Eat to live?

Over a year ago, I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in both my hips, significantly worse on my right. Osteoarthritis (OA) is where the joint's cartilage breaks down and can even get spurs in the socket so when the ball rotates it literally scrapes bone against bone or bone against spur. Needless to say, it's rather painful and slows me down quite a lot when it flares up.

My question has always been, what causes that flare up and what can I do to prevent it? Like a good doctor, mine gave me a prescription for pain management but who wants to take meds for the rest of their life?

I'm sure someone, somewhere, at some point told me about the potential impact diet has on OA, but it wasn't until this past weekend a new friend re-introduced me to the concept. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis over a year ago and her doctor gave her the option of (1) pain management or (2) trying a specialized diet. She, like me, is not fond of meds for life so she eagerly tried what many refer to as the caveman diet. Basically, it's fruits, veggies, nuts, and meats, though not too much red meat. Obviously, there's a few major things missing: carbs, sugars. Oh, my. And night-shade veggies are known to inflame joints and aggravate arthritis so I'm avoiding tomatoes and peppers, too!

Now, today is only day 3 of this major lifestyle overhaul but I feel GREAT! No pain, plenty of energy, well focused. I don't know about my resolve long-term but I have the amazing opportunity to choose every day if I want to be in pain or not and I can't think of any better motivation!

In all my research online in the last few days, I came across some additional, intriguing information promoting eating according to your blood type. As crazy as this sounded at first, the more I read the more it made sense (at least for me and my blood type). And it is incredible how much one's blood type is credited with personality type. So far there's no published research supporting eating for your blood type but the recommendation for me, with type O, is practically the same diet I just started!

I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences as I explore and experiment with my diet to find if it does help my osteoarthritis or not.

Before we started a family, I thought I'd never...

I have fallen in the self-laid trap of making promises I should have never made (especially to our kids) but I’m not one to often say out loud that "I'll never do" something.

However, in my head there is always a random list of things I think I'll never do. I'm just one that won't promise it. It's an important distinction that I need to learn better since my kids have a tendency to keep me honest and have the memory of an elephant!

Here is a list of things that, before we started a family, I thought I’d never….

1: Watch iCarly when no one is home and actually like it.

2: Have to keep my kids from discovering Home Alone for fear he would learn too much.

3: Buy a Nerf for my kids let alone participate along in pretend battles– and then take joy when I got him.

4: Allow movie watching with a little language (like Goonies or Shrek) just because they are too good to miss.

5: Offer my son my t-shirt for him to wipe his nose.

6: Think playgrounds and parks would be a more important deciding factor than speed and convenience when picking a travel route.

7: Love playing with Legos.

How about you? Spill it.

Featuring... Us!

About two weeks ago, we were invited to introduce ourselves to our friends at All Saints Church via their blog and we are honored! It has been wonderful meeting so many amazing people and we are excited to see how God is working through our new relationship with ASC.

Check it out!

Supplementing Public Education?

Over dinner last night, Pat and I were having normal family conversations with the kids when I said something about how it is already snowing in parts of the country. Julie and Jimmy started asking questions about where and immediately revealed their completely distorted understanding of basic geography. Two nights ago, we ran into similar disappointments in another area of their education.

Wow have our eyes finally been opened. I think we both have known that we should be doing more at home to ensure our children are receiving the richest education possible, but, like many, we have been relying wholly on the public system hoping it was doing enough. Additionally, there is no doubt that the instability in their education thus far (changing schools almost every year due to us moving) has had a huge detrimental impact.

Homeschooling is simply not an option for our family so what do we do? I have begun scrutinizing the free resources available online to find some ways to supplement at home and already ordered a world globe from Amazon. We would love to hear how other families bridge the gap. Thanks in advance for sharing!