8 YEARS Married!

Today is my husband and my 8 year wedding anniversary! 

Sometimes I feel like what on earth where did time go? 

But then I see it back almost like a movie - our wedding, first year of apartments and school work **hehe such babies**, living in India, having our first baby, buying a house, another baby, traveling, a third baby. 

All the bedtime stories and memories of our little family come crashing in and then I see where the time has gone. I love that I thought the wedding day was the BEST when really it was the start - I didn't think I would ever be happier or love my husband more than that day. I had no idea it got so much better, and better and better. 

Our anniversary came at a sweet time this year as a good friend of mine is getting married on Saturday. Last night a bunch of us stayed up wayyyy too late chatting and sharing stories but then as we began to give more solid and honest advice to this wife to be --it was so encouraging for ME to sit and listen and share. All our highs and lows over the years and what helped us works through them and to take the time for a second to reflect on the last 8 years. We are so so so busy in life.  Running running and always in a hurry. I haven't stopped and thought about early marriage nerves and advice in such a long time. It took me back to this day 8 years ago. That's when our life was joined into one and we became our family. I never imaged many of the places we have been in over the years. Some painful, but many wonderful. I could never, ever have hoped that God would bring someone like him to me. He dreamed with me in those early years in all the excitement of what God had for us in life, he was anxious with me while we waited for our first baby and becoming parents, and was exasperated along with me in the many sleepless nights that followed. He has held me together and lifted me up when I have crumbled in pain and grief and has loved me like Christ loves his church. I could not love him more.......but then again I thought that 8 years ago :) 

Happy Anniversary Babe!

For the past two weeks my husband and I have been trying to eat {really} well.

It's been a challenge lol. 

We're talking bone broths, salads, soups, salad, more salad, salad.....My kids told someone the other day that salad is their mommy's favorite food. NO IT'S NOT.

I'm about 11 weeks postpartum and didn't realize how much during this last pregnancy I just ate whatever-whenever :) I have a sensitive gut so I'm working backwards now to undo habits I formed those 9 10 months. I can't eat dairy usually, yet for some reason each time I am pregnant I'm able to tolerate it. So it's months of bliss eating ice cream, pizza {everything terrible for you} then a sudden jolt back to reality after each baby has been born. 

BUT this time around it was Jeremy's idea to eat well! Say whatttttt! The Wendy's eating guy I fell for 10 years ago is now a kale smoothie drinking man it's crazy haha! He said he really wanted to cut out things like processed foods, sugars, grains, etc. I was all for it! But yikes it's been harder than I remember. Before you freak out don't worry, I'm getting plenty of calories while breastfeeding :) I am making sure to eat LOTS -- just eating better things. Trading out process snacks or sugary treats for produce or protein. We both feel awesome except for our constant complaining to each other LOL. Which I have to agree is the worst. There's nothing more annoying than being around someone who's on some kinds of "diet" and listening to them complain the whole time. You wanna say "You're the one who decided to do this!" So we have been trying harddddd not to do that except when we are together then the flood gates of complaints open. 

We both love sugar and desserts so this is the largest area of weakness. If you have some healthy replacements send them my way! Then there's just cruel things like when I woke up yesterday I told Jeremy "you know what I want SO badly -- a pumpkin muffin with chocolate chips" Then he sent me this picture at his morning coffee meeting. RUDE. 

You also know you've hit a low when you dream about food. I literally had a dream last night that I was slicing a hot loaf of banana bread (my personal favorite) and eating the center piece (also my favorite) when I woke up. In spite of all the complaining it's felt so so good to kind of reset my system and get off the sugar gorging ride. Just in case you think I'm exaggerating the day he said he wanted to start this I had just bought a gallon size bag of sour gummy worms from the bins. Not for a party, for myself. 

I'm also unfortunately the kind of person where it's all or nothing. I can't seem to just have one spoonful of ice cream and call it good-I have that one bite I want the whole thing - then chips and salsa - then more sugar - then more salty. This is a bad cycle at 10 pm! 

Here are some of our favorite meals this week!

Bone broth egg drop soup with baby bok choy 

I follow this recipe

Salad bar with grilled veggies

I slice squash, onions and bell peppers if I have them and place in a gallon size zip lock bag with

1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar

1/4 cup Soy Sauce

1/4 Cup olive oil

1/8 cup water. 

SERIOUSLY so good. Try it.

Bacon Avo burgers - squash cooked in marinade from above

so. much. lettuce.I snapped this pic because this particular lettuce is from farmers market and so pretty!

Protein power lunches! I prep a lot of this at once -- like cutting up veggies so I can just grab them

MMmmmmm pad Thai! I follow this recipe basically, with a few changes. It's the one from the back of the pad Thai sauce.........fancy I know.

Send your healthy recipes my way people! Need to change it up this week. And maybe I will have more determination not to reach into the freezer and have handfuls of frozen dark chocolate chips this week haha............or maybe not :)  

Back to my blog!!

How to even begin this post? 

How do I start blogging again after almost a year?

For my husband this is simple - he handed me the computer and said "go outside alone and blog"....while this is most likely from pure sweetness (it's true, he's the best) it's also possible that he was tired of me talking about how I never blog, how much I loved blogging, or maybe it's because he's worried I'm losing my sanity with 3 kids all day long (a viable thought)  No matter what the reason I'm glad to be here. 

I love blogging because whether 1 or 100 people read it really doesn't matter. You are able to put words to everything going on inside or in your life and one of my favorite reasons for blogging is that is serves as an online journal of my family that I love looking back on. I've never been good with photo albums or baby books - my poor kids - there was even a scrapbook completely done given to me by my mother in law where all I needed to do was insert pictures.....ask me if that's done. So I love that I can look back through my blog and re-live memories I had forgotten. The editor in me can see that many posts were badly written or in desperate need of spell check, but now it's like, "Eh, who cares, I'm glad I wrote it anyways". 

So I am back to blogging. For me, it's a time when I finally SIT, breathe, stop from the hundreds of miles and hour I've been running all day, and allow things to seep in. Honestly I know that is what has often kept me from blogging this past year. We've been on a tough road with our daughter's health. And every time I would open up the blank page to write - it was like I didn't want to dive deep once again into thinking about it and writing about it. I would see a post from a year or two years ago where I was writing about the same issue and instead of feeling refreshed by blogging I would feel discouraged that I am still praying for the same stinkin thing I am today. But more on that later. 

So update on our life = We will celebrate our 8 YEAR wedding anniversary this month. GEEZ time 

is flying. We have 3 kiddos, an old house, a cat, a growing garden (woot woot!), amazing church body, friends who we consider family, full time incredible "job" and family that lives all around us. Life really is good-----God REALLY is good. 

Jules is still hiccuping. All. The. Time. We have had more appointments than I could ever count but the final ones at UCSF last week have explained that she does in fact have EOE - an autoimmune esophagus disease. Unfortunately after lots and lots of tests and studies they strongly believe there is NO correlation between this disease and her hiccups. Say what??!? I've pushed back on this a lot - it seems impossible to me that hiccups and an esophagus disease have no cause or effect on each other. But after this appointment I really see their point, and unless we see a strong reason why the two are interlinked, it just doesn't make sense. The doctor said to me "Sorry, we found another issue when we were looking to fix another problem." Yikes lol. We are trying another new medicine, diet changes and a page long (I wish I was kidding) list of more blood work to do. So that's the plan with the her medical issues. She's still severely behind in speech, so we are having a private therapist come for the summer to work with her. I hope it helps! It breaks my heart that she uses mostly hand motions to communicate with friends and family or she will come get me and ask me to tell them something. I would love to see her talk and be able to express herself! 

William is like a breath of fresh air in terms of medical, behavioral and social things. He's just a "normal" little guy and while it may sound terrible to say, he is such a joy in our household because it's a reminder that sickness and medical issues aren't always the case. Things can and do go right a lot of the time :) And right now for whatever reason he's been such a good boy with behavior. We'll take it while we can because I'm sure that'll change real soon!

LUKE !! Yes we had baby #3!!! (Another reason blogging has suffered). It was SO much fun not finding out the gender this time around and made the delivery so much more fun. Several nurses hung around because they had been waiting to see what we would have. He has been a joy and blessing to our family. Number 3 has been an amazing addition. It's so cool to watch our kids interact with their new sibling and we have treasured the newborn stage so much more than the other times because we know how quickly it passes. I want to freeze time! That being said he's also been our fussiest baby by far. Come on, I thought for sure baby number 3 was supposed to be the easy going one!! Sadly he has some refllux issues and....get this....hiccups constantly. Don't freak out yet....I haven't. :) But he does also have what looks like a lip tie we possibly having to fix so maybe that will make him a happier baby.

Global Fellowship has been booming with life and growth. We truly love what we get to do and it's just the best feeling after so many years of waiting on God to show us what he wanted us to do with our lives to wake up everyday feeling right in the niche of what we are supposed to be doing. Our ministry there is to recruit, train and send missionaries - specifically those with a passion for youth ministry. We act as the mobilization team haha - just the two of us until we find more staff. Our days look different every day. Jeremy is in and out of the office doing meetings, skypes and trainings. I join in several days of the week at the office and at home. It's just awesome to see God use us even though we are undeserving and through difficult times in our lives. 

Now that all that updating is out of the way I'm excited to jump back into blogging. Even if it's just you reading mom :) :) I love reading back and watching God truly grow me as I work out how to express what is going on in our life. He has often brought things to my attention because I'm attempting to write it down that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Until next time!