Dancing and Tumbling Through Life!

Princess has been having a blast in tumbling, and now cartwheels anywhere she goes. 

And our tiny dancer had another recital in May, performing beautifully. This girl is loving dance!

Haircuts!

This girl loves her beautiful, long hair, so just asked for a trim.

This girl, however, decided to cut off most of her gorgeous red hair and donate it to Wigs for Kids. 

Someone is going to end up with a gorgeous wig!

Food!

So much of life in our home revolves around food. If you were to ask us what our hobbies are, cooking and eating would be high on the list, and we love sharing that passion with our kiddos!

Here we are letting the girls experience a tepanyaki restaurant for the first time.

Sweetheart has developed a real love of tamales, so I decided that she needed to know how to make them. She is the best little tamale maker I know!

Princess is super great at making pizza, even making the dough from scratch and grating all the cheese. We are trying to teach them both that when you cook, you get to cook things that you love!

And here is a beautiful fruit salad. 

I'm sure more food adventures are coming soon!

Tree Nut OIT - Miracles in Action

We have seen so many miracles when it comes to our little Sweetheart and her food allergies, and this year we were able to see yet another. In 2017 we started OIT for her tree nut allergies. 

She is allergic to walnut, pecan, pistachio, and cashew. Walnut and pecan are in the same nut family, so treating one of those allergies helps treat the other simultaneously. Cashew and pistachio are also in the same family, so this meant that if we did OIT for walnut and cashew, it should take care of pecan and pistachio. 

So once a week we drove an hour each way to the allergist's office (they opened an office 1/2 hour closer to us, so we didn't have to drive 1-1/2 hours each way, hooray!). At the office, they gradually increased her dose of walnut and cashew until one day, she got to eat a whole cashew!

Eventually, she was also eating whole walnuts, and then she was eating a whole lot of both walnuts and cashews. After about six to seven months, she "graduated," and can now eat as many of these nuts as she wants!

After graduation, she went back into the office for a challenge to make sure that the work we had done also protected her from pistachio and cashews, and they did! 

We are so grateful for this treatment and the freedom it has given our family. We really have been able to watch miracles in action! 

For more info about Sweetheart's peanut OIT, here are some posts you can refer to:

Peanut-geddon

The First Peanut Day

The Story of 2015

Random 2018

Well, 2018 is half over, and I have so much to record for our little family journal here! Today I'm sharing just a bunch of random pics with no rhyme or reason.

I don't remember where we were or what we were doing for this first pic, but I love it!

Jordan River Temple open house

Hanging around at home

Easter!

Found this gem in a drawer, Marquis and CG when she was just teeny!

Brandon Sanderson is one of our favorite authors, and he has a book called the Rithmatist where they have magic battles using chalk. The girls love this book, and often create Rithmatic battles on our sidewalk.

 

These little creatures are so fun, and life is so good! 

The Rest of 2017

Begone, creative post titles. Who needs you anyway? Especially when the content here is almost a year old, it's better just to get it up than spend time being creative with post titles. There was so much to celebrate in 2017 that I wanted to throw up a massive blog post with all the awesomeness we had going on. Hooray!

First up, on August 29, 2017 Sweetheart started her next round of oral immunotherapy. We did this same thing for her peanut allergy, and it was time to go back for her tree nut allergies. All she had left at this point was cashew, pistachio, walnut, and pecan. 

Cashew and pistachio are in the same family of nuts, and walnut and pecan are in the same family, so she did the treatment for cashew and walnut with the expectation and hope that it would cover the pistachio and pecan. Just like with the peanut treatment, we started with a liquid that we would then dose her with each day. We then gradually increased the dose each week until she was eating cashew flour and walnut meal, and then eventually the nuts themselves!

Princess started tumbling! She had been doing parkour for a little while, but she wanted something with more girls in the class, and with better outfits. 

Our garden gets better and better each year, and we started getting some great harvests!

Hiking!

More garden harvests!

Sometimes you open up an avocado and it's so perfect that angels sing, and you have to take a picture.

Friends in the park!

Matchy sisters

Halloween!

Mavis (the vampire girl from Hotel Transylvania)

and Wonder Woman

Princess had a part in the 2nd grade program, and she did a great job!

First snowfall of the year

Funny faces

Cousin time! (I don't have a pic of this cutie pie that isn't blurry because she never stops moving!)

Top Golf with family

CG came home for a visit, and she brought a boy!!?!?!? 

Overall verdict: No one is ever good enough for your little girl, but this boy is acceptable. We like the boy.

 

Christmas dance recital

Precious treasures made in pottery class

She ate a cashew! (December 19, 2017)

We met one of our favorite authors

And then Christmas!! 

As always, even with a post this long, I wish I had more pictures. But that's a wrap on 2017!