Unannounced hiatus

Suprise! I'm back!

I decided to go on an unannounced hiatus during the time of Kyle's family needs. His grandfather passed away and we were very busy during that time. Right after that we went to Florida and though Kyle came back last Sunday my mom and I stayed until this past Saturday! I missed my furbabies and hubs like crazy but I got some much needed r&r! Being a stay at home wife it would seem like I never had much to do, however I think I work more now than I did before. Even if I'm not physically doing something my mind is constantly at work over what needs to be done, what I want to get done, and what seems too impossible to do. A full weeks worth of not doing anything but picking up after myself and the hardest decision I had to make was what to do for dinner was exactly what I needed. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with my mom as well, it's been long overdue.

My parents both went down to FL on August 13th and then my sister, nephew, husband, and I arrived on the 21st around 2AM. On the 24th my dad, sister, nephew, and Kyle all left. Jacob, my nephew, got to see the ocean for the first time and with him having an obsession with sharks you can only imagine his excitement. With all his knowledge of sharks and how they attack he didn't even want to put his toes in the water, he about had a stroke when I was waist deep.

Needless to say we spent most of our time at the pool meeting new friends.


















xoxo Haley

Intolerance

For quite some time now I just haven't felt good. Not the "I have a cold", "my belly hurts", etc. feel good but more of the I'm fatigue, I'm dizzy, frequent headaches, I could fall asleep any second, I rather crap my pants than walk to the bathroom...okay, you get it. I just feel like crap no pun intended. I had gone to the doctor months ago to figure out what was wrong and why I was randomly getting so dizzy I couldn't make it through a full work day. After stealing multiple tubes of blood from my body and making me pay a ridiculous co-pay, a week later I received my test results.

"Everything's fine. Your test results had no abnormalities."
...and they sent me on my way, no further testing, nothing...

'Scuse my french but are you EFFING kidding me?! Last time I checked it is not normal to be dizzy and lethargic on a day to day basis. You can take your PhD and ram it so far up your hiney that it will never see a day of sunlight. Needless to say I refuse to ever visit that doctor's office again and should have took the note down when my friend told me they almost killed him when wrongly diagnosing him.

I left it alone though. I abandoned my health concerns in hopes that they would sort themselves out, it will go away...I'll be just fine... After seeing me slowly deteriorate my mom, metaphorically speaking, came knocking on my door telling me I wasn't in this alone and we would figure this out together. So she set me up an appointment to have more blood drawn. This time we would be checking for my food allergies.

Who knew you could be allergic to something and never have a fat clue!?

I finally got my test results back and I'm allergic to many things that I consume on a daily basis, one being gluten. Bye bye beer. Grapes, so long wine. You can only imagine the big ball of pity I'm rolling around in over here...not to say that I'm an alcoholic but I like to consume about two beers a week, three if I get wild, and an occasional glass of Riesling. Do I even need to speak my love for an all-american burger? Well, hello turkey burgers...we may need to get acquainted quite sooner than later. Oh and remember that coffee addiction I was talking about? Yeah, I always use vanilla creamer, as seen above in my yellow intolerance list... I won't lie, I'm crying a little river on this side of the blogosphere.

So what's there to do now? Go through countless recipes and try to figure out what I can and cannot have. Within those recipes that are gluten-free I have to find substitutes for the things I can't have such as white wine or soy, etc. Throw away all of the knowledge I've gained throughout my journey of becoming more domesticated in order to prepare Kyle delicious dinners, because quite frankly those dinners were on the road to killing me and I'm pretty sure he would rather eat poop for dinner than to not have his wife, or maybe I'm flattering myself. On top of all of this I pretty much have to change my entire lifestyle. Kyle and I attend small group every Wednesday and each time is rotated between houses and who to cook, it's not fair to them to have to abide by my weird diet because my body is pissed at me and doesn't want to digest anything therefore it's just floating around like, "hey strawberry, how long have you been here?". Therefore when attending our bible study I will either have to eat prior or pack my dinner. Same with our Sunday brunches at Kyle's Nanny's house. Yeah, my head is still trying to wrap around all of this.

In all seriousness, even if you do not have an intolerance to gluten I would strongly suggest to try to eliminate it from your diet. If you ever do research on what it actually does to the body you, much like I, will want to sue the FDA for allowing such in the American diet. Selfish assholes. To sum it up we might as well let the FDA approve rat poison in our Lucky Charms.

Coffee addict

4.) Something you got to do when you were young that you would not let your children do.

As a child, and still to this day, I have always been my mom's sidekick... always. Anything and everything she did I wanted to do as well, which I'm sure always kept her on her toes to do the right thing because she always had me less than one step behind her. 

I remember Saturday mornings always being my favorite. She was off from work and I would get to enjoy her the entire morning before other festivities took place. I remember I would wake up and run down stairs to crawl in bed with her and have our Saturday snuggles, which were the best. Once we were up and moving we would head to the kitchen and I would wait while she fixed the coffee.

Anyone remember Chip from Beauty and The Beast? Yeah, I owned that coffee cup! After Mom finished making the coffee we would go sit on the back porch and chat all morning all while I, an eight-or-so year old, drank coffee. 

Looking back I don't know if it was such a good idea to let a child drink coffee. Still to this day I cringe at the thought of starting my morning without it. I remember in high school I would get up two hours early before school started so I could go to Starbucks beforehand. On the days I don't go into work to help my dad I can drink a whole 12-cup carafe of coffee, no big deal. I'm just saying, I may have a coffee problem.

Though there are plenty of things much worse that a child could do, I'm still not so sure that I would let my child drink coffee with me. As much as I cherish these moments of when I was a child I think I'll let my kid have their own fix, maybe chocolate milk with added syrup...maybe apple juice garnished with an apple wedge...I'm not really sure. 

I would like to say I will never give my child coffee but over the years I have fallen in my mother's footsteps more than a time or two. Since I currently don't have children I can't say what I would and would not let my child do other than the obvious, ya know like roller blade while juggling knives or something. My childless self is screaming "heck no I am not giving my kid coffee, I'm sure they will have more energy than I can handle as is!" Who knows though, maybe my kid will be like me and need a pick-me-up. 

So my question to you is: Would you let your eight year old, give or take, have coffee?

Girls just gotta have fun

What? Sometimes girls just gotta have fun! Seriously, who doesn't love some Sophia Grace? One thing I absolutely love to do when I'm in my girly girl mood is get my nails and toes done! I love soaking my feet in the jetted foot tub at the nail salon while sitting in the massage chair that you can control to massage where ever you want! Lower back problems? They have a setting for that. Neck ache? They got that too. I absolutely LOVE being pampered.

More often than not my mom and I do this together. We sit in our massaging pedi chairs and chit chat then head over to the mani stations. While she is more natural and gets Shellac on her nails I actually get acrylic nails.

I absolutely love the set I received Wednesday of this week. Inspired by Pinterest I went with a seafoam green with white polka dots on the middle fingers and white with sparkles on my ring fingers. I love them, they're so much fun!

However sometimes getting your nails done is not always glitz and glamour. Luckily I found a salon that I can actually understand what the nail techs are saying... for the most part. Other times, I just nod my head and hope for the best.  When they start speaking Vietnamese I won't lie, I often become uncomfortable. If you haven't seen Anjelah Johnson's skit on getting your nails done, I highly recommend it.

Pretty sure she hits the nail on the head with this one.

Saturday well spent

Saturday I decided it's time to start getting my tan on. With a trip to PCB, FL in August slowly creeping up on me it's time to get a good base tan so I don't fry like a lobster...or Will Farrell for that matter...






image via Google

I stopped by my sisters house and picked up my nephew and then headed to my parents for a day in the pool.






Because my nephew, J, is awesome he agreed to recreate this picture of when he was a one year old. Seriously my heart melts every time I see this picture! But his awesomeness didn't stop there...






He proceeded to let me play with his hair, and boy does he have a LOT of it! After our little photo session, and obviously during it, his Granny got him a fudge pop and he snuggled in real close to me and wanted me to share it with him. The older he gets the sweeter he gets, watch out girls.

Though I didn't get much of a tan I got to hang out with this little booger and my parents for the afternoon resulting in a Saturday well spent! Kyle had to work but as we called it a day so did he because huge storms and a tornado warning headed our way...






The drive home was horrible. It's hard for me to drive in rain let alone a torrential downpour! Luckily I got us home safely and I spent the rest of the day hanging out with my adorable hubs. Result: one successful Saturday!
xoxo Haley

A clean shave

Last week my mom started telling me about how she's been using coconut oil in replacement for her Clinique facial moisturizer. The idea of it being used as a moisturizer didn't come as such a shock due to hearing about it previously. However my mom has extremely oily skin so hearing that she had joined the bandwagon of people who swear by coconut oil was quite the shock. The other day her and I went to get pedi's together and I was even more so shocked at how clear and smooth her skin looked! Her pores were so much smaller and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were so much tighter and hardly noticeable. Not that her wrinkles were even that noticeable in the first place, she's aged very well! Seeing the results my brain started ticking. What else could coconut oil be good for? I've seen it used for hair a multitude of times through Pinterest and Facebook statuses by friends. I'd seen it used as moisturizer as well but what about for shaving?










On a whim I decided to give it a go. I cannot brag enough about how amazingly soft and moisturized my legs are! I have extremely sensitive skin when it comes to shaving my legs. Normally I can't put lotion on right after I shave because it irritates them. Shaving with coconut oil I didn't have to worry about it because the oil did the moisturizing for me!

I just used an all natural pure coconut oil. My oil was actually solid so I just took a tablespoon and put it in a plastic bowl then sat it on the shower ledge away from the water. I went ahead and washed my face and spent some time under the water to make sure my pores were good and opened up. Normally if my shave day fell on a hair wash day I would just wash my hair then shave however today I skipped the hair wash so I just spent a little more time under the hot water. I then just took a big pinch of the oil (which is now softer due to the shower steam) and rubbed it all over my legs and continued with the normal shaving process. I made sure to keep my blade cleaned out because I didn't want the oil to build up. You know the results are good when the hubs comments on my legs :)

Hmm...what to use coconut oil for next...