it's a-mazing.
Here's how you do it: Place eggs directly on rack in center of oven. Like so:

Turn the oven on 350 and set your timer for 30 minutes .Have a pair of tongs and a bowl of cold water waiting.
Take them immediately from the oven and drop them in the bowl of cold water.
When they're cool enough to handle you can peel them.
Can I just tell you  they slide right out of the shell! and the yolks are a beautiful yellow color! and the Whites are so nice and firm! The perfect boiled egg! With no boiling involved

You can make as many as your oven will hold! It's fantastic :D This is definitely the method I will be using for coloring Easter Eggs this week!
As info, some of the eggs do get brown spots on the shell, which I can only assume is liquid from the eggs coming through the shell, but I tested and if you dry them with a (paper) towel as you take them out of the water it comes right off. If any sticks you can use a Scotch Brite Green pad to buff any residual spots off and they will be beautiful for Easter coloring.

Real Food on a Road Trip

We recently started the GAPS diet.  GAPS is pretty restrictive. You can't eat just anything. Most of what you eat needs to be home cooked or raw.  Ideally it would all be organic, grass-fed, free range ... we can't make that happen right now, so we're doing the best we can. We avoid as many chemical additives as we can, no sugar or artificial sweeteners are allowed, except honey; no grains or starches either. You'd be surprised where you find sugars and grain additives!
But here's the deal: we're driving to the Grand Canyon from Alabama. 24 hour drive. 2 1/2 days driving. Yeah. I thought about just throwing in the towel and starting over when we get home, but the reason I started was the discomfort my two year old was experiencing and I wasn't going to go back on the progress he's made, so ... I just had to come up with a way to make the road trip and the diet work together! Not gonna lie, I took cues from a couple other blogs www.passionatehomemaking.org and another one I cannot for the life of me remember right now. I spent 2 days cooking up some chicken and cutting up veggies. Here's most of what I put in the cooler on ice.

In the 4 gallon sized bags: 5 dozen hard boiled eggs, 16 pounds of roasted chicken drumsticks, 10 pounds of marinated, baked, chicken breast tenderloins.
In the 7 quart sized bags: 8 cucumbers cut into "sticks", 6 sweet bell peppers (yellow, red and orange) sliced, bunches of carrots, I couldn't even tell you how many, peeled and sliced into discs,and some cuties.
Then there's Bubbie's dill pickles, sauerkraut (which I actually tasted and ended up leaving home, homemade yogurt and bananas.
I also packed a jar of ghee, for cooking at the campsite,raw honey and a half gallon of raw milk I had left in the fridge. We stopped at Sam's Club and picked up a bunch of Pink Lady apples, more bananas, some strawberries, and a box of Larabars. 
To be honest, I'm not sure we're going to make it.  We've already gone through half the carrots, about a third or so of the cukes, half of the peppers, all of the tenderloins, and slightly less than half of the drumsticks! The milk is gone, and so are most of the Larabars. And we're only 2 days into the week long trip.  We haven't touched the eggs yet, because the hotel we stayed at last night had hard boiled eggs at the breakfast and we can always stop and get more fruit and veggies, but the meat might be a problem. I'll have to think about how I can cook some up at the campsite to bring with on the way home.
What are some ways you deal with eating real food on the road?

Home Management Notebook: Downloads and Links

Our Home Management Notebook is well under way. I've given you the overview and the general idea to hopefully get you thinking about what would be most helpful for you to have at your fingertips. And I've given you access to a few downloads. With this post I will give you the last of my downloads and then link to some resources that I loved and gave me a lot of ideas. :)
Menus: "They" say that most women have about 21 meals in their rotation, so many women make a list of their 21 meals and draw from that when they make their Monthly or Weekly meal plans.  I chose to go about that a little differently.  I am in the process of making a Recipe Binder that contains basically everything I make on a fairly regular basis or that we really like. This is still ongoing and probably will be forever, but I had to start over recently because of the new healing diet we undertook here. More on that another time. But I'm taking that Recipe Binder and using it to put together Master Meal Plans. Plural because I have one for spring/summer type recipes and one for fall/winter type recipes with more soups and stews and such. And then I'll use these master plans to make my Monthly Meal Plans less stressful and also to help me purchase things in bulk or ahead of time.  This way I can just line my current month up next to the master and rotate things in based on a recipe I just found that I want to try or Holiday meals or whatever. Once my Monthly Plan is complete I'll use my Weekly Meal Plan with the shopping list to plan not only my dinners but also breakfasts and lunches.  It doesn't have a snack section. I'm thinking of adding one. Or two. If I do, I'll update.
Planning: I watched "I Don't Know How She Does It" the other night.  I thought it was pretty cute, but I kept saying to myself  "why doesn't she write her list down???".  I have to say, I make a lot of lists in my head. Not in the middle of the night. I generally sleep like a rock, but in the shower I'm on autopilot and I plan a lot.  But if I don't write it down as soon as I get out, I am going to forget. There is no question about that! So I have an ongoing Master To Do List for all those things that always need to get done. Like extra cleaning, organizing, stuff to get, things to tell Nathan ... and on and on and on. I also have some specific To Do Lists. One for Personal Growth Goals, One for Home Improvement Projects, one ofr Crafting Projects that I want to complete--can we say Pinterest?? :D, and a special Christmas in July list.  I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory.
Shopping: Simple it's a shopping list, but it matches the rest of my downloads so I like it :D
Notes: Just a place to write down stuff I don't want to forget while I'm on the phone, or making notes while I'm researching something online etc.
Maintenance: Here's where I keep a written record of maintenance done to the van, and to the house. So when something comes up, I know exactly where to find out what we've had done, when, how much it cost, and who did it.
Inventories: I'm keeping an inventory of my pantry and freezer so I never run out of staples, and so that I don't buy duplicates. A quick check to these lists when I'm making my shopping lists will keep me from wasting money, or from frustration when I go to make a meal, only to discover I don't have what I thought I did.
Account Info: This one I went back and forth on for quite a while, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep it in something I carry everywhere, but I need it with me in case I'm out. I you struggle with remembering all my user names and passwords for websites that I use? I'm afraid to ever change them for fear I'll forget what they are and I tend to use the same 2 or 3 for everything. More mental clutter trying to remember all that stuff all the time! I keep another copy in my Bill Pay Binder just in case my HMN is ever lost or stolen, I can quickly change all my passwords and not worry so much about hackers and identity thieves.
Spending Tracker
One more thing about the downloads, for some reason some of them look like half sized sheets and some look like they'll print in the center of and 8 1/2 X 11 sheet.  When you go to print, just make sure you look at the printer set up and set it to print 2 per sheet.  They will print out just fine :) Let me know if you have any issues in the comments section and I will do my very best to make it right!
This is just a list of blogs that I have found with Home Management Notebook resources:
mommytracked.com -- she's got some really cute printables
accordingtotonya.com
a mom after God's own heart
create order
desiring virtue -- really like her printables and her heart. nice blog
design finch -- a collection of printables from various blogs
delicate construction -- printables
Keeper of the Home
Life...Your Way
List Plan It
Miss Poppins
The Nest Effect

The 10 Second Rule



Click on the book to read the author's summary of the
10 second rule

You know how sometimes, particularly during a missions emphasis month, preachers will harp on being a missionary in your own community?  They rant about the lady in front of you in the grocery line, or the guy in the cubical next to yours at work, or the people you see every day going to and from work, your secretary, your boss, your neighbors.  It's terribly convicting! But here's the deal; I don't work outside the home.  My sphere of influence seems very small! And really, how should I go about approaching the lady in front of me in the check out line with the Romans Road, when I've got 4 hooligans I'm trying to keep in sight and in check?
In the past I've reasoned with myself that my children are my mission field right now. And that is very true!! They are perhaps the most important mission field I will ever encounter! The way I raise them could eventually influence hundreds or thousands of people for Christ, depending on how sold out they are for God. Talk about responsibility! But what if they never see me in action for Jesus? I'll say that again. What if they never see me in action for Jesus??? What kind of example am I setting for them to follow later in life, or even right now?
Last night and this morning I read a small book called The 10 Second Rule by Clare DeGraaf. The premise goes like this "just do the next thing you're reasonably certain Jesus wants you to do." That's it.  I got it in the mail from the Sonlight Curriculum office as a Christmas gift this past December and put it on the shelf.  I wanted to read it, but I was afraid. I don't like change. Can I be honest?  A lot of times I'm afraid to look at a book like this for fear I'll be called to evangalize a third world country.  Doesn't that sound horrible?  I hate that about myself, but it's true!
So, anyway, yesterday was Sunday. It was also the end of a "real church conference" at the church we've visited the last 2 Sundays.  I don't really understand how it is that they "plant" churches in other areas of the country and around the globe.  It's not by commissioning a member of the main church to go start one.  I guess that's not important.  At any rate, once a year they have this conference and invite members from these "church plants" and have a conference, and this past Sunday was the last day of it for 2012. It was amazing. It was all about evangalism and having the Gospel preached, and walking worthy of the Lord.  It was about the Goodness and the Majesty of our God. In short, it was one of those services that completely lifts your spirits and at the same time causes you to feel like a complete wretch. So when I got home and saw this book in the diaper bag (something told me to pull it off the shelf before the movers grabbed it -- go figure) I knew I needed to read it; so I picked it up and started.
It makes so much sense! It bridges the gap between what seems possible and what I feel a general sense of conviction about during mission services. It's not about enormous descisions, it's about sensing the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit and acting on it, before you can rationalize your way out of it. I don't have to make the decision to go knock on every door in our neighborhood and hand out tracts, or decided that I won't leave a grocery store before I speak to someone about Jesus, no matter what the boys are behaving like that day.  All I have to do is ask God to show me what He wants me to do and then do it.  Now, He could ask me to knock on my neighbors' doors, or he could simply ask me to wish the person beside me a good morning, or hand they guy on the corner a five dollar bill. They key is listening and obeying.  Being Jesus to someone when they need it.
I'll tell you what my first step was. Writing this post and putting the little vinyl clings with "10s on them in prominent reminder spots.  Then next is heading back over to Olive Garden where we had lunch yesterday.  I had a gift card that paid for the boys' lunches but most of my meal I paid for on my card. When the waiter brought the check back, for some reason I calculated my tip based only on the money that came out of my pocket, not the entire bill. I realized what I had done when I got to the car, but rationalized myself out of going back in. The boys are a good excuse for a lot of stuff. The only thing I could think about the whole time I was reading was that waiter and his tip.  He was friendly, and great with the boys and I'm pretty sure he saw us bowing to pray over our food.  Then I gave him an insulting tip. It woke me up at 5:30 this morning. I told God I would go.  I just hope he's working today!

Home Management Notebook: The Skeleton

I got to thinking that I should share not only the forms that I used and created, but the pieces that make up the binder itself as well.

For the actual shell I used and Avery Binder. You can find an Avery view binder, 5.5"X8.5" size at your local staples or you can find them on Amazon or online office supply stores.  I personally decided to use this comfort touch binder from Avery. It has more of a "planner" feel to it.  Avery also makes a binder this size with a pocket attached to the inside front cover that I really liked and almost decided to buy.

Click here to download the Covers and Divider sheets
Click here for the tabs

I made the dividers by getting Avery half sized sheet protectors. It turned out really well because there were 15 sheet protectors in the pack and I had 14 dividers plus my mission statement. I wanted pretty dividers so I designed the dividers to match the front cover. Then I slipped 2 copies into each page protector so that it would be double sided and a little firmer. I made tabs that fold in half so I could see them from both sides, and then I just used packing tape to attach them to the page protector. The tabs download has both the tabs for the HMN and for my Bill Pay binder. I apologise for that.  I included a blank background for the dividers, and also a background with a blank square in case you like my dividers but the names of your sections are different than mine. There's also a page that I intended to be my back cover. I ended up not being able to use it since there's no clear view pocket on the back of this particular binder, but I really liked it, so I chose to just leave it there.


Lastly, here are some links to business card holders similar to the ones I purchased,
(I didn't see this one before, but I think I like it better!) and theclear zippered pouch.