Summer's "not so" famous protein pancakes

Because I've been somewhat of a health nut these past couple of years, I'd like to share with you an awesome recipe I've developed for one of my favorite breakfast foods - pancakes!! Who doesn't love pancakes??!! If you don't love pancakes, get the heck outta here!! :) The big problem with pancakes in the carb content and the sugary syrup added on top.

One big health tip I've discovered in all my health and nutrition reading is that sugar is the enemy and fat doesn't make you fat. Sugar makes you fat. Sugar is stored in your body and fat is usually in the form of protein and that doesn't store on our bodies. It's crazy how many people still look for low fat foods thinking they are doing something good for their health. Actually, most low fat foods have added sugars to make up for it. Ludicrous!!

I found a recipe for protein pancakes and I've modified and experimented with it and make up my own concoction of goodness. The consistency is a little different than most pancakes; however, it is almost just as good!

The recipe:
2 eggs
1 scoop Vanilla Whey protein powder
2 TB coconut flour
1 TB baking powder
2 TB xylitol
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup milk
sprinkle of mini chocolate chips (if desired) 

Mix all ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl. The batter will be slightly thicker than most pancake batters so take some time to flip over the pancake once you pour on the griddle.
The hardest part of this is the flipping part since they are thicker than normal.

Recipe yields 4 large pancakes.

I hope you enjoy these healthier, low carb pancakes as much as I do!!!

Goodbye to apartment life!

We moved in the week of my birthday; feb 12!

This is the day we have waited for - to move in to our home in Center Point. We had some complications that prevented us from moving in sooner, but we prevailed. We also were visited by a nasty scorpion on our inaugural night! ugh! But we also prevailed from that too. 

When you are taking on a big project like building your home, there will always be issues and big bumps in the road.

I became aware of our first big bump after the toilet would not flush. Micah had just left for work and I was getting ready for work.

I will spare you the dirty deats, but let's just say that sometimes crap happens and it happens to everyone!

We found out that when they poured the slab, someone drove a wooden stake through our water pipe and didn't say anything about it. We found this out by calling a plumber over with a camera to find the blockage in our pipe.

We rented a tool to blast through the rock and climbed underneath to fix the broken pipe.Actually, my brother in law Chris did this for us; we are so grateful!  Here was the evidence above.

Fast forward 3 weeks later and we have been able to flush and have overcome our dirty debacle. Here are some updated bathroom pics.

Micah designed this mirror himself. So as you can see, I'm not the only one in the family who is a creative genius! haha! I love our bathroom and the way it has turned out. The bowl sinks tend to get a little messy and the water splashes out quite easily. So if you want to minimize the hard water stains, you have to be careful. I'm not that good at being careful.. but I'm learning. I also found the best cleaning product for these stains: vinegar and water!!! It works better than CLR and doesn't have all the obnoxious fumes!

Here is where we put our bed. We plan on getting a partition to divide the space and so we don't have to make our bed everyday! ha!!

I will post more pictures later!! Happy Friday everyone!

It's been a while

So it's been a while since I've shown pictures of the house. We have made quite a bit of progress on the inside with the cabinets, trim work, bathroom tile, flooring, and painting.

We moved out of our apartment at the end of December and moved into Micah's parents until it's more livable. That entails getting the flooring finished, which is almost done, and getting our shower door installed. That will be finished next week.

There has been so much happen these past few weeks. 1. Moving out. 2. Moving into the country. 3. Missing the city. 4. Missing my Luna B. who is currently staying with my parents until we can move her into our house. 5. Having my whole world turned upside down.

That is all.

I know this will all be worth it once we move in and have a home of our own. But until then, it's tough.

House Update/Country Critter

I found out this guy/gal is going to make a beautiful butterfly called the Pipevine Swallowtail!! I found it next to our A/C unit on the side of our house. 



Micah took a week off from work and I took off a couple of days to work on the house. I couldn't take a week since I just had surgery and didn't want to take off again in such a short time span. We got quite a bit of wok done.We primed and painted all of the walls; that was a big step! We also stained the concrete floor in our pantry. I also started cleaning all of our millions of windows. That was a tedious job, and I still didn't finish it. 

Here are some photos of the progress. 







And lastly, my sweet perfect angel who is called Luna Belle.

progress and halloween

We have made a little progress on our house, even though it rained about two weekends in a row and we couldn't get back to our house because of all the mud. It is starting to look more like a house to me now!

I am still adjusting to life out there. It's difficult at times and I have my moments where I wonder if I will ever fit into rural life.

Yesterday Micah and I drove out there to drop off some shelving units we bought at the container store. I found out that the donkeys that were in the field next to ours were sold to a dog food plant. :(  I cried my eyes out like a baby. I can't even imagine how they kill donkeys, but just thinking about it hurts my heart, my big bleeding heart. It's crazy how attached I got to them, even though they weren't mine. I would go pet them and pick out certain weeds and feed them. I even fed them whole carrots. I would even talk to them. But I must not think about it.

Here are some photos of the sheetrock and also of my Halloween costume. I'm pretty proud of it. I got it all at Goodwill! In case you are wondering how those two go together, they don't. This is just a random blog post and it's MY blog.

Swing your sword and shovel!

Shrubs I planted on the backside of our house!

I've been reading Mike Leach's book, "Swing your sword," and it's a really good read. I recommend it, even if you aren't interested in football. 

His story is very inspirational and and he talks about taking risks in life and thinking outside the box, daring to be different. He studied to be a lawyer and decided he wanted to coach football. 

He really dared to dream big and he had the guts to do it. He said that several people thought he was crazy to try to be a coach when he had a law degree. He said that this was one of the most defining moments in his life because he took the risk and didn't listen to others who had negative things to say. It was in moments like this where he could reflect on later on in his life and realize it was what made him successful in life.. the ability to focus on his own path, pursue knowledge by questioning everything and believing in himself and his dream above all else.

Did you know that Texas Tech had the lowest graduation rate in their football program when he started coaching there? When he was unjustly fired in 2010, Tech had the highest graduation rate in the nation!

That is truly incredible. And he was only one man who believed in himself and his dream of coaching football and making a difference in his players lives.

One phrase that really stuck with me was, "You have to defeat yourself before you can defeat someone else." 

How many times in my life have I let others defeat me because I had not conquered my own self doubt and conflict within?

I can remember several times on the golf course where I was beaten by players who were not as skilled and as trained as I was.. and it's because I got so upset when I hit a ball OB or in the water and couldn't put it behind me. I had to learn to trust myself again and believe in myself more than anything else!

And if you don't believe in yourself, you can't really believe in your dreams.. much less accomplish them. 

And here is where the "Swing your shovel" comes in.. This weekend I planted 13 shrubs on the backside of our house. Things are coming together.. we are chipping away at the stone and more progress is being made.. I'm getting excited! 

We also planted grass. We planted the El Torro Zoysia grass to see if it would grow and how well it would do. We did a lot of research to see what kind to get.. and it was a tough decision.

Here are a few pics..

Luna checking out her new potty!

We have these beautiful, wild lantanas growing on our property

Donkeys in the background belong to Mr. Lackey, who we bought the land from.

Notice our small pecan tree and donkeys in the background

The worst and best day ever

September 18, 2012, will go down in history as the most painful day of my life, ever! I don't mean emotional pain, I mean physical pain.

My coworkers sent me this edible arrangement! Aren't they sweet?!!!

It all started two weeks ago when I got a little cramp in my left side of my abdomen. I took an aleve and took a small nap. The pain was gone. Then I woke up the day before labor day in the middle of the night with the pain again, but worse. It lasted all throughout the night, and then I had Micah take me to the doctor first thing in the morning when the office opened.

It turns out that I had a huge cyst (softball size) in my ovary, or somewhere in that general area although they didn't know where exactly it was.At that point the pain subsided. They scheduled for me to come in and look at it one more time and then they would decide if they needed to do surgery to remove. Sometimes these cysts go away on their own.

Sometimes they do, but not mine! So the decision was made to go into surgery on Friday (a week from that day).

I didn't make it to Friday. Tuesday morning at 4 a.m. I was woken by that too familiar pain in my left side again, this time there was no relief. Micah took me to the doctor and they decided to take it out that day because I was in so much pain. I have never, ever felt anything like that. It felt like someone was burning me on the inside while taking a knife and digging it into me and twisting it around to hurt even more.

I think I told Micah to please find a gun and put me out of my misery a few times!! I know I'm dramatic but this pain was unbearable and for moments I thought I was dying.

At 5:00 that afternoon, I was finally able to have my surgery. PTL! (Praise the Lord!) It turns out that the cyst was twisted around my fallopian tube thus causing the huge amount of pain that it did. It also started to bleed.

I later found out that the doctor had to remove my tube because the cyst cut off the blood supply to it, leaving it lifeless and non-functioning. The good news was that if I had to lose anything, this was the best thing to lose. I was almost certain I would lose an ovary, but they were both in great shape. And the better news is that I can still have children with only one tube. That one tube will take over and serve both ovaries.

I think it's amazing that I can still have children and that God so fabulously designed my body to be able to do this. I look back at all of this and I realize just how special I am. Maybe God was removing that tube knowing that I would have problems with that in the future or something more serious would come happen as a result of that bad tube.

And he knows the big picture, despite that I may forget this time and time again. I don't understand why at 32 I have already had 2 major female surgeries. It's easy to think, "why me, Lord?" Why can't I just be normal?!!! Those were my cries 2 weeks ago.

Now I'm just grateful that I can still have children and that God created me unique and special, just the way I'd rather be!!