Where have I been?

You may have wondered what happened to the posts here at Living Healthy ‘n’ Happy.  Basically I took an unplanned hiatus from posting for the last 3 months.  Why?  Where do I start? First, as I left off with one of my last posts, I was dealing with my little one being sick with a pre-summer cold with high fevers.  When she gets a fever, I watch her like a hawk because it shoots up easily and quickly (ER visit in the past).  Over time, I found my failsafe for dealing with high fevers, and I’ll share that with you in another post.

End of school events – school for my daughter ended late June.  During those last few weeks, there were lots of fun events for me to help out with.  I had tons of fun making face, hand & body lotion from scratch with nearly 60 children (in small groups of course).  Oh my, lots of questions, and lots of helping hands.  I loved it… and I think they did too.  Then we had another fun day of making Strawberry Jam and Salsa with them, all coordinated by a school parent/local Chef (of which you will be hearing more about soon).  And, a few other fun end of school year celebrations and events.

Planning for a vacation – if you have a child that has allergies and/or a restricted diet, you know how intense and exhausting planning for a trip can be!   This involves doctor letters, medications, getting food for the trip or flight (learning what is acceptable on the plane or not), listing what needs to be purchased as soon as we get there, knowing where the hospital is, having food quickly once we get to our destination, setting up accommodations to make food, the panic of being able to communicate in a foreign language and list goes on.  What used to be a simple pack, grab, go effort is simply a dream in my past life.  But, as I mentioned in my About page, this is what drove to me to make so many changes…. I want that flexibility again, but more importantly I want to not have to be so concerned about these ‘allergies and restrictions’.  My goal is to heal and live more vibrantly!  And, it is slowly happening.

Then Germany.  The vacation!  The first vacation we’ve taken in 10 years (and first ‘family’ vacation)!  We had a fabulous two weeks visiting with family and friends in Deutschland.  My in-laws (who live there) made a trip to the local butcher and farmers market shortly before we arrived.  They had food in the fridge, ready for us prepare as needed.  We were so grateful.  The yolks were really orange… I did not edit any color on the photo! This is how our eggs should look! It was really hot (between 85F – 95F) and humid most of the time we were there… and most places, including where we were staying, do not have air conditioning.  We moved slowly and drank lots of bubble (mineral) water!  The food was yummy. Internet connection was difficult to find.  The greenery was dense and dark.  Burgs (castles, or ruins thereof) on hilltops were amazing. The scenery was   Stories of Hans Christian Anderson popped in my head.  Those two weeks went too fast, then we needed to prepare and pack all the food for the long flight back home (and yes, they did stop me at the airport security check both times).

I was ready to get back at it, ready to write up my posts and send them out.  But, it was requested of me to help with the backyard fence while my enthusiatic partner was still off from work (“Papa” around home… our daughter’s name for him obviously, but it stuck for my mom and myself as well).  It’s so funny how some projects get wildly underestimated.  Okay, maybe ‘funny’ is not the correct term, but I laugh when all said and (almost) done… I knew it wasn’t going to be a one or two day project (I had done this a few times elsewhere).  Both Papa and I are perfectionists with certain things. What would have taken someone else to do in two short days, took us four looooong days (and we still aren’t done yet because it’s TOO HOT here too – over 90F).   But, I can guarantee that it’s not going to rust for ages and paint won’t be chipping off any time soon.  We did it right!  None the less, my posts didn’t get out.

So now I was ready to post – Ummm, NO!  As I got one of my posts nearly done, a pressing issue come to my attention.  LICE!  What?  No, no, no.  I couldn’t believe it. I felt defeated. I was already nervous about getting back to the blog posts and now I’m presented with something that I have had no experience dealing with. And, actually, the thought of lice totally freaked me out.  So, who else has it?  As it turns out, only one of us had it, fortunately.  I’ll write up a post on how to treat lice.  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it certainly was not a 5 minute job… it took days (again, maybe a little more than needed, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to be dealing with it again in a couple weeks).

This whole lice episode caused me to go into cleaning mode. I was trying to find something in the garage and it turned into a major de-cluttering project all around the house!    Okay, so now what… I’m back at it.  And, here we are.

****Big Announcements****

Though I didn’t get the posts ‘published’, I was working on so many of the behind the scenes items on the blog, and as I was busy with lives little adventures, I was writing a ton of posts in my head… saying oh, I’ve gotta share this. I’ve finally been able to pull it all together and starting this week I’m going to make 3 big announcements about what’s new with the blog (you may have noticed some of it as you’ve perused the site.  Vacations are ending, school starts shortly (late here for us), fall is nearly here and Living Healthy ‘n’ Happy is back at it and I’m so excited to share it with you!  Thanks for staying tuned.

COMMENTS How was your summer? Did you travel with food restrictions and allergies that make it challenging? COMMENT below.

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photo credits: Judy@LHH

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