I'm not alone

Today was a good day. I made up a butternut squash pancake recipe from some other bloggers ideas and they were pretty good. The kids gobbled them up this morning and they were a great snack to send to school. It makes such a difference when they are excited about what they're eating. I cleaned the house this morning which felt good to do something that produced a result...at least until lunch when it was all dirty again. I had plans for many more things in the afternoon but I was completely exhausted. It hits me like a ton of bricks. One moment I'll think I can keep going and then the next minute its all I can do to get up the stairs and make it to my bed. This is one of the hardest parts. I need to keep cooking and finding recipes but I am just soo soo tired.

Afternoon and dinner was the highlight. Tyler was so pleasant when I picked him up from school and they played well together while I got dinner together. We have moved passed the stage of having to boil all our meats and veggies and can now eat things baked and roasted. This is huge. We had roasted salmon, asparagus and butternut squash/carrot potatoes. You can not believe how much the kids ate. They asked for thirds of everything. We finished off everything and Brian didn't even eat with us tonight. No left overs for tomorrow which means I'll have to cook something new for lunch.

The thing that has made the last 24 hours so wonderful is the various friends that I've talked to who are wanting to learn and try some of these things we're doing. I can't tell you how encouraging this is to me. Of all the things that are so hard with this transition (how crappy I feel, how new everything is, how much I have to learn, how much I miss certain foods, how much time it takes to cook everything) the two hardest things are how hard it is to tell my boys no and how alone I feel.

I am thankful for the yahoo group I am a part of and the blogs of other people on GAPS but it is no where near the same as people in your community going through something with you. Even in my marriage it has been hard because Brian doesn't understand everything as much and its hard for him to see all of us go through this. Cooking and eating has always been something we enjoy doing together. Brian has always shared a lot of the daily cooking with me. Now, I do it all and we miss the joy of doing stuff together. We had a wonderful talk this weekend about ways he can join me and he reassured me that he is on my team and he does believe in this diet. While we were talking I cried as I told him how great it would be if he (or anyone) called me up one day and said, "Hey, I was trying ____ and it turned out great" or "I read _____ the other day and found out _____." Does that make sense? Its like when you're a new mom and all you want to talk to is other moms because you need to hear ideas, be heard, ask questions. I have felt like I'm a new mom in a land of people that don't have children.

The awesome thing is, I feel like God heard my cry and answered me with a quick "You are not alone." In less than 24 hours, I had multiple conversations with people all wanting to start some part of our lifestyle. I understand it will be rare that someone would jump into full GAPS but just having someone to share learning how to culture vegetables together would be awesome.

Over the next few days I'm going to try to post all the different lifestyle changes we're making. I don't expect anyone to want to do them all but maybe having some friends/family picking one area to join me. Here are the areas I'm thinking :

• switching to local, organic meats/eggs
• culturing vegetables
• making Kombucha tea
• making more foods from scratch (Bread, nut-butters, condiments, salad dressings, yogurt, kiefer, crackers, bone stock, etc.) and reducing processed foods
  
• cutting or reducing sugar
• eating an 80/20 diet (80% of diet fruits and veggies/20% meat and grains)
  
• detoxing the home (cleaners, detergents, soaps, perfumes, etc.)
• cooking with traditional and healthy oils and fats (butter instead of margarine, olive oil instead of canola, eliminating soy and vegetable oils, using coconut oil, etc)

If any of these areas seem interesting to you, please keep checking the blog. I'll share what I've learned and resources I've found and I would love to hear from you as you learn along with me.