On this day in history:
One year ago today: My husband and children made a chocolate cake with mayonnaise in it instead of eggs. (Surprisingly tasty)
Six years ago today: I bought a great party dress for an upcoming Military ball that I looked fabulous in. (The day after attending the ball we found out that I was pregnant with kid #3--I didn't wear that dress again for two years)
Ten years ago today: I was feeling sorry for myself because my husband was on a trip to Korea without me.
Fourteen years ago today: I had my missionary farewell.
Nineteen years ago today: I had my first day on the driving range for Drivers Ed. I drove a Buick over a curb.
Twenty-two years ago today: My dad broke me out of school and took me and my older sisters to lunch at the Sky Room at BYU (it was the fanciest eating establishment I had ever been to)
Twenty-three years ago today: I got my braces on.
Thirty-one years ago today: My mom made sugar cookies that looked like the characters from Sesame street.
Thirty-five years ago today: I was born!!!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Reflections on healthy eating
(Disclaimer: I just finished writing this post and as I re-read it I realized it is the second grocery related post I've done in less than six months. I may be more obsessed with food than I thought!)
A little more than a year ago I decided to completely revamp the way my family had been eating. During my husband's deployment I admittedly was in total survival mode and we pretty much subsisted on convenience foods and drive-through fare. When Hubby returned we were going through so much transition we decided that it would be a good time to throw a diet overhaul into the mix. Around that time I read a book entitled "Death By Supermarket" that detailed all of the evils currently pervading the American diet--all those high fat, high sugar, highly processed foods. I determined that we needed to make serious changes.
I went though my pantry and got rid of everything that contained high-fructose corn syrup, MSG or hydrogenated oil. We used organic ketchup, drank Talking Rain unsweetened flavored water instead of soda, and became connoisseurs of all things Kashi. We traded our Goldfish crackers for Annie's Organic Cheddar Bunnies and banished white bread from the house. I made granola bars from scratch with rolled oats and organic brown rice krispies. We ate nitrate free ham and bought only natural non-antibiotic chicken. The only fruit snacks in the pantry were raisins.
I wasn't a total treat Nazi. We still celebrated holidays with the usual goodies and we still indulged in an occasional Saturday night pizza, but for the most part, we approached eating with a more healthful whole-food kind of attitude. And we generally enjoyed it. But like many good things in life--even things that are good for us--they don't always last.
Which is the whole reason I'm bringing this up now.
Over the past year as we have made a major career change and altered our finanial situation dramatically, reality has set in and we've pretty much lost all of our organic enthusiasm. As much as I liked the idea of feeding my kids ketchup without corn syrup in it, I could no longer bring myself to pay more than twice as much for it. And we decided that whether they be Goldfish or Cheddar Bunnies, expensive snack crackers just weren't going to make it on to the shopping list at all anymore.
The other day as I watched my purchases travel down the converyer belt at the grocery store I had to laugh at myself. The person I was a year ago would have been horrified at what I was buying--hot dogs (yucky I know, but one 67 cent package can be lunch for two kids for a few days), corn flakes (totally processed and full of carbs, but I can get generic for a little more than a dollar a box sometimes),and Capri Suns (full of sugar and empty calories, but when I no longer want to pay for school lunch I NEED something for the lunchbox and they are so much cheaper than the real juice ones--evil, I know).
So I am no longer the super healthy, organic mommy that I once aspired to be but there are several traits I picked up that I've been able to carry over to our now leaner times. Such as: if you cut out the Doritos and Oreos then you can still afford the fresh vegetables, pancakes made from scratch taste much better and only take about five minutes longer than a mix, and my kids will actually pick wheat bread over white when given the choice. So I guess I haven't abandoned my ideals altogether.
(Oh, but all bets are off when pregnancy cravings kick it. Bring on the Ruffles!)
A little more than a year ago I decided to completely revamp the way my family had been eating. During my husband's deployment I admittedly was in total survival mode and we pretty much subsisted on convenience foods and drive-through fare. When Hubby returned we were going through so much transition we decided that it would be a good time to throw a diet overhaul into the mix. Around that time I read a book entitled "Death By Supermarket" that detailed all of the evils currently pervading the American diet--all those high fat, high sugar, highly processed foods. I determined that we needed to make serious changes.
I went though my pantry and got rid of everything that contained high-fructose corn syrup, MSG or hydrogenated oil. We used organic ketchup, drank Talking Rain unsweetened flavored water instead of soda, and became connoisseurs of all things Kashi. We traded our Goldfish crackers for Annie's Organic Cheddar Bunnies and banished white bread from the house. I made granola bars from scratch with rolled oats and organic brown rice krispies. We ate nitrate free ham and bought only natural non-antibiotic chicken. The only fruit snacks in the pantry were raisins.
I wasn't a total treat Nazi. We still celebrated holidays with the usual goodies and we still indulged in an occasional Saturday night pizza, but for the most part, we approached eating with a more healthful whole-food kind of attitude. And we generally enjoyed it. But like many good things in life--even things that are good for us--they don't always last.
Which is the whole reason I'm bringing this up now.
Over the past year as we have made a major career change and altered our finanial situation dramatically, reality has set in and we've pretty much lost all of our organic enthusiasm. As much as I liked the idea of feeding my kids ketchup without corn syrup in it, I could no longer bring myself to pay more than twice as much for it. And we decided that whether they be Goldfish or Cheddar Bunnies, expensive snack crackers just weren't going to make it on to the shopping list at all anymore.
The other day as I watched my purchases travel down the converyer belt at the grocery store I had to laugh at myself. The person I was a year ago would have been horrified at what I was buying--hot dogs (yucky I know, but one 67 cent package can be lunch for two kids for a few days), corn flakes (totally processed and full of carbs, but I can get generic for a little more than a dollar a box sometimes),and Capri Suns (full of sugar and empty calories, but when I no longer want to pay for school lunch I NEED something for the lunchbox and they are so much cheaper than the real juice ones--evil, I know).
So I am no longer the super healthy, organic mommy that I once aspired to be but there are several traits I picked up that I've been able to carry over to our now leaner times. Such as: if you cut out the Doritos and Oreos then you can still afford the fresh vegetables, pancakes made from scratch taste much better and only take about five minutes longer than a mix, and my kids will actually pick wheat bread over white when given the choice. So I guess I haven't abandoned my ideals altogether.
(Oh, but all bets are off when pregnancy cravings kick it. Bring on the Ruffles!)
Friday, January 23, 2009
Spring Cleaning
I learned a good housekeeping tip a few years back from my sister who has quite a knack for being organized. (She has been known to even organize her clutter. I once saw a sturdy plastic bin in her garage with a lovely label-maker generated label on it that read "random stuff") She advised me to do spring cleaning in the winter when it's too cold to go outside, and use the warm spring days to work on the yard. Which, as it turns out, is a good method for me because once the weather is warm I will be just itching to get outside.
So I'm spring cleaning in January and this year my focus is on reorganizing our home office.
Soon after moving into this house we got a "new" desk (I have to use the quotation marks because it was actually just an old freebie desk we found on KSL classifieds). This desk has two large file drawers in it. As we established our household and created new files, we put them in the file drawers of the desk and more or less ignored our large file cabinet--the file cabinet that we had used for years before moving here, the file cabinet that was in need of a serious clean out, the file cabinet that no one wanted to deal with. That old thing has been sitting in the corner of our office basically unused for almost four years. But now after several years of pretending it's not sitting in the corner taunting me to organize it, I'm finally dealing with it. The surprising thing is, it hasn't been that bad of a task.
While I admit that most of what I've come across just needs to be sorted, thrown out or shredded, I've found that digging through old files has actually been a roller coaster of emotions. Some things I have found have made me laugh, like a file of "important things to file" that never got filed and now its contents are no longer important. Some things made me very nostalgic, like an old check registry from the first year we were married that showed payments to the hotel for our honeymoon and date nights to our favorite restaurants in Provo that are no longer in business. And a few things I found made me a little mad, like an old statement for my 401k that shows the account had more money in it five years ago than it does today.
And there amid the old insurance claim forms and bank statements, I also found a bright red folder containing many love letters my husband and I have sent to each other through the years. There was a note I had written to him during our engagement to apologize after our first major misunderstanding. There were several little cards that had been attached to flower bouquets he has sent me, some of which I had received during some of the most difficult days of my short teaching career. There were lots of Valentine and birthday cards and a few "just because" cards.
Life is funny that way. Often as we struggle to sort through and deal with all the clutter that is necessary to keep our lives functioning, we get unexpected happy reminders of why life is so worth living in the first place.
So I'm spring cleaning in January and this year my focus is on reorganizing our home office.
Soon after moving into this house we got a "new" desk (I have to use the quotation marks because it was actually just an old freebie desk we found on KSL classifieds). This desk has two large file drawers in it. As we established our household and created new files, we put them in the file drawers of the desk and more or less ignored our large file cabinet--the file cabinet that we had used for years before moving here, the file cabinet that was in need of a serious clean out, the file cabinet that no one wanted to deal with. That old thing has been sitting in the corner of our office basically unused for almost four years. But now after several years of pretending it's not sitting in the corner taunting me to organize it, I'm finally dealing with it. The surprising thing is, it hasn't been that bad of a task.
While I admit that most of what I've come across just needs to be sorted, thrown out or shredded, I've found that digging through old files has actually been a roller coaster of emotions. Some things I have found have made me laugh, like a file of "important things to file" that never got filed and now its contents are no longer important. Some things made me very nostalgic, like an old check registry from the first year we were married that showed payments to the hotel for our honeymoon and date nights to our favorite restaurants in Provo that are no longer in business. And a few things I found made me a little mad, like an old statement for my 401k that shows the account had more money in it five years ago than it does today.
And there amid the old insurance claim forms and bank statements, I also found a bright red folder containing many love letters my husband and I have sent to each other through the years. There was a note I had written to him during our engagement to apologize after our first major misunderstanding. There were several little cards that had been attached to flower bouquets he has sent me, some of which I had received during some of the most difficult days of my short teaching career. There were lots of Valentine and birthday cards and a few "just because" cards.
Life is funny that way. Often as we struggle to sort through and deal with all the clutter that is necessary to keep our lives functioning, we get unexpected happy reminders of why life is so worth living in the first place.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Day That Never Really Was
Do you ever have a day that just feels like it never really got started? Such was my day today.
I had a horrible night of tossing and turning last night and didn't get much sleep. I was feeling a little low in energy and just a touch queasy after getting the kids to school so I decided just to take it easy and do some reading this morning (I received several books for Christmas and hadn't had the chance to read any of them yet.) As you can imagine, I spent the next few hours in and out of dosey, non-satisfying nodding off type of sleep and was eventually fully brought out of my stupor with a call from my sister sometime mid-morning. That turned out to be a long conversation that my psyche really needed, but by the time I got off the phone it was already time to make lunch for a couple of famished 5 year-olds.
The early afternoon was filled with more lying on the couch trying to read which was followed by a stand off between me and the commode as I tried to will my self not to be sick. (I've been trying to ween myself off my unisom regimen and I'm learning that although I've been feeling OK, I'm not really ready to stop taking it just yet. Unfortunately that's a lesson I always have to learn the hard way.) But I'm happy to say I won the nausea stand off of the day (at least for now)and was able to think about other things until I felt better enough get some food on my stomach.
After that I of course had to make chocolate chip cookies. My kids were really in need of a project and a snack so making cookies seemed like a much better use of my time than attacking the piles of dishes that have been (and still are!)building up in my sink. Plus my sweet little three-year old friend who spends her afternoons at our house batted her big eyes and said, "I need some chocolate." I just couldn't resist! (note to her mother: I don't always give in, I promise!)
And before I knew it, it was time to take my son to piano lessons, which was my only must-get-done item on my agenda all day. And after piano lessons the day is pretty much done.
I was blessed at dinner time by a spontaneous birthday pizza party for our favorite little buddy next door, so I didn't have to cook, which is a good thing because I'm still queasy. I honestly just want to eat a few more chocolate chip cookies and go to bed.
So here I am at the end of the day, with no idea how I got here.
Don't you hate it when that happens?!
I had a horrible night of tossing and turning last night and didn't get much sleep. I was feeling a little low in energy and just a touch queasy after getting the kids to school so I decided just to take it easy and do some reading this morning (I received several books for Christmas and hadn't had the chance to read any of them yet.) As you can imagine, I spent the next few hours in and out of dosey, non-satisfying nodding off type of sleep and was eventually fully brought out of my stupor with a call from my sister sometime mid-morning. That turned out to be a long conversation that my psyche really needed, but by the time I got off the phone it was already time to make lunch for a couple of famished 5 year-olds.
The early afternoon was filled with more lying on the couch trying to read which was followed by a stand off between me and the commode as I tried to will my self not to be sick. (I've been trying to ween myself off my unisom regimen and I'm learning that although I've been feeling OK, I'm not really ready to stop taking it just yet. Unfortunately that's a lesson I always have to learn the hard way.) But I'm happy to say I won the nausea stand off of the day (at least for now)and was able to think about other things until I felt better enough get some food on my stomach.
After that I of course had to make chocolate chip cookies. My kids were really in need of a project and a snack so making cookies seemed like a much better use of my time than attacking the piles of dishes that have been (and still are!)building up in my sink. Plus my sweet little three-year old friend who spends her afternoons at our house batted her big eyes and said, "I need some chocolate." I just couldn't resist! (note to her mother: I don't always give in, I promise!)
And before I knew it, it was time to take my son to piano lessons, which was my only must-get-done item on my agenda all day. And after piano lessons the day is pretty much done.
I was blessed at dinner time by a spontaneous birthday pizza party for our favorite little buddy next door, so I didn't have to cook, which is a good thing because I'm still queasy. I honestly just want to eat a few more chocolate chip cookies and go to bed.
So here I am at the end of the day, with no idea how I got here.
Don't you hate it when that happens?!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Brother of All Snowstorms
I have five brothers and although we all get along fine now, as a child I was regularly and mercilessly teased by several of them. (I am certain I was equally annoying in their general direction as well, but that is not my point today.)
I remember one in particular used to just sit very close to me and poke me incessantly. It didn't hurt but it was just so obnoxious. Part of me wished he would just punch me once real hard and get it over with.
This is exactly how the small steady snow storms we've experienced over the last few days have made me feel. It's like a constant, painless poke. Not enough to be extremely inconvenient but enough to be totally obnoxious.
Monday afternoon I dragged my bad-backed, pregnant self out to the driveway to shovel the few inches that were there before my husband got home. (I learned my lesson a few weeks ago when I decided to wait until it stopped snowing to shovel and ended up needing to clear over a foot of heavy snow, I swore I wouldn't let it build up like that again if I could avoid it) It wasn't snowing really hard but just consistently enough that I had to do it twice before coming in to make dinner. Unfortunately, Hubby was delayed in coming home and by the time he got here you couldn't tell I had done anything. POKE!
So we all went out to shovel again after dinner and the kids were very proud of their hard work, but were very disappointed to find that it had to be done again the next morning before school. POKE!
My husband worked from home yesterday morning and shoveled yet again before leaving for work around noon and then again when he came home after 9:00 last night. DOUBLE POKE!
Why can't mother nature just sock us once with a giant punch of an overnight storm that takes us all morning to dig out from and then just leave it at that? I might prefer that bit of pain to the relentless poke of flurries all day long.
On the bright side, the sun is out today and things are beautiful. So maybe the poking has subsided for a little while.
I remember one in particular used to just sit very close to me and poke me incessantly. It didn't hurt but it was just so obnoxious. Part of me wished he would just punch me once real hard and get it over with.
This is exactly how the small steady snow storms we've experienced over the last few days have made me feel. It's like a constant, painless poke. Not enough to be extremely inconvenient but enough to be totally obnoxious.
Monday afternoon I dragged my bad-backed, pregnant self out to the driveway to shovel the few inches that were there before my husband got home. (I learned my lesson a few weeks ago when I decided to wait until it stopped snowing to shovel and ended up needing to clear over a foot of heavy snow, I swore I wouldn't let it build up like that again if I could avoid it) It wasn't snowing really hard but just consistently enough that I had to do it twice before coming in to make dinner. Unfortunately, Hubby was delayed in coming home and by the time he got here you couldn't tell I had done anything. POKE!
So we all went out to shovel again after dinner and the kids were very proud of their hard work, but were very disappointed to find that it had to be done again the next morning before school. POKE!
My husband worked from home yesterday morning and shoveled yet again before leaving for work around noon and then again when he came home after 9:00 last night. DOUBLE POKE!
Why can't mother nature just sock us once with a giant punch of an overnight storm that takes us all morning to dig out from and then just leave it at that? I might prefer that bit of pain to the relentless poke of flurries all day long.
On the bright side, the sun is out today and things are beautiful. So maybe the poking has subsided for a little while.
Monday, January 5, 2009
New Beginnings
I used to detest the end of the holiday season and the return to normal.
As a kid I dreaded going back to school. That dread continued into my adult years because once I finally finished school I became a teacher and found that many teachers experience many of the same anxious feelings about returning to school as their students--at least I did. In the years after I quit teaching my husband became a full-time student who was also working full-time so the holiday season was often a wonderful respite from the whirlwind of our crazy life.
But now that the days of schooling are behind us and we are finding out that as small business owners there really isn't much time for rest during the holidays, I am grateful to put the festivities behind us and get into a new and better groove.
I actually enjoyed taking down the Christmas tree almost as much as I enjoyed putting it up. I spent my functional hours on Saturday dismantling the tree and packing up all of our holiday trappings (I have to say my "functional hours" because I forgot my Unisom and B6 the night before and ended up spending most of the afternoon in bed. So much for my New Years Resolution to kick the morning sickness!) But it didn't make me the least bit sad to put it away. To everything there is a season and I'm ready for a new season. I'm looking forward to getting back to a routine--kids in school, nutritious food (except the Ruffles, of course), early bedtimes.
I am slowly but surely feeling better and getting more energy each day. I have a giant to-do list and for the first time in months I want to tackle it rather than run from it.
I love the catharsis that comes with starting over. I am more than ready to put 2008 behind me and I look forward to what's ahead in 2009.
As a kid I dreaded going back to school. That dread continued into my adult years because once I finally finished school I became a teacher and found that many teachers experience many of the same anxious feelings about returning to school as their students--at least I did. In the years after I quit teaching my husband became a full-time student who was also working full-time so the holiday season was often a wonderful respite from the whirlwind of our crazy life.
But now that the days of schooling are behind us and we are finding out that as small business owners there really isn't much time for rest during the holidays, I am grateful to put the festivities behind us and get into a new and better groove.
I actually enjoyed taking down the Christmas tree almost as much as I enjoyed putting it up. I spent my functional hours on Saturday dismantling the tree and packing up all of our holiday trappings (I have to say my "functional hours" because I forgot my Unisom and B6 the night before and ended up spending most of the afternoon in bed. So much for my New Years Resolution to kick the morning sickness!) But it didn't make me the least bit sad to put it away. To everything there is a season and I'm ready for a new season. I'm looking forward to getting back to a routine--kids in school, nutritious food (except the Ruffles, of course), early bedtimes.
I am slowly but surely feeling better and getting more energy each day. I have a giant to-do list and for the first time in months I want to tackle it rather than run from it.
I love the catharsis that comes with starting over. I am more than ready to put 2008 behind me and I look forward to what's ahead in 2009.
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