Good Morning World!

Glad we got outside to play on Friday, because the word of the day is SNOW... and Cold.  The high for today is 10°F and the low -9°F!  Right now we are a crisp 7°F.  The extremes of South Dakota living, we were 30°F yesterday.  So, yes we did drop 20 degrees in one day, probably more, since we were high 30s yesterday.  AND we get a wind chill as icing on our chilly cake.  When I say our blood is thicker, that is exactly what it is, physiologically.

My oldest in Spring 2012 on a wonderful family vacation!  We all got to swim with and kiss dolphins.

Week Highlight:

My little girl is growing up, or so she reminds me everyday.  And as she grows older her tastes become more refined: pink is out, flowers, hearts and princesses are passe and, as per usual, her bedtime is far too early.  Add to this the other ways I am limiting her maturity: for instance she will be quick to tell you I don't let her watch cable TV or play online.  She is experimenting with asserting a fledgling identity, which often seems to directly contrast my wishes, desires and pre-established house rules.  I am sure Freud has opinions on this, but thankfully he is dead. 

I am learning to adjust to my daughter while also struggling to formulate an identity as a mother of a preteen.  I am learning how to react without being dismissive, to have patience I am not sure I possess, have empathy when frustration feels more close to the surface and assert, and reassert constantly, boundaries and house rules.  I have to remind myself that I am a good mother for going against the peer pressure caused by the, sometimes, more permissive parenting styles of her friends - even if it feels horrible.  Of course, I know, now better than ever, as my oldest daughter and I enter into the fog of her adolescence, neither of us know which way to go and how to get her out intact.  We are in it together, and I hope she knows that, I hope we manage to only strengthen our bond as mother and daughter... I know that is hoping for a lot.

There are moments I still get to see my little girl surface.  Rare as the moments are I truly cherish them.  This week, though I will keep the details off the Internet, my daughter had a moment of pure joy.  By pure I simply mean it was such a good and consuming moment for her she forgot who she was supposed to be, who she is striving to become and instead just was who she has always been.  She found a moment so humorous she laughed with her nose crinkled, grabbing her belly, her mouth open, her eyes squinted shut and simply giggled, and giggled totally unaware of herself and became completely present in the moment.  It was magical to watch her exist without worries for a brief couple minutes.  And I could see, only the way a mother can, the toddler from years before rolling on the ground laughing.

I guess it is one of those moments you think you might never see, like a 40°F day in the middle of January South Dakota winter. 

Happy Sunday Morning!

New Gluten Free Cupcake Mix!

XO Baking Co.



This week I was thrilled to find a new gluten free brand of cupcake mix!  The XO Baking co. is a company certified by the free certification organization (GFCO) and it is dairy free and egg free, plus kosher!  Lindsey Deitsch created the XO Baking co. after she was diagnosed with Celiac Disease.  She is a chief, baker and is a certified health and nutrition coach.  XO Baking co. is available in Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Washington.  The stores that might carry it are Whole Foods, Chamberlin's Natural Foods, Akins Natural Food Market and Mother's Market & Kitchen in California, and Gelson's Super Market, as well as, amazon.com.  This is the link will take you to the mix I used this evening. I was obviously lucky to run across it in my local TJMax and I am thrilled I can order the mixes later online. 

 

 

After spending the evening cooking cupcakes and practicing cake pops I can confidently recommend XO Baking Co. as a new favorite gluten free brand in our household!  This brand mix tastes like cupcakes made from scratch, not cupcakes made from a box mix.  For once I did not have to alter the recipe at all to achieve a tasty treat.  The cupcakes are moist too!  Moist gluten free cakes from mixes are a rare commodity.  I also love that the instructions on cook time are accurate (amazing how often that is not true).  On a personal note, the founder of these gluten free products is a woman with true passion for cooking and for creating excellent tasting, quality gluten free treats!  This passion runs close to life and makes our home a lot sweeter. 

 

 Happy Saturday!

 

 

 

Beautiful Day at Home

Me 2013!

It is aways fun for me to read facebook status updates exclaiming how cold it is in California.  40 degrees is definitely jacket weather; however, for us it is warm for January, thus we can head outside and have a wonderful afternoon in our backyard - which is exactly what we did today!  The snow is melting off, there is less ice to slip on and the sun is out! 
My girls brought their ducks into the backyard, the dog made friends with our neighbor dogs (a pair of beautiful Newfoundlands), my man worked on the foundation of the green house, I took photos of our backyard and my little man got his first outdoor adventure in his exersaucer.  If only winter could be like this.

Our Backyard!

We are going to wrap this evening up with a Friday pizza night.  Our local HyVee has gluten free pizza to cook! We might have some hot chocolate and we will curl up by the fire and watch a little Star Trek Voyager with the girls. 

Happy Friday!



Gluten Free Product

We are going on our fourth year of being gluten free:  checking ingredients, making snacks for every classroom holiday party, always having snack reserves in my purse/car, and having a couple safe restaurants on speed dial is a way of life.

We are lucky that South Dakota is very gluten free friendly state: most restaurants claim to be gluten free and many are actually gluten free in application, there is a support group for both adults and children with Celiac Disease, the local HyVee grocery store has plenty of gluten free products and a nutritionist on hand to ask questions plus we have our specialty stores too.

As we have begun to master our gluten free lifestyle old friends from facebook have begun to pop up with questions about products we use. As a result I have start to post products regularly to facebook in hopes to help them from a distance.  Many gluten free products and brands that are second nature to me might be new to them.

Our favorite item this winter is Swiss Miss HotChocolate.  Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate is an warm, easy & fast to make treat.  The kids and I have been using this since we hit freezing temperatures as an after school traditional.  The girls and I have done homework, read and discussed their days over hot chocolate and it is a staple for family movie night and family game night.  Thus, even though it is simply a drink, it plays a rather integral part of our day to day winter life.  Really, to make a limited diet fun it is always important to know, first and foremost, which treats are edible. 

Swiss Miss has also started making a pudding we eat!
 

 

Happy Thursday!

*As per usualy, always check labels to be sure the item is gluten free, often ingredients change or one item made by the same company might be gluten free, while another is not!
 

 

2013

It is January 2013!  January is the coldest month in South Dakota - this year it has been remarkably warmer than usual!  Not just because of the hot chocolate we have been having, or the family movie nights with a fire in the fireplace, but I guess also because of global warming.  Watch out world South Dakota might just get tropical. 

I have had a harder time keeping up with the blog, because we are busy living life to the fullest.  In many ways this blog was started to help me adjust to a very new lifestyle.  I found out my oldest daughter had Celiac Disease and not long after moved to the Midwest.  The blog helped keep me busy, keep me positive, and keep me cooking for my daughter.  This blog changed my life, it was a way to learn and report on new happiness strategies, a place to learn and report on new recipes, as well as, a safe place to cope with the bullying we encountered at the tail end of 2011.

In the New Year I have found myself looking for resolutions.  This year is the first in which I feel at a loss for resolutions, in part because I hit my previous ones with such passion.

One goal I can make is to blog at least 100 words per day.  I might be stealing this idea from a friend, but it should keep giving back to a blog that gave so much to me.

Happiness should always be the goal for the New Year.  I want to share the strategies with the most impact from my happiness readings over the last couple years:

1.  Gratitude -  Hands down the best strategy I implemented for my family.  We still go around our kitchen table and proclaim what we are grateful for each night.  If I forget for a couple nights, the kids jump in and take over.  One night I was in a bad mood, it had just been a really long day, and Beezus could tell I needed a pick me up, she took charge and said, "let's all say what we are grateful for" - that night I was very grateful for her.  My kids know they are lucky and so do my man and I.  This is practice is pervasive, it changes your mind set a little at a time.  I highly recommend it.

2.  I tell my man I love him everyday, sometimes way more than once.  This  advice is all over the place, in books, in articles - along with sage advice like never go to sleep angry.  I make sure my man knows I love him and that I appreciate him.  It calms him and it calms me.  I look for things to thank him for and make sure he knows I notice the effort he puts in.  This strategy worked in a couple ways I did not expect, I notice what he does more, but also, he actually does more! 

3.  Finding opportunities and taking advantage of them.  I admit, I get completely tired out and do not take advantage of all the opportunities in life, but I am constantly upping my game and never becoming complacent.  I took on a volunteering opportunity this year where I mentor a family in need, and although I wish I was better at it, this experience has been soul improving.  Other opportunities are less large, I make a point of pushing myself more on weekends, when I would rather veg out/sleep in, I grab the kids and we ice skate (winter), go to the park (spring), go to the museum, the zoo, and the community pool (summer).  Of course my family has a thirst now for seeing new places, thanks to our move to the Midwest, and we are traveling whenever the fates allow.  I am essentially filling up my journal with adventures, as a family we relive these adventures through photos and stories we tell each other.

For 2013 I will be staying hungry for life, pursuing my passions and committing to love intensely.

Happy New Year!

Me, overdue, in 100 degree heat at the airshow!  July 2012

 

Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins!

Halloween, it feels like, just ended... and now here it is Thanksgiving!  I am very thankful for my amazing children, husband and Midwest friends, all who make this week special in their own way.

Ramona smelling checking out our new pumpkin muffins!

Gluten Free cooking, especially during the holiday season, is always on!  I got an email from my daughter's teacher asking me to send in a pumpkin muffin for her, because her class was having a special Thanksgiving snack.  So, to make sure my youngest daughter felt included in the special holiday snack I needed to learn to make pumpkin muffins fast.  Thankfully, they are rather easy when using King Arthur's Gluten Free Muffin Mix (below is the recipe).

This is great timing, as we are headed to a friend's house this Thanksgiving (flying home is a bit too expensive for a family of five) and I needed something I could bring.  Of course, we will bring at least a couple different gluten free dishes.  However, it is always nice to add a new recipe to our reserves.   


What you need/Ingredients:

Very grateful for my little man!

• King Arthur Flour (Soy, Nut, Wheat Free) - Muffin Mix
• 1 cup Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin (only ingredient is pumpkin)
• 3 eggs
• 4 tablespoons salted butter
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 tablespoon Cinnamon
• 1 cup Nestle semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 375.  Grease cupcake tin or place in liners.
2. Simple!  Add in ingredients and stir together, preferably with a mixer.
3. Cook for 25-30 minutes.
4. Turn off oven and let muffins cool for 5 minutes.  (If you are anything like me, it is great to have a reminder to turn off the oven!)

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

We Are Back in Business!

Maternity leave is over and I am back to blogging!  Feel free to give a round of applause, maybe you can do the wave?

 I believe I sopped writing early in the summer; about the time the pregnancy began to really kick my butt.  I remember I was worried about keeping my daughters busy and enriched all summer long.  And I did!  Does not mean I managed to blog about it, but between summer camps (Starwars, Lego, Pottery and Art), park, library, tutoring, pool, friends, and a wonderful helper at my house we managed to make it to late summer with only two weeks that were not scheduled to the max with activities.  My sister and her boyfriend helped out too.  Oh, my!  I still hear about my sister’s boyfriend and how amazing he is.  He kept the energy in the house nice and up.  ;-)  We had grandparents out helping too.  We hit up the Airshow and Jazzfest.  We went to a rocking 4^th of July party with close friends and their children.  Summer was very, very good to us. 

If there is one event that stood out from the summer, for my whole family it was hatching ducklings.  Sure, I also had a baby too.  For my family the major summer activity were the ducks.  My girls and my man went through each stage of duckling hatching together; building an incubator, getting the eggs, incubating them, rotating them, watching/helping them hatch, trading off midnight cuddles, taking them outside, building them a pond, and eventually a duck house.  These ducks became the summer – it might as well be called “the summer of the maffeoberry ducks”.  Ducks or no ducks, I did have a baby this summer. 

My little man was born late – this was a complete shock to me, as both my girls were born early.  A week late, almost nine pounds and delivered without any pain meds.  Now, he is three months and a total charmer.  I might have been afraid I would crawl into the oblivion that is 3 months postpartum.  That notorious three month bracket of time that is impossible to recall later in life, a time when nothing gets done and sleep is scarce; socializing is completely nonexistent.  However, I surprised myself again, I guess the third time is a charm: we are running low on sleep nowadays, but we managed to make new and exciting memories,  plan and attend events ,  visit with friends and family regardless of the our new addition.  In fact, we hit the Midwest Ren Fair twice AND the Mall of America twice!  My dad and sister visited.  My man’s mom visited.  We threw a party for friends and attended a couple parties thrown by friends.  I still made it to book club! 

And of course the gluten free life style continues.  I managed to keep up with my daughters’ school events – both in attendance and in dietary needs.  I not only made GF treats for their Halloween parties, but managed to attend both parties, and on the same day made chili and smokies (GF) for the Halloween party that night at a friend’s house; plus, even though it was a mid week Halloween this year, we trick or treated till the kids complained their feet hurt!  I felt like a rock star and not just a rock star that had a baby recently, but a gluten free mom rock star that provided snacks, treats and food to all events (and I am telling you, that is not easy with a new baby).  This house of course suffered, it might be a mess right now.    There might have been times we were zombie like in doing so, but for the most part we managed to even appear rested!  Again, feel free to applaud, maybe the wave.