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Category: Family

Making Stovetop Popcorn for Family Movie Night

Posted in Family, Homemaking, and Reviews

Special thanks to Moms Meet and Malaysian Palm Oil for providing a sample of the palm oil for our movie night. Around here, family movie night means gluten free pizza and popcorn. This week, we picked up Black Panther from Redbox as we haven’t seen it as a family yet. I decided that it was time for some stovetop popcorn as you can’t beat the flavor of that freshly popped popcorn. When my grandma was visiting a while back, I made stovetop popcorn, and she was really excited as she hadn’t had popcorn made like that for ages. She said…

The End of an Adventure – Marine Corps Retirement

Posted in Family, and Military Life

When one adventure story ends, another story begins… As I sit down to write today, I can’t believe that 3 weeks have passed since we celebrated D’s Marine Corps career. After 23 years of moving every few years and putting down shallow roots wherever we were stationed, we will now be putting down permanent roots on our homestead. Life will be changing in so many ways that we still haven’t truly come to understand the significance of the end of this military adventure. Over the years, we’ve lived all over the United States, met some really cool people, and experienced…

Wiley: Knee Injury Recovery without Surgery Part 3

Posted in Family

Conservative management for a ccl tear is not an easy process, but I am determined to do what I believe is best for Wiley. Knee braces were only part of the process. We also needed to add appropriate physical therapy and supplements to the mix. It took a little time, but I was able to find a local holistic vet. While she wasn’t keen on the knee brace instead of surgery route, she was supportive of the decision. Our first visit included a nice sit-down where she got to know both Wiley and me. It’s nice when you can get…

Wiley: First Walk Post Bilateral CCL Injury

Posted in Family

Life is crazy when you’re taking care of 3 dogs – especially when 1 dog has a serious injury and another dog is a puppy. It’s been an adventure trying to balance Wiley’s recovery with Wynoka’s puppy needs while continuing to give plenty of attention to Wyatt as well. For the most part, the dogs all get along. Wiley is a little resentful of Wynoka as he wants to be able to play like she plays. He misses running around. During this whole process with him, he has gone through bouts of depression which has been really sad. He’s struggling…

Wiley: Knee Injury Recovery without Surgery Part 2

Posted in Family

Bilateral CCL Tears – not something that any pet parent wants to hear. Yet, here we were going through it with our sweet Wiley. He has two major things going against him. 1) He’s a very active dog. 2) He’s a bigger dog. These two things make recovery much more difficult whether going the surgery route or the conservative management route. After talking to the people at Posh Dog Knee Braces, I felt like we could do this without surgery. Both required rehab. Both required movement restriction. One was invasive while the other was non-invasive. We definitely felt it was…