Over the Mississippi and Through St. Louis....

to grandmother's house we go! Our big boys (Big Daddy, Uncle and Papa) headed west to hunt wild hog so we went east to visit my Grammy and Papa Tom! Here is our trip in pictures!

Poor Nanny was shoved in the back with all the littles. I'm sure if you asked her, she would tell you that she enjoyed every second...except maybe the stop at Steak & Shake on the way home. That was a little much thanks to Claire's stinky feet and stinkier attitude.

Little Coco watching a movie.

Livi Loo playing with her baby. Just so you know, this child RAN the whole way. All six hours her little feet NEVER stopped!!

Cohen...just the opposite.

Wide awake.....

not so much.

We got to Grammy's and played for a bit. Mom decided that she would stay with Grammy and the rest of us would stay at a hotel (there was just too many of us!). Friday night she kept Claire with her and Saturday night she kept Cohen so that I only had one kiddo to wrangle! Friday night when she took us back to the hotel, Claire wanted to stay behind with Grammy. When mom returned, she found the girls playing with the "city" they had built in the office!

Cohen, Papa Tom and Tasha (Grammy's little dog)

Haircuts ALL AROUND!

We stopped by the nursing home to visit MY Great-Grandma. (My Papa Melvin's mom)

We met up with Aunt Marylin and Uncle Jerry (Papa Melvin's sister and her husband)

I see orderly in his future.

Alivia with her momma and her Great-great-Grandma!

Grammy with Cohen, Alivia, Claire and Claire's attitude.

Cohen and his beautiful Great-Grammy.

3 Generations!

**Not pictured...our visit with my namesake Chris, her husband Doug and her girls Grace and Hope! We left the camera at Grammy's shop!**

Thank you Grammy for having us! It was such a special weekend!

Cleaning Up the Kitchen

We have all heard the phrase, "Desperate times call for desperate measures." If you read my other blog, you know that we have been teetering on the edge of desperate and faithful. We are faithful and serve a God who is so amazing. We trust in His plan. But we have learned during this journey that everyone has a story. People want to share their stories and we want to hear them. They give us hope. Everyone seems to have a cure. It's hard to know what to act on for fear that it may turn out to be the wrong choice in the end. Steph has spent hours upon hours in prayer regarding her treatment. She has researched nutrition and the effects it has on cancer. God has led her to put serious thought into what she puts into her body. In turn it has made me think...a dangerous pastime I know. I have the luxury of considering my nutrition in order to enhance my life. My friend HAS to consider nutrition in order to save hers. We also have a little girl who struggles with Insulin Resistance. I DETEST the fact that she is dependant on medication twice a day. Worse, the doctors think that hers is the rare case where it is NOT caused by poor diet and lack of exercise (because she falls into NEITHER category), therefore cannot be reversed with medication. This means, she could be on medication for the rest of her life. I hate that! If that is the case, we'll take it because I know it could be so much worse.

In light of ALL of this, I have decided to check into "Clean Eating" and have found that it's not horrible. I tried a little experiment this weekend. Last night we had sandwiches..."cleaned up" sandwiches. I have always given the kids all-natural peanut butter. They don't really know the difference so they don't complain. (I wish I would have done this with SO many other things!) Instead of jelly with their peanut butter, we used bananas and strawberries.

I put a little honey on Big Daddy's sandwich to sweeten the deal. THEY LOVED IT!!!! So much that they didn't even complain about the wheat bread! Claire even ate her crust! Today for lunch, she ate not one, but TWO sandwiches. (Which was great because the child NEVER eats anymore!) I realize, this was just a VERY small step and really nothing major but it was such a boost to my confidence. I am looking forward to trying some of the recipes in my new book.