Ahhhh, gotta love summer!

Ahhhhhh summertime.  Evening thunderstorms, day trips to the beach (complete with jellyfish stings), visits from loved ones, blockbuster movies, and about 100 other reasons to completely ignore one's blog.  :)

So what have we been up to? My family has been REALLY busy since school let out, as are most other families, I'm sure.  So far it's been a terrific summer for us (even with my 12 year old finding the business end of a jellyfish), full of fun times with friends and family. The busyness is not going to let up any time soon, as my boys are getting ready to leave for Scout camp and I will start a new (full time) babysitting job next week.  And I've only got a little over a month before I have to start thinking about school again - Nathan will be going back to his public school, I will return to my online college and will be homeschooling Noah (I sure hope I can remember 8th grade math)!  I wanted to touch base here though and update a few things.

Sadly, after a lot of prayer and tears, we had to surrender my Altman bulldog, Petey.  He was too much for our family, and too rough on my boys.  It was hard to let him go, but probably easier than getting rid of the children.  I do not consider animals to be disposable, and I do not take letting animals go lightly, so this was a very difficult decision for me. I did face some criticism from people who don't even know me, those who DO know me know it broke my heart. 

In other news, I have been letting my kids "cheat" and have gluten-based products this month.  It's an interesting experiment, and a sort of necessary one since with camp and such it's difficult to monitor or control everything they eat.  Obviously if they had celiac I would be far more strict, but they don't and it's been a personal choice to go gluten-free and try to take them off meds or at least reduce them.  In Nathan, I've seen more "hyperness" but not really any other changes.  In Noah, I can't really describe what I've seen other than to say that he seems "more autistic" than he does when he sticks to the plan.  Also, it's worth noting that he has mentioned several times "not feeling well" after eating things off his diet.  So if this experiment has shown me anything, it's that going gluten-free was a good choice for my family.  When they return from camp, we'll be going back to it completely.  In the meantime, I've chosen to remain GF except for rare exceptions.  This is because it's just not really worth it to me to feel lousy and be in pain for a couple of days when I have other options.   In that same vein, I'm excited to try out a bunch of new recipes and products. As always, I'm happy to share what I like, so be on the look out!

I've stopped going to physical therapy for my shoulder.  We'd gone as far as we could with it, and all the exercises I was doing I could do at home.  It's really just about pain management at this point, since the ortho has no intention of fixing it and I'm honestly too busy to seek out a second opinion.  However, I have STARTED going to physical therapy (the same dr) for my neck.  It was injured at the same time as my shoulder (back in October 2010), but I could never get anyone to do anything about it til now.  Some of the problem is irreparable (it's very very straight, no curve), but we are working on stretching and strengthening the muscles and that will hopefully reduce the pain, stiffness, and limited mobility that I've been living with.

Ohhhh, there are probably a dozen other things I could write about. I should really start keeping a notepad handy for when I have the the thought "I should blog this!" because right now I can't remember any of them! This is already pretty long though, and I really SHOULD be packing my kids' clothes, so I'll end this now and promise to NOT wait another month before I blog again. :)