100 Day Raw Challenge Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big day. August 1st marks day one of my 100 day raw food challenge being put on by Bunny Berry and RawFu. The nice thing about this challenge is that I get to make up my own rules, set my own goals. My main goal is to eat a high raw diet for the duration of the challenge. By high raw, I mean 90% or more. I plan to use ingredients such as agave nectar and nutritional yeast that are consider "dead foods" but I feel add enough enjoyment to the raw recipes containing them to be worth it.

A while back I fasted from cooked food and completed 21 days on raw food only. I was less than graceful, but made it all 21 days. It was so HARD to do! As I recall, it was in late fall right around Thanksgiving. That was the hardest meal I've ever eaten. Seeing all the hot cooked food around me made my cold raw substitutes less than desirable but I did it. Oh yes, I made it through the torture that it was. But I was fasting. That's the difference. I chose to give up something I had grown completely dependent on and was forced to find new ways to cope. My emotions ran rampant and from a faith perspective God worked wonders in me over those 21 days.

This time around I'm choosing a challenge for health. Don't get me wrong, I feel like God is leading me in this direction and will bless this journey as much as, if not more than, my 21 days. But it feels like I'm more prepared this time and I'm going in with a different perspective. I have to, 100 days is a long time! And now thanks to Bunny and RawFu I have a community of people who are going to be doing it with me.

So I may post weekly updates on my raw food experiment blog or I may not. I'll most likely keep the nitty gritty of my experience on the RawFu forum blog and save the other for the fun recipes that sustain me.

Wish me luck, I think I'm going to need it ;)

12 lbs of Blueberries

Ever wondered what 12 lbs of blueberries looks like? Well, last Thursday we went blueberry picking as a family at Orchard's on Sand Road. It was a gorgeous but wet morning and I didn't want to stop picking. It felt like such a steel, too. At just $2 per pound I didn't want to stop picking, I just wanted more and more and more!!! Did I mention I didn't want to stop picking?

So this is our bounty in a huge punch bowl. I don't know if this photo really does the quantity justice, but we're talkin a LOT of blueberries. Most of them made it to the freezer, many were shared with family and some were consumed raw. I even made a raw blueberry pie yesterday :) Good stuff! So now I'm trying to think of an excuse to go back and get even more.

I found that picking the berries was extremely therapeutic. I sort of went into a meditative state and gathered. It felt so natural and wonderful. If you haven't gone already, I highly recommend it. I think the season only lasts a couple more weeks.

Outdoor Painting

After a visit to Willow Wind School a couple of weeks ago Adi decided that she, too, wanted to paint outdoors like the kids in the upper grades were doing...

Here she is in action:

A lovely photo of my lovely girl:

Green is good, but what about...

1-2-3

Over the last several weeks I've been struggling with anger and frustration of not being pregnant. It seems that every month we try at the right times and yet here we are, six months after the OK to try again after the last miscarriage and no pregnancy. I know that six months of trying really isn't that long, but really we've been trying since Adi was about 9 months old so in reality we've been on this roller coaster for over 2 years now.



A few weeks ago I had a series of dreams that were related to pregnancy. In the midst of those dreams was one with a very different tone. It was God's voice which said, "My kingdom come, my will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This was really profound and powerful to hear, and to be honest it was scary. What does that mean? Is Jesus coming back soon and this is my warning? But isn't it always true that Jesus is coming back soon - it's all relative.

Anyway, when I got my period it became more clear to me that the dream was a reminder that God heard my prayers about growing our family but I needed to know first that His will be done. It was a message intended to carry me through the darkness and disappointment that crushed me when my period came just after what felt like such hope (my dreams about being pregnant). That was message #1.

To clarify, I often find that messages from God come in sets of three. When I hear a message three times it really solidifies that message for me. It's only been through experiences that this has proven to be extremely profound in my relationship with God.

So message #2 came in a radio broadcast on my way to CR to help my brother move. I don't remember the exact words, but in short: when we're in a dark place and it seems like everything sucks and is going against us, we can take heart in knowing that God is in that, doing His thing and "making arrangements" for us. God's work is just as active in our dark times as it is in our bright and joyous times.

Once I heard that message I knew it was connected to the first. God gave me hope through the dreams and when my hope felt crushed the spoken message (also a dream) kept my head above water. So now I hear this and begin to understand that God really is at work and patience is once again the lesson at hand as I consciously chose to wait for the third message.

I didn't have to wait long. In the Sunday service Ali B-G did the teaching and I'd have to go back and listen again for the exact words but I just clung to a piece of the teaching - that God is working in His time, according to His plan. That we have to wait on Him, if we didn't we might miss what He has in store for us. It was number three and I was so stirred, so shaken. It's hard to explain the emotions I felt when I came to understand. God's almighty power is hard at work even when it feels like He's completely forgotten me.

A Lovely Afternoon

It was such a beautiful afternoon to spend outside yesterday.

We decided to hang out on the sidewalk with "naked feet".And play with some sidewalk chalk, which is multi-functional, you know.Adi must have seen someone else putting on lipstick because we all know that I don't wear it!

And the green chalk wins new lip color of the year.

Actively preparing to attack me as I lay on the ground taking photos of her.

Cousin Paige's National Gymnastics Meet

Adi was thrilled to learn that after a blissful morning of blueberry picking (and in her case mass consumption of berries of all kinds) that our afternoon would be spent at cousin Paige's gymnastics meet at Vet's Auditorium in Des Moines.Here's Paige (on the right) getting ready to warm up on uneven bars:

Adi is enjoying the meet in her Mariposa fairy costume which she also sported for the berry pickins (I don't know what Cam's doing, looks like something is stuck in his teeth ;)

Grandma Marsha was pleasantly surprised to see us there. She knew we were coming to see Mike (Cam's step-dad) who had just received triple bi-pass surgery the morning before but had no idea we would be at the meet.

Mike is doing great and healing like a champ. It was hard for Adi to understand but I did my best to explain simply that Grandpa Mike was sick but the doctors fixed him up and now he just needs to heal, just like when we get sick it takes some time for our bodies to get better. Later on after we left (when she wasn't feeling quite so shy) she prayed for Jesus to heal Grandpa Mike and to bless him.

Berry Picking

Our family's love of berries sent us on a two hour trip Saturday morning to Berry Patch Farm in Nevada, IA. We enjoyed a cool morning of picking red raspberries, blueberries and some goose berries. The blueberries are always the favorite.

Adi chowed down by the handful:

Blueberry Bliss

Open up wide to find the blueberry inside :)

Here is Adi's new growth chart from Uppercase Living. It looks amazing in her room and was well worth the time and effor to install it. As you can see, she really likes it too :)

Mulberry Love

So even though we have our very own mulberry tree in our yard (actually it's on the fence line in the neighbors yard but half of the tree is on our side) Adi and I decided to go for a walk last evening and go foraging for mulberries. There's a great wooded path near our home that has several mulberry trees and every time we go for a walk on the path we stop to munch the tasty berries. But yesterday we went a step further and collected a small mountain of berries to bring home with us. Once we arrived home I told Adi she couldn't have any more berries - we all know what too many berries do! But she was quite convinced that she just needed to have a few more.

This is the look I got when I said, "OK, that's enough".
And those little fingers kept showing up in my pictures of the mulberries ;D
Oh the joy of sneaking just a few more... Well worth it for the smiles and not to mention a super low sugar (in fruit standards) and high nutrition snack. I can't wait to go back and get more!

Worms and Things

Adi has moved far from a girl who did NOT like bugs of any kind to a bug hunting, worm loving kiddo. She decided to use this dinosaur egg to give shelter to her worm (before the dinosaur came and ripped the worm's head off and chomped it in it's mouth!!)

Here's the worm, head still intact. I didn't take a photo of it after it was assaulted. We had a little talk about that...