AZ part 1

I’m going to do a multiple post update because I’ve neglected this. Actually I had this almost finished and then forgot about it. ? After leaving NM, we fell in love with northern AZ. Many mold avoiders don’t do well in the areas we love because of their reactivity to fire retardant associated toxin (FRAT). We loved it so much, we spent a month in AZ, which was long enough to put together plans for grandma and grandpa and my brother’s family to come visit.

Our first week we stayed in town at one of our favorite hotels. We went down to Sedona to check it out and decided to come back for a visit despite the fire. We got to see my cousin Molly and her family as they were in town because her husband was competing in a triathlon. I hadn’t got to meet her husband or kids yet so it was fun to meet them as well as them meeting Wesley and Samuel for the first time.

We drove up to the local ski resort and found an amazing photo op on the way.

Monday I decided that 20 pounds of Samuel was no longer sustainable to carry so I bought him a stroller off FB marketplace for $25. It was the perfect price, and I could care less that it’s black and hot pink for a stroller we will likely need to ditch when it accumulates too many toxins. On Tuesday, my cousin Sara came up from Phoenix to meet up with us. She brought her tire pump to inflate the tires of the new found stroller, but the front tire didn’t have a big enough spot for the pump attachment. We had a nice lunch, walked around campus some, and caught up. Sara and I were the two cousins in the same class when we were kids and our families were pretty close growing up so it was really fun to see her.

When I first moved to Wiliamsburg to start my practice, I helped out some friends by getting their girls up and ready for school in the mornings. I saw that Naomi was in Phoenix to see Dani so I contacted them, and we met in Sedona on Wednesday. We stopped at a bike shop in Sedona and had the tires on the stroller inflated. Then we tried a hike that gave Samuel some serious anxiety in the stroller. ??‍♀️ We didn’t make it far and it took multiple walks to get him to like the stroller because his mommy didn’t think that through very well.

We went to a great church and felt immediately at home. I chatted with the pastor’s wife and they knew people I knew who were part of the church planting that Harvest Bible Chapel was doing. We went 2 weekends in a row, and the second weekend, we put Samuel in the nursery, which was weird because it was the first time he’d not been with one of us. After church we moved to another area of AZ, and spent a week there. We went on lots of walks there taking in all the beauty. At the end of our week, we were able to meet my online friend, Karen, and become official in person friends.

We headed back up farther north and stayed a week at an Airbnb in a rural acreage neighborhood. Wesley got to use his Starlink for the first time and it was nice to have a non-hotel home for the week. Many of our processes from the house in OK came back into play. It was nice to be able to cook again and Samuel got to practice rolling more because he was on the floor more. I hate putting him on hotel floors because they’re just dirty. Samuel likes to have his gums brushed each day because it’s part put what mommy does so he figures he should too. I stopped at the store and grabbed the last few things I needed to make cookie dough. I called Wesley and was telling him this and then I was like, ”Ooh, I didn’t get chocolate chips. I suppose you want me to stop so you can bake some cookies.” He affirmed this so we stopped one last stop and headed back. I was hand mixing and got the butter to melty and tried putting too many cookies on one cookie sheet so we got a cookie instead of multiple. They were still good. I still marvel at how boyish Samuel looks instead of babyish, esp in his PJs.

My brother and his family came to see us too. My parents and Scott’s family came in on Friday night and we were all together for my mom’s birthday. My niece wanted to see the Grand Canyon so we went up to see that as a family on Saturday. I’d seen it before, but not since spring break my freshman year of college. Wesley has been more recently. In case you weren’t sure, your National parks pass qualifies you to go in the pre-paid line. We weren’t sure, but verified that in case that helps anyone. The Grand Canyon was really cool. Unfortunately Samuel had a blowout while we were walking along the rim. ??

After the Grand Canyon, we took an afternoon rest, and then went to the Airbnb my family was staying at for dinner. My dad was playing peekaboo with Samuel.

https://youtube.com/shorts/UVmXt-O_k-U?feature=share

The next day Scott’s family and my parents hiked an underground cave and then Scott’s family headed back to CA and we met up with grandma and grandpa at Walmart to buy them new clothes for the week. I told grandma she could buy Samuel some new grabbies bc he chucks his toss on the floor so having a few more would help. She also got him a toy bar I was hoping would keep him happier but not be throwable. He loved it, but the elastic Velcro pieces to attach it to the car seat were contaminated enough that he cried while playing bc he was getting a toxin hit so we had to return it and try a different one.

We did some walks with grandma and grandpa, and figured out that sunscreen is the ultimate hair spiking product. ? I got sick on Tuesday so G&G went to Sedona for the day without us. Wednesday I got another clogged duct that really dropped my milk supply on the right side and was super painful. I’m still not sure if the fever was from the sickness or from the mastitis, but it took me out of the game so G&G decided to go to southern Utah to see Zion being they couldn’t see me and Samuel and Wesley was working. That visit didn’t go as well as we hoped and we learned some valuable lessons. Visits may have to be in short bits instead of hanging out the whole time someone is here, which makes a trip across the country a hard sell. I haven’t figured out a better way. I’m not sure if it’s the exposure to toxins from the house that originally made me sick on my parent’s things, vax slams despite my parents doing the homeopathic to help with the damage, our laundry debacle from the week at the Airbnb with toxins popping off during laundry without containment in a laundry room, or just not good enough air where the Airbnb’s were. My guess is it was a combo of all of the above.

The fever broke after a couple days, but the cough was awful so I began to wonder if that was my reaction to FRAT. Ladies, if you ever get a clogged duct, heat and massage aren’t the current recommendation. They recommended to treat it as inflammatory now so ice and ibuprofen. I went another route and used a homeopathic for mastitis and sunflower lecithin and it quickly resolved. Samuel broke out in a rash on his belly and started coughing more the same time I got sick. I showed a picture of his rash to another moldie and she said it looked like a Christmas tree rash, which has been associated with both Covid and the vaccine. She’d had it from mold exposure. It would be nice to know what caused what so we could do things differently next time, but I think we’ll have to go back to shifting away from people that don’t feel good, even if it’s the people who came from Iowa to see us. We do really well meeting people bc we’re only with them short amounts of time. I’m confident a few hours would’ve been no problem, it was the multiple hours multiple days in a row that didn’t go well. If you want to come visit, this is our likely reality. ? We just can’t expect to be able to spend multiple hours days in a row and have that go well. If we tolerate more than that, it’s bonus, but can’t be expected.

Because I was questioning if the cough was part of my FRAT reaction, we decided to leave the trees and head towards Vegas. We stopped in Kingman for 4 days and my cough did improve there just like Wesley’s had with each move. We came to a conclusion that the cough was reaction to toxins bc the three of us coughed in response to each other’s coughs for awhile. Often still if one person coughs, we all do. I remember Ana Harris writing about the time Brett got totally slammed was from her coughing. I’ve often looked at coughing, and sickness in general, as a major detox pathway. A fever will clear some toxins unlike any other method. Kingman introduced some challenges we just didn’t need. I’d gotten accustomed to leaving my wallet in the room, and were pretty sure a house keeper at the hotel snapped pictures of all of my cards. They weren’t a very good thief so the banks caught it right away and I shut down all my cards with very minimal charges going through. That left us with one credit card and one debit card of Wesley’s because all joint account cards were shut down. That was inconvenient, but doable while we waited for our new cards to arrive in FL and have them mailed to us. It’s definitely an easier challenge to deal with when you have a home vs being nomadic.