Real Life is a Wonderful Life

OK, so this will be a really long blog just to warn you ahead of time. There are slide shows, pictures, ramblings...

So while I am waiting for my slides to save, I will ramble. I have realized that as I have been blogging that I have neglected to mention that I quit Kids Who Count. Yes, it was a very tough decision for me. But, my kids have been needing more and more attention and my sanity is thin so I had to let something go. I will miss the kids terribly and I really did enjoy working there, with Melanie and the others. Thanks to Melanie, publicly, for giving me the fantastic opportunity of influencing children's lives. It was so fun. I hope to return to KWC one day when 3 is in Kindergarten or 1st grade, if they will take me and if my life can handle it. So, I guess with that you can imagine my level of saneness. It is low, but, I am coping. Having two kids with FXS seems like a task that I could never do and laugh when I think that God trusted me to do this and thought I would live through it! Ha!

I did a class on Fragile X Syndrome for the Preschool teachers for the entire school district here. I was asked to do an hour and a half presentation and I did it! I think it went pretty well. It was a lot of work putting it together and it is always hard to stare all the symptoms in the face all at once when at least once in a while I try not to think about it all too much. My father-in-law came with me and video taped the whole thing—I will post my video one day when I am brave enough to let everyone watch me in all my glory! : )

Also, I have been having problems with weight gain, regardless of my everyday exercise and eating less and even healthier than before. Anyway, to make a long story short, I think it may be Candida--it's where the yeast continues to grow in your body and causes many different symptoms, anyway, I am cutting out sugar entirely--all sugar and that is tough. Yeast feeds on sugar so that has to go along with lactose (dairy) and carbs (grains, potatoes and carrots, etc.) So I am going to be strict on it for 2 weeks and then introduce grains and carbs back in slowly--because there is no way I could ever survive without all those things for the rest of my life, but, if I have to, I will. So sugar is the biggest thing I am going to try to eliminate. Now this is just an experiment to see if this is really what is causing my problems. Look up Candida on the web, you'll learn a lot. Anyway, so the holidays will be interesting--and yes, I will cheat a little, I am not super human. But, to tell you the truth after only one day of of no sugar, no carbs, no dairy—I actually do feel a little bit of a change—it will be interesting to see what happens. Don't worry, I won't go overboard but, it is kind of like people who are lactose intolerant or have allergies to wheat--they feel much better without those things so they do it--we'll see. I will keep you posted. So far, so good—even while we made gingerbread houses last night I didn't snitch, at all!!!!

OK, so here are the slides and pictures of our first snow of December which brought on our Christmas spirit for our Family Home Evening Activities. Enjoy!

Here is 3 out enjoying our first big snow! She loves being outside!

Decorating the Tree together as a Family—tradition

Gingerbread Houses—tradition.
(I am not as cool as my sister though, I just used graham crackers—and Jessie, I don't think ours turned out to look like gingerbread trailers--although 3's has little to show for itself...)




And on Sunday we sang around the piano at mom's house—tradition!