A Boy and His Allergies

Many of you may remember when Gabriel always had broken out cheeks, like in the above photo. We found out his had severe allergies when he was an infant and battled them, trying to figure out what all he was allergic to for about a year. After getting in with Dr. Elkyham in Bellingham, we began a round of food eliminations and allergy testing. Turned out he was allergic to peanuts, cats, dust and pollens and had sensitivities to milk proteins and cottonseed oils. We removed all those foods from his diet and began seeing improvements in his outbreaks (like the photo above).

Fast forward to this week and Gabriel has outgrown all his food allergies, because we were able to avoid them completely. We went to Dr. Elkyham's office this week and met with Lisa Drinkwater PAC and finished his food tests. We already knew he outgrew the cottonseed and milk allergies all that was left was the peanut test.

First they did another poke test to confirm that he is no longer showing signs of allergic reaction. The bump on the right is supposed to look like that, it's a histamine to show his level of reaction to allergens. The blotch on the left is the antihistamine and in the middle was a poke of peanut butter and as you can see there is no reaction. Praise God!  So they fed him a small amount of peanut butter. He said it was so yummy!

Then we waited and every 20 minutes he had to do a blow test to check his peak flows and make sure he wasn't having an anaphalactic (sp?) reaction to the peanut butter.

More waiting... We were there from 9:30 am until almost 4pm. Some of the staff came in after us and worked their whole shifts and went home before we did. LOL!

Doing the peak flow test.

He passed the tests and we were allowed to go home without finishing the final round of testing. With each test they doubled the amount of peanut butter and by the 9th round he was eating 3 Tbsp of it without reacting, so it's safe to say he's completely outgrown his allergy. It's so great for him to be able to eat whatever he wants. Now we just need to get his brother and sister to outgrow their allergies and we'll be golden! His big brother Joshua even bought him a giant Reece's snowman for Christmas. I know he's going to enjoy every bite of it! ;-D

The Advent Told Us To

This year I decided to copy my friend's Advent tradition and I put together an activity calender for the kids to do. After setting up our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I made little scrolls and wrote out an activity on each one. Instead of getting a piece of candy each day of December, we have a craft or activity to do!

Elizabeth trying to steal the scrolls

Most of the activities I'm finding don't keep the boys' attention, so we'll need to tweek this a bit for next year. Some of the highlights for them were walking to Haggen's for donuts, making snowflake decorations and making Christmas cards. 

Close up of the scroll

BTW, yes that's a fake tree. It's the first time we've ever had one. My mom gave it to us last year and I have to say apart from it not smelling like a pine tree, I kind of like it better. Less hassle than a real one! One of the activities I ended up doing myself was making a wreath with fallen branches from outside, so now I have the hassle free tree and that lovely pine smell...Perfect! 

My graham cracker house

The other activity I ended up having the boys quit on was building graham cracker houses. Zaccheaus just took some candies and his graham crackers and ate them. Gabe wasn't going to even try. Joshua gave it a shot, but quickly became discouraged and quit. If you are thinking about doing graham cracker or gingerbread houses, go to Deals Only on James St. They have tubes of decorators icing in Christmas colors 10/$1, I'm guessing they are well past their dates and not fit for eating. But, they sure look pretty on my graham cracker house! 

We were supposed to go to the ice rink on the 10th (shh...don't tell the boys), but found out the public skate times were 7:30 pm-10:30 pm and we already had plans to do our church's date night that day. They also have a homeschool skate time on Wednesday mornings but we will be at Gabriel's allergist that day, so looks like we'll be waiting until January for that one.

My favorite day was last Saturday "Dad's choice day". All my activities are either free or super cheap. Josh's activity: Go pick up Thai take out, a couple beers, sodas and movies and chill at home. I love whenever I don't have to cook!

I hope you are all enjoying this season!

We can rebuild him, We have the technology

Yes! I'm back online baby! After my computer started dropping components like flies and quit cooperating with me, I have had to resort to using Josh's little netbook and it just wasn't cutting it! With some big help from my sister we are online and I got a sweet printer on sale black friday, so the print shop is back in business! Look forward to more posts to come and hopefully I can start following everyone else's blogs again as well.

P.S. Check out my sis's computer repair company's site, here.

Snow and Giving Thanks

Our first snow has come and gone here in Bellingham. Elizabeth had a being pulled around in this little sled. While her dad and brothers were a bit more adventurous and took another sled down ever hill in our yard.

 The next morning we had the most beautiful sun rise over Lake Whatcom!

It snowed again overnight before thanksgiving, but I didn't get any photos. :-(

We had a great day on Thanksgiving. We took the kids to see Tangled with my parents. Then we all came back to my house for our turkey dinner. Josh attempted to deep fry a turkey, but it didn't turn out so well. Thankfully, I did a second in my roaster oven, that turned out delicious! The older two spent  two nights out at my parents, so Josh and I could do some black friday shopping, I finally got a new printer, but other than that wasn't too impressed with the sales this year. Saturday, I baked some yummy spritz cookies that can be seen over on OH starting on Wednesday. Then we set up the tree and decorated it. This is the first year we did a fake tree. One of the best parts of having a Christmas tree is the smell, and it's just weird that mine doesn't smell. Maybe I can find a pine scented candle, hmm? Sunday we all started coming down with bad cold and stayed home from church. Which, brings us today. The last of the leftovers are gone, all the dishes are clean and put away and we're all feeling better. Looking forward to the Christmas season ahead! What are you looking forward to?