Slowly but Surely

Nancy and Her Adorable Girls

Bernadette, Nancy, and Nancy's two girls, Ellie and Catherine, were visiting Christie Forbrich (Nancy's cousin) this weekend ~ and Christie just happens to live in Aldie which is about a 30 minute drive from our house... So I drove down there yesterday morning for a little visit! I had a lovely time there. I saw Christie & Ryan's house and met their twin boys for the first time. Their house is beautiful!! Christie designed it, and it's situated on land that used to be owned by James Monroe (I'm pretty sure that's the guy) and also has Civil War history associations. The house itself has a historic feel about it and is just gorgeous.

For a little while Bernadette and Christie had Ellie and the twin boys playing outside, so Nancy and I had a great chance to catch up, just the two of us ~ a wonderful time. :) And it was great to reconnect with Christie and Bernadette too. I love them!

And Nancy's girls are so precious! Ellie looks exactly like Nancy did when Nancy was her age, and I must say that Catherine does look a lot like Dan. Although the first time I met Catherine, I saw Daniel Lew in her most! Weird how that happens.

Ellie is a little ham who just loves the camera! Getting pictures of her was no challenge.
Happy girl!
For a little while she was telling Nancy, over and over again, "I don't feel well!" Not sure what she meant by that because she wasn't acting sick - just a little upset - but... how cute to hear a little two-year-old using correct grammar, especially when most adults don't say that phrase correctly! Well, I would expect nothing less from Nancy. :)
Oh my goodness gracious.
Sleepytime.
Oops... did I wake you up, Sweetiepie?
Nancy and her girls. So sweet!

My Sink

This is how I clean my veggies and fruit when I come home from the grocery store! First I clean the sink... :) then I fill it with water and a few drops of the orange essential oil which kills all the bad stuff, and I let it soak for about 5 minutes.
Isn't it colorful? I love that God made our food so colorful and beautiful.

Shelving Project Update

So this past weekend our rec room became a construction site... The pictures say it all. :)

Oh how I love a healthy, organized, and clean kitchen...

Some changes have been happening in Jeff's and my kitchen lately...

It more or less started with my realizing that fruits and vegetables that come from the supermarket really need to be cleaned - and not just with water. The people that pick the vegetables and fruit might not be using good hygiene practices, and then the by the time the food gets to us, it's contaminated. I've known about this for a while but hadn't really done enough about it.

Then I went to see a nutritionist friend of mine, Margie Lung, who also does herbal remedies for various ailments. She's a mature Christian woman who goes to my church, and I've come to really respect her; so when she said she believed she could help me with my migraines (which have been more frequent lately), I felt confident to give it a try. And learning from her has increased my sensitivity to the need to make sure that what I'm putting into our bodies is bringing health and not sickness.

Then... Jeff and I watched Barbara Walters' special the other week on heart surgery - called "A Matter of Life and Death". As you know, Jeff had open heart surgery in the fall of 2009, so this is a topic of interest to us. Barbara Walters has had open heart surgery and she spoke quite openly about it. She also interviewed a few other high profile people who have had open heart surgery, including Bill Clinton, Regis Philbin, David Letterman, Charlie Rose, and Robin Williams. It was quite a moving and eye-opening documentary. Bill Clinton revealed that after his bypass surgery (the blockages were due to unhealthy eating habits), he became a vegan ~ and, of course, lost weight as a result which everyone noticed; but he's also much healthier than he was before.

Last Sunday after church, as Jeff and I were out to eat together (steak and eggs in front of him, and a BLT and fries in front of me), Jeff suggested, almost out-of-the-blue, that he wanted to try a vegetarian diet for a while. He's actually been pondering that for years, but never went ahead and tried it. And the Barbara Walters special that we had just seen stirred the idea in him. I was all for it ~ because I don't really like meat all that much anyway and because I love being healthy. So, we're giving it a go! For a little while, at least.

The food on our menu? Meatless (aka tofu) tacos... aloo gobi with brown rice (an Indian dish with cauliflower and garbanzo beans and potatoes and lots of fun spices)... salmon (yes, we're continuing eating fish)... vegetarian chili... lentil soup... egg dishes (in moderation)... things like that. Oh, and a spinach salad every night. It's a fun little adventure we're on!

I'm also cleaning all fruits and vegetables as soon as they come into the house with a special cleaner that contains limonene oil. (I got this from my nutritionist friend.) It takes a little time after I get home from the grocery store, but it's worth it. I'm also planning my own little vegetable garden for this summer... We'll see how that goes. I've never had my own vegetable garden before.

I'm also going to start using a dryer ball instead of dryer sheets... I just learned that they are full of awful contaminants that can be harmful to our health. Goodness gracious ~ why is our world so contaminated? Oh yeah. Sin. Right.

:/

Bottom line: Jeff and I aren't going overboard (at least I don't think we are), but we are making little changes that make sense to us and that help us be healthier people. And I've also determined to not blindly believe what the food industry tells me. I'm going to be smarter than that.

Our goal is heaven; we certainly don't believe we can achieve perfect health on this sin-tainted earth. But at the same time, these decaying bodies of ours are also the temple of the Holy Spirit, which deserves respect. And after years of nearly weekly migraines (and sometimes more often than that) - lemme tell ya, I'm all for eating well to avoid sickness as much as possible!

(By the way, we'll know in a couple months if Margie's theory about my migraines is correct... You better believe I'll be proclaiming it to the world if this regimen works!)

Valentine's Day

I am loved. :)

A Glimpse into the Past

I couldn't resist sharing this with you all ~
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the man I married...
Jeffrey Robert Case, circa 1956
Isn't he adorable?!?
As a child Jeff used to watch his dad lying on some old cardboard and working on his truck... and here Jeff is, wanting to be just like him!
Priceless! :)

He's still just as hard a worker. :) He's busy right now in the basement, doing a bit more painting on the shelving project. Hopefully next weekend we'll finally see it starting to come together in the rec room...

Step Two

Priming all the wood.......

Next step: Put the plywood up on the walls to be the back of the shelving unit. I guess there might be a more technical way of saying that, but Jeff isn't here at the moment to tell me what it would be. :)

More next weekend! I know you're all riveted...

Step One

Update on the shelves!

The first step was to sand all the wood and then wipe it down with wet rags to get rid of the dust... This is taking us a looooong time... and we're still not done. Almost, though. But Jeff says it's really the most time-consuming and arduous part of the whole process. So when this is done it will be funner and more exciting. :)

So Jeff was the sander:

And I was the wiper-downer:
Next step: After all the sanding is done, which shouldn't take too much longer, we'll prime the wood. Stay tuned... :)