Dr Holland Appointment

On Monday, we all climbed into the van, and drove up to Lethbridge to meet with De Holland again. He is Sarah's doctor, responsible for her medication. I was a little nervous because of having taken Sarah off her pills.

The doctor asked how Sarah is doing on her medication. I replied that I had taken off, and told him about how I was concerned because as a side effect, she was not hungry. I was lucky if I could get 2 bites of breakfast, 2 bites of Lunch and 2 bites of supper into her. Snacks were not done, because, she wasn't hungry. The other side effect we had was that she was unable to settle down at night. She would have her brain going 100 miles an hour, till late into the night. She would not be able to sleep, and would lie awake for hours!

The doctor asked about the problems we were having with her off the medication. We talked about Sarah "standing on her ear", having trouble focusing, and other issues. One thing talked about was, that she was taking language at school, and math at home, (which we are a bit behind).

After much listening, he told me that she was already on the lowest dose and because she is so sensitive to the medication, and so small in weight, that he didn't see any problem taking her off of it!

I am to watch and we can look into medication again if see is falling further behind in school, or if she seems to have a low self esteem, because she is missing out on things.

I am so glad! I have to admit things aren't easy with her, but I want the best for her as a whole person.

Hunter!

As a Monday night activity, we decided to have some fun together. Sarah made a sugar free dessert, and Nicole picked the game.

She picked a game that Auntie Mandy taught them. Mandy used to play it with her brothers in their grandmothers basement. They had made up a game where they had a hunters house, a hunters garden, and a few cushions as rabbit holes. The rabbits would hop from hole to hole, while the hunter would try to catch them with bullets (more cushions).

The kids all had fun teaching Mommy the way to play, and taking turns being the hunter and the rabbits. Here is a picture of Kenny in a whole, Sarah peeking out, and courtney about to get caught.

After all the fun, we sat down a the table together, and ate Berry Crumble that Sarah had made all by herself!

Itwas a great evening!

Janay Starts a NEW JOB!

Congratulation to Janay! She has been offered a job as a Bank Teller at First Choice Credit and Savings here in town. She will be starting Monday in Lethbridge for training.

This will give her a starting raise of $3.00/hour, benefits, amazing hours, and it is only one block away from her home! Congrats and Good Luck!

Daddy is HOME!

Daddy's big job in Edmonton is DONE!

He will be working in Lethbridge and Calgary for the next while, so that means he will be home every night!
We are so excited!
We have no big plans, but just being able to have him every night for supper, and the evening will be a change after working so long in Edmonton.

You did a great job in Edmonton,
but we are so glad your back home too!

Thinking about things....

I thought I'd update how things are going out here.

Things are going OK. If you are following our blog, you will see that we changed our diet, and are eating less processed foods, no sugar, and no white flour. We have also doubled or tripled the amount of fruits and vegetables we were eating. This I love! The recipes I get to try have been amazing so far, and I have come to look forward to trying new ones!

Ken is working in Edmonton every week for well over 6 weeks now. He does get home on the weekends, and we LOVE IT. This week, Ken was home for our Candy machine run that I do weekly with the kids. He came along for the ride, which to us was great! And extra day with Daddy! Yahh!!

Along with these diet changes, I have taken Sarah off her medication. She was having a hard time settling herself down, and felt she needed to be on the go all the time. The other side effect was, that she was not eating. She ate as much as the little kids during some meals, and some times would even skip a meal, because she was not hungry. I have since learned that her food she is eating is not being absorbed properly, and she is missing many important vitamins, as well as proteins even though she eats them. So when she was eating very little, she was getting hardly anything that her body needed! We have taken steps to fix this and hopefully she will be doing better!

The other kids are doing great. Courtney is doing very well at her school work, and is above her grade level in reading, writing and math!

Nicole just had her birthday, and is so excited to finally be six! She took some of her money and bought some new clothes!

Kenny is the typical three year old! He loves to laugh, and play superhero games as well as cars, but can also show some attitude at times!

Adrian is putting two words together all the time now, and is happy plays with his sisters, and brother.

I am still homeschooling, running a house, learning about new food, baking, cooking, and well as starting yoga (from a video).

This, I hope will catch you all up on daily life here at the Lynch House! Thanks to all of you who visit this site regularly! This really encourages us to keep it up to date! Feel free to leave comments, or sign the guest book!

Sign Guestbook

Nicoles Birthday

Family Arrived for Nicole's sixth birthday. Auntie Mandy decided to bring decorations, balloons, and crazy noise makers!

Nicole wanted to open her presents first today! She did very well!

Then she played with them for a bit, till it was time for cake!

The cake this year was a "French Apple cake with Denvenshire cream". It was sugar free, and used very little whole wheat flour, so it followed our new diet change.

Most of the people liked the cake, but some did not really like the cream on top.

The kids were not part of that group! They all loved it, every bit of it and all of them and some of the adults had seconds. This was the first time that there was no cake left over at the end of the night. With no sugar, it was quite good!

Nicole had a great birthday! She even said "This is the best birthday EVER!"

Looking back....

there is an old posting from Nicole's Birthday 3 years ago, when we first started the blog... check out the archive to see some really old stuff!!!" I had a lion cake. It was yellow. Everything on it. Got Pretty poncho, and my books with my Dora with a holder thing, Its my presents for my birthday. Lots of presents. A blowy pencil thing that broke. I new dress, but not a coat."

Family Day at "Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump"

We took our family day to travel the 100km to get to "Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump"




We piled into the van, and began our journey. The girls loved the drive, and the boys both fell asleep rather quickly.




We paused at the front entrance before we went inside for a quick picture.


The kids all stopped at one of the stuffed buffalo to get a picture. There was a buffalo that we all touched and stood beside, but the picture was blurred, and we did not want to post it.

Head Smashed in buffalo jump

We saw quite a lot of things while we were there. We tasted a 'Blackfoot' bread, that was fried in oil. It was very light, and fluffy, and served with jam. We all loved it and got the recipe.
2 cup flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
It is made by making a flat circle of dough, with a thinner area in the middle and was about 3 inches wide. We are going to try it one day with whole wheat flour and see if it tastes good as a treat.


After that we went to a puppet show and learned some 'Blackfoot' words. The kids learned dog... which sounded like 'kneetoe'. Horse was spoken to mean ELK-DOG because the Blackfoot thought that they looked like Elk, but could do the work of a dog. (Dogs were pack animals, and worked very hard.)

We also saw a puppet play about a legend of the god "Napi" that created all the animals. He gave his warm robe to a rock, because it was too hot to carry, and then took it back. So the rock got angry and followed him. Many animals tried to help him, but were unable to stop the rock. It was a good story too!

The next picture is the view from the front of the interpretive center. It is a gorgeous look of the prairie! We love the big sky, open fields, and just that huge open space. (and the lack of snow!)

Then there is a picture of the cliff.
All the clans would gather here once a year to hunt the buffalo. This was before guns. The tribes would place brush and rocks in piles along miles into the prairie, that would create a funnel driving the buffalo to narrow lanes and then right off the cliff. The buffalo had very bad eye site, and would take the brush and rocks and walls, and would not see the cliff until they fell over it.

The Name Head Smashed In comes from a boy who decide to watch the buffalo fall over the cliff from below, the hunt was more then normal that year, and the buffalo carcases landed on him, and the name became ... head smashed in (Yuck!). Good excuse to listen to parents next time.. eh?

There is a huge cliff inside with buffalo on top, and under it shows how archaeologists excavate the area.

We have been studying ancient languages and nomads in history. This fit in well to some of the displays we saw. Here is a large calender that was created to keep track of major events in time. Things like small pox, police coming, berries left on the trees all winter, and the last symbol was all the buffalo gone.

This last picture represents the coats that the Eurpeon's wanted. Millions of buffalo were killed, just for their fur. Others were killed for sport. People would see them out the train windows and would see how many they could shoot as the went by a herd.

Millions and Millions of buffalo, we lost. Finally a society was created to preserve that last remaining 1000 buffalo.

This prevented them from becoming extinct, but did not prevent the many Native Americans from starving!

It was a very educational and fun day!

Yoga

Mommy and the kids have taken to doing Yoga everyday. Here is some pictures of us all sitting on our mats and working hard.

Nicole likes to change into her bathing suit to participate.

Sarah also enjoys this daily exercise.

Kenny and Courtney are not very interested.

But Adrian will try hard to follow along!

Auntie Mandy made some really funnny Movies... watch and laugh!!

The Amazing Sarah & Nicole!‏
http://www.mushygushy.com/QCU94F


Tracy & Ken At The Beach‏
http://www.mushygushy.com/KD2CN9


Tracy & Courtney Do Yoga!‏
http://www.mushygushy.com/UI2MKL


Kenny & Adrian To the Rescue!‏
http://www.mushygushy.com/JY4L24

Apple Pancake's are a Sucess!!

Finally! If you remember back, the first day we started our new life style change, Jan 27th, we tried to make Apple pancakes. I had trouble with them sticking to the pans, and only the cheap pan seemed to work. We also found most of them really thin, like crapes. It tasted fine, and was great with the yogurt and berries.

Today we tried it again. It worked!

Instead of leaving them in a bowl, we poured the batter into a pitcher, and poured from the pitcher directly into the pan. The wonderful part was, that we could see through the pitcher, and realized that the batter was settling in layers, and if stirred before pouring, it made beautiful pancakes every time, in every pan! We still needed to use butter, or Olive oil to keep the pans greased, but it was well worth it!

Hurray!!!

Great Grandma Spiers Sends a letter!

Nicoles Story

The 2 black sheep. The 2 black sheep washed its clothes. The 2 black sheep went to bed. at the morning, the 2 black
sheep started a new job. The end. (picture of a Candy machine)

Sitten together while looking at pictures on the blogs... How fun!

Snow Day!

We were getting ready to send Sarah out the door to school, when Mommy realized that it had snowed during the night, and was still blowing.

The radio confirmed, that all Westwind schools are closed!

One is still open, The lynch Family Homeschool! Hurray, a day of math, history, science and cooking new sugar free treats! This is going to be a good day!

Losing Weight!

Daddy has been losing the inches off his belt buckle!
He has now had to come in three notches!!!

This is even with him eating out everyday!!! He has learned to pick foods that still follow our diet while he is eating out, and combined with the exercise of on the job work, he is still losing!

He has actually had a few people notice and make comments!

Congrats Dad!!! Keep up the good work!

5 Days to Nicoles Birthday!

...and counting.

But with while flour, and sweetners off the list, we are struggling to come up with a birthday cake. After much thought, we have decided on some stevia sweetened cookies, layered with homemade (stevia sweetened) berry flavoured ice cream. Then maybe a vanilla layer of ice cream on top.

Candles, and presents will make the birthday complete! She is looking forward to becoming 6!!

11 More days to Nicole's Birthday.... and counting!!!
This year she is asking for a friend birthday, not just family. We will have to see!

Sarah is Apricot crazy...

Every time we eat, snack, or are just relaxing, Sarah asks for an Apricot.... Mom, can I have an Apricot? Mom, can I have an apricot? Mom, please can I have an apricot?

At least she is not asking for cookies, chips, or chocolate!

But if I hear, "Mom can I have an apricot?" one more time.... I'm going to..... I don't know! Scream!