Carson's Second Birthday

This year Carson's birthday was a little less crazy, but still alot of fun. I decided to have a party just for the kids, my friends who have children close to his age. Then on his actual birthday I had some of the immediate family over for cake and ice cream.


Saturday, August 13th, was the day we had Carson's "friend" party. I wanted it to be small and simple, since it was my first party with kids and I had just found out a month before that I was pregnant again! LOL! I didn't want to overdo it. I just wanted to see how it would be and if I could do it. I wanted to have all the stuff I knew Carson liked to play with, so I chose the Beach Monkey theme. We had beach balls, bubbles, and balloons, three of Carson's favorite things. We also had it outdoors at our house, another first, and had a kiddie pool with a palm tree in the middle that cascaded water from it, and of course he loved that (running water, that is!). It seemed like all the kids had a great time.


For snacks, I made all low-protein foods that Carson and Noah could share with us. I made low protein chocolate and butterscotch chip cookies (which were the biggest hit), low protein tortilla chips for the boys and salsa (store bought), and a Chex party mix from Rice Chex, gluten-free pretzel sticks, and low protein bread cubes. I also attempted to make ice cream from coconut milk, but this is a work in progress. I still didn't get it sweet enough. Shaunna's boy, Lucas, picked up right away that it didn't taste the same. But he loved the Chex mix!

A big thanks to all who came and helped Carson celebrate and have fun at his first kids' party: Shaunna, Lucas, and Callie; LouLou and Chloe; and the Martins, Jimmy, Julie, Cady, Anna, and Noah. We had a great time and hope you did too!





The Three 2-year-old Amigos: Noah, Callie, and Carson


Callie teaching Noah how to blow bubbles


Noah and Carson enjoying some favorites: balloons, bubbles, and of course, cookies!


Showing the love: Thank you for coming to my party Noah! As Carson would now say, "Aww..."


The men (Daddy and Jimmy, Noah's daddy) chasing the beach balls as a storm is blowing up


And for the final entertainment of the day, Marty will demonstrate for the Martin family how to feed grasshoppers to his pet garden spider! EWW!!!

On Carson's actual birthday, August 16th, some of the immediate family came over and had cake and some ice cream and brought Carson presents. We were blessed to have Uncle Eric home with us and he was able to come and visit. Carson was thrilled...just look at the expression on his face when he first saw him! We miss Uncle Eric so much!!!
Others who came were Granny and Pops, Nanny, Nana and PawPaw, and Uncle Jason. I made Carson's low protein cake again and did maybe a slightly better job of decorating it this time, but nothing fancy. It also had a better texture and tasted better this year. I am growing into my role as Carson's low protein chef!


Carson enjoyed looking at his food through the balloons


Carson's favorite new toy that sings his favorite lullaby. He sleeps with his "Elmie" every night.


PawPaw showing Carson the new Johnny Tractor book Granny got him, which is now his favorite of all time and we have read it 10,000 times!


"What's in that BIG box?"


Carson supervising PawPaw and Dada putting together his new slide


Always the engineer: Carson has to see how everything works, including where the bubbles come from on his Bubble Mater!


It's also fun to make someone else do the work, Uncle Eric, so I can see the bubbles!


Enjoying the new slide


A beautiful sunset at the house giving a nice ending to a very happy birthday!

Cooking Crazy!

I interrupt Life Changed Forever to bring you my crazy cooking spree! I went nuts last week/weekend and cooked about a million things for Carson. I also wanted to include some pix of things I cooked previously.

First of all, in April I started baking Carson's low protein bread in the bread machine so graciously donated to us by Marty's cousin Shaun and his wife, Stacey. Thank you SO much guys, you have NO idea what a lifesaver this is!!! We owe you BIG. So far, I have tried 3 different recipes from my 2 low pro cookbooks, Low Protein Cookery for PKU and Apples to Zuccini. My favorite so far is Trish's Best White Bread from the latter book. It has an awesome natural color thanks to the secret ingredient molasses. It also has a nice flavor. The one I tried before it was Light Homestyle Bread, which includes applesauce. Great flavor and texture in that one! This picture is of the very first one I made.
The crust sank a little because it needed more water. Now I bake a loaf almost every week. I am finding new ideas and recipes all the time to use with the leftover, stale bread so I don't have to waste those expensive ingredients! I made Toasted Cinnamon Honey Sticks, then last weekend I made some Chex Mix with Rice Chex, gluten free pretzel sticks, and dried lo pro bread cubes. It was awesome!

Life Changed Forever, Part 1

This is the first of a 3-part post about our life after the storms. I will discuss three life-changing events that all happened within roughly 2 weeks: the storms, our trip to Canada/Alaska, and my college graduation.

Let me begin by saying GOD IS GREAT. He is our refuge, our strength, our ever-present help in times of trouble. Not only that, but He is also Jehovah Jireh, our Provider, who is MORE than enough for me. He blesses us so much more than we deserve and is the Giver of all things good in our lives. I will praise Him no matter what! I praised Him in the storm, and I will praise Him no matter what the future holds, because I know He holds the future.

That was a lot of mixed-up scripture and song lyrics!

On April 27, 2011, the lives of most people in North and Central Alabama were turned upside down. The lives of 238 people in our state met an end on that day. We are saddened by the loss. Thousands of people lost their homes, businesses, possessions, etc. We are saddened by their loss. Thankfully, we did not suffer any losses of this magnitude. Marty's family lost a barn, a swimming pool cover, and part of a fence. My family lost a tree. Neighbors lost a little more. Some lost huge sheds, giant trees, and vehicles. Everyone lost electricity for many, many days. Ours was off for two whole weeks! We are still without phone service, considering our phone line is still laying in the road by the driveway and we have to run over it every day. But praise God, He spared all our loved ones and friends and our homes.

Our hometown of Cullman, AL, where I work and shop and do most business, was sliced in half. An EF4 tornado ripped through the heart of downtown on that day, taking with it many businesses, historic buildings, churches, and people's homes. The cityscape we have grown up with and lived with all our lives is forever changed. The world as we once knew it is now forever changed. The miracle is: we survived. The hardship is: the aftermath. Yes, some people lost their homes, possessions, or livelihoods, but most of us lost things such as food. Replaceable, yes, but at a cost. Some, like us, had generators, yes, but at a cost. And now the cleanup is underway...for some, at a great cost.




Financial cost is not the only problem we are encountering. Emotional cost is high as well. Even those, like me, who did not suffer through a large tornado and lots of damage, still are haunted by the images, haunted by the sounds, and haunted by the emptiness. Many people had trouble dealing with the darkness, especially that night. And most of us now cringe at the sight of thunderstorms on the radar. Our new best friends are our meteorologists and weather men, such as James Spann, Jason Simpson, J.P. Dice, and Wes Wyatt. We are so thankful we have them to keep an eye out for us. With our generator running at home, we were able to watch the whole day unfold on TV. Sometimes I wish we hadn't seen it. But we were blessed to be able to have access to the news on TV to keep up with where storms were and who in our families might be in danger, because so many people had no idea.

Thankfully, we only had to watch the aftermath of the tornadoes unfold for about 4 days. For 4 days we had to keep our generator running to have food. The first day or two gas was hard to come by. Many stations were out of power and unable to pump. The nearest place that had power was part of Athens, which is over an hour from our house. There was devastation all around. Gas stations slowly began cranking up generators so they could pump gas. Long lines were forming and some places started rationing. We had enough at home already to run the first day and night, but the next morning Marty was out early scouting the scene. He managed to find gas by lunchtime.

In the midst of all the madness, I was trying to finish school. I had 3 more days left in my internship, and of course schools were closed. They had no power, some had damage, and many roads were impassable. My high school gym, where I had P.E. class and watched many basketball games, had major roof damage. It was one of the first things I saw on TV, because it had happened that morning.

I had one more major assignment due, as well as a final exam. Even though I could use my laptop, it was sporadic, and some of the websites did not want to load the things I needed. In addition to all this, we were also preparing for a major trip to Canada and Alaska! A week that had already been filled with schooling to finish, business to conduct, doctor's appointments, and packing to do, saw complete infrastructure come to an abrupt halt. Never, at least in my lifetime, had it been so massive and widespread.

Looking back now, weeks later, we continue to see where the protective Hand of God was on us. Marty just checked out the woods on our property behind our house and discovered that 1/3 of the trees are gone. We have been in denial, but finally realize that a tornado definitely passed our house, not just straight-line winds. The paths around our property are obvious now that we can see them. Below I captured an image from a tornado damage map around our property. The blue circles represent areas of major wind damage, and that blue box goes all the way down the bluff behind our house in a STRAIGHT PATH. Our house is by the green square, UNTOUCHED. The only thing that happened was we lost a few shingles, a heavy wooden chair was sucked off our porch and blown onto a tree (both only scratched), the lawnmower moved several feet, a gutter wrapped around the back corner of the house, our garbage cans ended up in the fields, and our back Cleveland pear tree was snapped off. MINOR. Considering there was a TORNADO in our YARD and we didn't even know it!!!!!!






Please help us continue to pray for those who fell victim to this horrible, disastrous day. For a wonderful account of the events and emotions of the day from our local area, check out my friend Julie's blog, Our Family, The Martins, on my favorite blogs. And help us continue to praise God for all the miracles He has performed and continues to perform through this event.

Adventures in Cooking

Ok, so it has been several months since my last post, I know. Things have been really crazy! I just happen to have a few spare moments that I decided to use to write. As most of you know, I am doing my student teaching right now, and also taking a class, so I am still a very busy girl, as usual!

Carson just keeps getting bigger and bigger. He is starting to outgrow alot of his clothes, so we just had to start shopping for an all new wardrobe. Plus, with it being so unusually warm for most of this February, he needed new seasonal clothes too! It is unreal how the weather was, mostly in the 70s. Very strange.

Anyway, the newest thing that is happening is food. Carson lost his appetite for a couple of weeks following an ear infection, but he has finally gotten back to eating just about anything we give him. On February 19, Marty, Carson and I attended our first PKU cooking class. We met up with Jimmy, Julie and Noah at Jeff State south of Birmingham. Chef Jason was our instructor, and I thought he did an amazing job and had some great recipes for us! We worked together at stations to prepare these recipes, then went to another room where we all sat down and tasted them. I was most disappointed with the egg plant burgers. They smelled and looked SO good while cooking, but ended up tasting VERY bitter! Yuck! Carson agreed, and so did Jimmy and Marty. The best thing to me was the pasta with pesto and the veggie fajitas. The zuccini tasted delicious in the fajitas, and Carson liked it too! After the class, the six of us stopped at Logan's and ate together. We had a great time! It was a beautiful day as well.

This experience inspired me to start cooking more low protein foods and try some new recipes. I have started getting adventurous, and I love it!

First, I made some really quick and easy biscuits with Cambrooke's MixQuick. The recipe came from their website, www.cambrookefoods.com. Unfortunately, I have yet to get them to keep well, as they get kind of gooey after a while. Definitely best when fresh. Carson loves them, and they are super low in phe. He loves any kind of bread! I thought I took a picture of these, but I guess not because I can't find it!

Next, for Valentine's Day, I made Carson his first cookies. I made the Butterscotch Chip Cookies, from Cambrooke's site also. Very easy to make, and delicious too! Carson enjoyed them, and I also brought some to church to share with friends. Everyone said they tasted just like a normal cookie...yummy!




Very satisfying!

The most adventurous thing I tried to bake so far was homemade graham crackers. I got this recipe from the Low Protein Cookery for PKU cookbook, which is the older PKU cookbook. I just recently ordered it through Amazon.com and had it shipped to my house. I actually bought the newer cookbook first, a long time ago! I did make a fudge recipe out of the new cookbook at Christmas. I have not yet perfected my fudge, so I ate it all myself. It sure did taste wonderful though...chocolate and butterscotch! Yum! If you wonder why so much butterscotch, it is because it is much lower in phe than chocolate, so a better option for Carson. Anyway, I digress. For the graham crackers, I used Wel-Plan Baking Mix, honey, molasses, corn syrup, cinnamon, sugar, and I do not remember what else. The problem I had was that I did not have a flat cookie sheet, only one with sides, so I could not roll them out perfectly flat. They did not get crispy. Instead, the texture was more like a cookie. I will also use half the cinnamon it calls for next time, because I prefer less and felt it was too strong. However, they were still delicious, tasted much like a regular graham, and most importantly, Carson loved them too! I look forward to trying them again with the proper modifications. Graham crackers are Carson's favorite snack, which he picked up from Noah a long time ago. Unfortunately, one Honey Maid graham square has 19mg of phe, which is high for such a small portion. The homemade grahams are significantly lower, so I will be making them again very soon!


As for Carson's eating habits, he is being pretty selective right now. Ever since we suffered from the horrible stomach virus last month, which took Carson over a week to recover from, he has not been eating the same. He went back to eating canned sweet potatoes, Bruce's Yams, and refuses to eat them in any other form. He will still eat green beans as long as they are with something else. He will also eat carrots sometimes, and he still loves broccoli and cauliflower, thankfully. He probably eats spaghetti five out of the seven days a week, only because I refuse to make it every single night. I use low protein spiral noodles and 2 tablespoons of Ragu Traditional Old World Style. Apparently, this is Carson's most favorite food in the whole wide world! He must have spaghetti! With 1/2 cup of the noodles, this portion totals only 23mg phe, which is wonderful. But the noodles are mostly starch! Sometime in the near future I plan to try a low protein mac & cheese. I also bought some lopro rice to try. The major problem we are having right now is Carson's reluctance to try new foods, as well as his rejection of fruit. He used to eat all kinds of fruit, but since the virus has completely refused it and spit it out. What to do? Any tips are appreciated. I plan to try to make a nice dessert for him with fruit in it to try. We will see!

Most of all, I look forward to six weeks from now, May 14th, when I FINALLY graduate from college and can devote more time to cooking and trying new recipes for my little man. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!