Our Thanksgiving turkey Warning: graphic!

Here is the brief recap of our turkey's demise. Warning: a bit graphic!

My friend dropped him off and immediately tied up his legs so we didn't have to chase him. We put out plastic down to contain the blood and Jared got a piece of cardboard and we got the coolers ready.

I was walking around and started getting attached to him, so I kept my distance, since I knew we'd be eating him. Jared got him in position and was straddling him and he told me I had to hold the bag. I couldn't look!! I heard this loud cracking noise and the bird started freaking out, so I had to look. There was blood everywhere!! A lot of it was in the garbage bag but while the bird was freaking out he tore up the plastic so there was blood on our friends garage floor. Great, just great. I'm gonna be scrubbing up blood! I asked Jared what was going on and he told me that the turkey's head was completely chopped off, and it's wing had gotten loose and was beating up Jared's legs. O_o' Holy shit! It also made this disgusting gurgling noise and Jared said that was the blood filling up in the turkey's lungs.

He's a video (warning graphic!!!) of the few final twitches of the turkey.

Yeah, I missed out on the good part but I had my hands full until he calmed down a bit. Anyways, Jared made me help pluck but he removed all the innards and cut off the feet. I kept some of the feathers to reuse in crafts and in my dream catchers. This was an eye opening experience. Never really had to deal with anything like this before. I don't think we'll ever do this again for a Thanksgiving turkey. I'll tell ya tho, he was a yummy bird!!


We also killed 3 other birds that you can see in the video.

30 Days of Truth Day 3

Day 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for.


I ignored my blog because I did not want to write this one. Honestly! Well today is the day I own up and tell the truth. I need to forgive myself for my eldest son's birth and childhood.

This was taken after his conehead went away.

I was 18 when I had him, and was a week overdue, so stupidly I said induce me... well 9am they started. About 6pm the doctor broke my water to speed things along. Along the way I had an epidural. They kept asking, can you feel the contractions? I said yes, cause I could.... needless to say they turned it up way too high. I slept some and then in the wee early hours I started pushing. I couldn't feel anything so I was pushing as hard as I could. I broke blood vessels around my eyes from pushing so hard.... so i'm pushing and haven't eaten anything for hours and I started puking while pushing. Lovely huh. Then the doctor gave me an option, forceps or vacuum... I didn't know what to choose and I had to choose one so I wouldn't have a c-section. I choose vacuum. He was born at 6:36 am. He also had fluid in his lungs, so they took him away to put in an incubator.

After that was a blur. I wanted to see my baby but my legs were totally numb. It felt like a whole day later I was wheeled down to see him. I tried to breastfeed him but was struggling. I also basically had an out of body experience too. I had lost a lot of blood and was anemic on top of it so I wasn't feeling myself to say the least. The nurses tried moving me to a different room, and I refused. They went behind my back and told my doctor and I got a you just had a baby, you need to grow up pep talk. SO finally someone figured out I needed something because my blood levels were very low. They pushed a blood transfusion on me and I refused so they gave me an iron iv. Thank god, it made me feel normal again, well as normal as you can after having a baby.

I brought Victor home and I struggled with breastfeeding him more. Was told to supplement him (instead of breastfeeding education) and ended up supplementing him until he was exclusively bottle fed. I felt like a total failure. So I went back to work and let my mom raise him while I worked. She got paid to babysit so it was nice for her to have an income, and I could work where I knew what I was doing.

My mom helped raise him until he was 4 years old and I got married. Instead of getting the support I needed and me fighting for my kid, I gave in. I was so depressed. I never really bonded with my kid. When I had him full time it was an eye opener. I am sad because we're still not real close. He lost his grandfather to cancer that he was close to and he's not really close to his real dad either.

Instead of dwelling on the past, I need to look to the present and future. I need to be there for my kiddo and love him unconditionally.

Winter Wonderland!

 Have you looked out the window recently? Let me show you what I see....

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!! We've needed a heavy winter here for some time. Just in time for Thanksgiving, I'm sure this massive snow storm that I swear covers all of Washington State is going to mess up many holiday plans.

I wish I already had my tree, Jared is making me wait so it will actually still  look good by the time Solstice rolls around. Luckily enough our neighbor has a tree that will suffice for now :)

It started dumping snow last night, with a school delay this morning. Right now it's still snowing, and they're letting my hubby and all of his co-workers go home early. The roads are bad!  The 50 million dollar question is are we still driving out of town to kill our turkey and bring it home? I am really crossing my fingers. Everything is set, we just have to drive there and now the weather is trying to foil our Thanksgiving dinner :(   I trust Jared's driving and his judgment, so this is solely his decision.  (Which I just heard was yes!)

On the other hand the kids are ecstatic!!  They keep looking out the window every 5 minutes and are seriously begging me to go outside and play. For now they are placated with The Grinch (with Jim Carey) with all the snow I'm starting all celebrating early including Christmas music and movies!!

 It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is in a few days. The snow is covering up the last traces of Halloween. Our pumpkin will be buried before I know it! We were very lucky and had a windstorm that blew away all of our leaves or else we'd have a yucky mess under our huge pile of snow. All this talk of snow is making me cold! I'm snuggled under my down comforter thinking of hot chocolate with marshmallows, steaming hot chicken soup, and the hot buttered rum that I'm so gonna make, as soon as I can make it to the liquor store.

I will be making a snowman at some point in time and we'll also take the kids sledding, for now I'm staying nice and warm and cozy till we brave the road tomorrow for our turkey, gobble, gobble.

Winter 2007 in Canada visiting family

30 Days of Truth. Day 2

Day 2: Something you love about yourself.

Oh, that is so easy! My craftiness! Once I can envision what I want to do, and I set my mind to do it, it will be done!

I've posted some pictures as examples but these are just barely scratching the surface of what I'm capable of doing. Sometimes it is hard deciding what to do when I go back to work. Too many options. I'd love to work in a bakery! I've made every single birthday cake for my family and some extended family since we were diagnosed with our food allergies. The Hello Kitty cupcakes were for my sister-in-law's birthday.

My husband has also joked about one of us making our clothing. He said it'd fit better :) I ended up making this dress for Keely on a whim. I used all the leftover material from our bus curtains and she loved it! I always enjoyed sewing, but it is very hard to do with little ones around.

 For several years I have been making all Halloween costumes. I like to do themes. One year we were all characters from Alice in Wonderland. To the left is a picture of Rory's makeup the year he was a lion. I did his makeup myself and then did my own, meow, I was a kitty cat! All I did for the makeup was look at a few face painting books and I was set. I love reading! Books are great for inspiration! This year our theme was anime characters so Jared was Lupin the III (and I'll tell ya that red suit coat and gold tie were really hard to find, but I was prepared to make them from scratch if I had to.) and I was Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service. I was sad tho, my costume wasn't technically finished. I was going to make a black cat that looked like her cat Jiji using felt and pipe cleaners for his whiskers. Needless to say mom always comes last. Luckily I had a spare black cat that I used :)

So many other things I have done such as making cards, (I even sold a few!) screen printing shirts, and I made a pop art poster of my sister-in-law as a gift. Future plans are painting murals on my kid's walls and my bathroom, sewing more clothes and curtains, and my kids's birthday's are coming up, I've got to whip up some awesome gluten free cakes!!

I get complimented a lot on my craftiness and I amaze my family and friends. I really take pride in being able to create so many things.

There are a few things I'd like to get better at and they are drawing, crocheting, and woodworking.

30 Days of Truth. Day 1

Day 1: Something you hate about yourself.


Well I think that would be pretty obvious. My weight.... the constant reminder of fluffiness from my kiddo's. I love my three beautiful kids. I wish I could ditch the weight. I've actually lost quite a bit since I've had Keely but I seem to plateau and can't get past a certain point. I have tried going to the court club, running on the treadmill at home, and using netflix streaming for a work out video. I'm just lacking in motivation. I watch The Biggest Loser and wish I could get skinnier, but with three kids it's hard to get time! I need to make more effort, this is all on me.

30 Days of Truth

My friend over at ...Create Yourself.... is doing the 30 Days of Truth and I figured, why the hell not. SO.... I'm doing it too. I think it will be fun because my hubby is doing Nano Writing Month and I think he'd be proud of me for doing some type of writing. Here is the 30 questions for 30 days...

Day 1: Something you hate about yourself.
Day 2: Something you love about yourself.
Day 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 4: Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 5: Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 6: Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 7: Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 8: Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 9: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10: Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11: Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12: Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13: A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14: A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15: Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16: Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17: A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18: Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19: What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20: Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21: (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22: Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23: Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24: Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25: The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26: Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27: What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28: What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29: Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30: A letter to yourself: tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself.


This should be an interesting journey for me :)

Revamped

Do you like it? I certainly do!! I had a lot of help from my friend Dani, who has her own blog. Please click here to check her out.

So right now i'm trying to upload pics and tell stories and make my blog feel complete. I'm breezing through it pretty easily so far (luckily!) but need to get in the habit of actually posting on my blog as much as I can instead of just using facebook.

Just a few things we have done recently that was very fun!

 This month is Native American month! The RPL put on several fun activities and we went to the kid friendly ones. One of the activities was  Native American storytelling. The boys were fascinated, Keely was while I took the picture but ended up reading to the therapy dogs :)  The boys were bragging about what they knew and that they had moccasins and ribbon shirts for Sundance. Victor was too embarrassed to sing the Native American song he knew. The story teller was so nice and had awesome props and promised Keely he would find a pony story for her!

Another fun thing we did was learn how to make dream catchers from an awesome lady named Alice. She is from a local tribe. It took us forever to make just one but Victor, Rory and myself each completed one dream catcher each. This is the one I made. I love it! I was actually going to put this on my tree as a tree topper but decided to put it in my car. Funnily enough my nephew just asked me tonight why I had one in my car... anyways, I made another one for my tree topper, it's even more beautiful and bigger than the first one I made. I've gotten a few requests to make some for friends and will happily oblige. They are fun to make.

Also in the same week I made color burst  cupcakes. I've been saying that I was gonna make them for quite a while and I finally did it! Someone sent me the link to a blog where they were posted (which is here)and I knew I had to make them! Unfortunately for me it was not a gluten free recipe,  she used a regular cake mix, so I had to adapt, and ended up using a basic gluten free yellow cake recipe from 1000 gluten free recipes. (I love that cookbook!) The base is garbanzo bean flour, potato starch, and tapioca flour/starch. You can use whatever combo you prefer, I just use those cuz sorghum is impossible to find in large quantities and my daughter is allergic to rice. You can pick any colors and in any order. They turn out so pretty but spooning in the batter is time consuming!!  I decided to use green, pink, blue, and purple for the colors with bright yellow frosting. I'll have to change up the color scheme when I make these again for my brother-in-law's birthday.


I hear it is snowing right now... I hope so, it makes it feel more like the holidays. Already listening to Christmas music.

Coming soon: On Tuesday, we are butchering our Thanksgiving turkey!! If it's not too gross I'll post a video!