Sariah went potty in the potty chair for the first time! Hooray!

Mountains

Sariah loves to color and draw pictures. She was coloring in the office while I was doing homework and brought this piece of paper to me and said "Mommy, I draw mountains!" I'd say she did a pretty good job, it actually looks like mountains!

<3

I have the most wonderful and amazing husband in the whole wide world! I came home from school yesterday to this on the kitchen counter. There's a balloon too, but just part of the string made it into the picture. He even made me a cute little pyramid of Reese's and Hershey's Kisses.
:) <3!

Dx

So today I found out that I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Celiac Disease.

Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disorder, basically my immune system is attacking my thyroid gland and it can lead to hypothyroidism. With Celiac Disease, my body is damaging my intestinal villi (those little shaggy things in the small intestine that allow nutrients to be absorbed) whenever I eat foods containing gluten and I am becoming malnourished as a result. And according to my bloodwork, the villi must have been pretty dang damaged and inflamed. My ND is pretty sure that in my case, the Hashimoto's is a result of the Celiac Disease.

And, as weird as it sounds, I am so relieved! I have a diagnosis, finally! I've been feeling so exhausted and brain-fogged for so long with doctors doing bloodwork, and a sleep study(which didn't indicate anything), and telling me that I just need to get to bed by x time, or to exercise more for energy and it will go away. All it took was going to a naturopath that does more detailed bloodwork, and it was obviously there as I looked at the bloodwork charts with her. All the things that the doctors normally tested for my thyroid showed that I was completely normal, but she went into it just one more test, and that result was in the 450's when it should have been in the 30's, wow.

Now I can start doing something about it, I'm taking some supplements to help in the process of healing my digestive system and also some really nasty liquid medicine for my thyroid. And now I have to have a gluten-free lifestyle. And I'm finding out that gluten is in pretty much everything! So I have to be really careful about what I eat. Which is going to be hard with Christmas coming up and pie, and cookies, and mmmmmmmmmm. I'll have to find some good gluten-free recipies for baked goods.

More garden stuff

The garden is growing, which surprises me because I usually have a black thumb. In the front, on the left is broccoli, on the right are some carrots, right behind those are onions which aren't really visible in this picture. In the back on the left is the lettuce, and on the right are the tomato plants. I don't think we have too much longer until we can eat some of the veggies!

Pretty much every time we are outside doing garden stuff, or watering the grass Sariah picks a honeysuckle flower off of our honeysuckle bush and wants me to put it in her hair. She was saying "put in hair" as I snapped the pic.

Curtis made this cute gingerbread house a couple of days ago, I keep wanting to eat it. Must. Resist.

Sariah was putting on her daddy's church shoes today. So silly! :)

Back at the ranch...

We went to visit Curt's grandparents at their ranch this morning, and I got to meet his grandpa's best friends who are visiting with them for a couple of days. Curt's grandparents have some fun animals on their ranch, and Sariah loved spending time with them on this visit. I took pictures, of course:

In front of the chicken coop, I think they were her favorite.

Feeding the horses.

More horses.

A bull, who shook a bunch of flies off at me right after I took this pic. Yay...



Kind of an unrelated picture, but I think she is making a pretty funny face here.

Happy birthday tomorrow Curtis.

I bought Curt's present about a month ago, and it's been sitting in the trunk of my car. It was the only good hiding place I could think of. Every year I have to get more sneaky, he likes to try to find his present and ruin the surprise. I ended up giving his gift to him tonight, because I am awesome.

I bought him a barbecue grill, and I had to put it together. It took a little while, and I had to backtrack once or twice, but I kind of enjoyed it. I usually leave the putting together of everything to Curtis, he loves it. But I think I'm gonna try to put more stuff together.

Wanna see what it looked like when I took it out of the package?

The finished product.

And Sariah, because she's so silly!

Happy Halloween!

...Just some of my favorites from today. Here's one from last year:




She's so big now, holy cow!

Lots of excitement, lots of insanity

Yesterday Curtis and I celebrated 4 years of marriage! I love him so much.

Today Sariah turned 2! My big girl! I love her so much, too.

I'm finally off the waiting list! I start nursing school in January. Yeeeeeeeee!

Curt's birthday is in a week. I need to figure something good out.

Garden

We started a small sq ft. vegetable garden in our backyard a little under a week ago. We planted lettuce, tomato, carrot, onion, and broccoli seeds. I'm going to try my best to keep everything alive because I've always had a black thumb. I'll make another garden post when things progress. Our broccoli has already started to grow a little, yay!

This is our garden so far, I plan to expand it when I get better at gardening.

Broccoli!

More little broccolis (because I am a dork.)