There's Gaps in Our Diet

I hate diets.

I don't particularly like being told that I can't have certain things... it tends to make me want them more.

I don't really care for cutting out whole food groups either, it just feels kind of... not unhealthy, but unbalanced.

But things here had to change.

Lion is diagnosed Aspergers. Monkey is undiagnosed something... I feel like it's Aspergers but with different traits to Lion (since we homeschool I'm not pursuing a diagnosis, it won't get extra funding or extra help or extra anything so we'll just plod along). Dragon has an unhealthy gut, without too many details, lets just call it "Mother's intuition". Butterfly is an unknown as yet. She shows a lot of the same "quirks" as Lion and Monkey, but is much more of a mimicker than any of the others were so I'm not sure how many are naturally her and how many are learnt behaviours. Wolf has his own gut issues which I'm sure he'd rather I didn't broadcast. Then there's me... My body is currently not absorbing iron like it should which as you an imagine presents issues when I lose a lot of iron on a monthly basis. I also have nerve damage that we suspect is from B12 deficiency related to the low iron (they are buddies and do everything together, apparently) or possibly Raynauds. I have mood swings that frustrate me and I know are better when my iron/B12 is where it should be, but I'm also so incredibly forgetful that remembering to take my supplements is not happening (and they make me feel sick).

So I researched. I looked into how our diet could help at least some of our issues. I was leaning towards a paleo-ish style menu but would probably still eat those treats that I like because the occasional treat wouldn't be that bad, right?  So I researched and looked and I knew that heaps of people had successfully eased many Aspergers symptoms/traits (I have no idea what to call them) on a wheat free diet so I assumed that would be a large part of what we did, but I'd just replace those things with wheat free replacements... how hard would that be... But I kept looking and coming back to this "Gaps" diet. I researched it some more and it seemed to offer the potential relief of so many of each persons issues. But I wanted something that wasn't just some quack offering to heal everything if you spend a million dollars on all their products. I wanted something backed by science, that still contained good food and wasn't going to leave my family lacking vital nutrition. The further I looked the better it looked. Then I started to see it mentioned on one of my favourite blogs/facebook groups, Quirky Cooking.  Except I realised that I was only just really noticing something she had been talking about for a long time. Jo had even written a program that is similar to what she implemented for her family to take on the Gaps diet. And the best part yet... it wasn't a forever diet! You heal your gut and get it functioning properly, at the same time you are figuring out what foods your body doesn't like, what doesn't work well for you and then you start to add back in foods that you can tolerate and slowly increase the variety you are eating. I LOVE VARIETY!!!

"But I don't need to spend any money, I can do this." I say as I keep researching and researching and slowly become more and more overwhelmed with what I would have to do. Okay, so I spent the money.

Lamb Tagine

One of the Stage 6 recipes Jo has produced

I am so glad I did. There is so much support and help and it's step by step... seriously, how good is that!!! There's a Facebook group for those on the program to chat and help each other and to reassure each other that whatever stage you are struggling on, it will get better.

Even better than all of that... it's not a 6 month membership. It's not a 12 month membership. It's a forever membership! That means that you can take your time to wrap your head around it, go through all of Jo's helpful videos and cheat sheets and read up on what helped other people and THEN start. You can slowly build the recipes into your family's menu plan before kicking off so that it's not such a shock (both to them and their gut) and if you fall off the wagon you don't have to worry about not completing the program, you can go back as far as you need or start again from the beginning and you won't run out of time, you won't get out of sync with the others on the program, you just do it at your own speed.

So here is Clan McTavish, at the starting line of Gaps. We have introduced a few meals from the menu plans that have been met with varied responses (lets just say we have discovered a mutual dislike for a few items which are now off all menus). We haven't bought a loaf of bread for over a week (that's a long time to go without bread for these kids). We have had our last meal of pasta. We finished our last bottle of milk this morning. We are ready to start... but when.

The kids are not keen. They aren't outright rebelling... mostly. But they aren't all for it. I kind of had this fairy land idea that when I explained to them the things that might get better with a diet change they would give up sugar and wheat and potatoes and every comfort food they've ever had on the promise of potential health benefits. Yeah, sounds stupid to me too now that I say it out loud.

So just a word of warning... I'm likely to blog our journey, maybe... that requires remembering to blog it... but it also will mean that I can go back and see how far we've come.  The blog is pretty quiet now, not many visitors still stumble past even when I do post, so it'll likely go rather unnoticed for the most part.

Another word of warning. I'm tired. Chronically tired. Posts are likely to be longish and boringish because I can barely string together two sentences, let alone a blog with cohesive thoughts. Though I'm hoping that's something that might improve. There's been many women reporting that their brain fog has lifted as they improved their diet... so lets see how we go.

You Give Me Fever...

Scarlet fever, not quite what the original artists had in mind when they wrote the song. Two weeks before school started back for the year we had the two big ones knocked out with Scarlet Fever. It was the first week of Wolf's holidays and we were quarantined. This was our big week, the week we had planned to do adventuring every day, maybe an overnight at the beach hut with a trip out to Mt Fox. To say I was upset was an understatement. I was cranky, frustrated, upset, annoyed... I'll stop short of pulling out my thesaurus.

This was our first chance since Butterfly was born where we had Wolf and the boys off school and work at the same time. I was sooooo looking forward to this, so were the kids. Wolf's usual lack of enthusiasm for anything that might be considered "social" or "adventure" was being ignored and we were going to go and make some fantastic memories and he was going to have fun once he was out there... I knew he was!

I may sound a little callous, my kids were kinda quite sick, after all. But they weren't acting it. Knowing that physically they were still up for all this stuff and within 24 hours of the antibiotics we were seeing improvements in their physical symptoms, but we were still on a 5 day quarantine and I would NEVER willingly put other people in danger. I knew that for my normally healthy kids with no other problems that scarlet fever is pretty much a non-event if caught quickly but for others it could easily be life threatening. There are so many other health issues that can cause dangerous complications so I was not going to break our quarantine, at home we stayed. Slowly but surely the state of the house and our moods went down hill.

One of our precious friends delivered us a meal one afternoon, along with it she brought some chocolates and treats for the kids and a book that made me cry and a gingerbread house kit! She had bought it on a whim when she saw it on sale post-Christmas and hoped that it would fill in some of our house-bound time. Well, wouldn't you know it, the boys reminded me I had completely forgotten that in our pre-Christmas craziness I had purchased a gingerbread house kit and it was still sitting somewhere in it's box. The weeks before Christmas were a little crazy... I cannot even remember why, I think the baby was sick, or I was... or someone was, we've had a lot of sickness lately.

So one afternoon we sat and we decorated. Lion and Dragon took one house and Monkey and I took the other. It was fantastic! I remember buying the house thinking "Boy, I'm going to regret this!" and "This is going to end in fights and arguments and this is such a mistake." DID NOT HAPPEN. Partly, I am sure, because we had two kits but mostly it was just good kid-friendly fun. So, without further prattling on, here are the photos...

Monkey turns into such a ham sometimes, it's rare for others to get to see it or for me to catch it on camera so I LOVE this photo. Monkey and I decorated this masterpiece.

These adorable boys melt my heart. They decorated this incredible masterpiece. I piped the loops on the roof shingles, they did the rest of the piping and decorating, I was amazed at how well they handled the piping bag and how they carefully selected each decoration using the box for inspiration then adding their own touches.

Monkeys and mine on the left, Lion and Dragon's on the right. 

This wall and roof section was all I was allowed to design, Monkey is quite the artistic director. From what I have heard from photographers he has a career in food styling ahead of him if he keeps his opinionated ways.

This was a gingerbread man. Monkey kept calling him his dude. "I am going to eat my dude first".

The boys were all better soon and we planned to move as many of our activities to the next week... but it poured down all week. Like flooding type rain, not the sort of thing you can brush off and go out anyway.  Oh well, we'll just do them all when it's cooler later in the year, I wasn't looking forward to the sweltering heat anyway. Lion did have a reoccurrence (or something similar) in the first week of school that required some stronger antibiotics to make sure we knocked it out but they are the picture of health now.

Cooking with kids.

I posted this first photo as part of my 365 project.  I thought I would fill in the rest of the story...

So that was on Sunday, January 30th.  I was sick in bed, the kids were going stir crazy from being stuck inside, we had just got through the non-event that was TC Anthony and the boys decided that they didn't need a nap, they needed to cook.  Sultanas, 2 types of pasta and a banana... all the ingredients for a yummy lunch.  I can't remember what triggered my brain to wake up and think something was wrong but I leapt out of bed (no easy feat when you've barely moved for days) and went to find them cooking their own lunch.  They were going to try cooking it but remembered that they weren't allowed to use the stove by themselves.  Thank goodness that part of the "no cooking without mummy" lesson was absorbed.

Fast forward to Friday, February 4th... We are coming up fast on 48hours without power thanks to TC Yasi.

In the middle of summer.

With so much rain that we couldn't even open any windows.

We *think* we have everyone down for a nap, in spite of the oppressive heat and humidity.

We fall into a restless sleep, exhausted after a cleaning up the trashed yard and cubby house but too hot to sleep properly.

Hours pass.

I hear a noise...

Bad photo, I think my rage was stopping me from holding the camera still

Keep in mind this is 4 days after the first cooking episode.  Four short days after my eyes bulged, my head spun in circles and steam came out of my ears.  Four days since they last got in trouble for helping themselves to stuff from the pantry.  This time there is about a kilo of sugar, a cup or so of flour, cannelloni tubes, soup pasta, 1/2 a jar of chocolate spread, fruit straps, sultanas... I can't remember what else.

Would you like to see it from a different angle?

I'll give them credit for creativity.  Filling the cannelloni tubes with chocolate spread and sugar actually seems rather appealing but that doesn't mean you should go ahead and try it!  Though all that sugar spilt on the carpet and no electricity to vacuum it up... bad, very very bad.  Moving out that night for almost a week in other peoples houses while we waited for the ants to clean it up for us electricity to come back on so we could clean it up properly wasn't such a bad thing.

I'm hoping at least one of them ends up as a fantastic chef one day so I can write this off as learning to experiment with ingredients rather than disobedience, defiance, mess and general naughtiness.

The Post Christmas Post 2010

Christmas is done and dusted.  The tree has been decorated and destroyed.  The fat man has been and gone.  The presents have been wrapped and unwrapped.  The treats have been made and eaten. Carols sung, toasts made, photos taken, children spoilt... it's been a good year.

Now it looks like Santa's Elves threw up all over my house.  New toys strewn across the floor... in the lounge room... the play room... the kitchen... the dining room... the bedrooms... EVERYWHERE!  Wrapping paper hiding in all sorts of weird places, just when you think you have thrown out the last piece of toy packaging the kids have found another piece that they just can't bear to be separated from because "it can be used as an aircraft carrier" or "but it's perfect for something, mum".  Almost every decoration has been stripped from the lower branches of the tree and I've given up re-hanging them, now they just get tossed back under the tree.  There are two gifts left for two little boys who were away for Christmas but they will be delivered tomorrow.  There's still fruitcake to eat, the ninjabreadmen are all gone, the chocolate pops are all eaten, most of the chocolates people gave us have been consumed during the post Christmas DVD watching stupor.  Yes, it has been a good year.

Because I decided not to decorate our Christmas cake this year I left it until quite late to make it.  Thankfully I didn't' have any helpers other than a small Monkey on my hip trying to peer into the mixer bowl and a couple of taste testers at every stage.  It turns out Monkey quite likes fruit cake mixture...

I gave him the beater first and he licked away at that and I tried to take it back and he growled at me... yes, like a puppy with it's bone.  I gave him the spatula thinking I could switch them out... he growled again.  I figure if he has the bowl that's three items for two hands, he's got to let me have something!  Nope, he wanted it ALL... there were some big tears when I finally had to take it all away and clean him up.

The next big job was decorating the Christmas tree...

Lion got the thrill, not of putting the angel on the top, but putting the top of the tree on the top!  He was pretty proud of himself.

After the angel on the top, the first decorations to go on were three identical snowflakes Nano sent last year...

The precious and breakable ornaments go at the top and other than that it's wherever they land.

But, the same as every year, things got a little manic and had to be brought back under control a few times but in the end we had a decorated tree.

So that brings us to Christmas Eve... Wolf was working late so I got moving and got my very last minute baking done and Santa started doing his thing.  Santa left them one stocking each this year... and that was it.  I think I'll be asking him to do that every year... it was so much nicer.  The big boys and I had got into a bit of the wrapping earlier in the week, doing the stuff for Wolf and for the cousins and the things that were for Monkey from each of them.  That still left a lot to do though.  I will admit, there was much less last minute wrapping than other years which I am thankful for.  Wolf helped with the wrapping and general tidying up of the lounge room when he got home.  I made our food gifts up for family members and thought I must have been insane when I came up with what I was going to include.

So here we have a representation of what was included in each gift, generally one for each person it was intended for, other than the chocolate powder, that was one per family.  Top left, we put in a chocolate pop for them (these are the ones I did for Lion's class, I didn't take a photo of the next batch). Bottom left, my ninjabreadmen... I did as many as I could in ninja pose and decorated but with severe back pain by that point Wolf finished filling in that tray for me and that was it.  Right, Italian Hot Chocolate powder (aka Love Potion).  This isn't the batch I made for the family gifts, this is another lot but I didn't take a photo of the cute little jars I did up for family.

So, now we are a Christmas day...  Lion and Dragon woke early but had been told they were not to come in to us until the sun was up.  So, as the first rays of light filled the morning two EXCITED little boys appeared beside our bed telling us "It's CHRISTMAS and SANTA has BEEEEEEEN".  Up we got, woke up the poor little Monkey (he did NOT like that idea) and we got into the gifts.

I realise there are way more photos of Monkey here than of his brothers but they didn't exactly sit still enough to take photos.  At one point Monkey was doing his best to take photos of all that was going on because that was what mummy was doing!  Monkey took a while to figure out what was going on but he was a champion present opener in the end.  He opened with gusto but considered each gift carefully before moving on to the next.  Special gifts in the above image that need to be pointed out (I'm guessing you can click on it to see it larger) are (top row, middle image) Monkey's gift purchased with money from Lapun Mama, a wooden car parking garage... it is in CONSTANT use.  (bottom right corner) Lion and Dragon with their iPod Nano and docking speakers that we purchased with their money from Lapun Mama.  (image above that) Three boys trying to decide just what their gift from Grandpap and Nano is... it's a blow-up "carwash" that you can attach the hose to and ride bikes through and it looks like great fun... but it's been TOO wet to use it so far :-(  Try explaining that to a 4 year old, it's TOO WET to use a toy that makes you get wet.

So, after church we headed around to Aunty Chimeras for morning tea and to open gifts with the family.  Romeo, Juliette and Ladybug couldn't make it because they were with Juliette's family for lunch but the kids that were there were all wearing their Christmas shirts/dress that I had made so we did the best we could to get a photo...

 It's pretty much what they are all like anyway... not perfect but perfectly wonderful.

So, although it's late, and it's 2 hours until next year right now, from the McTavish family to your family...

Merry Christmas

What's for dinner?

Life has been moving faster than we can catch up at the moment.  Wolf has a new job, Monkey is getting smarter and smarter, Lion has finished his first year of school and Dragon is done with Kindy for the year.  It's almost Christmas and I am soooo far behind on blogging what's been going on around here.  I'm just going to do my best and see how fast I can catch up.

 *****

Driving along in almost silence one day, Dragon was obviously doing some deep thinking when he came out with this doozy... "Mummy, Are we God's Lego?"  Wow, what an opportunity... kicking my own deep thinking brain into gear I got on with an answer... I can't remember it exactly what I said but it was along the lines of "yes...and no"  Yes, we are like God's Lego because God can make us into whatever he wants to, he has complete control of us.  But no, because God loves us perfectly, he loves us more than we could ever love Lego and because of that there's never a person that is out of his sight, he never wanders around saying "now where is that kid with the red cap, I know I had him here somewhere yesterday".  He takes care of us better than we could ever take care of our Lego.  Dragon took it all in, processed it and gave me a deep response... "I need to wee when we get to the shops".

*****

Lion had a bit of fun a while back helping Grandad to clean their big trailer with the pressure sprayer.

*****

I think I sing too many children's songs when a sudden ant bite sends me into a tuneful (or not) frenzy of "Ants in my armpit, a a a, ants in my armpit, a a a..."  Stupid ants.

*****

I found Monkey a few days ago sitting on the floor unwrapping a Dove chocolate like we have in the advent calendar... I don't know where he got it. He tried to pretend he wasn't opening it and gave it to me while looking all innocent... I pretended along and shared it with him... no one need ever know....

*****

These are what Lion and Dragon took for their school and kindy friends instead of Christmas cards or candy canes.  I hate candy canes, the kiddie-crack that they are, and there was no way I was going to sit around and supervise as they wrote in 483940 cards for their friends and then when handing them out find that we missed a kid who is now in tears and... and... and... it's all too much for this season of love and goodwill.  Something sweet, something with no names attached... easy.  Yes, I'd much rather stay up late, after the kids are in bed and make treats for their friends than supervise the Christmas card writing.

*****

Cleaning up the kitchen bench junk piles recently I found...

• 1 hand grenade (toy, thankfully )
• many rocks
• 2 pairs of socks
• 1 snake skin
• sparklers
• matches
• an array of things I should have returned to people

Life with boys is never dull.

*****

Lion's class led the school assembly a few weeks ago.  It was awesome.  This term they were discovering "Who Sank The Boat" so they performed it for us.  Lion had to welcome everyone to the assembly and introduce one section then thank everyone for coming at the end.  He had a lot to learn but he did a great job!

*****

We had Cheetah and Little Bear come for a sleep over a few weeks ago... it was absolute chaos!  But we did have a lot of fun!  Believe it or not the last two to go to sleep were Dragon and Little Bear... those two kept going and going and going and going!

Little Bear managed to find our only two Duplo girls... she said one was her and one was me... she's so sweet.

***** 

Judge me if you wish but when the kids ask what's for dinner over and over and over they usually get the response "poo on toast".  One day Lion came to me and asked "Mum, are we having poo on toast for dinner?"  "Yes" I responded... "Oh noooooo" said Dragon... "not TOAST".

*****

Phew... there's a bit of a catch up... still more to go!

Dragon's Birthday

Dragon's birthday came fast on the heels of Lion's... Same as it does every year... it's just taken me a while to get to blog it. 

October 30th was Dragon's 4th birthday.  We started the day with presents and kisses!



Big brother kisses are very special... even if he does make it go on forever so that you can't unwrap your gift.

 He's not quite sure why Grandpap and Nano are sending him an eyeball... we had to explain that it was a science kit for him to do some 'sperimentin' with and I promise, his expression changed to a little more excited and a little less confused.

He received a Duplo Caravan Family set from mummy and daddy... this is the one I won waaaaay back on Childhood 101.  He loved it, I had done some careful implanting of ideas in his sweet little head when we were browsing the Lego aisles at the shops but he has enjoyed taking the family camping and combining it with the Duplo Camping Family set that Aunty Chimera got him he has had a blast... Though he did put aside the dad from the camping set... that way between the two sets there was a dad, mum and three boys... sound familiar?

We went small scale on the 'cake' after dinner that night because he was getting a real cake for his party (family get together) the next day.  We had some left over "rocks" from Lion's birthday cake so we piled one each on a plate and melted some candles to the plate and he thought it was the funniest cake but absolutely loved it!  The poor boy had to compete with two brothers and a father all trying to blow out the candles for him... but I think he got them all himself in the end.

The next day we gathered the family to celebrate the two boys birthdays... but we called it "Dragon's party" for the sake of peace.  Dragon had been trying to decide what sort of cake he wanted for days... it was a really big deal for him and none of my suggestions were working.  We were browsing in Target and he came across a silicone cupcake form for a butterfly where you can put all the funny shaped cupcakes together and they make a butterfly.  That was what he wanted, since I had been waiting for something definite to be decided I grabbed the form and we headed off... until two rows later the same sort of thing was hanging up only it was a car shape... well, the butterfly went back and a car was purchased.  They also do a dinosaur one but try as we might we cannot find it anywhere.  This was quite possibly the worst cake I have ever had to do.  I did try to convince him that I could do a better car without the form and we can use his favourite mint pattie biscuits for the wheels... nope, it was this and only this cake.

It didn't matter how close together you put the pieces the icing still ran down between them and left gaps, and they kept moving apart as I tried to ice them... but he thought it was wonderful it was his favourite colour and it was the car he had chosen.  I am so glad that even when he can be so picky about something he is still really easy to please in the end.  Just please, whatever you do, don't judge my cake decorating skills on this cake alone :-)  or my mad photoshop skills... you could never tell that I got rid of his real name and wrote in "Dragon" on the computer... could you?

Now, like all 4 year old boys who get a sword wielding ninja for their birthday... he used the sword to cut the cake.

I hope he never tries that trick with a real ninja sword!  The cake was my usual chocolate cake recipe but using gluten free flour.  So it was egg free, milk free, butter free, gluten free... it was barely a cake at all... but it still tasted really good!

Then to round out the excitement, on Monday he had kindy and wanted a cake to share with his friends like Lion took the cake pops for his friends.  I didn't have it in me to make another batch of cake pops so I just made a regular cake.  That particular day they were going on an excursion to the aquarium so I went a bit wild and made a Blue Linckia cake.  He loved it.

Again with the mad photoshopping skills :-)  And that is the best photo I got of this cake, I'll have to check if Kindy got any of him with it.

I think he quite enjoyed his extended birthday.  It seemed to go on for days and days, just rubbing in the fact that my sweet little Dragon was turning four.  But really, I was ready for three to be over, there has been a few struggles between us for three and four is so much more grown up... at least that's what we're working on.

Happy Birthday to my sweet Dragon boy.  xoxoxo.

Odds and Ends

Driving to school last week and a little Dragon voice pipes up from the very back of the car...

"Mummy, Mr Maker has boobies like yours".

"What was that, sweetie"

"I said Mr Maker has boobies like yours"

"uh, okay, are you sure?"

"Yeah, he does"

"No, Mr Maker is a mans and he can't have boobies like Mummy because Mummy is a girl"

"No, Mr Maker has boobies like Mummy"

and for Dragon, that was it.  That signalled the end of the conversation and neither Lion, nor I could say anything to change his mind.  I don't know where the idea came from and it hasn't come back up.  Random.

We had rainbow day at playgroup last Tuesday, I was on morning tea for the grown ups so I made a cake.

This was the outside...

This was the inside...

Yes, it was for the grown ups!

In other exciting events Lion tied one end of a 5 metre rope around his waist with a single knot.  He ties the other end to the rail of the cubby house approximately 2 metres off the ground "with a very tight knot" and informs Wolf that he's going to jump over the edge and it's okay because the rope will stop him before he gets hurt.  Thank goodness he decided to tell Wolf what he was about to do or that would have been a very painful lesson in length and double checking calculations.

For Remembrance Day last week I did some poppy craft with Dragon, he had loads of fun and even thought himself to give his craft to one of his friends whose daddy is overseas with the Air Force.

Things have been interesting around here lately.  Saturday must have been in the running for some kind of awards. After the first few incidents that I can't remember now I figured why not give my friends on facebook a live feed of the crazy...

*Do not give your 3 kids babycinos and then hide from them for some peace and quiet.

There will be mess.

It will be on the carpet.

You will be sorry.

*I just found Monkey standing on the kids table singing and shaking his toosh dancing... lets hope this isn't a future career path for him.

*I let Monkey play with daddy's hair brush while I changed his nappy and... Well... I'm gonna need to wash it now. Should I tell Wolf?

*I Went to put Monkey in bed and found he'd trashed his room at some point... I made him clean it up but he had so much fun cleaning it he promptly up-ended the basket of his clothes so he could clean that up too.

This was another gem, I had helped the big boys build a pillow fort to try and keep them a little bit quiet while Monkey had a nap, Lion and Dragon were both talking a mile a minute, speaking as one person."...and mum, y'know what mum, if anyone tries to get into our fort the crocodile will eat them, or the snake will bite them, or the lion will eat their foot, or the dragon will breathe fire on them, or the possum will hiss at them, or the rock wallaby will... um... throw rocks at them"

Monkey loves apples, so far I've only given him a whole apple.  I love my apple slinky machine so when I was making apple slinkies for his brothers I figured I'd run one through for Monkey too...  I don't think he quite knew what to do with it so he did what any self respecting 1 year old would do... he broke it into a zillion little pieces and threw them around.

I think he may have eaten a few small pieces.

Monkey also loves his highchair, if he's in his highchair, it means I'll be giving him food.  So he got his hook on highchair pretty grotty so I put it by the back door so I could take it outside and hose it and the next morning while we were getting ready I found that it was suddenly filled with a baby again.

Today I read on Twitter that someone (I wont name her just in case she doesn't want it shared further than she already has *update* Ali is happy to be linked and she's heaps of fun so go here to meet her) was going to book herself a colon hydrotherapy appointment.  Now, I was a little sleep deprived so I didn't connect the dots of colon meaning, well, your colon and hydrotherapy meaning LOTS of water.  So I googled what colon hydrotherapy involved... then I lapsed even further and I clicked a YouTube link... yeah. I did.  I quickly figured out that this was not something I was going to be putting my hand up for any time soon but figured that surely the clip will just go though what happens without actually showing it.  Nope, not only do they show you what is being cleansed from the colon but these people show their faces.  What possesses them to record this stuff in the first place but more than that, what possesses them to cut to a shot of their face, immediately to a shot of what was formerly residing in their bowel.  I was rather shocked by the clips we found on YouTube of people using neti pots and filming the former contents of their sinus cavities but this was just plain crazy.  The similarities were not lost on me though... Colonic Irrigation, it's like a Neti Pot for your, well, you know.

Now, to get those mental images out of your head...

Here's a cute kid.

Sunday Snapshot... a bit more holiday fun.

Summer is here.

It's HOT.

It's sweaty.

The kids STINK by the end of the day.

I have extra loads of washing whenever we go swimming.

What's not to love?

So this isn't really from today only... or even from this week only... it's a mish mash of stuff that I needed to get out of my brain and my photo files.

Last Saturday we went swimming at Cheetah and Little Bear's house.  The kids had a great time and I eventually remembered to wash the swimming gear.  Just in time to go swimming with some friends yesterday.  I'm right on top of this domestic thing.

Dragon looks super brave there.  Thing is, that's how he spent most of the afternoon, on the edge of the pool.  Little Bear really was turning blue... she's a little cold frog like her Aunty McTavish.

We really went around because we weren't able to make it for Cheetah's birthday the weekend before so we took some Milk Arrowroot biscuits, some leftover icing from the fridge and some sprinkles and made some birthday cookies to celebrate all over again!

Monkey, who was wearing a sweet little toweling robe and was being called "Heff" all afternoon, LOVED the iced cookies!

*****

Do you need a new oven?  Are you concerned that you current oven is using too much electricity? That it's damaging the environment?  That it just isn't the "in" thing?  Well let me introduce to you the Simpson Recycle.  Based on the ever popular Simpson Evolution oven only using 100% less electricity we think it will be a winner in your house. 

Lids of  "take and toss" containers for the hotplates, nappy box for the oven, old rice cooker for them to cook up a storm.  They loved it and played with it constantly for three or four days and on and off since.  Thanks to a friend of a friend for the idea.

*****

I recently made a purchase that I have been intending to make for a while.  Almost all our face washers are 6 years old... or more.  They are VERY well used and are looking a little worse for wear.  I haven't really bought many myself, they were mostly baby gifts when Lion was born (we got a LOT of washers) so they have had 6 years of babies learning to feed themselves, 6 years of cleaning up kids coming inside from the dirt, 6 years of cleaning up spills, 6 years of bath times, 6 years of tending to scrapes and cuts... most of them need retirement.  Washers are annoying, their very use lends them to getting stained and discoloured quickly.  So when I saw Target had 10packs of ALL WHITE washers I jumped.  My friend that I mentioned my plan to thought I was insane.  YOU HAVE ALL BOYS!  YOU CAN'T BUY WHITE!!  YOU'LL REGRET THIS!!!  But I bought them anyway.  Because the one thing I've learnt with boys is black is a great colour for clothing.  Brown is a fantastic colour for furnishings.  But for washers and towels and things you can't go past WHITE...

Because after it's been through a bucket of bleach it looks like new again and again and again.  So here's to 10 years or more from my 30 new face washers... yes, 30!

Oh, I do have brown ones that wont be retiring... they are brown to make their use very clear... and it's certainly not for cleaning faces.

*****

Dragon woke up one day on the school holidays and decided he wanted to be a scientist.  Always happy to encourage science I tired to think up some experiments we could do.  We did a few little experiments with weight and volume in a tub of water.  Mostly I wanted to make sure I was giving him 'speriments to do so he didn't do what I heard him chatting to Lion about and "go and do some 'sperimentin' by myself".  I figured bang for buck you can't go past a few teaspoons of bicarb and some vinegar.  so I balanced a pinch bowl on top of an upturned cup, used some foil to make sure it didn't tip over and added some food colouring to the vinegar and we had a great time making blue volcanoes!

Monkey got a bit freaked out and didn't sit there for much longer after I took the middle photo.  I am sure if I had let them the boys would have gone through my entire stash of bicarb and vinegar.  And because I did it all on a tray the clean up was so easy.  I took all the mess inside, rinsed everything off and put it all in the dishwasher, that's my kind of  'speriment.

*****

So that's a little of what we've been up to along with 12 month needles, sicknesses and teething just for a bit of fun and excitement.

Those Calzones

This recipe has changed the way I do pizza.  Seriously.  We used to buy 95% of our pizzas as a convenience food and 5% of the time when we wanted something a bit nicer I would make something, though usually on a bought base.  Slowly things started changing and I started making more and more of our pizzas and the bought base changed to flat bread bases.  Then I started using this recipe and now we probably make 95% of our pizzas from scratch and buy the occasional one when I need Wolf to grab something on his way home from work after all my plans for the day have fallen in a heap.

This is our pizza base, calzone shell, cheeseburger roll up dough, it's so easy and it's so fun for the kids but without the mess that kids cooking usually involves.

Grab a bowl with a lid, make it a lid that fits well, not just a cover.

Chuck in...

1 3/4 cups SR flour

handful of grated cheese (60g?)

1/4 cup olive oil

2/3 cup water

pinch salt

pepper

"Pizza Topper" herb mix or whatever herbs/spices you want.

put the lid on, make sure it's fitting tight.  Hand it to a kid and tell them to shake it in a circular motion (or just shake it if they are like my kids).  If you don't happen to own one of these genius labour saving devices then you can shake it yourself.  Or if you don't have a bowl with a good fitting lid you can just stir it with a spatula or your hands.

Now you have your dough... you need to turn it into something... It's got quite a bit of stretch to it so I find it easiest to work it with my hands rather than a rolling pin.  For the mini calzones I pulled off chunks a bit smaller than a golf ball and made a flat "circle" about 10cm diameter.  I say "circle" because it sure wasn't a square or a triangle but it was also lacking some rather important circle identifiers... like actually being round, and symmetrical and stuff... but you get the picture.  Anyway, spread the whole thing with sauce of some sort leaving about 1cm all around the edge sauce-free.  then put your fillings on half the circle still leaving your sauce-free zone free from toppings too.  For the boys I use ham/bacon and pineapple and cheese. Then fold the edge over with a sort of pinch and roll thing to make sure it's good and shut.  If you are making bigger calzones you will need to prick them with a fork but I find for these mini ones that they don't need it.  You could probably brush them with milk or sprinkle them with cheese or something at this point but I don't think they need it.  Chuck them in a moderate oven until they are browned and cooked looking.  About 15 minutes but it's going to depend on how big you do them and how thick you make your bases.

I press the dough out REALLY thin for both these and my pizzas.  The cheese and oil in the crust makes it kind of crispy but the cheese also seems to make weak points as you are trying to spread it out.  I am sure I have forgotten something here, I have been imagining myself making them to try to make sure that I don't skip a step but I probably still did.  When I make pizzas usually I make a double mix and do one pizza each for Wolf and I and the boys make a calzone each.  Wolf eats a pizza and there is some of mine left for our lunches and Lion and Dragon each have some calzone left to go in the fridge for their lunches.  It works well.

I have also used this for a side dish... spread out your pizza base and then spread out some cherry tomato halves, sprinkle with crumbled feta and then drizzle with olive oil... or mix minced garlic in with the dough mix and just use Parmesan on the top of the pizza... or top your pizza with feta, Parmesan and cheddar... mmmmm, yummy.

If you like a thicker base you can add 7g of dried yeast and make it hot water and then once you press it out into shape you cover it with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place for 10-15 minutes.

I have tried to put a photo with this but it's just not working so if you want to see them again you can go here.

I was also going to do a whole cooking show for you but just making sure I gave you all the ingredients was challenge enough for me...

Now go and make some pizzas and calzones for the ones you love!

Sunday Snapshot

It's been one of those weeks that just flew by...

Monday we spent a big chunk of the day with Grannysaurus picking new taps etc for our bathroom.

Tuesday Wolf had the day off so we could take the kids to see an exhibit at the Museum of Tropical Queensland (MTQ).  They had a special exhibit “Creepy Crawlies Alive” and indeed they were, creepy, crawly and alive, that is.  They had Giant Burrowing Cockroaches, Giant Stick Insects, Bird Eating Spiders, Millipedes, Large Brown Scorpions (seriously,  that’s its common name), Giant Snails... are you getting the picture, a LOT of these creatures had ‘large’ or ‘giant’ in their names... it was icky.  I didn't take many photos.  Actually I only took one photo and it was outside.  It was of a Golden Orb Weaver spider that had built a web across the road.

This is not the only spider like this that we have around here, there is a Redback spinning a web in a tree at a park near us who is similar in size to this big fella.

Wednesday was a run of the mill day, staying at home, trying to get stuff done, all of my plans being thwarted by one or another of my progeny.

Thursday is usually a day for staying at home in the morning and when daddy knocks of early we all go and get the groceries done.  This week Wolf had other things he needed to do in the afternoon, like attack this...

Since it has rained almost every day since Christmas our yard that was a dust bowl on Christmas day has since turned jungle-like (that grass was about half way up my shins) and needed to be brought under control.  So since we still needed groceries the kids and I bribed Grannysaurus to help us with groceries in the morning so Wolf could get mowing in the afternoon.

Friday was featured in yesterdays post about my Beach Baby!

Saturday our only trip out was to buy Lion's school uniforms but the place we went to only stocked the sports shirts and nothing else so we still need to buy shorts and a formal shirt for him but we are a bit closer to having everything we need to start school.

Today we made it to church.  We get there every week but some weeks feel like more of an achievement than others depending on how chaotic our morning was.  I made cupcakes that did not turn out well at all but still taste yummy so I will have to just eat them all myself.

So there is a snapshot of our week.  It was a big week with lots to keep us busy.  I tried to involve the kids in cooking and preparing the food a bit more than I usually do and I remembered why I don't do it as much as I would like... Every time I told them "okay this is hot so don't touch it" Dragon had to check to see if I was telling the truth... a hot baking tray, the oven door, a hot frypan, a measuring cup of hot water... it all just gets too much for my poor old heart.  Thankfully the tray had cooled just enough to give him a fright and not burn him, the oven had not reached temperature yet, he touched a handle of the frypan and our hot water is set to a temperature that wont burn little ones.  I swear if I told the kid to keep his hands away from a bull-ant nest he'd just as likely dive on in!  He does it with everything... "that glue isn't dry so don't touch that yet" *touch* "your dinner is still hot don't take a bite yet" *bite* "don't touch that" *touch* "Eeewww, that was Monkey boogers I wiped on his bib"... he just doesn't learn.

Tomorrow Dragon starts kindy... I'm sad... he's excited... we'll see how we are feeling when I go to leave him there.  Tonight we went through everything that he already knows goes on at kindy.  I got him to tell me what happens when we get there in the morning, where his lunch goes, where his sheets go, who his teacher will be, what toys he might get to play with, just letting him realise that it's not a big deal, he already knows so much about kindy.  Tomorrow we will have the talk about how he might see some kids crying because they don't want their mummy or daddy to leave them but he can be a friend to those kids and ask them if they want to play with him and help them feel better and show them how fun kindy can be... hopefully then he wont think that it's something he can try on.  Pray for us!

Not the Sunday Snapshot

This is a WAY out of date post but I wanted to put it up anyway. This is the Christmas cake post!

Every year I bake a Christmas cake, it's a secret family recipe (that we give out to all and sundry) that is just YUMMY!  Most years I ice and decorate the cake too.  This year I almost made it to the final stages!

I love the whole process, I love to have the fruit soaking for as long as possible, I love dragging it down from on top of the cupboard and turning the container over to make sure all the fruit has a turn at sitting in the rum, I love every stage of the mixing and preparation, I love the smell coming from the oven as it gets close to being ready to pull out, I love to see the cake wrapped in towels sitting on my bench cooling ever so slowly, I love to open up the towels ready to ice the cake and smell that wonderful fruit cake smell again, I love it ALL.  I'm a bit of a fruit cake fan.  But I have been spoilt, this fruit cake is sooo good that often I wont even try other fruit cakes because I can tell just to look at them that they won't measure up.  I'll call it, I'm a fruit cake snob, I know I am and I can hold my head high anyway.

Okay, lets get down to business, there's lots of photos because I got a little carried away with the whole process... I'll try not to get too boring.

I had a cute little helper or two :-)  I'm not sure about other people but I find it helps to have all the ingredients out on the bench and put them away as I use them... that way if I have anything left at the end I know ahead of time that whatever I'm baking is going to be an absolute flop... not that I would ever have left out any ingredients, nope, not me!  Thankfully this time I got everything in and in the correct measures too!  That big bowl there, that has 1kg of mixed fruit and 1kg of sultanas and LOTS of rum to plump them all back up nice and fat (that is REALLY important, you have to soak your fruit or they steal the moisture from your cake).  This fruit had been soaking for about a month.

This was the last thing the poor old Kenwood made before it carked it.  I was fretting that it was the motor but it turns out it was just a worn part and Dad is trying to get a new part for me.

CUTE CUTE CUTE LITTLE HELPERS!!!

I like to stop here and eat lots and lots of mixture covered sultanas... mmmmm.

We made two 8in round cakes and lots of little cakes for munching until we got to eat the big one!

Em came over for the decorating.  We both decided on all white for our designs and she wanted a simple Christmas tree design and I wanted to try something different... a hill... with sheep and shepherds... and an angel or two... I would come to regret this thought.

Em did a super duper job getting the icing on her cake... we were very lucky to be able to use all mums tools from when she did this sort of thing for money!  She got her cake nice and smooth and we managed to keep the kids fingers away from it!

My "hill" was a little lumpy... it was really hard to get the circle cut evenly in two so we were trimming and turning and moving and packing out and stuff and then decided we'll have no cake left if we keep trimming so I gave up.  I finally got it covered and one of my sweet little helpers stuck their fingers in it... I know why mum just about went crazy trying to do this when my brother was little.

So here are our decorations...  over on the left we have "fluffy" sheep bodies with their heads laying next to them, Christmas trees and tree sections, shepherd bodies and their heads laying next to them... it all sounds a bit morbid really.

Do you want to know the worst thing about this post... Em took her cake partially completed because it had to travel to Brisbane with her so she thought it would be safer to finish it there and my design didn't work and I completely forgot to take a photo of what it did turn out like.  The weather here was a bit too humid to sustain the design I had in mind but I did reassemble some shepherds to stand with their flock for a quick photo before too much got eaten.

It was really yummy, just as I expected it would be :-)  So, even if my sheep had heads way bigger than they should have and even if my angel wouldn't stay in the sky because she was just too sweaty I will call it a success.

So, very little thought has gone into this post, blogger is mucking me around, it's really late at night, I am off to bed, sorry if this makes little or no sense, I'll probably re-read it tomorrow morning and go "What was I on last night???"

and just to warn you... there's still more Christmas posts coming!