ouch!

I had the best intentions on our trip.  I was going to make a bunch of snacks ahead of time and I was going to look up restaurants with gluten free menus so we could stay "clean" the whole time.  There's a place I've heard of that has a road lined with good intentions.  Let's just say, it didn't happen.  First of all, I am famous for trying to pack too much into a day.  But this wasn't all of my doing this time.   It took so long to get all of the house projects done and to get all of the clutter out that by the time we got the house listed to sell it was right before we were going to leave.  We decided with the Realtor that we would actually wait until the day we left to list it so that we didn't have to deal with showing it while we were getting ready to go.  That was hugely helpful but it meant that as we loaded the car to leave I was literally going through each room making sure it was cleaned and ready for the open house happening that same afternoon!  At the very end I made sure I was the last one out the door and no one had touched anything.

Audrey's vine pretty much sums it up - you can see it here.  You just have to realize that she loves purple and I took great pains to paint that room just the way she wanted it :)

Any way, with the packing for a trip, packing for a year at college, cleaning and de-cluttering - I didn't get to the snacks.  I didn't really even get to the second half of the trip for Craig and I.  I was still making reservations as we drove down the road!  After 2 weeks of eating out and only some of the times being smart about it, my body was quite angry with me!  It took about 2 weeks to get back on track.  It doesn't help that selling a house is just plain stressful too.  But slowly and surely I'm getting there.  It was a good lesson that it's a lot easier to fall off the clean wagon than it is to climb back aboard!  

Hi!

Welcome to my newest blog where I'm going to try to chronicle my adventures in gluten free eating while maintaining a very active way of life!  I have another blog where I talk all about my love of cake decorating and baking that you can visit here if you'd like (and I hope you do).

Let me introduce myself a little bit.  I am a wife to Craig, who travels for work all around the Pacific Northwest selling capital equipment to hospitals.  I am a mom to Sydney, who rides & trains hunter/jumper show horses and teaches lessons in Tampa Florida and to Audrey, who is a sophomore in college equipping herself to work in the music industry.  I also share my life & my heart with my two furry babies, Libby (a chihuahua) and Bear (a manx cat).  Bear is a big momma's boy although he thinks he is a tough guy, and Libby is attached to my hip.  She goes pretty much everywhere with me except restaurants and grocery stores.  She has travelled with us all over the country too.  She has great manners for staying quiet while out shopping and usually people don't even realize she is watching everything from the comfort of her bag on my shoulder.

Admittedly, I do tend to gush about all my kids - fair warning :)

I'd also like to let you know how I learned the benefits of a healthy diet.  I'll try to give the abridged version because I could go on & on about my passion for what I've found - well, I guess I will actually because that's part of the purpose of having this blog!  But for now I'll start at the beginning:  from the time Audrey was a year old until after she turned 5 she suffered from horrific bouts of high fever, full body stiff muscle soreness, headaches, and all over pain.  She would have "episodes" that would last 3-4 days with all of those symptoms that gained in frequency until they were at least once a month.  And when I say high fevers, I mean 105-106!  I have used every thermometer sold over the counter for let's just say everywhere they can be used, and she would top them all out!  A couple days before she would be hit hard, I could see it coming in her eyes and she would insist that I not take her temperature because she knew it too and didn't want to stop playing.  I actually played a game where I would kiss her forehead and then take her temp to see how close my guess was.  My lips became so calibrated I was always within a half degree of correct.  Needless to say, we saw a lot of doctors with a lot of different specialties