Vacation and Stuff

Every year we go on a vacation for me and my Mom in honor of our birthdays. But about a week or two before our vacation we were waiting in line at the Costco gas station and Mom was just commenting on the fact that we hadn't been having much car trouble when a muffled explosion coming from under the hood of our car announced that our radiator had blown up, forcing us to abandon our plans for that evening and get towed home as well as buy a new radiator and install it. Needless to say, we were pretty disappointed when this happened. But I tried to convince myself that God had a good reason for it--somehow. Well, when Grandpa helped Dad fix the car, he also helped us fix the fan that had been malfunctioning and had thus allowed our radiator to get too hot. Now we have a switch in the car that must be turned on when we start the car and turned off before we get out. Here's the awesome part: on our way to the beach (the destination for out trip was Depoe Bay) we had to go through Tigard with a lot of stop and go traffic that would most certainly have blown our radiator as many times as necessary to keep us from going on vacation at all! Get it? If our radiator hadn't blown at the gas station a mere twenty miles from home then it would have blown up while we were in Tigard (about twice as far away from home) and successfully canceled our birthday trip (or at least horribly and disgustingly delayed it)! God is good all the time!

When we got to the hotel we were pretty sick of sitting in the car (at least I was, my knees were killing me!) and were very glad to get out and get into the room. Here is a picture of Judah unpacking his stuff in our room.








On my birthday we went and looked at some of the tourist shops and went to the dock to look at sea lions while they took their neverending beauty sleeps (which, in my opinion, have no positive effect on their appearance), there was a baby sea lion sleeping next to it's mom, he was actually kinda cute.

 One of the lions looked like something had cut into his neck, wonder what it was? Sorry the picture's not rotated the right way, blame blogger for not being photo friendly enough.

I'm pretty sure this one is out of order, but it's a cool picture anyway. :-) Sunsets over the ocean are amazing if they're visible.

 This the birthday cake Mom made for me and Judah and I helped decorate.
Thanks Mom!

If you're ever in the Depoe Bay area and want a good place to find agates then go to Fogarty Creek. Sorry, no directions will be found here, good luck finding it! hahaha!!!!!

 This is a sign beside a book store called 'Roberts Books' and this sign reserves a spot for the owner, I thought it was funny enough to take a picture of.

 I noticed this while I was looking for agates and thought they were pretty interesting. If you use your imagination (if it's anything like mine) the cracks in these rocks can look like a network of huge canyons. Amazing.

There were a lot of amazing splashes we could see from our room, some of them were close to three stories high!

 Judah and I had a lot of fun building forts and putting "star wars guys" on them and knocking them down. I think we had more fun than they did.

 These last two were taken May 18th and I thought I would include them. I'm hoping to sell prints of the top one.

 Over all our trip was very nice, we found lots of agates and got to play lots of games together...Thank God that he provided a way for us to get there by allowing our radiator to blow up! God bless.

Sorry

So some might say I haven't been blogging in a while. Well, I guess I would say that they would be right.
But I'm blogging again! The diet mom and I started a while ago is drawing to a close (finally)!

Yep, we've added sugar back in, and in a couple days chocolate will be added back to our diet (with much ceremony, of course)! Soon we will be able to eat everything we used to, but we'll be trying to limit a few things so that we can try to stay healthy.
And about symptoms...I have had a runny nose for almost two weeks and am beginning to wonder if that is a symptom of cutting out so many things from my diet...hopefully it'll go away soon, it seems to be getting better.
Also my Urticaria hasn't changed at all; I think I would need to have a much more drastic plan of action than a elimination diet in order to get rid of it.
I am looking forward to the diet being over and am planning on never doing it again (unless my family is crazy enough to do it again).
God bless.

Dietary Insanity Update: Tamari, POTATOS(!!) and Beans!

Yay! We can now ingest tamari potatos and beans! I don't really feel any different than I did before this diet (grrr!) but I have lost some weight and that is good.
Also we have discovered many more good recipes, on the same day that we got potatos added in, we also got tomatos so mom made a ketchup that is allowed on our diet. And today mom made some crackers!

They taste a little like those sesame sticks at Trader Joe's and aren't a bad addition to soup. I imagine they would be pretty good with tomato sauce on top too. Well, if you want the recipe you might want to check Mom's blog for a link to it later if you haven't already (wisely) chosen to just follow her's so you can get all the practical info. God Bless!

My Review of The Nintendo 3DS

Well, I've had the 3DS for a little over a week now (I got it 2 days after launch) and it's AWESOME! To start at the beginning, though, I should tell you how I felt about it BEFORE I got it!
I was really excited about it being 3D, but I was also really excited just for the sake of there being a new DS! But, while I was excited about the 3D gaming ability of the system, I was also somewhat worried about whether I would be one of the unlucky ones that could not see the 3D in it. I even had a headache for like half an hour after trying it out at target, but I realized that the 3d slider had been all the way up. I'm happy to say that when I got my own I turned it almost all the way off and it only bothered my eyes a little. Now, after over a week of owning it I have the 3D up a little and it hardly bothers my eyes at all! So you might not want to be hasty when you judge 3D bad for your eyes; just start small and let your eyes get used to it before turning it up a little.
 But even if I couldn't see the 3D I would still want the 3DS because as a Nintendo fan I wanted to be in on all the Nintendo exclusive games (Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Mario, Bomberman, Wuhu Island). Also their are a lot more features that you won't be getting anywhere else (yet) which I will talk about later.
One of the other features that made me want it was the analog circle (located above the d-pad). In fact, while I was trying to get Yoshi to face the direction I wanted him to in Super Mario 64 DS (an awesome game) I thought "why didn't they somehow put a joystick on this thing? They should have!" That was on the original DS. Finally after three more generations of the DS Nintendo has corrected the problem and you have the equivalent of a joystick on your 3DS!
Now I will talk about the 3D feature and the problems surrounding it. The 3D Screen seems to be the main new feature, but some people (I hear) cannot see the "3Dness" or it causes dizziness, headaches or eye strain. I have not heard of any permanent damage but some people just don't seem to be able to handle the 3D. Of course, you can always just turn off the 3D with the 3D depth slider. While some may say that if you can't utilize the 3D feature you may as well skip the 3DS entirely, I would have to disagree with them because (as I said earlier) there are other exclusive features.
Now, to go through some of the other features and what I like/dislike about them.

• The Mii Maker: It's awesome! I really like the idea of have miis on a portable system as well as the wii. As for the extra accurate mii settings that help you make it look more like you, well, I didn't really notice that much improvement.
• Streetpass: A neat way to get more Miis for the mii compatible games and to meet other 3DS owners in a detached sort of way. If your 3DS is on or in sleep mode (on but closed) and someone else's is nearby and also is on, then your ds will exchange miis and a short impersonal message with the other one. Not something I've experienced yet, I'm afraid, because I live in a small town. Hopefully it'll get easier to use this feature as more people buy the 3DS
• 3D Camera: YES! This feature is awesome, as long as you can see 3D, of course. Even though the cameras are pretty low res, the pictures look like you're actually looking at the subject through a window! But if it's a really bright day, then your picture will likely be overexposed if you're taking pictures outside. The camera is also pretty sensitive to lack of light.
• 3DS Sound: On the 3DS the sound app will allow you to make sounds (not something I use it for much) and play with them or your music (also not something I do very much) but it lets you listen to mp3 music files as well as AAC which makes loading music onto the DS much easier. This is definitely a cool feature and the surround sound is very good quality, but it is not loud enough to listen to if people are making much noise nearby.
• AR Cards: Also pretty neat if you can see 3D, but really fun even with the 3D turned off.
• Face Raiders: another game that works fine in 3d or not. Funny flying morphed versions of your face (and other people's if you have pictures of them) will attack you and you have to shoot them down. You wanna stand up to play this game; there are enemies all around you!
• Activity Log: You can keep track of your steps and what games you've been playing with this app.

• Play Coins: For every 100 steps counted on your 3DS's pedometer feature (activated by keeping the system in sleep mode) you get 1 play coin, you can earn up to 10 a day and use them to buy in-game bonuses and stuff for the RPG type game where you try to rescue your mii.

All of these features are ready for you to enjoy right away after opening your 3DS, I don't have any 3DS games yet, but will soon own Pilotwings Resort. I plan to review it too. Feel free to ask questions in the comments section! If I can't answer the question, I will try to find the answer or refer you to someone who can. God Bless you!

Dietary Insanity: Days Seven, Eight and Nine

Sorry I haven't been keeping up very well, I gotta keep this kinda short because it's almost bed time.
We have tried quite a few new recipes, they are really good! One of them was a pizza crust. We can't put any pizza toppings on it, though, but it's really tasty dipped in soup or with a Sunny Sunflower Seed Burger on it! By the way, you can find the recipe for those burgers (which are really good) in this cookbook, maybe try getting it at the library. Yesterday we had some roasted broccoli and cauliflower with some red lentil dal on it, sorry, mom doesn't have a recipe for it but it was soooo good!
My rash has started to come more easily and is usually on my face now, not liking it. Pray that me and mom benefit a lot from this diet and please pray that my urticaria goes away for good. God bless you!

P.S for pictures of the things I mentioned and more, see my mom's blog

Dietary Insanity Days Four, Five and Six

Well, I haven't been able to blog for awhile, but not much unusual has happened. The inventor of this dastardly diet claims that I will feel better than I have in years by day 12, I better, or I will be very disappointed in this...lol. Whether I feel better from this diet or not, it is helping me eat healthier so I guess that's a plus. I've still been getting the rash from Urticaria (I'm not gonna link it again, so if you haven't seen the earlier posts go to them and click the link or just google it!) but I'm really hoping that it's gone by day 12, that would make me feel better than I have in years!
We had a caregroup meeting with some people from our church and there were snacks, snacks THAT I COULDN'T EAT!!!! But, to tell the truth, it was easier to just not eat any of them than it would be to have eaten some, and not too much!
  Mom made some sunflower seed butter and we've been enjoying it on toasted rice cakes, the best snack we have been allowed since we started! Have a good rest of the weekend! God bless.

Dietary Insanity: We can eat now!

But, we can only eat selected foods. Here's a list of most of the things we can eat:

-brown rice, wild rice

-quinoa
-amaranth
-teff
-apples, pears
-peaches, nectarines
-plums, apricots
-berries (except strawberries)
-cherries
-grapes
-figs (dried and fresh)
-mango
-kale, collard greens
-lettuce, spinach
-dandelion greens
-bok choy, cabbage
-parsley, cilantro
-sprouts (all types)
-Brussels sprouts
-broccoli, cauliflower
-beets, carrots, parsnips
-winter squash (all types)
-yams and sweet potatoes
-avocados
-onions, garlic, and ginger
-sunflower and pumpkin seeds
-sunflower and pumpkin seed butters
-pine nuts
-mung beans, adzuki beans, lentils
-wakame seaweed, kombu seaweed
-nori seaweed, dulse flakes
-fresh herbs
-coconut milk
-coconut oil and olive oil
-kudzu, arrowroot (be sure its GF)
-guar gum (in small amounts)
-agave nectar and maple syrup

So... the things we can eat mostly are not your everyday ingredients, but it a whole lot more than green smoothies!!

Today we had some hot cereal made from rice that mom blended, it was pretty good, too, once I put maple syrup on it! For lunch, we had quinoa and cabbage soup, YUM!!!!! Also, for a thicker consistency, we added a mixture of rice and lentils to it, which made it even better!!! Then for dinner we had steamed broccoli and rice and lentils mixed into it. Also YUM!!!! Thanks Mom for the good cooking! By the way about the rash...I woke up with it covering my upper body, It was cold last night, and sometimes I get it from being cold. So I guess I haven't quite done in Urticaria...oh well, maybe later on in the diet. To see the whole diet menu and all the phases, go to this link By the way, my Mom is blogging about this diet too, and she'll have more details on the recipes and stuff! Go check her blog out!