Food

For those of you that know us, food has become quite the chore at our house. Thirteen years ago I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. It became very severe as time went on and the drug therapies that I tried made it and my body worse. I turned to natural medicine. I tried EVERYTHING you can think of from acupuncture to NET (Neurological Emotional Treatments)treatments. What finally helped me was a natural path in Spokane, WA who does the Carroll food testing (here's there web site explaining what this is: http://www.windroseclinic.com/FIT.html) I found out, through this testing and a few other tests that they do, that I am potato, sea food and sugar intolerant. As you can imagine this makes eating and cooking hard to do. It's been about 5 years now since I went for the first time so I've gotten used to making lots of food from scratch and finding great goodies that I can have. As hard as this is, it's worth all the effort of being pain, swelling and symptom free. We had our children and Aaron tested as well, to help them with good health. Fortunately there are a few duplicates to make life a little easier. We find that vegan recipes work great as well as grass fed beef. We eat meat about twice a month with eggs often (Gwen gets dairy at egg times because she is egg intolerant). It's difficult because we don't get invited to eat at others very often and church is hard with the kids because of the amount of treats that are handed out. With time though our ward has become sensitive to us and has started working with us to help our kids eat healthy. Our dear friends the Nielsen's help us a ton in the beginning and Josef taught me how to cook from scratch (he has a Passion for cooking). He truly was an angel to me when it came to changing my diet. The first few months I would walk around the house crying because I was so hungry and did not know what to eat. When Josef would notice he would say "what would you like for dinner". My other great friend, Liz (who has a culinary arts degree), helped a lot by sending me two of my most favorite cook books, Laural's Kitchen and Real Food Daily, not to mention the little tips she gives me here and there.

Often times people ask "what DO you eat?" Well here's what we eat on a typical day:

Yummy Mexi Chop Salad!!

My homemade bread baking in the oven (don't mind the dirty oven...does anyone want to come clean it? ;) )

Every time we make bread we also make pan fried bread. We bring out different spreads like, hummus, peanut butter and honey mix, almond butter and our favorite agave, coconut and chocolate sauce!

Gwen enjoying her good eats

Aaron's favorite treat is this yummy Root Beer by Dr. Tima. It's made with honey and actually tastes like root beer.

Cutest kids in the world!!

Here are some fun pictures and a couple of videos of my kids.

Emma with a puff painted picture she made

Gwen with her penguins...I like the pink one :)

This is a picture Emma took of Eva, Robyn and Aiden

Cute video of Eva

This is a video of Robyn and her "physics" lesson for the day. She did this all on her own. It took her 5 trys to get it right.

Here she is setting it up

Finally! The State Fair

So after 3 years of going to the Utah State Fair and saying "I really should enter some of my dresses", I finally did it this year! A week or so before I took the dresses in I told the girls that I was going to do this and they could enter something too. Robyn took me up on this and entered some of her dolls. It was really fun to see our creations there and with ribbions too! Our winnings brought us home some fancy ribbions and about $8! Ya!

I made this yellow and white dress for Gwen when she was about 18 months. I entered it into the professional toddler dress catagory and got second prize!

I made this dress for Gwen's blessing. I brought home a first prize on this one
Robyn's cute dolls that brought home a first prize.

This is my favorite part about this doll, a nursy mom, equipment and all! HAHA!!

Homeschool Fest at the Pioneer Village

This year the American Youth Leadership had a homeschool fest at the Pioneer Village. They had dancing, games, face painting and free roam of the park. We had a great time. Our friends, the Jeppsons, were there with their family band and the kids took to dancing. We spent almost the whole day there enjoying the park and our homeschool buddies.

The kids with their faded face paintings at the end of the day. Aiden's was a shark with it's mouth next to his so when he opened his mouth it looked like the shark's mouth was open. So cute :)

Gwen found a dance partner (my friend Betsy Fox's little girl Faith). They both stayed for quite a while trying to learn the pioneer dances. It was SO cute to see them dance together.

Gwen and Emma at "high tea"

Getting used to the new bundle

So we love having another baby! Babies are truly the joy of life. She is a dream sleeper, but loves mommy I think more than any of my other babies. Aaron is slowly growing on her with much love and determination from his part. My favorite part of having another child is watching how the other children interact with the baby. It's amazing to me how quick they are to accept and love another. There is so much to be learned from children.

Aaron brought Eva in to the house in her car seat and set her on the table and this is what was seen. I couldn't resist such a sweet picture.

Robyn with Eva who is about 2 months old in the picture

Aiden, Emma and Gwen with Eva

Sweet Eva!

Aiden, Gwen, Robyn and Emma with Maeve at the Oakra Mt. Temple open house back in July. My dear friend Liz gave me the best baby gift, a week with her daughter who helped me cook and take care of the wee ones. She was amazing (just like her mommy) and I loved having her around. It doesn't seem long ago when I used to baby sit her when she was a wee one!

Elisheva Simone Kibbie

I'm finally blogging about our sweet little addition. Elisheva Simone was born on July 8, 2009 around 5:30pm. She weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces and was 21 inches long. What a joy she is to our family. I started labor around 11pm the night before. I had on and off labor until about 3pm the next day. Wow this was a very long labor for me. She finally came after about 15 hours of labor. Even after my water broke I thought "She's never going to come". Man was I relieved when she finally did. Life is so much better when I'm done being pregnant. I love the out come, but the processes is very difficult for me.

So you would like to know the mystery behind her name? A year ago almost to date Elisheva's birth day I had a miscarriage. It was tragic and very difficult to me. I can't imagine loosing a child at an older age. When I became pregnant again I was very worried about loosing this baby as well. Aaron assisted in a blessing that Heavenly Father said I would have a healthy baby girl with no complications and to name her Elizabeth. We went to look up her name and it means "promise from God"! Her very name is a promise that she would be perfect and not to worry. The only problem with Elizabeth is that my brother just named his little girl Elizabeth. So as we were looking at the meaning we saw that the Hebrew version was Elisheva. We really liked this so this is her name.

I have my doubts of being a mom of 5. I worry that I can't be the kind of mom I want to be and give them all the love they deserve, but I know deep within my heart that Heavenly Father wants me to do this so I know that I can do it with His help. I pray everyday for all the love that my children need and for angles to come and administer to our family. Man does He answer prayers. I know that Heavenly Father only gives us what we can accomplish. I heard a great quote the other day "the Holy Ghost will NOT lead us down a path we cannot accomplish."

6 more weeks!!

Yes, I only have 6 more weeks to go...or some people say "6 weeks?! I thought you were due any day, wow, are you having twins?" No I'm not having twins, yes I am short and have no other place for a baby to go, but out. We are all very excited to invite a new baby into our family through another home birth and look forward to sharing pictures with you all. Sorry about the bad quality of a picture...

Lessons from Kit

Emma just finished another semester of Liberty Girls. This past semester we learned about a girl named Kit from the 1930's. She lived during the Depression. One thing that happened is her Aunt Milly came and made her a dress out of chicken feed sacks. In June, all the Liberty Girls groups will be going to a retreat in Salt Lake. The girls love to dress in costume so we just put together this remake of a 1930's dress for Emma to wear. Doesn't she look cute in it?

Here are some pictures of our group visiting the Humanitarian Aid Center in Salt Lake. Kit did a lot of service in the books we read, including feeding the homeless and getting others to donate clothes and shoes to needy kids. We learned some ways to serve others and where our donations go. It was touching to my girls to see what other children are living like around the world. Emma said "Mom, after that, I feel really spoiled I want to give more" Robyn started in on making baby kits to donate. I'm so grateful for compassionate and loving children!

Easter

For Easter we really try to stay focused on what it is all about, Christ. On the Saturday before Easter, we have a tradition with Joe and Krista Nielsen to have an Easter egg hunt where we don't use candy. This year we did nickles in the eggs and then had a "store". We talked a lot about Christ and the reason for celebrating Easter. On Sunday Aaron and I do not give baskets or candy, but read stories about Christ and attend church. I find it very important to teach our children why we celebrate these important holidays.

Josef and Aaron hiding eggs
Baby number 5 attending in utero

anticipation

Gwen and Ainsley

Gwen

Aiden

Robyn

Emma is the pink blurr in the back ground. It was hard to get her on camora. Aeryn is in the blue.

Other WA photos

Here are some more pictures from our Washington trip. One of my favorite places to go in Seattle is Alki Beach. You can see the Olympic Mountains, Ferry boats and down town Seattle from a distance. The kids loved playing in the sand.

Gwen's feet
The kids with the Puget Sound in the back ground

Robyn's creation of her name (do you like the Rainer Beer cap?)

Robyn's self portrait

A ferry boat

Me with the kids and down town Seattle in the back ground

One day I took the girls to the Bellevue Doll Musuem and Grandpa took Aiden and Max to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Feild. I did not get any pictures of Aiden at the Flight Museum, but here are the girls with the dolls. They loved it! They are holding the dolls that their Aunty Gwen made them. Aren't they cute!!

On the way home we stopped at Snoqulimie Falls.