A Time to Reap

Fall is in the air today as I take some time out to relax after what has been a busy week. It is supposed to warm up again for a while but there is a distinct difference in the feel of the wind and just the air outside. I'm not going to lie, I love it! Fall is by far my favourite season and I am never sorry to see it come. In preparation for fall and winter we have begun harvesting our garden and our apple tree. Some of the veggies will still be growing for a bit yet but this past weekend we harvested our apples and then I set to work putting them up for the winter. We were blessed with an amazing bumper crop this year and the final count was amazing! 14 jars of apple butter, 9 jars of applesauce, 3 good sized jars of dried apples, 4 apple pies and 1 apple crisp. And that isn't counting the apples we have been eating or the bag of apples I gave to my Mom. All from one little apple tree! It was lots of work but I know we will be thankful for it all in the middle of winter when we open a jar of wonderful apple butter or eat a warm pie from the oven. I was able to do everything while still following Emma's diet restrictions as well. No gluten, dairy or eggs in the pastry or apple crisp and the only sugar used was a few tablespoons of coconut palm sugar in the apple crisp. It feels so good to know that I am feeding my family healthy wholesome food!
Here is a look at the last few days...

Picking the apples. Of course someone had to hold the ladder to make sure Daddy didn't fall. :)

Emma thought this was pretty exciting to do. For a while...

Then she entertained herself by watching cartoons.

She was my taste tester and she loves eating "cimmanon" off her fingers.

The first of four dehydrators I was able to do.

For a few days the crockpots were constantly going with either applesauce or apple butter cooking away. The house smelled yummy!

 About half of what I ended up with.

The last crockpot full. Emma got in on the last of it all.

My 4 gluten free, egg free, sugar free apple pies.

Last dehydrator full. I showed Emma how to put the apples on the dehydrator and away she went.

We had so many peels and cores after doing hundreds of apples. If only we had chickens!

I wish I had taken a picture of our little tree when it was laden with apples. Some of the branches were touching the ground. What a strong little tree!

"The Lord is good to me and so I thank the Lord

For giving me the things I need

The sun and the rain and the appleseed

The Lord is good to me!"

A little sidenote and update on Emma. It is amazing what going off of foods that are poisoning your system will do! There have been some changes in her for sure and the biggest most noticeable one is her energy. She has so much of it! Yes, she is still napping and still really needs her sleep but when she is awake she is more energetic and chatty and happy and not as clingy. How happy my heart is to see her run around the house squealing. I didn't realize until she started doing that in the last little while how rarely she really did that. Now she is running around and squealing and giggling and just doing what a toddler should be doing. I may need to ask our doctor for energy pills for myself to keep up with her! She was also quite puffy and bloated and that has disappeared. Noticeably. My Mom, who hadn't seen her for a bit, commented on it when she saw her on the weekend. It is such an encouragement to keep on the road that we are on and to keep following this new lifestyle. I have found some great cookbookes and gotten good ideas and it really hasn't been that difficult. We even survived our first birthday party thanks to some cupcakes and "ice cream" that I found for her. I love seeing her so healthy and happy and filled with life!

Purging, Cleansing, Renewing, Healing

I have started changing over Emma's diet. This afternoon I purged our pantry of things she can't have and did the same with the fridge. I have been shopping and reading labels and looking up recipes. Yesterday was her first day and the rice milk and sunflower seed butter were a hit! Especially the sunflower seed butter as you can see...

My heart hurt for her when I saw she is sensitive to peanuts because she loves peanut butter so much! I thought she would probably like sunflower seed butter as it has a similar taste and thank goodness I was right. She calls it peanut butter still. :) We also made waffles that were gluten free, dairy free, egg free and sugar free and they tasted very good! The recipe made enough that I was able to put some in the freezer for her breakfasts.

We have been enjoying some of the veggies from our garden and I love how eating them fresh from our garden is getting her to eat more veggies as she will very willingly eat whatever is picked. Our carrots are almost big enough to start picking and we had to cheat the other day and pick some. They tasted so good!

I am feeling quite encouraged about doing this diet with/for Emma. I have found so much and am thankful that Chad and I have done something similar in the past so I have a good idea of where to start and how to do it. We have a couple of birthday parties coming up and I was able to find some cupcakes and ice cream for Emma that she is able to eat so that she doesn't have to feel left out. She is too little to understand. She may grow out of all of these sensitivities but if she doesn't that is totally okay. It is a very healthy way to eat. It may mean more work for me but as I get into the swing of it all it will get easier and just be a way of life. The hard part will be going to other peoples' houses and having people offer her yummy things that she can't eat. If you are reading this and know you will be seeing her please don't offer her anything with gluten, dairy, eggs or peanuts! She won't understand why Mommy isn't letting her have it. I will try to always bring food and snacks and goodies with me that will be just for her.

I am planning on doing this all with her so that she isn't alone in it and Chad is okay with it all as well. Yes, it's more work. Yes, it's more time consuming. Yes, in some ways it is sacrificing alot. But tell me, don't you think this cutie is worth it?!

Longing...

I think that word best describes how I have been feeling lately. Overall I feel content with life. I am happy with where we are, have settled into living in our house for a while longer, love being a Mommy, enjoying summer, thankful for so much and yet I am longing. Longing for a few different things...

I am longing to hold my baby. Emma has filled our hearts and lives so much and up until a few months ago that longing was there but it was minimal. It has grown now and I so long to know who our baby is going to be and how God is going to bring it all together this time. I am at the point where being around pregnant women or women who have just had babies is tough for me again. Not that anyone would know because I have pretty much mastered faking it and would never ever want the women I am around to feel awkward or as though they are hurting me. I still am happy for them and love to see photos and such but the hurt and the longing is just that much stronger now. It's not something I openly talk about as the majority of people in my life don't understand and so it easier in so many ways to just keep it to myself. I have been praying that our baby comes home soon and praying that our hearts would be prepared.

I am longing for fellowship. This is a tough one. People can tell me just to find a church and get involved but we did that and ended up burnt out and hungry. It is so much easier said than done. I am longing for heart fellowship. Not just coffee time or play dates or movie nights or game nights. I am longing for fellowship with people who are similar in heart and spirit, who want to know more of God, who sacrifice for their families and put the interests of their mates and children far before theirs. People who have a certain standard when it comes to living in this world that may make them "peculiar" to others when they won't let their children be involved in certain things or when they themselves won't get involved in certain things. I wonder at times why it is so hard to find and have found myself praying that God would provide us with friends who have similar hearts and I am trying to trust that one day we will meet those friends.

I am longing to see Emma be healthy and flourishing and blossoming. No, she hasn't been sick as such but as her Mommy I have been watching her closely and could tell that she most likely has food sensitivities. We had her tested and my suspicions were confirmed. She tested positive to sensitivities to gluten, dairy, eggs, peanuts, just to name a few. We are starting her (and us really) on a new 'diet' even though it is more a lifestyle change and one that I hope stays. Her dairy and gluten sensitivities are super high, especially the dairy. We have done this change before for ourselves but eventually wandered away from it. It is a lot of work but once I get it down and figured out it will be good. It will be so wonderful to see Emma have energy and no black circles around her eyes and to see her skin smooth and healthy and her little tummy no longer bloated. Those are just some of the outward signs and I know as we see healing there that will mean that the damage done inside will be healing as well.

I have even found myself longing to challenge my brain somehow. I am not sure what that is going to look like, if it will be courses I take or different reading I do but I need to be challenged in something other than just life and so I am looking into different things.

I am longing for a closeness with God that I haven't felt for quite some time. No one to blame but myself of course! It takes work and time and I just haven't been spending the time that I know I need to. I could make a ton of excuses what with having a toddler but the truth is I just need to sit down and do it. In utter honesty and vulnerability though in some ways I am scared to because I know alot of things are going to come up and lots of tears are going to be involved. I will get there one day though and will be so thankful that I did.

In this period of longing I am so thankful that God knows the cries of our hearts even before we utter them. I am thankful that He understands and puts longing in our hearts for a reason. I am thankful that I don't need to explain myself to Him or to feel like I have to hide how I am feeling or what I am thinking. I am thankful that as hard as it is I can trust Him and trust that He is holding us and directing us and preparing us and drawing us. I am thankful for my home and my family and my health and for living in a country with 4 beautiful seasons and sunshine and rain and flowers and birds and giggles and love and hugs. I read in a book by Francis Chan recently something that is such a good reminder. He talked about how this life we live isn't our story. It's God's story. God put us here for a reason and it wasn't so we could just live our lives as we pleased and bring glory to ourselves. He created us to bring glory to His name and so the lives we live should be a story of the awesome God we serve and His goodness and mercy and love and forgiveness. Never bringing glory to ourselves but to Him alone. Hard to live out for sure but something to try and do.

Longing - a yearning desire. Overall it should be a desire to see God's will done in my life to bring glory to His name, no matter the cost.

What are you longing for today?