I have never been this productive after Thanksgiving before. I did a lot of cooking, baking and cleaning as usual but this year I decorated the house for Christmas , finished my online continuing education courses for my dental hygiene license renewal, sealed all the baking soda/corn starch ornaments,played games with Cathy and typed up Jack's progress report.
My family has been great at accommodating my celiac disease and I'm getting better at turning regular recipes into gluten free ones. My mother in law got a gluten free turkey and ham and my Mom is making gf stuffing and a pumpkin pie. My father in law requested the crock pot green beans that I make. The only thing different was I had use gf soy sauce instead of regular. Here is the recipe: http://herviewfromhome.com/the-best-green-beans/
I also made gf cornbread just from a mix and I have never made a pumpkin roll because it always looked complicated but it was actually easy. I found this gluten free pumpkin roll recipe. For my all purpose gf flour , I used Betty Crocker gf all purpose flour that I found at Walmart . Here is the recipe. http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/thanksgiving-pumpkin-cake-roll/
For some reason it won't let me do links.
I am thankful for so many things:
My family is amazing
My son and I have so much fun together - I love relearning things through his eyes , to see the beauty in simple things like a pile of leaves or a rainbow. I also love how we both love singing and dancing and have duet parties. Did I mention games , this family loves games especially when we can beat Jason.
I am so thankful for my husband and the decisions he has made for this family, although sometimes I may be skeptical of his decisions they have brought us closer and made us stronger. I never thought I would admire him so much. His intelligence always amazes me. Why Google when you have a Jason , LOL
I'm thankful for our dog Maya because Jason will never admit this but Maya brings out his softer side. She is a good listener especially when I'm rubbing her belly. Haha
I'm thankful for my health more or less, some days are a struggle and my whole body aches,cause auto immune diseases suck but I refuse to let it consume me. At least now I have a cause for all my joint pain , constant headaches , anemia, several vitamin deficiencies, hair loss , depression, dry eye , exhaustion , anxiety etc , the list goes on and on. It's amazing what Celiac disease causes and Doctors are still continuing to discover more things about it.
I'm Thankful for my job. I love What I do , most days. I enjoy where I work and all my coworkers most of the time ( hey we are human and we have bad days and take it out on each other sometimes ) but we are a team and we have pretty great team work and we get it done.
Mostly I'm thankful for a roof over my head , clean clothes, food , water, electricity. We as a society overlook things like that and always want the latest technology and the newest everything.
I have always given back as much as I can and that is what the Holiday season is all about. So I encourage people to give back : donate money ,volunteer at the red cross or soup kitchens , donate canned food to your local food pantry or red cross , Angel tree , Toys for Tots , a local person having to buy extremely expensive medicine on a daily basis just to keep their child alive (donate what you can and spread the word that you know of a family in need), cook and bring food to shut in's (my Mom does this for each holiday). I have done all these things. This year I have donated money to a couple local families that are in need , gloves and hats to the local library mitten tree , soon we will be stuffing backpacks for children going to foster care. I'm not finished yet , I'm just getting started.
Remember what you have in life, slow down and take it in , be kind and courteous. Life is too short to be angry all the time, so be kind instead, and if there are people that are super mean and rude and you don't want to be kind to them , avoid and ignore them as much as possible. Haha I hope I remember that last statement when all the family is together for the holidays.
So I'm not worried about what to get for my son for Christmas but my husband is hard to shop for and I have a hard time making the dirty santa gifts kid friendly too. I finally figured it out with my husband. I got him a movie he wanted , tickets to a comedy show and a gift certificate for a one hour massage. I finally have found dirty Santa gifts that everyone wil love. One gift is a DVD , candy and popcorn. Another gift is chips , salsa , queso dip , a dice game I got for 80%off last year and a 3.00 fleece blanket.
The weather was beautiful today to be in late November. It was sunny and in the 60 's. I took the dog for a walk and I read some of my book outside. Jason and Jack practiced baseball. I love this beautiful weather.
Jack loves science experiments. The library has a DVD of experiments. The DVD tells you what you will need for each experiment and the science and explanations behind the experiment. After our lessons today ,we picked an experiment to do. Jack wanted the color changing milk experiment.
you will need:
A plastic plate
Food coloring
Milk ,preferably whole milk but we just had 1% and it worked just fine
Q tip
Dishwashing soap. It called for dawn but we just had palm olive and it worked just fine.
Pour milk in plastic container ,then drop different colors of food coloring onto milk in different places. Dip one end of Q tip into dish soap ,don't glob it on , wipe off excess , then touch the soap dipped end into milk and watch the milk move and the colors mix around. Jack was fascinated by this. It works because the soap is meant to cut out grease and fat, so the soap cuts the fat which makes it look like the milk is moving away from the soap.
Then we went to the once a month Homeschool PE group. Jack got to try Pickel ball today and he really liked it.
We had our annual Halloween camping trip to Jelly stone park campground. They have so many activities fir children. We love it there. We did it all: the hayride ,singing songs ,bounce pillow ,put put golf ,arcade games, playing on the playground ,candy bar bingo ,painting pumpkins ,hanging with friends by the camp fire and of course trick or treating. This place is awesome. We have a tent and we like to tent camp but it always turns cold this time of year, so we get a cabin.
