Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my Moms birthday, I made her a gluten free cake (so that she could share it with Aleric) and I spent a few weeks working on a quilt for her new chair. This is the first quilt I have made so there are a few small flaws and im sure that all of the quilting pros would laugh at me but I am very proud of myself. Now lets get to the pictures!

This is the front of the quilt:

And the back of the quilt, I really like how the flowers look like the ones from the top are falling and forming the ones on the bottom:

Close up of the stitching, I used the coolest multi color thread I LOVE this thread, if I had a million dollars I would buy every color they make!

And lastly just a picture of the quilt a little closer up:

Win a cow!

Today is the start of Marks Primal Challenge on MDA. There are tons of prizes to be had as well as the weight you will lose and the energy you will gain. He is even giving away a cow, yes you read that right a cow provided by US Wellness Meats will be a prize! Not that I have a freezer to put a cow into but you can bet if I won it I would be out buying a freezer to stuff it in. Being Primal is seriously the best thing to happen to me and my health. Chris has already met his goal weight and I am only 20 pounds from mine. But within the last 2 months my life has went to hell and so has my eating. But now I am back on track and ready get active and get in shape. I urge everyone to go over to www.marksdailyapple.com and join in the fun.

5 Day Weekend

I love holidays, really im not even sure why I love them so much but I do. I want Aleric to grow up and have good memories of his childhood and family get togethers. Holidays usually mean a family get together. But so far that has meant the in laws on one day and my family on another. This 4th of July all of us were here at my house together and it was wonderful. We had a pretty busy week though, we had a five day weekend so on our first day off we went to Denver, we went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Aleric is only 17 months old so while he wont remember it, he had a good time, he loved looking at all the stuffed animals, he was running around and pointing at everything.

The next day we went to Salida, then the next day we had our 4th of July (one day early). This was the first time Aleric really got to see fireworks, we went and saw a public display of them last year but he was still so tiny, he slept through the whole thing. He also got to play in his new baby pool that day.
Aleric in his baby pool with his Papa John in the background

Aleric and Chris - Aleric is getting a smoke bomb so he can go place it where he wanted to and light it

Aleric and Chris with a giant sparkler!
Aleric and his Grandpa (My Dad) with sparkler

And then on Sunday we did absolutely nothing. It was great, really we had stuff we could have done but when you have 5 days off you have to at least spend one of them relaxing and watching movies. One of the movies we watched was Fat Head. This was a great movie, I will recommend it to everyone. I love documentary's and this was just so well put together it was very entertaining while still delivering some very good information to the public in a way that they can understand. And as of tomorrow its back to work and back to normal everyday life.

Primal Rap

I just found this video on another blog (http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/). I think its awesome.

Life

Why does life always seem to get in the way of well life? I have been collecting blog subjects for over a week now but yet I just never have had the time to sit down and write the damn posts. Last Sunday I was going to blog about my first experience cooking snake. Well it failed horribly so I then had to remake dinner with something that was actually edible, so hopefully when I try again this week it will come out right and I will be able to write about that. I also got a new shotgun for my birthday so I was going to write about it. Almost 2 weeks later I finally shot it today for the first time. We had a hail storm that killed our garden that we worked so hard on every single day. Then a few days later we found a rabbit in our garden burrowing under our dead cucumbers. All that is left in our garden right now is beans, onions, and we are really hoping that the pumpkins, tomatoes and strawberries come back. Our little aspen trees took a beating also but I think they will survive. (Picture below is what is left of my beans)

Our Jeep has been in the shop again getting the last few things fixed so we were down to 1 car that fits the car seat. And now the trailer lights still don't work so we have to pay for a load of water tomorrow while we wait for that problem to get fixed. But one thing did go as planned in the last week, on Saturday we went to FIBArk in Salida. Aleric got to see the parade and he loved it!


Every time the horses (or donkeys or mules) would come by he would get all excited and point and say "tsss" Its so cute. He finally got to meet some real horses on Friday night at a friends house, she has horses and we took him over there, he was so excited first he tried to crawl through the fence to get them, then when that didn't work he kept trying to go over the fence to get to them. He was not scared at all of them like he was the cows that he met over at Larga Vista Ranch.

Good, HONEST, People

With all of the things that are going wrong in today's modern world, I have all but pretty much given up on people. You can't really trust anyone, people lie to you about the dumbest shit. But right now I am learning that there really are a few people left in this world who care about more than themselves. I try to always help anyone in need, people look at my family funny because lets be honest the majority of people who are walking around today with 5 piercings in their faces and flaming pentagrams tattooed on their arms don't really give a shit about anyone else. So we try to open doors for the elderly, help people push their cars when they break down and rescue animals in need off the highway during rush hour. You always hear people talk about how they are "Good Christians" and they help people. Honestly I have never met someone who is a good christian that has done a damn thing to help anyone but themselves. You never hear people say "oh look that athiest is such a good person." Or "That devil worshiper is such a nice person to help that old man with the door" Its always about the "Good Christian" well I think that should change, its not only Christians that help people.
So we have been having a few issues with the Jetta, seems they started when the final payment was made on it, like it knew that we had paid it off and now it was going to break every chance it got. Being the young couple we are we have searched for a good mechanic in the town, we have been ripped off and screwed over by every single one, except one shop that is Mr. Mechanic over on Prairie Ave. The guy that runs that place is one of the most honest, hardworking people that I have ever met. We have even given him chances to charge us extra and he hasn't, when we needed help yesterday we called him and he was there for us, only question he asked was "where are you so I can send a tow-truck?". That's what I call a good person, yes he has a business to run so its not a free service but the fact that he didn't start off by saying yeah I can come get you buy its going to cost you x amount of dollars, that's just amazing to me! Without people like him in the world, we would be lost. Its people like Tom who are restoring my faith that maybe, just maybe there is hope for humanity.

The post that changed everything

My son started getting hives when he was around 7 months old, looking back on it now I can see that it was the food we were feeding him that gave him. After 6 months and tons of research I found out that he was having a reaction to various food, mainly gluten, eggs, and corn. Then also he was having reactions when he ate a large amount of sugar (not that we were feeding him candy or anything, fruit and fruit juice made him break out in hives). While doing some research on food allergies I found a site called Marks Daily Apple. The first few posts that I read sounded great, and then I read a post on a book called "The Vegetarian Myth" by Leirre Keith and my first thought was "fuck this dude trying to tell me that being vegetarian isn't the answer to all of our problems" Well this is what I looked like at 178 pounds when I read that post.



















Well on March 7th, I decided that Mark was right, I had decided to read "The Vegetarian Myth" and everything she says in the book is true. All of the vegetarians and vegans are being led to believe that this diet can save the planet when in reality its killing it faster than anything. Aleric was already having allergic reactions to grains of all kinds and sugar in any quantity that was over 10 grapes or 4 strawberries so all we had to do was change our eating habits to match his. 3 months later I have lost 21 pounds. For me that's a HUGE amount of weight that's already gone. I only have 20ish more pounds to go and I will be at my goal weight. I was wearing a size 18 jeans in February, when I met my husband I wore a size 7. I don't think I will ever be able to fit into my size 7 pants again (although I still have them just in case) I am starting to feel more like my old self and am starting to feel comfortable in my own skin. Here is a picture of me from Saturday while at the lake walking with Aleric. I weigh 157 pounds. I cant describe how good that feels to say, yes its still overweight but I'm halfway there, and without Mark and all the people at the MDA forums I would probably still be at 178 pounds or possibly even heavier. One post changed my life.