Who am I?

I'm a thirty-something wife and mother working on accomplishing my goals. Some of them are goals I've had for years, others are more recent additions to my list. Some take a lot of work, others not so much. Either way, I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment as I learn from them and complete them.

Me, our Little Miss Sunshine, and Mr. Mellow, who balances me out nicely

Goals
I like to make lots of goals, even if I don’t always meet them as quickly as I’d like.

Projects
I always have projects I’m working on, whether it’s painting a room in the house (eventually I will paint every room in the house), building a piece of furniture, recovering a chair, sewing a skirt for myself or our daughter, or whatever, there’s always something I’m working on.

Running

I’ve been running since middle school track and high school cross country and track. I’m not fast, but I have pretty decent endurance, and as long as I’m not injured I really enjoy doing distances. I’ve had chronic shin splints for the last 12 or so years. It never mattered how slowly I eased into training, I’d still end up with shin splints. Recently I’ve been working with a physical therapist to resolve some issues with my left knee, and I have high hopes of being able to run completely pain free very soon. I’ve run 1 marathon, 4 half marathons, an 8k, and lots of 5ks over the years, and I would like to focus on bringing my half marathon time down.

Recipes

I'm not very good at coming up with recipes on my own, but I've started adapting some to fit in our dietary limitations. Mr M has inspired me though (he's a good intuitive cook), and I'm slowly adding to my stack of recipes.

Gluten free (and then some)

Our daughter and I have celiac disease and one of the side effects for us is that our intestines are damaged and don’t absorb nutrients from food as well as they should. As a result, there’s a LOT of things we can’t eat because we’ll be spending a lot of time in the bathroom (short term) and feeling progressively sicker, among other things, if we continue to eat them (long term).

The current list of foods we don’t eat includes: gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, corn, sorghum, millet, tapioca, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant, yams/sweet potatoes, melons, cashews, peanuts, coconut, almonds, rice, quinoa.

So what do we eat? We're currently on GAPS, so we eat meat (elk, poultry, pork, fish, shellfish, beef), veggies (except those mentioned above), and fruit (except those mentioned above). We're technically on full GAPS, but because of our sensitivities we haven't actually added in all the GAPS legal foods like dairy, eggs, etc. That will come with time though. I’m constantly searching for new recipes to expand our menu, and lately have found GAPS and paleo/primal recipes to be the most helpful (ie, they have the least amount of substitutions that I’ll have to make).

GAPS

We were already essentially eating a GAPS legal diet, so we took the plunge, starting with GAPS Intro and moving to the full GAPS diet. It may seem restrictive, but we've seen progress with our symptoms already, so we'll stick with it. 

Homeschooling

We are homeschooling our daughter, and having a great time doing it. We love the flexibility of our schedule (we’ve been able to take several family vacations during the school year), and the one-on-one attention is great. We are following the curriculum recommendations laid out inThe WellTrained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and it’s so fun to see our daughter learn and progress.

Adoption

We’ve known since we were newlyweds that we wanted to adopt, and 10 years later (2011) we felt like the time was right to start the process. We took our time with the paperwork, but in August 2012 we were finally approved to adopt. After much prayer, we decided to go through LDS Family Services, which means we’ll most likely adopt an infant. We’re fine with any child (or a sibling group) that’s younger than our daughter, but LDSFS is involved primarily in infant adoptions. Our daughter is excited to have a sibling (she's praying for a sister!) and we look forward to the day when our family will be blessed by someone's brave, selfless decision.

If you, or someone you know, is considering placing your child with a family through adoption, please contact us- we’d love to get to know you!

1001goalsblog (at) gmail (dot) com

Cub Scouts

I'm currently an assistant Wolf Den leader. It's my first time working with the Scouts, and I'm learning a lot!