Those were the first words that came out of my mom’s mouth the other day when she called me. To explain this though, I need to back up a bit….

I’ve had chronic hives for 13 1/2 years. Not just your ordinary hives, but painful, bruising, sometimes debilitating hives. They started when I came back from India with malaria, and no doctor has been able to figure out how to get rid of them. I could go on about that forever, so we’ll just sum it up that It pretty much sucks. 

Back to our conversation…. on a Dr. Oz episode that my mom watched, he talked about leaky gut syndrome (sounds weird, I know), but some of the causes and symptoms go along with exactly what is wrong with me. After reading on the subject for hours, I’ve decided to try a crazy diet to see if it helps!

Now, I don’t even remotely eat healthy. When Matthew got sick, I gained 30 pounds in a couple months and have relied a lot on food since then. This diet is ridiculously healthy, so it will be a big change, a change that I am excited for! Here is a list of foods that I can’t eat:

1. Wheat/White flour

2. Dairy

3. Soy/Tofu

4. Sugar

5. Table Salt 

6. Artificial Sweeteners

7. Processed Foods

8. Caffeine

9. Alcohol

That doesn’t leave much, they call it the caveman diet. But if a caveman could do it, so can I. I started on a 6 week journey this morning (we’ll see how it goes from there) to see if my hives go away. I figure I can do anything for 6 weeks, which actually ends up being the day before my birthday. A hive-free Julia would be the best present ever! I’ll keep you updated on how I’m feeling, etc,.. Hopefully writing about it all will keep me motivated! This is one of the biggest changes I could make in my life, and I’m ready for change, so here we go!

To sum up the past few years, life got really complicated, and I stopped posting. In a sense, I almost stopped living. I figure it’s about time I get over it. So, here I am with a new site, a new theme, and a fresh start. Things are about to change… big time, so stayed tuned for more!

I went outside our front door today and saw the biggest moth that I have ever seen! I ran inside and got Dillon and Cameron’s bug jar to see if I could catch it…

Amazingly, it filled the whole jar! The next picture is Dillon’s hand under the moth showing how big it is…

After a few minutes of looking at it in awe, we decided that it was too big and beautiful to keep, so we returned it to it the outdoors…

Cameron was very excited to play her first sport this summer. She’s been waiting on the sidelines watching Dillon for a long time and it was finally her chance! She’s done a great job and loves to play (which I am a little surprised because it’s kinda boring at this age…). She even got to have her Daddy be the coach and play with her best friend, Macy.

Dillon has been selling toys and saving his money for a couple of months to buy either a DS or a PSP. This focus was immediately trumped the day Lego Harry Potter hit the stores…

When I reminded him that he could play a PSP in the car, he simply said, “That’s alright, I just like to relax in the car.”

Yes, this is our backyard…. and it has beautiful green grass! Now to just get rid of all the weeds and it will be perfect!

(The area of no grass to the bottom right of the picture is where we will (eventually….) have a patio)

We were driving home the other night after Cameron’s t-ball game and the kids started cracking up laughing. I looked in the backseat and Cameron’s eye were watering and her face was red and as she was laughing histerically, she said “The root beer even goes into your mouth…”

Whose idea it was, I don’t know, but they had decided that it was cool to suck the root beer through the straw into their noses! I couldn’t help but laugh as I told them that they couldn’t do it anymore…. it burns my nose just thinking about it.

The school year went by so fast. It is amazing to think that my little boy will be in first grade in the fall and going to school all day… such a bittersweet thought. He is turning into such a confident, talkative kid; something that I never imagined from shy little boy that I used to know. I love watching him grow every day. When I look at the pictures from his first day of Kindergarten and his last, it amazes me to see how much his face has matured over the year. My baby boy is starting to turn into a handsome young man.

On the first day of school:

And on the last day of school:

I received a Kohl’s ad a couple of weeks ago that pictured a bedding set that I absolutely fell in love with. Unfortunately, it was pretty expensive so I sadly didn’t consider it. The next week, I received a coupon in the mail for 30% off plus $10 Kohl’s cash for every $50 spent! You can probably imagine what happened next….

Now I just need to convince Matthew that we need new furniture to go with the bedding!