Just me and my sidekick

Lake Natoma View from Folsom Bridge

It's been a pretty decent weekend.  Marsella and I have spent lots of good time together - even when she's not feeling good.

Yay for natural home remedies!  Marsella woke up last night with a horrible earache.  After taking some motrin, she was able to get to sleep but this morning the pain attacked again.  I don't like taking her to the doctor because it's the same thing each time - weight, height, look in the mouth, ears, and then "Well, you can give her Tylenol to ease the pain and just let her rest."  I wish I could say that and get paid for it! Instead, I opted to try out a natural home remedy of olive oil, garlic, and onion.  I heated up the oil in a sauce pan and then added about two cloves of chopped garlic and half of a chopped onion.  I let this cook for about 15 minutes and then cool before her Dearest dropped some into her ear.  I then cooked up a peel of the onion to get it soft and let the juices start seeping out.  This was placed on her ear to kind of cup it.  She was NOT thrilled about having an onion on her ear.  I told her when she was done I was going to eat it and the look on her face was priceless.  I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her little head!  She took a little nap and seems to be doing about 60% better.  No ear pain but we are still tackling the cough.  Now that the garlic and onion has had time to seep into her ear, she smells like a little italian cook.

Farmer's Market Flowers

Yesterday, she had an "up" day!  It was a beautiful day so we hit up the Farmers Market down the road to see what kind of goodies we could get our hands on.  We picked up some fresh veggies, fruits, and flowers.  I just love getting fresh flowers from the market.  They are always so pretty and they last a lot longer than the grocery store.
Something different I picked up was Choy Sum, which is the flowering stem of Chinese cabbage.  When I first saw it, I thought "Well this is pretty but what do I do with it?"  The little guy told me to just treat it like a stir-fry vegetable.  This is exactly what I did.  I washed off the leaves and little yellow flowers and tossed them in the pan with some olive oil.  I tossed the greens with some linguini and a little bit of soy sauce.  Oh my goodness ---YUM!!  I regret not taking a picture.  This just means that next weekend, I will have to pick up more.

In the afternoon, we met up with some good friends and took a little bike ride down the American River Bike Trail.  It was so nice to get out in the sunshine.  I definitely got a good workout pulling two 4 year olds behind my bike.  Once our friends had to leave, we ventured on to take a ride around Lake Natoma. I believe it's about 12 miles give or take a mile.  Not very long but challenging when it came to the hills.  My thighs were burning! At some points, I was yelled some encouraging words by passer-bys.  We ended the day with some ice cream and starbucks.

We missed service this morning.  That was pretty heart-wrenching.  I hate missing service but I have to remind myself of my responsibility as a mom.  I was supposed to meet with the Elders of my church and give my testimony.  I'm a little nervous because I never really thought about my path that led me back to Him.  I have considered myself a Christian all my life but I haven't been living His way -- I've been living my way.  Which certainly doesn't always work out so well.  Since I have been making a more conscious effort to follow his laws, life has been looking up.  I do struggle with feeling lonely now and then but in those times, I just pray.  I pray that He will just wrap his arms around me and remind me that I'm never really alone.  He's here, with me and my munchkin, all the time! 24/7!  And that in itself is pretty amazing.  He knows how we are feeling right now, the challenges we go through, and He knows where we will end up.  Our future - I struggle with that a lot.  I feel like there is so much I want to do, so many different career directions I could take.  It sure is comforting knowing that He'll show that path to me when the time is right.  All I can do now is trust Him.

I have to share something!  I just tried Annie's Naturals: Green Garlic Organic Dressing.  It's AWESOME!