Back to School With Young Living Essential Oils

If you have kids going back to school, consider adding Young Living Essential Oils to your supplies list. Here are some favorites for this time of year:

1. THIEVES essential oil blend to support immunity. That's right, this little bottle of oils can help your littles (and you) battle the undesirables that come with school! To use, just rub a drop on the bottoms of their feet at bedtime and in the morning. It can also be taken internally in a tea or a capsule, but may seem too spicy for young children.

Some additional immunity boosting oils are: oregano (and thyme), melaleuca alternifolia (tea tree oil), lemon, frankincense. 

2. STRESS AWAY essential oil blend. This one is pretty self explanatory. It smells amazing, though. Containing vanilla, lime, copaiba, and lavender essential oils, it's like a beach in a bottle. Apply to your wrists, neck, or take a bath in it--no really, just add a few drops to a 1/2 cup of Epsom salts and add to a warm bath. Aaaahhh. 

3. LAVENDER essential oil. Use this at bedtime to help those excited kiddos relax and fall asleep. I use this every night on my daughter! I rub a drop or two on her collarbone, and also on her pillow and blankets. It is also great for the skin!

Some other favorites for healthy sleep are: Cedarwood, Roman chamomile, Tranquil Roll-on, Peace & Calming, RutaVaLa Roll-on, and Valerian (doesn't smell great, but works REALLY WELL).

4. Peppermint and Lemon essential oils can help with focus, a little wake-up, digestion, and sniffles! These oils are so versatile, they all have multiple uses and benefits to the body!

There are many, many more beneficial essential oils, blends, and products made with essential oils that Young Living has to offer! To get started, I recommend getting a Premium Starter Kit. They are on sale right now for $10 off!! 

I'm also offering a BACK-TO-SCHOOL SPECIAL until the end of August. JUST A FEW MORE DAYS!!

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If you sign up with me and order a Premium Starter Kit listed above, I will give you a $20 Product Credit, a $20 value Reference book, and a little goodie bag to help you get started using your oils. 

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Here's the link to sign up with me:

https://www.youngliving.com/signup/?site=US&sponsorid=1807012&enrollerid=1807012

Just a reminder: when you sign up as a wholesale member with Young Living, you are not obligated to sell oils or host classes or parties. There are no monthly or annual fees!! Just enjoy your high quality essential oils! 

Building a Foundation

Wow, life with a toddler, husband, and a house being built is busy! Actually, that is an understatement! I think Katie has gotten 4 more teeth (molars) in the last two months! She is also growing her vocabulary every day, even talking in complete sentences like "I don't want to." Well, at least she is communicating, right? Ha. Here is a picture of her reading the phone book...out loud. Lol.

Our house construction is also coming along. We now have what looks like a house! There have been some major changes in the last couple of months. Let's go back...

August 30: We have a cleared spot for our house, and smoldering brush piles. These took all day for the flames to die down, and Neal came home with a fire tan. It rained for a few days after that, and the piles were still hot! Later we discovered that the clay that was stuck on the tree roots had baked into a brick and was probably protecting the heat underneath. A little science for ya. 

Shortly after this, Neal went out and surveyed again, staking the corners of the house so the foundation people had something to go by. It was really neat being able to see where the house would go, and visualize where the different rooms were! 

After a week or so of phone calls, the foundation team finally came! They had one guy with a backhoe driving around and moving dirt, and later another came and drove a compactor over it so the foundation would be more dense. Don't want anything to shift under your house!

They added several layers of select fill dirt, 25 dump truck loads to be exact! The slab design company tested the density of the slab at every layer, but it failed the tests after 2 layers. Mild panic set in as the foundation contractor, our builder, the slab designer, and Neal scrambled to figure out what went wrong. They couldn't replace all of that dirt! Finally the builder noticed a small detail that had gone overlooked: the location that they got the fill dirt from was not the same location that the tests were based on! Like comparing apples and oranges. Once they sampled and tested the correct fill dirt source, the dirt that was placed for our foundation passed the tests. Whew! What a relief! 

Now they could begin placing the corners of the slab. 

Once the corners were in place, the shafts for the piers were drilled. I think we have 48 total! 

Then the steel rebar cages were placed in the shafts, and concrete poured. They had to use a pump truck to reach all the areas of the slab. 

Here is the slab area with the concrete poured in the piers and the steel rebar sticking out. It will be cut later. 

This will be continued in the next post: A Slab for a Birthday Gift. 

Adventures in Mommyhood

The title was meant to be a play off of Adventures in Babysitting, an old movie from the 80's. Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) I feel like a new mom and don't know what I'm doing. This story is one of those times.

The other day, Katie and I were going to meet Grandma in Waco for lunch and an exchange of goods. My plan was to keep Katie happy with different toys through the ride, along with snacks and water. I had her kid songs CDs in the car, and even my iPhone with the car hookup cable to play white noise in an emergency. I was hoping she would eat lunch and sleep the whole way back. I thought I had everything covered. Boy, was I wrong! 

She fell asleep on the way up there, about 15 minutes into the drive. She slept for 30 minutes, and then I handed her toys and water. Fifteen minutes later she started crying. I found an exit (we were in Marlin, TX), found a random hotel driveway on the side of the road, and got out to check on her. I should mention that a cold front had just blown through, and it was quite windy. I checked her diaper, rubbed Peace & Calming essential oil on her--this worked pretty well on the last road trip, and she did calm down. I also gave her a different toy and a snack. This settled her down until we were about ten minutes away from our destination. 

I heard her cough a little, so I looked at her in the mirror. We have a mirror facing her in the backseat so I can see her while I'm driving. Anyway, I looked back there just in time to see her throw up. All down her front, all over the car seat. About the time the smell hit me, she started screaming. I took the first exit I saw, which literally went nowhere, but thankfully, there was an extra wide paved area so I could park far off of the driving lanes and feel safe. 

I grabbed some napkins, and ran to the backseat to clean her and her car seat up. Fortunately, there was a plastic grocery bag on the floor back there to dump the trash in. I got her out and into the trunk to change her. I had a change of clothes in her diaper bag, thankfully, but the pants I packed were too small. Oh well. At least she had something, right? So after I changed her, I put her on the ground and told her to wait by the car door while I finished cleaning up her car seat and the trash. Suddenly, I heard the car door slam, Katie started crying, and the trunk closed on me at the same time. A huge gust of wind. My heart sank into my toes. I thought the car door hit Katie when it blew closed! I ran over and picked her up, still crying and wailing. I tried checking her over for bruises, and didn't find any. Maybe the wind knocked her down and it all scared her. But still she was crying uncontrollably. 

At this moment, I did not know what to do! I'm standing on the side of the road next to the car, in the wind, holding my daughter, and did not know what to do. 

Finally, it hit me that we were very close to where we were going to eat. I told Katie, "I have to put you in the car, it's a short trip." And we were off. I held my bottle of Stress Away (yummy mixture of lime, vanilla, and other soothing essential oils) in front of the air vent to help with the smell. She quickly stopped crying! When we got there, Grandma greeted us with hugs and picked Katie up. She perked up pretty quickly, and even ate pretty well at lunch. 

After we ate, Grandma put some jeans on Katie that she had added some cute ruffles to:

There was a shopping center next to where we ate, so we took Katie there. She literally ran through half of the store, and then stopped, looked at us, and sat down! We carried her through the other half. On the drive home, she slept for an hour, and did great. 

The next trip, I will use DiGize (stands for "digestive energize") and Peppermint essential oils as a preventative measure for her carsickness. Praying this is an effective solution.

Never a dull moment being a Mommy! 

Surviving Toddlerhood with Essential Oils

Once again, there has been a lot going on in Katie World. She's learning new words every day, even repeating brand new words that I say to her (note to self:watch what I say phase)! 

Lately, she has been asking for "hep, hep" when she needs me to help her get a toy, which cuts down significantly on her frustration levels. When she does ask for help and isn't being stubborn wanting to do something herself! She says "truck", and knows what she is talking about--a picture of a truck or a toy truck. She told her Grandma "fa, off" when she was cold one morning, pointing so Grandma would know what she meant. She's also learning animals and sounds. She calls dogs "woof-woof", and makes animal sounds with her books.

My favorite stories are of her and Jake, our cat. They have such a special relationship. She knows not to overwhelm him physically, so she will just go up to him and pet him once. She also sits in front of him and chats, which is really cute! I caught this little gem during one of their chats:

Cue "awwwwwws". This pretty much sums up their friendship. One day while Katie was at Mother's Day Out, Jake ran around the house crying and rubbing on her things. He missed his girl! Another time, he went and took his nap in her crib. One day at lunch, I was trying to get Katie to eat some leftovers, so I handed her the container. She put it on the floor and started trying to herd Jake over to it! It still makes me laugh to think about it.

She's growing so fast, too! It seems like in a month she went from reaching the dining room table top, to the top of her high chair tray, and just yesterday I saw her reach up and pull a cup of water off of the kitchen counter! She went skating on the water and fell, but it scared her more than hurt. She also climbed onto a dining room chair for the first time too! She really likes to help out. She will take trash to the trash can and throw it away, and also take dishes to the kitchen (we did get a couple of dishes in the trash the first few times)! She can't reach the sink yet, so she leaves it on the kitchen floor. It's pretty funny to walk into the kitchen and see a plate or bowl in the middle of the floor. 

Since she didn't get any teeth until she was a year old, we are dealing with her getting teeth back to back now. Fortunately, they are coming in pairs most of the time. For any parents out there, you know that this involves a lot of discomfort for your little one. This includes random, inconsolable crying at the drop of a hat--followed by "are you tired? Hungry? Hurt? Oh, your teeth." She also wakes up in the middle of the night screaming or wailing. She doesn't usually have other issues with sleeping, so we usually know that it's her mouth hurting. I have some Clove Essential Oil that I dilute with coconut oil, and add some copaiba to it. Most of the time, Katie actually asks for some by pointing to it on her dresser. I rub some of the mixture onto her gums where it looks red or where I can tell her teeth are coming in. Clove is numbing, and copaiba helps with inflammation, so it gives her relief very quickly!

 I also rub Lavender or Peace and Calming oil on her chest and neck, and she sleeps, well, like a baby! Occasionally she is too worked up or hurting too much for the oils to settle her down, and we use Motrin, but we use it about 1/3 of the time we would have to without the oils! Win for less liver damage!

If I suspect a fever (normal with teething), I rub a little Lemon oil on her back, and this helps too. 

The best part is that, even if you guess wrong about what she needs, the oils don't hurt your kids when used properly! 

If you're curious about the essential oils, or Young Living as a company, their website is www.youngliving.com. Here's some info on the Premium Starter Kit: 

Katie started Mother's Day Out this fall, we call it "school". She LOVES school! I wish she could take a longer nap at school, but even a one hour nap is better than none. She usually makes up for it on non-school days and takes longer naps or even sleeps in (which I don't mind at all). She brought home her first art work the other day. I'll leave you with a picture of her art work:

How Much wood...

So it has been several weeks since my last post about our lot. We had just started clearing, and I was impressed with how "fast" it was going. Boy did I become disillusioned fast! 

We were continuing to clear with the brush mower and loppers, while stopping periodically to survey some points to delineate where the construction fence would go. Since we were approximating where these fence points were, sometimes we were way off, and I was still trekking through the dense brush with a 12' survey rod. Sometimes a larger tree would be in the way and we would either mark points on either side of it, or skip that point and try to survey near it. These more difficult points seemed to take forever to figure out, while I was standing in the dense woods with flies and other insects buzzing in my face, not to mention the heat of the middle of summer! We were fortunate that the long weekend we happened to pick to do the most work was probably one of the coolest of the summer! 

After 2 or three days of the clearing and surveying, Neal managed to go through two or three brush mowers that died. By the end of the weekend, we were stuck trimming with loppers and hauling the branches to piles. NOT ideal, or very efficient! But we managed to trim enough to get a few more points surveyed, and then started trimming a line along where the back of the construction fence would go. Here's a picture I took when Neal took off back to the starting point to get some stakes and clear the path a bit more:

This was with some of the thicker areas trimmed! As you can see, there are lots of healthy trees which we hope to keep, and lots of denser brush, which I hope I can convince Neal to thin out.

Once we got the stakes in and a path cleared through the brush all the way around, we could focus more on our efforts to continue trimming and clearing brush. When we got to the point where we could hardly walk through our trimmings anymore, we rented a wood chipper. 

Here's a picture of the wood chipper.

Here's a link to a video of it eating a tree: http://youtu.be/CmFG16gD1ZM

We fed the wood chipper for at least two days, which included hauling small trees and large and small limbs into a pile to feed it. Which gave rise to the question in my mind: "How much wood can a wood chipper chip?" A LOT!! And fast, too. Just gobbled them right up, whatever you could shove in there, up to about 4" in diameter. 

After the brush and limbs we had cut were reduced to wood shavings, we hired a dozer to knock down the larger trees to finish clearing the area, and to make a path so that the engineering consultant could drive their core rig in to get soil samples. They would then test the soil to properly design our slab. 

Here is a photo of the dozer:

Here's a link to the video of the dozer in action: http://youtu.be/IZQMUOf2IKg

And another: http://youtu.be/UoPD14qpfu8

Have you ever noticed how much this equipment resembles elephants? So large, and so powerful, but yet capable of handling things with such precision and delicacy. 

Here is a photo of the drill rig that took the soil samples: 

I didn't actually see it in action, but I think it's funny that they named it "Bubba Red".

After the soil drilling was complete, we hired a guy to cut up our wood into firewood, and Neal started putting up the construction fencing. After working on it for a whole day, he came home and said "I need your help." It turns out , the wire he bought for the fence came in a giant coil, which sprung loose into a bird's nest when the bindings were cut! He had to build a box to contain the springy mess, and we had to unwind it carefully a section at a time to prevent another bird's nest. By the end of the next day, we had deemed the wire a 4,000 foot slinky that we had to straighten out! Often it kinked and twisted like a metal slinky that had gotten tangled into an impossible mess! After a few more days, we had our fence.

With only a few brush piles left, we were ready to start moving dirt for our slab!

It's Alright to be Little Bitty

Taking a break from writing about house building because Katie is doing so much lately, and I don't want to forget any details! 

She's becoming a lot more interactive, and trying to communicate more, as well as showing a lot more understanding of what we are saying. I have gotten the timeline a little jumbled, so these are all stories that have happened in the last couple of weeks.

Her 15-month well baby doctor appointment was this month. I put some Peace & Calming oil on her before going because she started screaming as soon as we started weighing her. This time, she did great through weighing and measuring her length, but she was not very happy with the head measurement at all! Katie only gained 12 ounces in three months, but grew about 2.5". She's tall and skinny, "built like a supermodel", as the doctor says. She calmed back down once we were in the room, but was NOT happy when the medical student came in to check her. She screamed the whole time. Then the "real" doctor came in and she was a little better for her. Then we started talking about giving her bottles at night. The doctor said that if she's eating enough during the say, she shouldn't need bottles of milk at night. We told her Katie eats a lot during the day, and the doctor said "no more bottles". Katie stuck out her bottom lip and burst into tears! She only got two shots this time, and she only cried for a couple of minutes after them. We had a rough first few nights after that, but now she only has a sippee cup of milk at bedtime and only wakes up once to get more. She even slept 12 hours in a row one night! 

Katie loves to be helpful. She has learned where the trash can is, and how to put stuff in there when we ask her to. When Grandma was visiting, she set her breakfast bowl down on the couch. Katie walked up, picked up the bowl and spoon, and walked off. Wondering what she was going to do, I followed her into the kitchen. She walked around (apparently thinking), then walked up to the full trash can and very gently, set the bowl on top of the trash can! I went and told her she was a big help, but it was the wrong place, as I put it in the sink. She absolutely loves verbal praise, so I wanted to make sure she knew she did something good! 

Katie recently discovered the window in her room. Her new favorite thing is to scoot between the window and changing table, behind the curtains, and sit there till I find her. I'll say "where's Katie", which is usually followed by a quiet giggle. Then I'll tickle her through the curtains, which sets off more giggling and a cackle or two.  Problem is that she likes to hide there when she is tired, has a dirty diaper, or avoiding going to bed! 

Katie's also starting to use a spoon to feed herself. 

When she doesn't dump the food out into her bib, she does pretty good. But most of the time she can't spoon feed herself fast enough and starts grabbing handfuls to shovel in. She has such a big appetite! 

Final story. We were at Mamaw and Papaw's house this weekend and Katie was getting a little cranky. To distract her, I asked if she wanted to go upstairs and get dressed. She ran off, so I assumed the answer was "no". Less than a minute later, I heard her crying and looked, and she had climbed all the way up the stairs by herself! I think she had gotten tired of climbing. Sure gave me a heart attack! I flew up the stairs and grabbed her before she could fall. Whew! She is sneaky! 

Well, that's a little insight into Toddlerville. Hope you enjoyed the stories! 

Alissa

We Have a Lot

We Have a Lot

So when we got back home from Fort Worth, I think Neal was abuzz about getting the lot cleared before we even went to bed that night. He had ordered some survey equipment that came in while we were gone, and boy, was he eager to test it out!

Because he had worked so many extra hours earlier this year (and because he works for the State), he has so much comp time and vacation he needs to use very quickly. So, his plan is to take off at 2:00 every afternoon, and take off a few days here and here. All that being said, he went straight to the lot on Monday after work to test out the new toys. The plan was then to rent a "brush mower", and we would both go out to the lot on Tuesday afternoon, and clear some brush and get some surveying done.

Here's a pic of our equipment:

For those of you wondering, we need to survey in order to determine what area to clear for where the house will go, plus about a ten foot construction border for equipment. So, we need to survey to know what to clear so that we can finish the survey. We also need a good path for testing equipment for the slab engineers.

I mistakenly thought I was going to be helping with the surveying, but there was a lot of clearing we needed to do first! Neal was driving the brush mower, so I was hauling big branches and trimming taller stuff (the brush mower can only "climb" so high).

Here's a picture of the lot when we started:

I was amazed at 1) how much work there was to do, 2) how quickly things got cleared with the machinery "mowing" brush! Most of the area was filled with Yaupon Holly and Beauty Berry. Some of the Yaupon were either dead or easily pushed over because of their shallow roots. One of these I was trying to push over, and it snapped off and whacked me in the chest! It was such a hard hit, it knocked the wind out of me. It hurt very badly too. After wallowing and yelling a bit--to no avail, Neal was running the brush mower and wearing ear plugs--I went and checked it out in the truck mirror. There was a big red mark, and was tender to touch. Remembering that Valor essential oil helps bruises, I dabbed a little on and took a water break. I kept reapplying the valor, and the spot never really bruised, and felt better a couple of days later! 

That first day, we got most of the driveway area cleared of brush, and a teeny part of the garage area. This is when I realized how big our house area is! 

More to come, on finishing with the brush and clearing the construction area. 

Alissa