Labor Day Love

Labor day is one of my favorite long weekends out of the year. Don't ask me why... I've just always looked forward to this particular weekend at the end of a long summer.

This summer didn't go by too slow. I thought it was going to when it got super hot early in July. I was worried it was going to be THAT HOT alllllllllllll summer long. Thankfully.... mother nature got my memo and it cooled off. Not a lot but enough to make it tolerable. If only she'd get my memo about my dislike for humidity, life would be just fabulous.

So what did we do???

Well... Friday evening I picked up pizza and after dinner I went and got a hair cut. A much needed haircut. It was lovely. I came home to find Kevin slowly being taken over by the cold/virus that hit our house earlier in the week. Boo.

Saturday Kev got his sick butt up and out of bed to go to a softball tournament. I wished him good luck and off he went. Connor and I had plans. BIG plans. Plans to party.

Every year my dad's side of the family and another side of the family get together. We grill and cook up really yummy food and BAM! the party gets started. This year we had Alligator and Crabs on the menu. SCHAWEET!

Sunday..... Ahhh... Sunday.... I was supposed to get together with a girlfriend to do a yard sale. Late Saturday night we decided to cancel because it was supposed to rain off and on all morning long. Well.... the rain was off all morning long. OH WELL! All three of us pretty much vegged around the house like a lazy bump on a log. It was wonderful.

Monday Connor met up with our friends Taran and PJ for a play date. Apparently the air port in our area has an inside viewing area that the kids could watch the planes. There is also plane pieces for them to play on (if I read the website correctly). We got to the air port with toddlers in toe. Dodging people and their bags, down escalators and looking for air planes. When we asked someone where this awesome place was.... we were informed it was closed for renovation! OH NO! Toddlers wanted to see air planes! It was rainy outside so we couldn't do the outside viewing area!  Luckily we found an area off to the side with windows and a beautiful glass crab statue. The kiddos could see some planes and were memorized by the crab. From there it was off to the mall for lunch and playtime.

Our Labor Day weekend wasn't over the top, we didn't travel somewhere exotic or party hard.... but we spent time together and with people we care about. Those....are the BEST kind of weekends for sure.

Gluten Free?

In the last several months I've been looking into gluten free options of eating. I had a few colitis flare-ups last year. I have medicine that will prevent them but I don't like being on medicine every day if I can prevent flare-ups with my diet.

Research that I have done is coconut oil and milk is VERY good for your digestion and overall health. Coconut oil does a bazillion great things for your body inside and out (maybe I'll post a blog about it soon) and coconut milk has lots of nutrients for your digestive tract and coats it if you're having issues.

Next is yogurt. I'm not a HUGE fan of yogurt but I've noticed that yes... it does help my digestive tract out big time when I eat it.

Lastly, is a gluten free diet. When I first looked into going gluten free this winter I felt very overwhelmed a thought that it would be impossible with our crazy lifestyle. BUT in the last two months I'm finding out more and more that gluten free is finally becoming "popular" at the grocery store and there are A LOT of options. We've switched to eating Quinoa and fresh vegetables rather than preprocessed noodle sides or frozen sauced vegetables. We've always been a fan of eating Spaghetti Squash instead of pasta BUT I've also now discovered gluten free pasta made by the Quinoa brand. It is surprisingly good!

For lunch this week I made Crustless Quiche. It was gluten free, easy to make and VERY YUMMY! I found brown rice flour in the grocery store last trip and I thought that is what I would need as flour. Apparently you need to mix other things with that flour for baking. I got disappointed at first but then found gluten free flour with everything mixed together for me. Sooooo this morning... I made gluten free blueberry pancakes. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd they tasted exactly (if not better) than my other pancakes that I make from scratch! It even passed the Kevin and Connor taste test. Score!

I started with the basic pancake from scratch recipe that I found on line. I swapped the gluten free flour mix that I bought with the flour in the recipe. Then I added the blueberries, a big splash of vanilla extract, a regular splash of almond extract, a sprinkle of nutmeg and a big sprinkle of cinnamon. Like I said... they were gooooooooooooooooooood.

I'm started a board on my pinterest for gluten free cooking. I'm looking forward to it!

Call Me Maybe?

I'm finally starting to feel better and enjoying the Labor Day weekend. Working on a post of our Labor Day Weekend but here's a quicky post to make you smile.

Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen is a catchy little tune that gets stuck in my head if I hear it. Its a song that my 2.5 year old son knows some of the words too. Its also a song that has a bunch of parody spin-offs on it as well. My inner nerd secretly loves them.... well... maybe now its not such a secret. Here's my top two favorite parodies.

Buzzzzzzzz...

I took Connor out for a hair cut on the way home from work/daycare on Thursday. USUALLY we get a level 3 along the sides and blend it up to the top and then trim the top.... well... in my congested head I got it confused. I said.... Level 3 on the top and blend it down. So..... my little boy's new nickname is Buzz. Oops!