nap time/play time

I put Lynlee down for a nap almost 40 min ago and we have been struggling to get her to go to sleep since then.  She climbs out of her crib, pushes her chairs up to the light switch and turns on the light to play.

Just about 20 min ago I heard a ton of ruckus coming from her direction and found her with cups from her play-kitchen, standing on a little chair in the bathroom next to her bedroom trying to fill them up....So after putting her back in bed and having a talk about not climbing out anymore I left the door slightly open in hopes that would let her know I could see/hear what she was doing.

So far so good, but there has been a lot of little talking noises coming from her room so I went and stood by the door to see what was going on (and mostly to make sure she hadn't climbed out again).  I could not resist writing this down immediately because I don't want to forget.  She was talking to herself, having an actual conversation with 2 different tones of voice:

      Voice 1(boisterous and loud): Drink 'o water? Where are you?

      Voice 2 (soft/whispering): Ah!  I drink 'o water!

      V 1: Oh!  It's nap time!

      V 2: Nap time?

      V 1: Yeah!

      V 2: No, play time...

      V 1: Mommy says sleeping.  Nap time.

and then a few other things I can't remember and couldn't really make out.

Ah, I wish I had caught it on a recording.  It was so hilarious and all I could do not to bust out laughing right then.  That girl.  So funny.

Oh, and yes she is still in bed right now, and still talking to herself.

juicing: Day 3

Today was another interesting day.  Dane and I drove up to my parent's house last night in order to spend time with family who have come in town this week for Thanksgiving.  We got there just in time to put Lynlee to bed.  Which meant we had a nice evening to spend with my sister, her family and my parents. They were all (in there own way) interested in my juicing and since church was at 9:00 am this morning, I decided to do all my juicing for today, last night.

It was really nice to just have everything ready for the day so I didn't have to worry.  Also, it was nice to have a chilled juice for breakfast.  And I found my new favorite way to store my juices:

I know you are all totally in love with my super awesome counter tops from the 70's, huh?

A shaker bottle.  Really I would maybe say a must have.  After not too long in the fridge, all of my juices have separated and need to be stirred or shaken before drinking.  I made 3 juices for today.  Two of the ones from yesterday, Rise & Shine and Lean & Green.  Accept I didn't have anymore romaine lettuce, so I added another one to the menu to make up for the lost volume.  And I have to say it was my favorite on so far:

Candied Carrot (makes about 2 C)--I doubled this

5 carrots
2 apples
1 orange


Now, I know that I couldn't/shouldn't drink this juice all day for this kind of cleanse because it is pretty much all sugar...which is obviously why it tastes so amazing.  But it was really nice to have lots of variety today.  And because both the Candied Carrot and Rise and Shine make a lot less juice, they were easily stored in blender shaker bottles in the fringe.  (Many thanks to my mother for having a bunch of those bottles for me to borrow!)  Anyway, I LOVED this juice.  It truly was a treat.  I sampled a little of it last night after I had made it and decided to save it for my last juice of tonight.

And I am glad I did.  A ton of my family were at my mom's tonight for a prime-rib dinner complete with Costco's American Chocolate Cake for desert.  Seriously, it smelled so amazing!  But when I thought about eating it, it wasn't even a temptation, and to be honest, my Candied Carrot juice waiting for me in the fridge sounded devine when compared to the cake.  I consider that progress.  It was tough though, I will admit.  The food all looked, smelled and sounded soooo good.  I think I really do miss food.  Mostly as an emotional gratification thing.  And also chewing.  Chewing sounds really nice.

As far as hunger and energy today, I felt petty good.  I usually started getting hungry about 2 hours after drinking a 16 oz glass of juice.  But I feel like that is a good sign that was telling me that my body was absorbing it quickly.

So, I do have some bad news.  Today was pretty much my last day of juicing.  Not because I can't handle it anymore or because I don't think I could go for my full 5 days that I talked about, but because I am out of produce.  I made one big trip to the market before I started and got what I thought would be enough for my full 3 days and then 2 more half days.  I know that I could go get more, but I really had planned to just go until I had finished what I bought.  Well, I had just enough produce left tonight to make one more juice, that of course I sampled (and it is maybe my favorite one so far!), and then put in the fridge for tomorrow's breakfast.  And then it is literally all gone.

I can't believe how quickly it all went either!  As I was shoving it all into whatever space I could find in my fridge a few days ago, I couldn't even begin to imagine how I was going to eat all of this by myself.

Here is the Juice I made for tomorrow:

For the Love of Kale (makes about 3 C)

5 carrots
2 small red apples
6 kale leafs
 (I also added 1 orange, one more apple and 3 more carrots, just to finish everything off.)

I actually am really looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast juice.  (And I would be lying if I didn't say that I am really looking forward to tomorrow's lunch and dinner too.)  I plan to take it pretty easy as I get back into real food.  Like have soup for lunch and dinner and still stay away from lots of refined sugars and such.  I don't want to shock my system and I really don't want to blote back up--I didn't really think about this as a way to lose weight when I started, but all in all I lost about 4-5 lbs.  Now whether that stays off or goes right back on, I am not too concerned about but I do like the way that I feel right now and that's what I hope stays.  I like feeling empty at the end of the day.  I like feeling hunger before meals.  And I like not feeling like I ate too much at the end.

I am glad that I had a few days to give my insides a rest from digestion and a super boost of nutrients   I am glad I had a chance to get used to juicing, and I think that I would like to start juicing often.  Thanks for following me on this!

juicing: Day 2

Yay!  Another mini victory: two days down!  I woke up really excited to start another day of juicing, especially because I was going to try two new recipes that sounded a lot less celery-crazy.  And I have to say that I really liked both of the juices today.  I started with a big glass of Rise & Shine and then drank Lean and Green throughout the day, saving my last tall glass of Rise & Shine for "desert".

As far as hunger and energy, I think today was a little harder than yesterday.  Some of that may have been because I wasn't working today and so I had a little more time to be bored and hungry.  Another reason is probably because it was my second day juicing and I didn't really have any left-over food hanging out in my body from the day before. But the biggest reason was probably because I ran a 5K this morning.  I know, probably not the best idea.

Actually I had decided to not exercise at all durring my juicing cleanse just because I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't be making myself extra hungry (and also because my foot is still a little sore from my half marathon 3 weeks ago and I really think I need to take it easy).  So, I know, it was a dumb idea, and my foot is totally sore again.  But over all, I still felt like I had plenty of energy to make it through the day.  And I got to the point where I was actually looking forward to  drinking my juice!



Rise and Shine (makes about 4 C)

1 large grapefruit
2 fuji apples
2 granny smith apples
2 cups of green seedless grapes
10 sprigs of Italian parsley

This one is soooo delicious!  It was very refreshing and the grapefruit added nice strong fresh flavor.  I loved it.  But that shouldn't really be a surprise because it is basically all fruit.  It was a huge contrast from yesterday and I am sure had much more sugar, so it gave me a great boost of energy.  I would definitely recommend this juice--especially to people who may be a little tentative or skeptical of the idea of juicing.

Lean and Green (makes about 8 C)

1 head romaine
8 dinosaur kale leaves
6 stalks celery
1 large cucumber
8 carrots
1 lemon
(plus I added 1 gala apple)

I also really liked this one.  Partially, I think, because I had really gotten used to drinking green juices yesterday.   And also probably because I could only detect a hint of celery.  The lemon gave it a really nice fresh flavor too.  I added the gala apple because I was remembering yesterday's juice and wanted to make sure I could swallow this all.  I loved the addition and think I would do it every time.  This is a really great green juice.


And as a side note, I thought I would add a little bit more about why I have decided to try juicing.

Juicing vs. Bending (VitaMix Style)

A few of my family members have asked me why I have chosen to use a juicer as opposed to my VitaMix.  This is a really good question.  And to be honest, the first time I head about juicing I asked the same question, and actually thought it would be better to use the VitaMix or another high powered blender because then you wouldn't be missing out on all of the fiber!  But the more I learned about it and the more interested I got, I discovered that there are wonderful benefits to doing it both ways.

A lot of the women in my family suffer from IBS (irritable bowl syndrom), and sometimes I am one of them.  It isn't as extreme for me as it is for a lot of people who have been diagnosed, but when it hits me, it is horrible.  Durring those times, the best advice I have heard is to avoid high amounts of fiber.  If you think about fiber like an exfoliating mask for your skin it might make more sense.  Exfoliation is a wonderful way to keep your skin fresh, clean and smooth.  Fiber does the same thing to your intestines, keeping everything moving along the way that it should.  Now imagine if you had a cut, a rash, or any other sore on your skin.  Exfoliation is not a good idea until it has healed.  And so that's how fiber is on your gut when you have an irritated or inflamed bowl.  And sometimes even if you aren't having an episode, but you do have extra sensitive bowls, too much fiber can greatly irritate it.

So, if you consider the amount of nutrients and fiber in the ingredients in these recipes that I am using for my cleanse, the idea of being able to get the nutrients with out the fiber is mostly why I want to juice.  I honestly don't know if my gut could handle all of that fiber.   There are sometimes where my morning green smoothies irritate my tummy a little and that is only a fraction of what I am consuming through my juicing cleanse.

juicing: Day 1

If any of you follow me on Instagram  you may have seen that today marked the beginning of a juicing journey for me.  Now, I am not one of those who has decided to do this because I want to lose weight or to cure cancer or anything too extreme.  I have just really wanted to try it for a while and decided I might as well do it sooner or later.

Thanks to my good friends Reg and Jes for loaning me the juicer for a few days!

Mostly the thing about juicing that intrigues me is the idea of filing yourself with a ton of natural vitamins and nutrients easily and quickly.  To actually eat the amount of produce that I put into my juice today, for example, I really think it would have taken me a few weeks (at my regular pace of eating produce--which I do feel like is pretty good, but not the best.)  Juicing also has a remarkable effect of cleaning your system of processed and refined foods and the cravings that come along with them.

So, just for the sake of trying it, and also seeing how I like it, I have started a juice cleanse.  I plan to drink freshly juiced veggies and fruits only for the first 3 days.  After that, I plan to juice for breakfast and lunch and then eat a plant based, heathy, balanced dinner--while still avoiding processed and highly refined foods (I think I am giving myself this as a little as a reward to look forward to towards the end...chewing!).  I am not really following a certain program from anywhere, just kinda winging it.  But I did get my recipes from this wonderful blogger who writes about nutrition and healthy lifestyles.  She did a 5 day juicing cleanse of her own earlier this year.

After it is all said and done we will see how I feel.  Ideally, after the cleanse, I would love to incorporate juices similar to what I will be drinking throughout the cleanse into my normal life.  Like a kick-start each morning.  But we will see.  It is very possible that by the end of this I may never want to see another leaf of kale or stock of celery again.  So for now, all I am committing to is to drinking a whole lotta juice for the next 5 days.  And at the end of each day, letting you all know how it went.

Day 1:  The Green Machine
Cue scary music.  No really, I'm just kidding, but if you were Dane it would totally be appropriate.  Here is the recipe I drank today:

3 green apples
15 carrots
15 leafs dinosaur kale
3 cup spinach (packed)
1 cucumber
23 stalk celery
15 sprigs Italian parsley (except I forgot to add this)

Dane helped me juice this all this morning, and I was totally shocked at both the amount of produce we were dealing with as well as the amount of juice that I was staring at by the end.  All in all it made about 14 C of juice.  That is 112 oz, people!  Almost 1 gallon.  Yikes.  I put it in the refrigerator for a bit so I could drink it cold.  And let me tell you it is a good thing I did.  My first go at this one was a tall glass, slightly chilled and harder to swallow that I expected.  To be honest, after my breakfast glass, I had no idea how I was going to make it through the day.  The flavor was pretty much taken over by the celery (I think I might do a lot less next time).  But I was committed, and so I tried not to think about it too much until lunch time.  I knew I needed to drink about 16 oz every 2-3 hours to get it all down before bed time.  (And to be honest it did become a lot more palatable through out the day....I wouldn't go so far to say I 'liked' it, but I didn't hate it anymore, which I see as major progress!)

Through out the day I was really surprised that I wasn't battling hunger pains all day. I stayed full all day, and by the time my last ounce went down my throat, I felt like I was going to burst.  So much juice!  But it was a mini victory for me.  No solid foods.  I was sure that I could do it last night at the grocery store purchasing everything, but not as sure after I had dug myself deep into a hole filled with green machine.  I am happy to say one day is down, and I know I can do it again.  

So until tomorrow, where the recipes look a lot more promising than today's.

Hello old friends

I haven't forgotten that we I have blog.  And I haven't forgotten that there are a few people out there who do in fact read it.  I guess I just needed a little break for whatever reason.  I don't claim to be any bussier than anyone out there, but maybe it was just a mental thing.

When ever I get into good habits of blogging I start having visions of my blog being something more than it really is.  Something like all the famous Utah-Mormon-stay-at-home-moms have created out of their blogs.  So, then I get discouraged and pushed away, but let's be honest, people.  The only reason I do this is to keep a record.  And for the pictures.  And I haven't been doing a very good job at that lately.

So, since it has been a while, here are a bunch of pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Most every day of this summer included time spent in the front yard and ALWAYS included water in some way.  Lynlee could not get enough of it!

For the 4th of July, Dane celebrated by running the Freedom Run 10K.  The start and finish were only a few blocks from our house, so it was easy to get Lynlee up and dressed to go cheer him on.

I ran my first half marathon ever.  But this was no ordinary race.  It was the first anual Aunt Beth Memorial run.  Dane and his family put it together for me because I had registered to run a race but missed it because it was on the same morning as her funeral.  I have to say, I have the best in-laws in the world.

Dane went to Vegas for 2 weeks to complete all of his flight instructor certifications in an accelerated program.  It was insane and probably the worst 2 weeks of my life.  Not seeing him was so hard.  He was under an incredible amount of stress to perform and get done in time.  And on top of that I had a miscarriage while he was gone.  I would never wish this experience or even part of it on anyone.  BUT  we are SO glad he is done, and now an official CFI! (certified flight instructor)

Lynlee and me spending some quality time together, learning how to use the photo app on an iphone.  She is getting pretty good.

We made pretty good use out of this little back pack this summer going for lots of hikes and walks.  Here we are on our way up to Stewart Falls above Aspen Grove.

I can't even handle how cute it is when this little girl gets ahold of corn on the cob. 

Or even an ice cream cone for that matter.   This is Lynlee with her cousin, Zoey.  They are just 6 days apart.

Lynlee can never resist joining me for my exercises on the floor.

One night after dinner at the mall, we hopped on the carousel.  Lynlee couldn't stop saying "neh, neh"  the entire time.  She loves horses. 

In September, Dane's family got together for a family vacation at New Port Beach.  It was so much fun to spend time with everyone and Lynlee loved her cousins.

Cousins at the hotel in New Port Beach, CA

And of course we had to take a day and head over to Disneyland!  

Dane went on lots of bike rides this summer and took some amazing photos of the fall leaves.  Who can resist a scene like this?

Lynlee has started saying "cheese" when we take pictures of her.  I can just here it so clearly when I look at this!

We moved into a new place in Provo and I got a job as an apartment manager at the end of August.  We had so much help from friends and neighbors for the move it was overwhelming.  It was so amazing.  Many of my friends came over to clean the day  before we left.  They brought their kids and took turns watching them so the other mom's could clean. Eventually the kids got bored playing and wanted to help.  So we set them to work with spray bottles of water and rags.  It was so cute.

Fall is here!  So we went for our anual drive to see the leaves in Alpine Loop.  

Lynlee has been skipping a lot of her naps lately.  One night a few weeks ago, Dane took her to the grocery store to get some things for dinner (on a day she had skipped her nap) and she fell asleep in the car on the way.  She stayed asleep in his arms the whole time.  

Not only is Dane a CFI, but he is employed!  Here he is at UVU with one of his students, Brian, before Brian took his first solo flight.

Lynlee was an elephant for Halloween this year.  I fell in love with this costume at Costco and went to about 5 different Costco's to find the right size.  This picture is at our ward "trunk-or-treat".  It didn't take Lynlee very long to figure out the process of going from car to car.  

A few more pictures from California--Lynlee chasing birds at the beach

Abbie, Dane's sister, took some new family pictures for us in California

How can you resist this little sweety?

And last but not least, I finished my first "official"  half marathon today!  I was soooo cold.  We started up at Sundance and ran down Provo Canyon.  

St. George

I just found this blog post un-published for some reason.  So, better late than never, right?

A few weeks ago, we went to St. George with some of our good friends.  We didn't take many pictures, but we had a lot of fun.  Swimming, biking, running, hanging out and eating lots of good food.  This is always one of our favorite vacation spots.

Hogle Zoo

Several weeks ago, Lynlee and I made a trip up north to see the animals at the zoo.  It was such a great day to go!  All of the animals were out and walking around, and it seemed like every time we stopped at a new cage, it was feeding time for that animal.  Lynlee loved it, and I might have to say that her favorite animal to see was the monkeys.  There were so many different kinds of monkeys!

Unfortunately, we didn't take too many photos of her looking at the animals, but there was a really great playground that we let her run around in for a while before heading home and I remembered to pull out my camera.

We loved the zoo!

We tried to see how big she would be next to a gorilla, but there was a melt down instead.

Baby elephant!

My favorite!

She always has to taste the dirt.  Don't know when she will learn that lesson...