Precious Moments…

February 1, 2012 by ·

 

 

… ahhh, those ‘rare’ precious motherhood moments, when all the stars align, the kids eat all their vegetables, and skip to bed without complaining…

and then there is reality.  Those ‘more often’ precious moments where you wonder how in the world you are going to survive this gig called motherhood.

Let me take you inside one of the latter…

It’s a Monday.  I have offered to babysit for a dear friend so she and her hubby can go to a work function and have a much needed date night.

In an effort to not miss our own family home evening (the night in our church that we set aside to have a lesson, songs, and activity), I devise this ‘wonderful’ plan (read:  ‘wonderful’ = insane-what-was-I-thinking-plan!) to have all of our kids come with me, have hubby meet us there after work, have our family home evening, then have him take our kids home while I stay with their kids the remainder of the night.  Sounds simple enough, right?!

As the FHE activity, hubby decides to help our kids learn some service and has the 3 olders go out with him to shovel their driveway.

which leaves me inside with 5 youngers (from age 4- 3 months old) who are all very tired and ready for bed.

still doing okay.

I get friend’s two olders ready for bed, in between holding the 3 month old and fending off my bouncing-off-the-walls 2 year old and tasmanian devil 4 year old.

… I have just finished putting down their second child, and am walking down hallway to pick up crying 3 month old

– oh, did I mention that in said hallway, they have a corner GLASS cabinet, with GLASS shelves, housing a collection of GLASS precious moments dolls, collected over years and years??!!

….  yes, I did hear your collective gasp, and yes, you do know where this is going…

Just as I scoop up 3 month old, I hear that gut-wrenching glass upon glass shatter sound…

and turn to see 4 yo in a sea of precious moments bits.

… first and foremost – no, he was not harmed (at least by the precious moments!).  He had pulled one glass shelf down onto another shelf, shattering about 85% of the precious moments collection.

. Wow.

If I had my wits about me, I would have snapped a picture of the whole thing.

I did NOT have my wits about me.

Seriously – what do you do in a moment like that??!

After thorough investigation, there was no hole in which I could bury myself.

I tried to super glue some of the not-so-shatteried heads back on – no luck.

So I carefully placed the decapitated heads next to the jagged bodies,

wrote a big fat check,

and waited for the dreaded moment of return of the friends.

The worst part was, they walked in so happy because they had come home to a freshly shoveled driveway…

and I got to shatter that feeling, letting them know what their shoveled driveway had indeed cost them.

Lovely.

Being the amazing people that they are, they were very gracious about it (they really are next in line for sainthood!!), but it still did little to relieve the utter anguish of this lovely,

precious motherhood moment.

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Motherhood

Smooth Moves!

January 10, 2012 by ·

 

 

 

Let me be VERY clear.

I am not a nutrition fanatic.

well, okay, maybe in some respects I am (you’ll have to ask my sister about my GREAT corn meal waffle recipe that warrants mocking to this day!)

But normally, I am well, normal.

So when I got my vita mix blender a year ago (have I mentioned how much I LOVE LOVE that thing??!  So worth the scrimping and saving, and then scouring the best deals around – I use it every day!), I didn’t exactly get it for the ‘ah-natural’ types of crazy carrot-pea-spinach smoothies that they touted it could do.

Nope.

Not me…

I got it mostly because it could make ice cream in 60 seconds, and super duper yummy strawberry smoothies 🙂

 

and I swore that I would never let a ‘green’ smoothy pass my lips.

 

That is, until I went to a nutrition convention where they were demo-ing the vita mix

and I ran up to give my own little testimonial as to how much I loved mine (seriously, these guys should give me a commission for how much I have touted it in my seminars!)

… and they usually have samples, so they asked if I wanted to try…

their GREEN smoothie concoction!

 

In an attempt to be somewhat cordial, I hesitantly took a sip.  and then another.

and then a gulp, just to be sure.

And much to my surprise, the most delightful feeling showered upon my tastebuds.

It was actually good!

a Green smoothy.

Good.

Who would have thought??!

So I instantly snapped a picture of the recipe,

and brought it home to try it out on the toughest critics…

the kiddos.  and wouldn’t ya know – they LOVED it just as much as I did!

 

So without further adieu,

here is the ever-covetated TASTY green smoothy!

4 cups spinach (yep, the leafy green stuff!)

1 peeled orange

a few slices pineapple

1/3 cup frozen white grape juice concentrate

1/4 lime (with peeling ON)

1 cup ice

that it.  Simply blend until smooth (about 60 seconds in the vita-mix),

 

 

 

Pour into glasses,

and watch the quizical looks on your guests faces turn from utter horror to sweet delight as they, too, become unwitting fans of the GREEN smoothie 🙂

 

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Recipes

Nutrition Nerds Unite!

September 27, 2011 by ·

Once a year
I get to board one of these

Say Goodbye to these:

Meet up with some of these:

And eat lots of these:

Oh yea, and attend lots of these:

Yep, once a year I get to spend 4 days with my fellow nutrition nerds
and learn the latest and greatest
in all that is food and nutrition

I always feel so re-energized
and remember why it is
that I love this field so much.
And am re-solved to spread the word
and the love

of all things FOOD!!

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Random

No one asks your shoe size…

September 13, 2011 by ·

I’m sitting here
writing this post
with numb feet.
Because I tried to tell myself that I still wear the same size of shoes that I have for the past decade.
And I ordered a super cute pair of black workout shoes (that I found on a killer sale!).
But after an hour of wearing them,
The sad truth
Is that I am just not the same size
that I was 10 years ago.
… which really bothers me
because I was never one with dainty feet to begin with.
(can you say size 10??! In 10th grade??! Yup… that’s me, miss amazon ape over here!)

But to make matters worse,
I ran across these beauties a few months ago
(In the clearance isle, of course!)

And looked at the size.
Which was not a 10…
it said the dreaded “11”
Which I know is just one size up…
but there is something about the size “11” section
that loses all cuteness
and any sense of style or fashion
… It’s as if the companies said, “whoa, if you are a size 11 you have a whole slew of issues to deal with, so we’ll make the shoe selection easy: flat slip on in brown or black. Take your pick.”

… So when I saw these red babies, I sat
and deliberated
I mean, although my feet have been killing in my ‘normal’ size shoes,
I hadn’t yet openly admitted that I was actually the beyond ginormous king-kong footed person my shoes where telling me I was.
But when the price is $6 (yes, that is $6.00!), I couldn’t resist.
I took them home and didn’t wear them for a while (have you ever done that, buy something, but give it some time, just in case you want to take them back??! strange quirk, I know!)
But finally broke them out.
And guess what, my feet rejoiced! I actually wore them the whole day (Without numbness!)
and not one person walked up to me and asked,
“Say, what size are those shoes??!”
In fact, it was just the opposite…
I started a lecture series to a group of youth, and the person introducing me said (she had never met me before, mind you), “Let’s get started, because we have a really fun speaker today!… she’s wearing red shoes, and anyone who wears red shoes is going to be a fun speaker!”
You can believe I strutted those shoes like a peacock showing their feathers!
I felt so great about it in fact, that I ran out and bought:

… yes, those are incredibly high heels (6 inches to be exact)
which, when paired with my 5’11” body length, amounts to what could be godzilla walking down the street.
But they are Blue! and size…
11
(and yes, on another clearance sale!)

And ya know what?
Not one time has anyone asked what size they were.

So, why do you care about this at all??

Well, I find it ironic
that in the ‘diet crazed’ world in which we live…
we live and die by the numbers we see here:

When, in reality, not one person is going to walk up to you on the street
and casually say, “Hey, how are you doing? How much do you weigh?”

I have had so many clients put themselves into a tail spin
because they stepped on the scale,
possibly after they drank one extra glass of water…
and saw a .5 pound increase (I’m not kidding about that number, either!).
Yes,
Many-a-bag of oreos have been consumed in the aftermath of the dreaded
WEIGH IN day.

Does the scale help in weight loss?
Yes…
and no

What really helps in weight loss
Is knowing yourself.
If you know that the numbers on that scale send you into a bad place.
Throw your scale away. (I’m not kidding about that, either!)
(if it doesn’t send you to the double dipped chocolates, then by all means, keep it in place!)
There are SO MANY more indicators of health and and in-shape body –
Why do we put the ‘scale’ numbers on some sort of shrine??!
Wouldn’t you much rather take note by the way your clothes fit?
Case in point:
If you start a weight lifting program,
You are going to build muscle (a good thing!)…
which weighs more than fat.
… in other words, you could have the exact same weight on the scale, but if you are building more muscle and losing more fat, the body size is going to shrink (even if the numbers don’t!)
… I use models in class of a 5 pound glob of fat (pretty big) and a 5 pound slab of muscle (much smaller).
So if you are on a body-changing plan (notice I didn’t way weight loss plan!)…
pick up the weights
and (if it sends you to a bad place) throw away the scale 🙂

… then go buy some new shoes!
… from the clearance isle…
… in the right size!

Filed Under: Deep Thoughts, Featured Posts, Random

let dirty dishes lie… and other wive’s tales debunked!

September 9, 2011 by ·

At one of my bridal showers, some sweet, well-meaning woman gave me this advice, “Don’t ever go to bed angry! Talk and work things out.”
And we tried.
and tried.
and tried.
But it seemed that for us, with any argument that came up, regardless of how small it was, if we tried to stay up and iron it out,
the only thing that happened was
we got more tired
and more grouchy
and more fighty
After a few years of this (I said we tried and tried!) (or maybe it was that we just plain got too tired to stay up anymore!)…
We started to just go to sleep.
smoldering.
still angry.
but sleeping.
By morning time, 9 times out of 10, we both looked at each other and said, “I’m so sorry!” almost simultaneously. Sometimes we even wondered why we had gotten so bent out of shape over really small things.
For us, this method works. We have found that our energy levels are at their peak in the early morning hours, so those are the times that have morphed into our ‘deep thought’ moments.
I am fully aware that this doesn’t work for everyone.
But it works for us.
I just wished someone had told me that not ‘everyone’ stays up to duke it out at night many years earlier.

… in fact, this philosophy works across the board.
One question that I pose in my nutrition seminars is, “what is the best time of day to exercise?” I get many different responses, depending on what studies people have heard about exercise and health.
What we then discuss is the fact that this is a trick question.
The best time of day for you to exercise
Is the time of day that you WILL exercise.
In other words –
If you are not a morning person, DON’T set the alarm to ring at 4:00 am and expect to bounce out of bed and do a quick 5 mile run. That plan is going to last as long as it takes for you to reach over and find the ‘snooze’ button.
Find YOUR rhythm.
Know YOUR body.
We all have different peak energy levels at different points of the day. Don’t fight yours, learn how to utilize your peak hours, and give yourself a break on your ‘off’ hours.

… which brings me back to the dirty dishes.
Well, as with my marriage, I have found that my kitchen is another area that I can best work in the morning.
In many circles, it is often heard, “oh, I can’t go to bed with dirty dishes, it is such a mess to wake up to – I have to wake up to a clean kitchen.”
… and I have fallen victim to this thought pattern, thinking that if the ‘other moms’ do it, then it must be the way it should be done.
So I have spent many nights cleaning my kitchen.
Being very tired
and grumpy
and yelling
and not snuggling the kids
and not reading extra books
because I had to go to bed with a clean kitchen!

… but I have in recent years started applying this ‘go to bed’ scenario with my kitchen.
And guess what?
It works!
Not for everyone, mind you,
But for me…
Leaving this:

(don’t worry, I did put the hamburger in the fridge!)

right where it is,
and heading off to bed
is the best thing for me.

You see, when I get up in the morning, and I am once again greeted by this:

(only minus the hamburger, I just didn’t take another picture – deal with it 🙂 ).

I instantly have something tangibly productive that I can do.
And I dive in. It kind of becomes a rhythm
and me cleaning the kitchen,
lets the kids know that it’s working time,
and they start doing their chores.
and by the time we head off to school,
I get to feel so productive because my kitchen then looks like this:

(okay, maybe not ALL the time when we walk out the door, but I’m creating the mo-jo here, so just go with me!).

… and instantly I feel like the day has been a success.

So I invite you to site back,
Do a little introspection,
and if it works for you…

Let the dirty dishes sleep 🙂

Filed Under: Deep Thoughts, Featured Posts, Motherhood
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