Recipes, IEP Prep, Mercy, Scripture, and Fiats - 7QT

1 - Let's start off with a song, shall we?



or maybe you'd prefer this one



L prefers this one. She loves the little dance he does (and so do I, really.)


2 - We have a lot of food allergies in our home and I have tried out a lot of recipes over the years. Just to review, JF and JP do not eat dairy, eggs, nuts, wheat, or tomatoes; Ben cannot have nuts; and I am currently dairy-free for Tee's sake. In case you're in a similar boat here's some recipes that some or all of us have enjoyed recently:

Easy Dairy Free Scones
I made these with blueberries and a clementine glaze the other day - delicious!

Easy Biscuits
Use water instead of milk for dairy free. I even substituted GF flour and added some herbs and they were still really good.

The Healthy Gluten-Free Life Cookbook (affiliate link)
This cookbook has been wonderful! I have tried so many online recipes which have been failures and so often allergy cookbooks don't cover all our bases. But this one has 200 recipes that are dairy, egg, soy, and gluten free. I can easily not use nuts for some but even with the ones that are based on nuts this book has been just awesome and I just had to share.


3 - Speaking of special needs (because I definitely think of the boys food allergies - especially JF's deadly allergy to dairy - as special needs), we are getting ready for JF going to Kindergarten next year and addressing his special needs. Our older kids are at our parish school but because of JF's apraxia he will need services that he can only get at our excellent public school. We're working with both principals to hopefully do a dual enrollment so he can have the best of both schools. At the encouragement of a friend of mine, who has spent many years advocating for her son, I made up an info sheet to pass out at JF's upcoming IEP meeting. I think it's such a good idea that I wanted to share an example in case it might be of help to anyone else. I used PicMonkey to make the section titles and then used Microsoft Publisher for the rest, but Word would work just as well I think.

4 - Earlier in the week I spoke live on Facebook, talking about a really wonderful video called Mercy is Greater, the book Beautiful Mercy, my fears, God's mercy and how I am supposed to live that out, and why I decided to start memorizing Scripture. Knowing that I was going to be sharing some personal stuff I was pretty nervous, which shows a bit in some slight rambling.

You can watch the Mercy is Greater video here, and you can go to my blog's Facebook page to watch the 12 minute video of me. And if you want to follow along and join me in memorizing Scripture please do. I will mostly be posting on Instagram, and mostly as a way to keep myself accountable to my goal of daily reading a chapter of the Bible, doing spiritual reading, and working on my memory verse.


5 - My nerves (and the tears) in the video meant that I forgot to mention something.

I wanted to say that my friend, Heather Renshaw, has been a major influence in my understanding the importance of Scripture memorization. Heather frequently peppers her conversations with Scripture. It's something I noticed while recording The Visitation Project with her (and maybe you've noticed to when you listen) and I've seen that same act in Facebook conversations and in offline conversations, too. She has used Scripture to bring hope, comfort, and praise into so many situations and often in situations where I didn't know what to say but Heather did because she has so much Scripture tucked in her heart. I see that as mercy in action.

The two verses I have memorized so are: Galations 5:22 and Philipeans 1:6. Look them up - they're good.


6 - Maybe you saw already, by the last Breakout Speaker for the Finding Your Fiat Conference was announced - Sr. Clara from the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

We have so many great speakers coming - it's an incredible line-up. I hope you can join us and be there, too. To learn more and buy your ticket visit our website.

7 - I don't really think these were so quick so I'll just end here with a big THANK YOU to Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum for being hilarious and for hosting the link-up each week.