iPhone App Review: MealBoard

As a brand new iPhone 4 owner, I am still learning how to use my phone and am discovering the joys of apps!  I have found a few that I really love and thought I would share them with you, if you happen to have an iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad where you could enjoy them as well.

My first iPhone App Review will be for an app called MealBoard which currently costs $1.99 in the iTunes app store.

I LOVE THIS APP!!

The tutorials on their website are very minimal, so it took me a little while to figure out how to use everything on my own, but I’ve found most of the apps are that way.  You have to sort of use your own intuitiveness to discover what all the icons mean and which of the common iPhone touch actions will perform what tasks.  This might come easier to you if you’ve had your device for longer than I have, since I’m still learning all that.    But here’s what I love about this app…

Create Recipes
The app comes with a few recipes, but they are mostly there just to show you how it works – don’t count on getting any spectacular new recipes for your menu!  I deleted most of them and have started slowly adding my own.  This can be a tedious process, but there’s also the option to add your recipes online on their website and then download them to your phone, which is a bit easier.  Instead of trying to add all of my recipes at once, I’ve just been adding them as I use them, when I’m planning my menu.  So soon I’ll have everything in there for easy access!  Adding recipes is simple and you can create your own categories – I like to have my main course meals sorted by meat, but I also have categories for Breakfast, Veggies, Miscellaneous, Desserts, etc.  Each recipe can be in multiple categories as well.  If you choose to add your recipes on your phone, make sure to upload them to the website first, because if you add some to your phone without uploading them first & then do a download from the site, it could wipe out your recipes! (**Update: They have added several new fields to the recipes, such as Servings (you can plan your grocery list for a certain number of servings), Prep Time, Cooking Time, Notifications (have it remind you to make a certain meal on a certain day), Recipe Source (allows you to input who created the recipe or even link to an internet site where you found it), and a 5-star rating scale. I really love it that they’re always adding new features! I also love that I can add photos of my recipes, as it makes my recipe book so pretty! **)

  

Create Menu
You can add recipes to your menu (you can choose to do either 1 or 2 weeks at a time) and designate whether they are for breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack or create your own category!  It’s easy to add, edit, delete, drag and rearrange meals and to click on a meal to see the recipe.  A recent update they made, which I definitely appreciated, was that the screen won’t go black when you’ve clicked to view a recipe.  Before the update, the screen kept going off while I was making something and my hands were dirty as I was cooking, so it wasn’t easy to turn it back on – definitely a nice feature.

  

Create Ingredients
As you create recipes and add new ingredients or as you create items for your grocery list, these all get added to your master ingredients list.  Once an item is added, it’s easy to add them again to a new recipe or to add it to your grocery list in the future.  Each ingredient can be assigned to a store section (there is a list of sections already, but you can edit these and create your own – one of my favorite features), a quantity, and a preparation note – i.e. 2 c. cheese, shredded (Dairy).  One thing I’m not sure if I like about the ingredients is that it will store the last quantity you used, so it’s often filled in with a quantity already, which you have to edit when you add it to a new recipe or your grocery list – not a big deal though (**Update: this feature has been changed, so the quantity is now blank when adding it to a new recipe**).

  

Create Grocery List
I love this part!!  After creating my menu, I can generate a grocery list from those recipes (for the dates I choose) and it automatically tells me exactly what I need.  I can then check off any items I know I already have or add items that are not included in my menu, such as fruit, bread, diapers, etc.  I usually only plan my suppers, but this could be more extensive if you actually planned all your breakfasts, lunches and snacks as well!  Then, your grocery list is sorted by store section or aisle number – SO GREAT!  It makes grocery shopping so quick and easy, as I can check off items as I grab them and have all the items organized specific to my store!  Now, this could potentially make it confusing if you went to a different grocery store than usual, but overall, it’s a wonderful feature!  If you don’t know exactly where items are in your store, as you are grocery shopping, you can also easily edit that ingredient to mark which aisle you found it in.  One more feature I should mention is that you can also assign grocery prices to your ingredients and it will give you a total estimate for your shopping list as well as show you how the total for what you’ve checked off as “In Cart”, but this takes quite a bit of time to add all the prices in for each ingredient (my suggestion, if you want to do this is to use your receipts after shopping)!

  

Email
It also has a feature that allows you to email your grocery list to someone, which I just did the other day – I emailed my list to Joe at work and he picked up groceries for me – so easy for both me and for him!  You can also email recipes or your menu plan.

  

Conclusion
Overall, this app is SOOOO worth the two bucks you pay for it!  It has made my menu planning and grocery shopping a breeze and I would definitely recommend it!  The developers are also great at listening to suggestions and making changes to the app, which is awesome.  For example, the master ingredients list was originally only viewable in alphabetical order, but they responded to consumer requests that you could also view your ingredients by store section, which I loved having that option.  Some things I’d like to see them change in the future are the ability to view a history of past menus, as you can only view a maximum of 2 weeks at a time (**Update: you can now go back up to 8 weeks to view your previous menus**), as well as possibly the ability to plan a menu for as many as 4 weeks at a time (**Update: you can now plan your menu for up to 4 weeks**).  You have the ability to save menu templates, but seeing as I don’t usually use the exact same menu twice, I haven’t found this feature to be especially useful.  But like I said, a great app with lots of potential for increasing your productivity and helping you be more organized!

  

Book Review: 66 Love Letters by Dr. Larry Crabb

Book Description
Written in a conversational first person, as if God is speaking directly to us, Dr. Crabb looks at each individual book in scripture and boils it down to a one- or two-sentence message to us from that particular book. He then unpacks each sentence in a short chapter answering the question, What does God want me to hear from this love letter? The book’s epilogue then fits all sixty-six pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together into one coherent paragraph and reveals the beautiful picture of what God has been about since the creation of the world. Far from being comprehensive, this is a personal approach to helping readers know God and his great love for them, his message for all mankind, and how their lives fit into His larger story.

I have been reading Dr. Larry Crabb’s book 66 Love Lettersfor the last several months – not because it was unenjoyable or boring, but because it was thought-provoking, heart-stirring, and just plain thick!  Plus, I got derailed for 3 months when I decided to read through the Bible in 90 days.    This is not a quick or an easy read, but I think its message is one that is necessary for the current culture to hear – both inside and outside of the church.  In a day and age where we expect and even demand that God bless us, prosper us, and make our lives happier and better, it is not common to hear a voice pipe up and say that God is ultimately more interested in making us holy and committed to fulfilling His plans – not ours!

I’ll admit that reading this book felt a little heavy at times, as the author highlights God’s messages to us from the Bible that speak to our sin and selfishness, but sometimes you have to shout to be heard and I think the repetition of these themes are a good reminder to us of the iniquity within us that we’d sometimes rather ignore.  While this book may feel extreme on the side of expecting pain and suffering in our walk as believers, I think the author’s message needed to be so strong in order to break through our culture’s message of “me, me, me – now, now, now”.  Ultimately, God’s plan and His purposes for us are absolutely and 100% to bless us, prosper us and make our lives happier and better, but He will do it on His terms and in His way and in His timing!  Sometimes, in order for Him to be able to give us the things we long for and are asking for, it requires a deep work in our hearts that is often accomplished through painful circumstances, but which are ultimately for our good and which are achieving His greater purpose of making us holy.

I would highly recommend this book as a fresh approach to interpreting the overall story that the Bible is telling us and what God is desiring to speak to us in His love letters.  I think this book is written in a very approachable, easy to understand way that could appeal to those who are unfamiliar with the Bible and who might like the conversational style between the author and God.  At the same time, it has truths that are far beyond being introductory or beginner and there is much depth for the mature believer.  At times, I found the parts where the author is speaking to God less enjoyable, simply because I could not always relate to his personal struggles or questions, but I usually really enjoyed reading God’s response, feeling that the things written resonated with my heart and were confirmed by the Holy Spirit. 

If you get this book, plan to give yourself a lot of time to read through it at a nice, slow pace, giving yourself time to enter into the conversation yourself and see what God is saying to you personally through His 66 Love Letters.  While not everyone would have the time to do this, it would probably really add to the benefit of the experience to actually read each book of the Bible in conjunction with the chapters in this book.  While I believe this book was written to attempt to show a consistent flow of thought as it tells the story from beginning to end, I found that it could not be read as a novel and that each chapter had a distinctly unique message to be digested on its own.  Take the time to ask your own questions and listen to hear God’s answers – that is truly what He wants as we read His Word!

Book provided by BookSneeze – I was not obligated to give a positive review.

Rayah Update

Hello friends!  For those of you who hadn’t seen my update on Facebook, I wanted to let you know that Rayah is doing MUCH better!  All of the pussy scabs have fallen off her face and the swelling has gone down, so she finally looks like herself again.  She is also back to her happy, active, mischievous self, so it is great to see such an improvement from how she was a few days ago!  Her skin on her entire body still looks very, very dry and is red in some places and flaking off, so you can continue to just pray for complete healing and that her skin won’t be too irritated or itchy – she has still seemed a little sensitive when we’ve tried to put lotion on her.  But here are a couple pictures to show you how she looks now…

Thank you so much to everyone who was praying for her and for our family!  Praise Jesus for the healing she has experienced and for His hand on all of us this last week!

Sick Baby

Well, we have had a very busy week!  As some of you may know already from Twitter or Facebook, our sweet little baby girl has been very sick…

Sunday
Rayah started to show signs of discomfort in the evening, hitting her face with her hands and crying several times during the night. 

Monday
She woke up with puffy red eyes and looked quite sad.  She had a runny nose as well, but otherwise doing not too bad. 

Tuesday
She woke up in the morning and her eyes were even puffier and the skin beneath her nose was red, irritated, and raw.  So I dropped Joe off at work and took the kids to the walk-in-clinic.  The doctor there did a swab of her throat and did a quick test in his office, which produced a positive result for strep.  Because of the puffiness of her eyes and the possible implications of water retention and damage to the kidneys as a result of the strep bacteria, the doctor told me to take her to the Children’s Hospital to have some blood work done to confirm this diagnosis and get a prescription for antibiotics. 

So I headed to the Children’s ER with the kids and thankfully, we got in fairly quickly.  The doctor there, however, felt that her symptoms were not indicative of strep, since the inside of her mouth and throat looked fine and the areas of redness on her face were not in the places they would expect with strep.  Plus, her runny nose seemed more in line with a virus.  But, since the test at the walk-in-clinic had been positive for strep, he did another swab of her throat to do a better, more accurate culture test that would take a couple days, and prescribed us an antibiotic just in case. 

So, I went home thinking she just had a cold or flu virus and that she was just reacting abnormally and that her skin looked so bad because of the snot and tears.  In addition, she was drooling like crazy, which was probably due to a molar breaking through and she also had what looked like a heat rash over her whole body.  She was sensitive to being touched and would cry when we picked her up or changed her diaper, etc. 

After we were done at the hospital, I decided to just go driving, since she kept falling asleep in the van and I figured it would be a good way to help her get a decent nap.  So I went and got myself a Starbucks frappuccino and started driving around the perimeter of Winnipeg with music playing from my iPhone, quietly praying as both of my kids passed out in their car seats.  Since I wanted to stay on highways as much as possible to prevent having to stop, I headed down the Trans Canada Highway towards Steinbach, thinking I would just drive for a little ways and then turn around, but then it wasn’t long before I was at the #12 highway that brings you to Steinbach and I figured I might as well go all the way and make a surprise visit to Grandma and Grandpa.  So the kids got a pretty good nap and woke up as we came into Steinbach and got see Grandma at work and then Grandpa at home.  We headed back home then for supper with daddy and that night was another rough one for Rayah, who would wake up crying often. 

Wednesday
She woke up looking horrible!  Her eyes were even puffier and more red and the red, irritated skin on her face was now all around her eyes, nose and mouth and was scabbing and pussing.  The skin in her neck folds was starting to peel and was constantly wet from drool, snot and tears dripping down her face.  We toughed it through the day, but felt like we would maybe take her back to the hospital the next day.

 

Thursday
She slept much better during the night, so we even got to sleep in a tiny bit that morning and were thinking maybe this meant she was starting to get better?  Joe mentioned that if she seemed to be improving, maybe we wouldn’t need to take her in again.  But when he went to wake her up, the first thing he said was, “We’re definitely going back to the hospital!”  It seemed that every morning she would look worse than the day before!  Her eyes were almost glued shut, they were so puffy and pussy.  She also seemed puffy in other areas of her body and it appeared she was retaining water and actually felt heavier to us.  So we got everyone packed up for another trip to the hospital and thankfully it wasn’t busy, so we got in right away. 

We saw the same doctor I had seen on Tuesday and after seeing how much she had changed since he saw her and some of her new symptoms, he felt that it was not strep nor just a virus, but that it was most likely a staph infection.  But he wanted to get a second opinion, so we waited to see another doctor.  The second doctor examined her as well and then they decided to try and do some bloodwork on her.  This was probably the hardest part of the day, since Rayah was obviously not feeling well, but then she had to be pinned down with 3 nurses working to try and get some blood samples from her.  At first it wasn’t too bad, but as they struggled to get a vein, it got worse and worse and Rayah was wailing and squirming, trying to get away.  I felt like crying, but tried to stay strong, and just stroked her head and sang softly to her in the Spirit, and sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children” or just hummed.  Eventually, the nurses gave up on getting a vein (I don’t blame them – I’m sure it’s hard to find those suckers in chubby little babies) and they did a toe poke, which I think worked out, but was tedious and took a long time. 

After that ordeal was finally over, we needed to wait for the results and the first doctor told us that he wanted yet a 3rd doctor to come see her, from Pediatrics Infectious Disease.  I can’t say hearing those words was terribly comforting, but we just tried to stay positive, and at this point they moved us to a bigger, nicer room where the kids could watch TV and have more room to play.  Justice did great the whole time we were there, just having fun playing in the waiting room with Daddy or running around the hospital with me when I took him to the cafeteria for lunch.  We tried to get Rayah to have a nap, which she did for a short time, and I brought food back for Joe to eat, and then finally the doctor from Infectious Disease came and saw her.  After this, they decided that yes, they believe she had a staph infection and that the best way to treat it would be a different antibiotic which would help attack the toxins that the bacteria was producing, which was causing some of her symptoms like the rash.  However, apparently this antibiotic tastes really bad, so they wanted to give us the opportunity to give her a sample to see if she’d take it before giving us the prescription.  So then we waited yet again for the sample to come, and when it did, she took it fine and we got our prescription and were released to go.

 

I asked the first doctor a few more questions, like “Is it contagious?” and “Is there anything we can do to ease her discomfort?”  Apparently, the staph bacteria exists on our skin all the time and it only causes problems if it manages to make it’s way into the blood stream through a scratch or cut.  So, while it’s technically contagious through contact, it’s unlikely you’ll get the infection unless it also gets into your blood stream.  Besides, you could actually get the infection from your own skin, so not a whole lot of reason to worry about getting it from Rayah.  Also, there’s not a whole lot we can do for her skin – we can’t really clean it off, since the scabbing is part of the necessary healing process and besides, she probably wouldn’t let us anyway, as she is extremely defensive about us touching her face in any way right now.  Another side effect of this infection is that with the toxins produced by the bacteria, is that they go throughout the entire blood stream, so this is what produces the heat rash, which is similar to a sun burn (which explains why she was so sensitive to touch) and which breaks down the superficial layer of the skin and causes “sluffing”, where the skin dies and starts shedding – lovely.  So, we can expect to see her skin start to shed in numerous places on her body (which it is now starting to do), and hopefully her face starts to improve.

After this, we left the hospital around 3:00pm and ended up driving to Steinbach again to my parents’ place for supper, which allowed the kids to have a short nap in the van, since they had both missed their naps that day.  However, after it all, Rayah was in suprisingly good spirits and when we were at my parents’, she wanted to play and climb the stairs and walk around, pushing the high chair, so there was some definite improvement in how she was feeling overall.  When Joe and I were talking about what her face reminded us of, though, we both had thought that she almost looked like a burn victim – it’s crazy what this infection has been able to do to her skin!

Today – Friday
Today her face looks a lot drier and like it’s starting to crack in places, with a little bit of bleeding.  Her nostrils are also almost completely closed off from built up snot and scabbing, so hopefully we can figure out how to clear that out!  However, she slept fairly well and was eating better and was happier – playing, smiling and laughing occassionally, and crawling and walking around.  Definitely not as lethargic and mellow as she was earlier in the week.  Thank you to everyone was has been praying for her and we welcome your continued prayers that she will recover quickly and that her skin will heal well.  It’s likely that she actually does have a virus at the same time, which explains the runny nose, which is obviously not helping her breathing or sleeping or her skin, so you can pray for healing for that as well.  You can pray that she won’t be in too much pain or discomfort and for protection over our family, that none of us will get sick.  In the pictures below, the first one shows the skin dry & cracked, while the second one shows her with polysporin smeared over everything.

 

In all of this, I am thankful that Rayah is holding up well and that Justice has been a great big brother to her during this time.  He has shown concern for her, been more gentle, has been praying for her, sharing his toys, and saying sweet things to her, like “Hi, pretty girl!”    I’m thankful that Joe had yesterday and today off from work, which was so helpful to have him around!  I’m thankful for the flexibility of my work that I am able to focus on caring for my kids when necessary.  I’m thankful for all our friends and family who were praying!  I’m thankful for the excellent care we received at the Children’s Hospital and the wonderful staff there, who were compassionate, caring, and thorough.  I’m thankful that in trials we have the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and that we have hope through the gift of prayer and giving our burdens to Jesus.  It also opened my eyes a little to realize how many other parents are bringing their sick children to the hospital and the emotional, mental and physical dynamics it causes as you worry about your child and want to see them receive care and find out what’s wrong and make it all better!  If they don’t have Jesus, what or who do they place their hope and trust in?  And what a day that will be when Jesus splits the sky, returns to the earth and makes all the wrong things right again, taking away all sickness, pain and sorrow!