Dr. Crippen is the author of this book and also a practicing chiropractor. His journey into a cure for his migraines led to his expertise on holistic health. This form of medicine treats the body as a whole, instead of just throwing medications at symptoms and hoping they go away.

Anyone who has had a health problem that doctors were unable to help you with can strongly relate to Dr. Crippen’s story that he tells in this book, of searching for answers and being unable to find them in a broken system.

I can strongly relate to this. When my health fell apart in 2014-2016, I had all sorts of crazy symptoms. Thankfully, I had one provider who thought outside of the box. If it weren’t for this one cardiologist I had, I would have never figured out that it was one part of my diet causing all of my problems. (In my case, it was gluten, and you read more about that here.)

So without further ado, here is Dr. Crippen. He is sharing with us a snippet directly from from his new book, Timeless Youth.

***Disclaimer: If you purchase through Amazon links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Dr. Lisa Saunders, a medical doctor, journalist, and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, whose New York Times column “Diagnosis” was the inspiration for the TV show House, wrote:

“A decade ago, I stood alongside my 99 fellow freshmen as we were welcomed into the ranks of medicine in a ‘white coat ceremony.’ Here, on our first day of med school, we were presented with the short white coats that proclaimed us part of the mystery and the discipline of medicine. During that ceremony, the dean said something that was repeated throughout my education: half of what we teach you here is wrong – unfortunately, we don’t know which half.”

That quote, often repeated by the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, was originally spoken by Charles Sidney Burwell, a past Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard, over 50 years ago. It is just as true today as when it was first spoken.

This book will explain why half of what is taught in medical school is wrong.

What if there was a better way? What if, instead of starting with disease and the parts and pieces that make up the body, we started instead with the principles that were true in the beginning and are still true today? 

The first principle of holistic health is The Yellowstone Principle: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

In the early 1990s, conservationists with Yellowstone National Park faced a titanic problem. Over the previous 70 years, an ecosystem that was once in balance was spiraling out of control, and conservationists were at a loss to reverse the trend.

One obvious symptom of the change was the ballooning population of elk. But this wasn’t the only change. Many of the trees were losing their bark, which led to a decline in the aspens and cottonwoods. Also, the songbird population had decreased.

Other changes in the Yellowstone ecosystem included a decrease in the beaver population, erosion of the streams, and a decrease in river animals such as muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — many symptoms of a diseased ecosystem.

All the symptoms of change, from beavers to rivers to elk, were connected by a single cause.

The ballooning population of elk led to an overgrazing of tree bark, which led to fewer aspens and cottonwoods, destroying the habitat of the songbirds and providing less wood for beavers to make their dams. Fewer dams resulted in erosion of the streams, and a reduced habitat for muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Naturalists hoped they could attack the problem at its source — the growing elk population.

In the 1930s, the park services started trapping and moving the elk out of the park, and then, when that didn’t work, shooting them. This went on for decades. While one symptom improved (the population of elk did decrease) the other symptoms, the trees, birds, and beavers were largely unchanged.

What should be done next?

Plant more aspen and cottonwood trees? Introduce more beavers into the park? Dredge the streams and rivers to restore the wildlife habitats? All were logical — capable of treating one symptom or another — but none would restore balance to the ecosystem.

Why? Because, as the conservationists learned, the solution to the changes in Yellowstone would only be found by understanding the ecosystem as a whole, and not a disparate set of unconnected symptoms.

While the changes in Yellowstone’s landscape were becoming more apparent in the 1990s, the change started in the early 1900s.

When the U.S. Park Service took control of Yellowstone from the U.S. Army in 1916, they systematically killed all the wolves in the park, killing all 134 over the next 10 years. From this point until the early 1990s, there were no wolves in Yellowstone as wolves were a deemed a threat to cattle and livestock.

To make the ecosystem whole once again, naturalists could either kill more elk, plant more trees, add fish, feed songbirds, build dams, or, quite simply, they could reintroduce wolves.

Fourteen wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 17 more the following year. Thirty-one total wolves were added to a 2.2-million-acre national park spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

This seemingly small addition produced a series of remarkable changes.

First, the wolves, a natural predator of the elk, helped thin the elk population.

Then, the potential threat of being eaten changed the behavior of the elk. The elk moved from the valleys and the gorges, where they could be easily hunted, to the areas of heavy timber. This allowed the bare areas of the valleys and gorges to regenerate.

Songbirds and migratory birds returned to the new regenerating trees. The beavers, with their food source of trees restored, began to proliferate. More beavers led to more dams. Otters, muskrats, ducks, and fish that relied on the dams for habitats returned.

Increasing vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, reversed the erosion in the riverbeds, and created a healthier ecosystem.

The changes in Yellowstone could not be understood by looking at only one species, one location, or one plant. The interventions aimed at treating a single problem produced only short-lived changes, and none restored health to the whole.

Instead, to restore balance to the ecosystem, all the pieces must be considered as parts of the whole, where every part impacts every other part.

Just as an ecosystem is made up of many individual plants and animals, of a variety of species, each independent yet interconnected, the human body is also made of many independent parts — cells, organs, tissues, and systems, that interconnect to form a whole.

This idea of holism fits within the context of nature. When we introduce wolves back into Yellowstone, we accept the cascade of changes as natural consequences. In nature, we understand that a change to one part affects the whole.

But somehow, along the way, we started to view the body as separate from nature.

Instead of seeing the body as a whole ecosystem, the way we might with a national park like Yellowstone, allopathic medicine treats the body as if it operates according to a different set of rules.

The body, the thinking goes, is not a whole but instead a collection of parts. This is called reductionism, the idea that a complex system can be understood by understanding the pieces that make it up. It is this thinking that lets us to cut out a cancer from the body without changing the conditions that led it to grow in the first place.

Reductionistic thinking lets us take an antibiotic for a cold — often without knowing if the symptoms are even caused by bacteria — instead of asking why the immune system did not fight off the bug in the first place.

In another context, reductionistic thinking allows for the surgical replacement of a knee without evaluating the health of the whole.

Specifically, without asking how and why the knee degenerated in the first place. And no, getting older is not a sufficient reason to have a bad knee. My favorite questions for patients who use the “I’m just getting old, Doc” explanation for knee pain is to ask, politely of course, “Well, if that is the case, how old is your good knee?”

The idea of reductionism is not universal, but it is foundational to the medical idea of health. Perhaps, it came from the Industrial Revolution with its proliferation of machines to increase output and its concurrent migration into cities and out of nature.

Or, perhaps, from the revamping of medical education that occurred after the Flexner Report, in 1910, with its increased focus on scientific research in the basic sciences like physiology and biochemistry (both of which focus on the parts of the body rather than the whole) at the expense of holism. However it happened, the medical idea of health mandates that we see the human body as a collection of parts, separate from nature.

This change had a profound effect on our health.

It is the difference between shooting elk and restoring wolves.

The idea of thinking of the health of the whole is foundational to how we see nature.

We do not need to consider the health of 2,000,000+ acres of a national park to see the principle of holism. We can observe the same principle in a single leaf.

When it comes to health, plants are simple. They are not like humans. Plants don’t complain. They don’t forget to eat. They don’t sabotage their health with Oreos and reality television. Plants grow. They add carbon dioxide (CO2) to sunlight to create food. They survive.

Because of this, healing plants is easy.

A healthy plant needs optimum amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). A sick plant, one with brown leaves, needs optimal amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). That’s it; that’s the whole list. The presence or absence of disease does not change what the plant needs to create health. It may need more or less of each, but healthy plants are the inevitable result of optimal amounts of these three inputs.

But what if things were different? Let’s imagine we enter a world of plants, a world that, for simplicity, we’ll call Plant World.

Let’s imagine Plant World has advanced well past the antiquated ideas of ensuring plants need optimal amounts of sunlight, water, and nutrients. How old fashioned! How antiquated! Instead, in progressive and innovative Plant World, plants are treated like people, following the three-step allopathic model disease care diagnose disease, treat with drug or surgery, eliminate the symptom or disease.

Step one, diagnose disease.

In plant world, before a sick plant can be helped, it first needs — of course! — a diagnosis. How can you treat a plant if you don’t name the disease? In the allopathic plant disease care, as with humans, the disease is given a name, often with a Greek root. We’ll call it Brown Leafitis.

In this progressive system, researchers and plant doctors search for a cure for Brown Leafitis. Lots of money, public and private, is spent researching pharmaceutical treatments and surgical techniques (step two!) to treat the symptoms of Brown Leafitis.

The allopathic plant disease care system even has teams of molecular biologists searching for a miracle drug that will cause an already sick plant’s leaves to turn from brown back to green. Other promising treatments include, covering the leaves with spray paint and the surgical removal of the brown leaf (a leafectomy, if you will). How progressive! How technologically advanced!

Even better, Plant World elected a government that demands equal access for all diseased plants to essential plant medications and includes a team of lobbyists petitioning Plant Congress and the Federal Plant Drug Administration to have medications approved for the new epidemic of Brown Leafitis.

Luckily — for the plants — Plant World disease care doesn’t exist.

We don’t waste our time and money on pharmaceutical drugs or tiny plant surgeries to treat Brown Leafitis. Instead, we restore health in a plant by ensuring the plant has exactly what it needs to create health (sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil)).

By assuring a plant has the nutrients it needs, the plant returns to health and the symptom of brown leaves go away, or, better yet, never appear in the first place. Giving the plant water, sun, and healthy soil is healthcare.

We recognize, intuitively, that a brown leaf is not a disease of the leaf, but rather a sign of a problem within the whole plant. We intuitively provide healthcare to plants, but we disastrously provide disease care to humans.

What the medical idea of health seems to forget is that we humans are not reductionistic machines but instead operate under the principle of holism — like plants!

In the case of my headaches, taking pain relieving medications sometimes helped with the symptom of head pain, but didn’t make me healthier. How could I be healthier taking a chemical that (supposedly) helped pain yet at the same time damaged my liver and kidneys?

Doctors who understood the principles of health would take a different approach.

They would see pain in the head not as an isolated symptom but instead as a sign of dysfunction of the whole, much like we view a brown leaf on a plant. Instead of prescribing a drug to treat the symptom, the treatment might include the human equivalent of water, sunlight, and healthy soil needed to restore health.

So how do we find those basic first principles, the human equivalents of water, sunlight, and healthy soil that create health?

We must begin by seeing a disease of a part as instead a dysfunction of the whole.

Timeless You-th tells the story of my struggle to find a cure for my crippling headaches while navigating the established medical system. My headaches persisted and worsened despite seeking the best medical treatment available, including top doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. The overall goal of my book is to teach you five foundational principles of health so that you, too, can create a lifetime of timeless youth.

Timeless You-th is your go to resource to maximize your health without drugs and surgery. Grab a copy on Amazon and share!

The post Why Holistic Health is Life Changing: New Book by Dr. Crippen appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I was all excited to buy “Georgia peaches” now that I live down here, but look. These aren’t actually from Georgia. 🙁 Apparently, peach season is over already. I missed it!

This week I have two cardiology appointments. The one yesterday was fairly easy, and all went smoothly. John David, my faithful sidekick, tagged along for that one. I think he fully entertained the cardiac floor of the hospital. My favorite part was the bit he did with the crayons. See, I brought a brand new box of 24 crayons along. New crayons interest people more than old ones.

My sidekick…..He’s not distracting at all…But he can entertain a cardiology office like no other.

JD enjoyed the crayons very much, but I’m not sure that he actually did any coloring. The door to my appointment room had a large gap between it and the floor. John David found it delightfully fun to roll each of his crayons, one-by-one, under the door and out into the hallway. I stopped him at first, but then I was trying to give the doctor my full attention, so when he eventually resumed his game, I didn’t even notice really.

When I finally opened the door and fetched all the crayons, there were nurses giggling in the hallway. When I got onto the elevator, the elderly gentleman behind us said, “Well, we all know you had a good time at the doctor’s office,” to little John David. John David was wearing his Lightning McQueen back-pack, and he looked ridiculously adorable. He just looked up at all the people who kept talking to him with his little straight, serious face. This is definitely not the toddler you have to worry about running off with strangers.

I asked the man, “Oh, did you see the crayons rolling out into the hallway?”
“Oh, yeah,” the gentleman replied with a smile. “Is this your first?”
“Oh, no, my fourth.”
“What! Gracious! You don’t look old enough to have four! But then you don’t act like he’s your first. First time parents are, you know, different, more anxious and restrictive.”
Haaaa!!! Yep, true, and we’ve all been there.

So the heart problem lives on. I see my electrophysiologist today. It’s all sort of embarrassing when all of my health problems start coming out. Maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut today about all the other non-heart symptoms that I have. I’m glad I didn’t yesterday though because that doc actually understood my hip problem and referred me to a local orthopedic surgeon, but don’t worry, I’m not hoping to have surgery.

What I actually want to tell you all is what a difference eating better has made for me. You know that whole, “You are what you eat?” slogan?? Well, it’s true. I hate it, but it’s true. The last few days, I’ve just re-embraced the fact that I need LOTS of sleep, and I can’t handle wheat, and I feel like a living human again, instead of a dying one, like I felt the last week.

Out for a walk with my work-out partner, JD

See, moving to the South from California was exciting and also bad, or really just I was the one that was bad. I wanted to eat buttermilk biscuits, fried chicken, and pie, pie pie!!!! I decided to pretend like I don’t have a problem with gluten for a while.

Until it caught up with me, and I was back in the hurt locker. So now I’m back to behaving, and I feel better. Eat better. Feel better.

I’ve been getting in more exercise too. I felt too poorly to do much of it last week. Who knew? Food, sleep, and exercise: three things I never realized would be so important for the rest of my life.

That’s why I’m such a fan of Justin Cox’s Kettle Bell Burn program. (You can check it out here.) He teaches the importance of a balanced diet, 8 hours of sleep per night, staying hydrated, 20 mins. of exercise per day, and taking vitamins.

I recently noticed that his current promotion is a free 5-day course on nutrition, so I just wanted to call your attention to that and urge you to sign up.

His regular exercise program is only $30/month, and it’s awesome, but if you’re still on the fence, the free 5-day course is a good starting place.

What, your gym doesn’t have a china cabinet?

When it comes to exercise, arm day is my favorite. I always actually do the whole work-out on arm day. You have to understand. I was never an athlete. I don’t even feel ashamed when I quit. I’m like, “Eh, this is heavy, or I’m out of breath. Time for a nice little rest.” No shame.

Case in point: Yesterday Caleb came into the kitchen asking Joshua to play ball with him. Joshua refused. Joshua was in the kitchen snacking. (Peas. Joshua eats whole cans of peas for a snack. We are baffled and pleased).

So I volunteered. Caleb kind of looked unsure, “Sigh. Okay, but I mean Mom can’t really catch or throw, but….Just so you know, Mom, there ARE bugs out here, and it is hot. I’ll get you a glove.”

(I complain about sweat, gnats, and bugs on the regular.)

9. Wow. It took my children only 9 years to surpass me in athletic skills. Nice. 

Now don’t be mad at Caleb. He was very sweet to me out there. He has played with me before, so he knows that half of my pitches will go over his head or five feet away from him, and I can’t throw very far. And I don’t really care. Sports are not my thing.

My sons say that P.E. is their favorite class. Can you imagine??? Well, I certainly can’t. I even found a way in high school to not have to take any P.E. at all. 🙂

Nutrition and exercise suddenly became so important to me after it actually turned my illness around. I was the queen of having two granola bars and a Coke for lunch, so this epiphany that if you want to feel good, you have to eat good was a truly rude awakening. (Yes, I know that’s bad grammar, but it’s catchy, you see. Eat good, feel good……Eat well, feel well doesn’t have the same ring to me, but we could also use that.)

I want you all to feel better too.

info graph/ affiliate link property of kbburn.com.

Let me know if you decide to give kbburn.com a try, so we can cheer each other on.

Eat better. Feel better.

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“I want to hug Olaf! I want to hug Olaf!”….”No. No. I not hug him. I scared o him.”

We’ve been back from vacation for a few days now. Daniel keeps asking when we’re “ever going back to America.” By America, he is referring to our home in California. It was amusing to listen to Caleb trying to explain to Daniel that we are still in America.

In the short time that we’ve been back from Disney World, 7 of us caught a cold. 6 of us developed a hacking cough. (I have escaped it so far.) 2 of us have projectile vomited. Maybe that’s why Dan is ready to head back to “America”!

I think this was the first time in our 10 years of being parents that we were awakened to the sound and FEEL of projectile vomit at 5:50 am. I’ve never jumped out of bed with so much quickness!! We got him changed, us changed, stripped the bed, cleaned up, and all gathered in the living room to watch Planes, JD’s current favorite movie.

I sat there with my coffee, so thankful for our automatic coffee maker, trying to force myself to wake up.

I was so happy to see Caleb walk into the living room at 6:10. I snuck off to his bedroom and went back to sleep in his bed. (Mine was still wet.)

Daniel does have some happier summer vacation news. He has an exciting new accomplishment to add to his name: underwater swimmer! He can now go under and swim without even pinching his little nose. He mostly taught himself. That’s how Daniel rolls.

We’ve sent summer out with a bang. Here are the photos from Day Three of vacation, which we spent at Hollywood Studios.

It’s taken me so long to blog about our Disney trip, you may think we spent three weeks there. But no, I’m just slow. We were there for four days.

The almost disaster

This ABC cafe was a huge hit with our boys because they have tv’s everywhere. We couldn’t get a word out of the boys or a question answered the whole time. They were total tv zombies, watching ….a cooking show. Lol!

Ordering food for six people at Disney is confusing. No, ordering food for six people anywhere is hard to keep straight. You know that feeling when you go to the drive-thru window with 6 people in the car? And they all order something different? That is our life, ya’ll!!  Every meal of vacation!!

I thought nothing of picking up these adorable chocolate cupcakes for the boys. I kind of wanted one myself.

So a miracle happened. No, I’m telling you, our almost disaster was a miracle.

Now, normally Joshua eats all of his food and then starts eating everyone else’s. But this time he did NOT. Weird. Feeding Joshua is like feeding a teenager. He’s only 10, but it is. My mom, who fed three teenagers at once, has already confirmed this.

I figured he would surely tear into that cupcake, but he looked at it, a CHOCOLATE cupcake, with CHOCOLATE icing, that looks like Darth Vader even, and said, “No, I don’t want it.”

That was a stop the music moment right there. I was all, “What? But it’s so..look at it. You don’t want it?”

Alan said, “He must be full. Can I have it, Joshua?”

Joshua agreed to let Alan have the cupcake, and Alan took one bite and discovered……peanut butter filling. Pure peanut butter!

Aughhhhhhh!!!!!

Oh my goodness. If that had happened to Joshua, we would have had to use the EpiPen, which we did have, and then Day 3 would have abruptly ended with a ride to the local ER in a nice Disney World ambulance.

Nut allergies are an easy thing to drop your guard about because for the most part, it’s pretty easy to just not eat nuts. We were way more vigilant after this cupcake incident.

It was about 95 degrees in the Indiana Jones show.

JD made it halfway through the show, but when cars started blowing up and catching fire, JD insisted that we leave. So he and I exited early.

We left the park around 3pm, sweaty and tired.

Even bus rides are fun and exciting to children. I wish I could get that level of enthusiasm back for myself.

The T-Rex

That evening, we ate supper at Disney Springs, at the most themed out restaurant I’ve ever seen. Hard Rock Cafe has nothing on this place.

T-Rex entry and gift shop

Magma, Sea Creatures, an Ice Age in the back, roaring dinosaurs, a giant octopus. This place delivered the atmosphere, and the food was delicious too.

JD had only managed a 10 minute nap that day, so by our 6:30 dinner, he was ready to collapse.

So he nodded right off to sleep, right on Joshua’s shoulder.

He slept until we were all the way back AT our hotel. And then he woke up hungry and with more energy than the rest of us.

Enjoy the rest of summer while you can. It’s almost over! Don’t forget to keep in touch. I’d love to hear about what you’re doing with the rest of your summer.

The post Hollywood Studios, the Almost Disaster, and the T-Rex appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today I met with a nutritionist, also known as my friend Lacy. I bombarded her with all the food questions I could think of about how to lower blood sugar, and I’m going to share the first, most doable steps that I learned.

I’m writing them down NOW before I forget any more than I already have!

Lacy is a fellow home schooling mom. She also has four kids, so there’s no one who better understands what I’m up against. She fully knows the drill of the busy, action-packed life!

This sounds so silly, but the hardest part of ALL of it is just not drinking soda. Coca-Cola has me the same way Marlboro has the smoker crowd! Man, I love my sugary sodas.

Good-bye, soda. We must break up. This hurts me more than it hurts you. Can I still have one on my birthdays?

This is hard.

But I can do it! God will give me what I need.

Let me sum up why I’m cutting sugar.

1. I have high sugar and high sodium in my blood stream. 
2. My head keeps getting fuzzy, like when you have a fever. Sometimes I have a fever, and sometimes I don’t. I also get headaches.
3. We think that some of this is caused by my high sugar and dehydration.
4. I also get mucous-overload from milk products. Talking with Alan and Lacy helped me to reach that conclusion, so I have got to cut back on the milk. Yogurt should not make a person choke on mucous and dry heave, apparently….
5. Inflammation in my shoulder and right hip

Here’s what I’m trying to do about it:

1. seeing a doctor
2. I’m already getting chiropractic adjustments and physical therapy for my pain issues.
3. Now I’m all about lowering the blood sugar and eliminating the milk products.

So here are the tips for cutting down on your sugar intake (Thank you, Lacy!) that I’m implementing this week:

1. Instead of snacking all day, which is my current habit, I need to sit down and eat three square meals a day. Greatly reduce the snacking in between.

Why? I have a sugar problem, so in order for my sugar to be handled properly in my body, my body needs the carbs to be combined with fat and protein. This should help my sugar stay at a better level throughout the day, rather than having constant spikes from my carb snacks. And let me tell you, I have been the QUEEN of carbohydrates, which is what got me into this mess.

2. My biggest issue is that people love to tell you what NOT to eat, but they don’t tell you what TO eat. I

mean, if you take away my bread, my yogurt, and my granola bars, what do I have left??

They always say, “Avoid processed foods, but what does that look like exactly??”

Lacy gave me some “what to eat” ideas. These are specific to my sugar and milk issues, but I think they would be good for anyone!:

lima beans cooked in ham…I think these are okay. I didn’t ask.. FYI, if you boil butter beans in ham, there’s no way you won’t like them.

Vegetables…..like cut up fresh bell peppers of any colors, broccoli, carrots, salad, fennel, onions, garlic, celery, romaine lettuce, and on and on. Cook ’em, roast ’em, eat ’em raw, whatever.

Mini peppers, so sweet and crispy yumminess, even raw.

Alan’s amazing, fresh homemade salsa: tomatoes, lime juice, onion, garlic, parsley. I love this stuff.

Fresh or frozen is better than canned because of the added sodium.

The label on the can of green beans reveals the higher sodium level. Not horrible, just not as good as frozen or fresh veggies.

This steam-in-the bag frozen pack of veggies contains far less sodium.

Avocados! That’s one of my favorite foods anyway, so that’s good news. Eating some fats is important for me, as it turns out.

Meat…..steak, chicken, bacon, fish, ground turkey meatballs…

tiny bundles of yummy beef..They were supposed to be triangles…..Oh well, it was my first attempt!

I loved her ground turkey meatball idea because our family loves meatballs, but I never make them because they are a lot of work. We also like “hamburger steak,” so this is a cross between the two.

Lacy said to just put your ground turkey in the big skillet, sprinkle your favorite spices and salt and pepper on them, and as they cook, cut them into little triangles.

That simple. So yummy.

Confession: I used ground beef, but I think that’s okay.

Carb Suggestions: 

Trader Joe’s whole grain bread…I can’t remember what it was called exactly, and I should have mine in the context of a meal.

Sweet Potatoes (like half of one)

Fruit, but with other things

Beans or peas, which are also proteins

Milk Substitutes

Almond milk or coconut milk. Since our family has nut issues, we may go with the coconut. Some of our kids can still do regular milk.

I put the coconut milk in my coffee today, and that filled me with joy. I just can’t tell you. Coconut milk is naturally a little sweet.

Meal Plates

The plate should be half vegetables, 1/4 meat, and 1/4 carb.

Now obviously, she told me a ton more stuff. It’s still floating around in my head, but these are my FIRST STEP things.

Thank you so much, Lacy! My family thanks you as well!

This week my goal is to sit down and eat lunch with the kids, instead of standing in the kitchen picking on sugars. Once lunch is done, those boys are going to learn the new habit of helping Mom clean up lunch, and I don’t just mean their plates. I mean clean up the whole meal. Laura and Mary Ingalls did it, so I figure what was good for them is good for us too. hehe

Hope you are all having a fun weekend!

The post Easy Steps from a Nutritionist to Lower Blood Sugar appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Sometimes school looks like this. Thankfully, all of the boys love books. They don’t always love the same books that I want them to love, but they do love books.

By the end of the homeschool day, I have this NEED to zone out. Does herding children all day make you feel as beat as it does me??? Blogging is my version of zoning out, so let me tell ya what’s been going on lately in our School for Wiggly Boys.

-Things are going well. Caleb is making a speedy recovery. Yesterday, you could see his lip shrinking all day long. It was quite the wonder. Today he looks downright adorable, a bouncy little boy with a smile full of chipped teeth! 🙂 Bless him. (For that story read: this.)

Caleb keeps starting out to the trampoline, only to remember, “Oh, yeah, I’m not allowed to jump,” and come walking back in with his shoulders slumped in disappointment. The problem is that his entire plate of top front teeth is loose, so until we get a lid on this situation, Caleb is not permitted to do much in the way of fun. :/

Actually, I just heard Daniel enter Caleb’s room, and Caleb told him, “I’m trying to play with my Legos SILENTLY.” lol  Ironic, coming from Caleb. It sounds like Daniel has him convinced to let him play too.

-Last night at dinner, we were all practicing our presidents song. We are learning the names of the U.S. presidents, in order, this semester. This is something we’ve just started. I can almost sing them all now. Having a good song makes ALL the difference in memorizing.

Alan hasn’t listened to the song as much as we have, so he doesn’t really know the tune. It gave me the greatest joy to watch Alan trying to figure out who came after Theodore Roosevelt, and hear Caleb chime in for him, “Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge.”
I was SO EXCITED. We haven’t even gone over that part yet. He’s just soaked it in from listening to the song!

So here’s a link to a slightly different presidents song than the one we use, for those who also want to teach this to their kiddos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFWMo4trudU

–Let’s talk about food for a minute. Like most parents, we live for compliments about our children. Parenting is such a challenge, and we need all the back pats we can get. Over Christmas, my mom commented on how amazing the boys’ diets are. “What did you do to get them eating so healthy?” she asked.

Well, first of all, THANK YOU, Mom!!  Thank you so much! I didn’t even notice they were eating healthy.

It is kind of hilarious. You can bake them cookies, and they often won’t even eat them. They are terribly picky about their sweets. Don’t waste your time with anything called “casserole” either.

Joshua’s typical “dessert” consists of chicken and sweet peas.

“Can I just have a big bowl of sweet peas!??” he often asks.

Ironically enough, Caleb can’t even have sweet peas. He’s terribly allergic. They make his throat swell, and then the bathroom part begins. It’s terrible.

It’s such a relief that peas are not like peanuts. Nothing is. We can have all the peas we want in the house. They are not an airborne allergen. Unfortunately, that is not the case with NUTS. Don’t even get me started on that one.

As long as you have plain fruits, vegetables, and meats around, yes, my kids will be very happy. They do eat healthy!

The dentist was going over food options with Caleb, for his week of broken teeth. Caleb asked, “Can I still eat green beans?” The dentist looked very surprised.

“Uh, well….they are crunchy. Make sure you steam them real good first. It will take out some nutrients, but ….”

hahaha  Alan didn’t bother telling our wonderful California dentist that our green beans come from a can and don’t have a whole lot of nutrients left anyway. 😛

— The other night, Alan and I were settling down to sleep. I confessed that I’d been drinking like 3 cups of coffee per day. Alan said, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that. That can’t be healthy.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Eh, I don’t know,” he replied.

hehehe Nah, we’re not so sure.  The third kid started my coffee drinking habit, and home schooling has taken it to a whole other level!!!

—My idea of ‘fun’ has also changed. Last night Caleb, Daniel, and I spent a good half hour laminating science centers and a multiplication game, and it was such a blast. Every teacher needs a laminator!!

You can find awesome file folder multiplication games at this site:

—-My New Year’s goals aren’t going so well this year. I HAVE been studying Jesus, but I can’t remember what the other goals were….I hope it wasn’t “Wear real clothes every day,” because I have definitely failed at that. Today, I was reading this really cute book called Marvin Redpost Class President, to the big boys, when Caleb looked at me and said, “Mom, your pants are on inside out.”

“Oh. Yeah. I noticed that,” I told him.

Have I fixed that yet? Nope. Don’t worry. I’ll change pants before I go to AWANA tonight. hehehe

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You know those days where you just feel like…….BLEH. I’m good. I’m even really excited about moving into my new house on Friday, BUT…….bleh. Today I am reminded of the fragility of life, the reality of the military life, and well, my eye itches really badly. I’m allergic to weeds. The West coast grows a lot of weeds.

Here’s the super condensed version of what happened on the journey out here.

1. If you have two children under four, you do not need to travel with a stroller. You need to travel with a DOUBLE stroller. I don’t care if your husband tells you that it won’t fit in the van. It will fit. You will make it fit. He will make it fit. This will never happen again.

Meanwhile, Daniel was super cute walking at the pace of a 100 year old turtle, looking at every single thing in the airport, while simultaneously picking his nose and saving the boogers as souvenirs.

2. Moving cross-country: just don’t do it. Too much work.

3. My mom traveling with me was truly a life-saver. I am high strung, and she was more calm. I needed that. Her calmness was essential. Thank you, Mom.

4. The actual flying part was easy. On the 5 hour flight from Atlanta to LA, we sat behind a family of four little girls. All eight kiddos were model travelers. I only had one minor heart attack, when the mom in front of us turned and asked me if she could give all of my boys Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. Phew! At least she asked, and none of her little girls touched Joshua or John David, so we were able to finish out the day without a trip to the Emergency Room.

I had to laugh at myself, going to great lengths to make sure no peanut products were served by the airline, while the lady in front of me was handing out Reese’s. You know, you just can’t control the world. There had been a previous flight, a few years ago, where Joshua had broken into hives from the presence of peanut on the plane, but this time we were free of incident!

5. Poor Caleb. Upon arriving, Alan asked Caleb, “How was the flight?” Caleb answered, “Good. I mean, not really. There was this kid that sat behind me that kept kicking my seat for the whole flight.” Then Caleb sighed and mumbled, “But there was just nothing I could do. She was just like a 5-year-old little kid that didn’t know any better,” and he shook his head.

I had no idea any of that was going on, and Caleb was sitting right beside me.

6. The military reimbursed us for these tickets, as this was a military move, not a vacation. Therefore, I went ahead and purchased JD his own seat and brought along his car seat. Traveling with your baby’s car seat is WONDERFUL. It wasn’t for safety reasons. I wasn’t all that worried about his safety. The great thing about the car seat was that it provided him a place to sleep!!! I was able to sit and read. Who would have ever thought?

7. The hard part was not the flying. The hard part was navigating through the airport, check-in, baggage claim, and to the rental car area with 7 suitcases, 4 children, a stroller, and a car seat. THAT was almost impossible. Going through security was rough too. I kept my cool all day long…….until baggage claim. When Caleb threw his little body on the moving suitcase belt, that was when I suddenly became completely unglued. I snatched Caleb off of that luggage belt and became April-in-panic for the rest of the day.

Mom told me that a lady came up to her, after I pulled Caleb off the belt, and said, “I want you to know, he just lived out one of my life-long dreams!!”

My state of panic became even worse when we were crossing the street to get to the rental car place, and all of the suitcases on my suitcase cart fell off into the road. It sounds like a little thing, but by this point I had been up since 5 am, flying with four little boys, and ALL little things were great big things.

8. I waited in the Avis line for what felt like an hour. Meanwhile, I could hear Daniel having a melt down over by the snack machines. My mom was trying to get them all a reward for being such great flyers, but of course Caleb and Dan both wanted the last bag of fruit snacks in the machine.

I finally got my turn at the counter, and the Avis lady said, “I see no reservation in here for you.”

No, I didn’t freak out. I was already in a freaked out state anyway. I very quickly said, “Okay. So do you have a minivan available for renting?”

“No, but we have seven passenger SUVs.”

“Available right now?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take it. Here’s my credit card.”

After 20 more minutes of snack machine problems, we finally went upstairs and got our SUV. Only I forgot that I had also reserved a car seat for Dan. That’s when I became almost hysterical. Daniel is tiny!! He HAS to have a car seat!! I turned to my mom and asked her to go see if she could be super assertive (not really her thing) and get one for us from Avis, without waiting in that killer-slow line.

Mom did us proud. She did not wait in line. She went up to the counter and said, “We HAVE to have a car seat.”

“What agent helped you?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We just need a car seat.”
“Is it in your rental agreement?”

“No, but we need one. My daughter is out there, and she doesn’t have a car seat, and she’s freaking out. You gotta give me a car seat.”

Mom was back in 5 minutes with a car seat. I was so happy to see her and that seat that I started to cry.

9. Well, of course we got lost. We made the 1 hour 20 minute trip from airport to hotel in a little less than 2 hours…I wanted to melt into a puddle in the floor. Instead, I climbed into bed, and we let Alan take the boys for a while.

The boys are so excited to be here–so excited. I’d like to say thank you again to my mom. I certainly could not have done this alone!!

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