New Year, New Beginnings

I love that it's a new year.

If you have had the undeniably amazing opportunity to follow any of this blogventure (blog+adventure... I tried) you know that last year was something else for me. It was filled with grief, hurt, unbearable sadness, emptiness, anxiety, depression and all those other great life things. It's no wonder why I was looking forward to a new beginning.

Some argue that there is no difference between December 31st at 11:59pm and January 1st at 12am. For me, there is a clear break. In my mind I get a new chance, a fresh start- and who can't use one of those?

For this year, I am devoted to being better. A better wife and mother. A better friend. A better worker. That also means that I am devoted to intentional time with my kids and taking more dates with my darling husband. I get to be slow to anger and quick (er) to forgive. I am vowing to not procrastinate when someone asks me to hem a pair of pants. I am saying yes to more messages of encouragement to people who encourage me. It's a package. It's not just about me saying I am going to eat healthier, it's about the bigger picture of being able to see my children walk down the aisle one day or bounce my grandchild on my knee.

It's time to live for the bigger picture. I think I am ready.

A blessed New Year to you and yours! 

Soup!

So I hope I am not the only one who struggles to put food on the table sometimes. It's not necessarily that I don't have what I need (although that does happen). It's more about planning ahead and making something that everyone will want.

Right now I am working with my husband, a newly vegetarian, my stepson who is pretty good but if it looks funny- no way, my daughter Sofia (3) who eats so little sometimes I wonder how she keeps on living and Leila (16 months) who eats everything and twice as much as Sofia. I'm pretty easy going too but.... little to no dairy. That leaves me frustrated and wanting to head to the closest drive-thru.

As it turns out, with the  changing seasons and changes in seasonal foods, I have latched on to soup as my go to and I found the perfect book! From the library of course (love it!). The book is called SOUP and it is just a compilation of a bunch of super yummy, super easy, soup recipes. I don't think I have ever cooked so many recipes out of one book in my whole life. Pumpkin soup, chunky turkey soup, lentil soup, even Mulligatawny is honor of the Soup Nazi himself. I think I added too much ginger though. Time for some tweaking. Anyway.

The thing about soup is that most times it is easy and can be quick- but you have to have the right things laying around. I suggest you always pick these things up at the store and have them on hand:

butter

onions

vegetable or chicken stock

parsley

potatoes

carrots

celery

For some reason it seems like most recipes call for some combination of the above and having those things around can be a life saver. Especially after a long day.

I definitely recommend the book- just buy it, you won't be disappointed but until then here is one of my favorites:

Allotment soup

You need:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium leek, finely sliced

2 medium carrots, diced

1 large zucchini, diced

1 celery rib, diced

1 large potato, diced

2 tomatoes peeled and diced

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 quarts cold water

sea salt and ground pepper

6 oz frozen green beans

How to:

Heat oil in a large pot. Add leek, carrots, zucchini, celery, potato, tomato and garlic and cook, stirring regularly for 10-15 minutes until soft but not brown. Add water and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 45 minutes or until everything is tender. Add frozen green beans and heat until tender. Serve with some yummy crusty bread.

Yum-o! Enjoy!

Summer time salad

When I was growing up summer meant a lot of things.... iced sun tea, grilled foods and lemon and oil salad. I made this salad just the other day with some garden lettuce. It is way simple and a beautiful memory for me. I know, "lemon and oil? Salad? Seriously?"

Yeah, I'm serious. Here is how it goes:

You need:
The amount of everything depends on the size of the salad
Lettuce of choice (the crisper, the better), chopped
Onions, thinly sliced
Tomato, thinly sliced
Optional ingredients: cucumbers, grated carrot, radish, whatever
Juice of 1 lemon (or more for a bigger salad)
Olive oil (or other oil of choice)
SALT (very key!)

How to:
Place all ingredients except lemon, oil and salt in a bowl. Mix. Squeeze juice from lemon into the salad being careful to catch any seeds. Add what seems to be an equal amount of oil. Toss to cover. Now add the salt to taste, a little at a time. Let sit, covered, in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Toss before serving.

The salt is key. You don't want anyone having a heart attack over the sodium content but you do want enough salt for it to enhance the flavor of the lemon and oil as the dressing for this simple salad. If you taste it and think "yuck," you just need to add more salt.

Growing up, my mom always added a whole pack of chopped, dirt-cheap lunch meat. It was a summer meal for us. I always appreciated it and never realized it for what it really was- my mom just trying to provide for us. I am so happy that once I had the ignorance of a child!

Enjoy! Happy summer!

Food diary of the scared to die

I gotta tell you, that title took me a while....

Me, my sister Lisa and niece Whitley

In my last post I mentioned how my sister Lisa was diagnosed with breast cancer last week. This came as a shock given the fact that I'm not done grieving my mom's death, and neither are my sisters. Through my mom's experience my sister has done a lot of research about cancer, treatment methods conventional and non-conventional, etc. She has made the decision to not take any conventional action right now, not surgery, not radiation, not chemotherapy. She is on a super-duper cancer fighting vegan diet with other supplements in hopes that it will create an environment where cancer cannot survive or prosper. This might sound like a death sentence to people who have only known conventional treatment or know little about cancer. It is not. If you stop and think and drown out the noise of the conventional medical system (where profit plays a role), it makes all the sense in the world to put only good stuff in your body to fight cancer. It is a risk but people who do conventional treatment die everyday. My mom was an example.
With that being said, I have decided to make some drastic changes to my diet as well, to come along side my sister. Here are some things I am doing or eating now:

• Drinking water and 100% fruit and veggie juices, no pop
• As much organic raw veggies and fruits as possible, or frozen but not canned (I have read that most cans are lined with a BPA plastic which can get into the food)
• Organic brown rice, not white rice
• Whole grain pastas
• Almond butter instead of peanut butter
• Continuing with organic milk (looking into raw milk)
• Making my own soups and sauces
• Staying away from high fructose corn syrup, aspartame and MSG
• Doing my best to stay away from anything in the processed food aisles between the dairy and the produce
• Very limited sugar intake
• Looking into getting grass-fed meats
• No processed meats

Another thing I did was get rid of anything that I didn't want to snack on. It usually happens around 2 or 3pm and 10:30pm when I get the "snackies." I reach for something easy which is usually junk. It only leaves me feeling like I want more. And because I am an emotional eater anyway, this really was not good. So I threw those things out.

Another challenge has been having stuff that my kids will eat but not have junk around. I realized that my kids have the habits they do because they have watched me eat in front of them for their whole lives. When I am eating a piece of chocolate and Sofia looks at me, squints her eyes and says, "please can I have some chocolate, mommy?" what am I to do? If I don't have junk in my house I won't be lying when I tell my kids I don't have any treats but they can have a piece of fruit. I can do it! So can you!

So, this is day three and I feel good. Here is what I have eaten for the last three days:

Day 1: Breakfast: blueberry bagel with almond butter and milled flax seed with a tiny bit of apricot preserves, a banana and some watermelon. Lunch: Chicken salad with low mayo and steamed veggies mix. Dinner: Turkey burgers on whole wheat buns, veggie salad and baked sweet potato fries.

Day 2: Breakfast: Oatmeal and fruit. Lunch: Rosemary chicken salad on wheat, orange pepper slices and watermelon, sun chips. Dinner: Caesar salad and bread (catered meal I helped serve at church, not the best pick) and apple juice.

Day 3: Breakfast: Egg white bagel sandwich and orange juice. Lunch: Tuna salad on whole wheat, sugar snap peas and strawberry/blueberry mix.

This might not seem very drastic but just the amount of stuff I am not snacking on during the day is serious and to my benefit.

I am trying not to get crazy or stress out about it. I understand that a lot of stuff in my life is totally out of my control. I understand I am not my mother or my sister. I also understand, though, that if I can make some positive changes in my life with something that is in my control, I should do it. There is no time to waste! I guess you could say I am scared to death to continue eating like crap. If you eat like crap, you should be too.

Today, take a look at your life to see where you can make some positive changes and go for it. This is it, you have one life.

Leila, you got me on my knees...

...praying to God you'll sleep... Leila!

Leila is my dear 7 1/2 month old daughter, also known as little sweetie, cream pie, little glo worm, brutus magutus, Leilers and occasionally, little stink face. The last one really isn't as harsh as it seems when you combine a cute baby with a poopy diaper and baby talk, really. I hope she sees it differently but I feel like her whole life has been kind of crazy. I don't know if this is really a post about my daughter Leila or a post about having two children close together. Either way, I hope someone can pick up what I'm putting down.

My pregnancy with Leila was joyful and fearful. I found out I was pregnant with Leila on November 13. We were so happy because we had lost a baby at 7 weeks at the beginning of September.  I was sick like with Sofia and scared for a while because I didn't want to lose this baby too. In the end we made it just fine and after a carefully planned birth, I had Leila on July 17. I had her totally naturally and it was a very empowering, amazing and totally wack-a-do experience. I was exhausted after being up all night and when I finally got hold her I just felt overwhelmingly overwhelmed. Ug. I loved her but I was thinking to myself "who is this new kid?" "how am I going to recover and take care of two kids?" "when can I sleep?". After some personal complications, I left the hospital and began to work on my new "normal."

At about 2 1/2 weeks Leila started with some crazy reflux and colic. I remember being on the way into the grocery and she just started to spit up EVERYTHING in her stomach and then some. It drenched her clothes, the car seat cover and actually drained through the car seat and onto the pavement. It freaked me out big time. The colic period was from 9pm to midnight or later every night like clock work. We heard from someone that taking her to the chiropractor might help with both the reflux and colic so we did, and it helped! The reflux never came back after the first appointment and the colic peaked at 6 weeks then disappeared. Now Leila is a pretty good sleeper... she just gets up a lot at night still!

After things started to settle in that way, my mom fell ill again. She was at the hospital for almost a month exactly and then went into home hospice care at my dear sister's house. So from the beginning of September to mid- December me and my girls woke up everyday, got around and left for either the hospital or my sister's house. I basically moved in to my sister's house. Each day I took care of my recently potty trained toddler, my needy infant daughter and my dying mother. It was the most taxing, exhausting, emotionally annihilating time in my life. It's important to note here that if given the opportunity to do it again-- I would, in a heart beat. My mother and daughters are that important to me. My mother passed on December 15 and I am still grieving.

Now I can't believe that Leila is going to be 8 months. I feel like I have been so mentally strained between making sure that everyone is bathed and has eaten and has snacks and grief and everything else that I don't feel like I've been entirely present. But maybe I am being too hard on myself and this is just what having a second child (I keep saying second child- my second child, I also have my stepson) is like. I am glad to report that at this point I am keeping up in the baby book and with picture taking. Leila is no less special just because she is my second child. Leila has a very light-hearted and fun spirit. She is demanding and intense and stong. She is not a little squirt like Sofia- she is long and the weight of Sofia as a 1 year old. When she wants something, you know it. When I walk out of the room, she cries. She loves her mother, what can I say? Her comfort is to "paw" at my face and chest which usually ends in an involuntary blood draw. She is kind of the family goat right now, eating everything (especially paper) in sight. She is doing some serious army crawling, determined to get in to stuff she is not allowed to get in to. Leila is happy and giggly but very intense. And I love her so much. She is so special to me, just like Sofia, but in her own way. I can't wait to see the girl she is growing up to be :)

Me: Let's get this out of the way

It is kind of a bummer to talk about yourself. When someone asks me to tell them a bit about myself (think interview), I never know where to start. Do I give a life story? Focus on the triumphs over adversity? Make up something more interesting? Ha ha. I am going to give it a shot- if anyone is reading this at least they should know a little about the Holy Housewife!

I am a stay at home mother of three. I spend my days with my daughters, Sofia and Leila, 2 1/2 and 7 months respectively. My stepson, Luke, is a big-time fourth grader. My beautiful husband is a high school Spanish teacher. Together, they are the loves of my life.

In December, I lost my mother to ovarian cancer. The grief is overwhelming at times and I miss her still. I imagine the missing may go on forever. She was one of my very best friends. I guess you could say that now I am a functioning basket case.

Outside of my current feelings of identity crisis, there are, in fact, things that define me. I went to school for fashion design and do consider myself somewhat of a designer/seamstress on the side. My big-deal project right now is a wedding dress for a friend. I think it is going well and can't wait to deliver the final product :). My husband and I love indie music... and I love anything that makes me want to dance. Before I hit my next big milestone birthday I want to take a hip hop dance class and learn to break dance. I am definitely a glass half full person but also seasonally affected...so.. I am glass mostly full from April to December and glass totally empty from January to March. It's March tomorrow so I am pumped about that.

I was raised catholic but departed, if you will, after high school. At college, I went through a very trying "desert time." It was a time in which I felt alone and lonely, and like I didn't fit in with anyone. I missed my family, my friends and who is now my husband. I found a church that was non-denominational and spoke to me in a way that I could hear. Now, God is a huge part of my everyday and I wouldn't want to have it differently. More on this later.

Now you know a little bit about me and we have something to build on. This is good.