Mean, Mean WASP!!

When this thing

meets this cute little girl.....
Then we end up with a not very happy little girl and sad mama!

Poor wittle Erin got stung by a wasp this afternoon. She was out playing on the tramp and the wasp was on the ground, and Erin must have stepped on it, because it stung her on the bottom of her foot. She was screaming bloody murder, so I run out there as fast as I can.... thinking maybe she has fallen off and broken her arm or leg. She's crying and yelling, " Mom, something bit me!" and Ethan is saying- the cat came and bit Erin. And I look around for our neighbors cat, that sometimes comes into our backyard, and I don't see her- and I'm like- Erin, did the cat bite you? And Erin is like- no, it was something red and on the ground. I said, was it a wasp? She says, no- it was small, and it had wings, and it was on the ground. I told her it had to be a wasp- and ran her inside to look to see what it actually had been- and sure enough... poor baby had gotten stung by a wasp! :(

Day at the museum!

Chet and I took the kids to the museum yesterday afternoon, and as we were on our way, Chet asked if I had the camera-- -and WHOOOPS! - I had forgotten it! So, no fun pictures- but the kids had a lot of fun! Dante's favorite part was the butterfly center- where you get to walk around and see tons of pretty butterflies!


Erin's favorite part was the gem section with really pretty jewlery and rocks.
Ethan's favorite part of the museum was very unusual! As we walked through all different parts of the museum, he was ok with the dinosaurs, and ok with the gross bugs, and ok with the children's section in the basement... but OH! How he got SOOO excited anytime he saw.......

AN ELEVATOR!! Don't ask me why-- but he would run up to it, and be like MAMA-MAMA! An elevator. If he saw another one - he would be like MAMA, another elevator!! Isn't that cool!!?? So, I'm glad to know that Ethan has an obsession with elevators:) I guess I shouldn't be surprised as I used to have a fascination with them myself... ALL day ANY day on vacation- that is where you would find me- riding up and down on the elevators! The joy of being a kid: people would look at me like I was crazy if I played elevator tag now!

New blog!!:)

OK, so any of you who have clicked on my profile before would have noticed 2 other blogs that I have never posted in. One is Happiness from the Inside Out and the other is Life: Have it Your Way! I have now posted my 1st post in Happiness from the Inside Out and will be doing a post in Life: Have it Your Way soon. These 2 blogs, next to my family, are my passions!! I can't wait to keep them going and spreading the word that YOU can be happy no matter what- and that you can have the life you want to have! I have posted the links to the right side of my blog, so that you can click on them from my main blog vs. having to go into my profile. Please spread the word, if you feel like these 2 new blogs will help others out, or give them inspiration. You are all awesome and I could not be who I am, without each and everyone of you! Every friend you have shapes your life in some form... and I'm grateful for friends and family who have helped to shape mine in the best positive ways imaginable:)

MY favorite Christmas gift:)

Ok...... so some of you might think, why is she writing this delicious dessert post, when she just previously wrote a post about healthy eating. Well, that is the beauty of intuitive eating:) It is ok to have desserts! Hard to believe, huh!:) Anyhow- this Christmas and my most used Christmas gift EVER probably (even though I have only had it for a handful of day) is SKOOKIE!! These are AMAZING! I was first introduced to the "skookie" at The Pizza Factory in Provo- but it is called a Never on Sundae there. Anyways, I have been mimicking the Never on Sundaes for a really long time now- and would just put them on a plate when they came out vs. keeping them in a skillet. Now- I have the skillets:) I have also added this item in my store- because it is DEFINITELY one of my most favorite desserts ever!! With the skookie you get a chocolate chip cookie mix or brownie mix (whichever you choose), you get 2 skillets, 2 skillet holders, and a recipe book for other things to keep warm on the skillet. I usually serve them with Bluebell Home made vanilla ice-cream and then hot fudge, carmel sauce and whip cream! It is to DIE for! I had it recently as the dessert at my New Years Eve party, and it was a HIT!! People who were not dessert people were going back for 2nds:) So- if you love warm cookies/brownies/cold ice-cream and toppings-- I say GO for it! You can also make these in the round cake pan- that is what I had to do, til I got these:) Bon apetit!

New Store!

So, I thought with all the books that I have been reading and will be reading, that I would start a little Amazon store- so that if you read a review on one of my books and you would like to read it- you can just buy it from Amazon used or new for cheap... and I just provide the link:) So, check out the link on the right that says "A few of Bertie's favorite things" I'll be adding more- right now I just have Intuitive Eating in my store! Can't wait to fill out my store:)

Intuitive Eating

Since, most people decide to "lose weight" or "get fit" as a New Years Resolution, I thought it would be appropriate to put this summary out here for everyone to see. This is my favorite book about healthy eating, and I've read my share of healthy eating books!

I tried to write a good summary of the book- but didn't feel like I was really getting the message across- so I stole the "summary" from the Intuitive Eating website, which is www.intuitiveeating.com. It is amazing and it REALLY works!

Intuitive eating is an approach that teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body--where you ultimately become the expert of your own body. You learn how to distinguish between physical and emotional feelings, and gain a sense of body wisdom. It's also a process of making peace with food---so that you no longer have constant "food worry" thoughts. It's knowing that your health and your worth as a person does not change because you ate a so-called "bad" or "fattening" food.

On the surface this may sound simplistic, but it is rather complex. For example one of the basic principles of Intuitive Eating is the ability to respond to inner body cues, “Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full”, which may sound like a no-brainer. But when you have history of chronic dieting or rigid “healthy” rules about eating it's quite difficult because a number of things need to be in place, including the ability to trust yourself! Here is a summary of the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating, from our book, Intuitive Eating, 2nd ed, 2003.

Intuitive Eating Principles

1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

3. Make Peace with Food Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police .Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating under 1000 calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise--Feel the Difference Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10. Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

Last years resolutions

Last year I made quite a few resolutions, and I can't really remember any of them now. I'm sure I wrote them down somewhere..... but the one that I am most proud of is how many books I have actually read this year. I set a goal last year that I would read 1 book a week, which would be 52 books by the end of the year! I got to 45!!! I'm VERY proud of that... because I swear- that is more books then I have read in my entire life (actually- I think I started saying that after book 15:)) So, I didn't hit 52 - but I did "shoot for the moon, and fall among the stars" I'm going to have the same goal this year, and if I make it past 46 I'll be happy:) Here is my book list.

Books read in 2007!

1. Mans Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
2. For one More Day - Mitch Albom
3. 10 Secrets Wise Parents Know - Brent L. Top and Bruce A. Chadwick
4. Intuitive Eating - Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
5. Pay it Forward - Catherine Ryan Hyde
6. Life after Life - Evans D. Hopkins
7. Wins, losses, and lessons - Lou Holtz
8. The Balanced Mom - Bria Simpson
9. Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say - Warren Farrell
10. No Doubt About It - Sheri Dew
11. The Power of Intention - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
12. The Price of a Child - Lorene Cary
13. If Success is a Game, These are the Rules - Cherie Carter-Scott
14. Jack Welch and the GE Way - Robert Slater
15. A mormon in the White House? - Hugh Hewitt
16. Laughter: A Scientific Investigation - Robert R. Provine
17. The Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family -
Dave Pelzer
18. NEVER FORGET: An oral history of September 11,2001 - Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias
19. Life Matters - A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill
20. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
21. Super Mom Saves the World - Melanie Lynne Hauser
22. Advice to a Young Wife from an Old Mistress - as told to Michael Drury
23. Raising Motivated Kids - Cheri Fuller
24. Lincoln's other White House - Elizabeth Smith Brownstein
25. The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
26. Confessions of a Slacker Wife - Muffy Mead-Ferro
27. Who Wants to Be Me? - Regis Philbin
28. Holy Places - True Stories of Faith and Miracles from Latter-Day Temples - Chad S. Hawkins
29. Final Exam - Pauline W. Chen
30. When Zachary Beaver Came to Town - Kimberly Willis Holt
31. If You Can't Lose It, Decorate It - Anita Renfroe
32. 1001 Nights in Iraq - Shant Kenderian
33. Men Like Women who Like Themselves - Steven Carter and Julia Sokol
34. Puccini's Ghosts - Morag Joss
35. Flawless! - Louis A. Tartaglia
36. American Spy - E. Howard Hunt
37. Into the Minds of Babes - Lisa Guernsey
38. Relentless Pursuit - Kevin Flynn
39. How to Ruin Your Life - Ben Stein
40. Shirley, Goodness, And Mercy - Debbie Macomber
41. The Ocean in the Closet - Yuko Taniguchi
42. Dizzy City - Nicholas Griffin
43. If Love is a Game, These are the Rules - Cherie Carter-Scott
44. Trail of Hope: The Story of the Mormon Trail - William W. Slaughter and Michael Landon
45. Passion - Barbara de Angelis


Every book that I chose to read had no rhyme or reason! I'm usually a major "judge a book by its cover" kind of gal. If it looked good- I got it, if it didn't I left it on the shelf. I only had a handful that I probably could have done with out, but learned something in each one. I think the biggest lesson I learned reading all these books - that GOD is huge and present in so many people's lives, whether he is known as God, the universe, a higher power, Budah, etc.... and that everyone is so much a like in this world! We all have struggles, we all try to HIDE our struggles, we all want to know how to deal with our struggles, etc..... We are all human, we all have the need for good friends who love and support us, we all want to try and be the best that we can, but feel lost at times. We all have dreams and aspirations, we all get hurt sometimes, we fall down and get up, we all learn how to ride a bike the same way, we all have feelings, etc.... And when "God" is present in our lives... people seem to know more about themselves and their purpose and are more joyful, then the ones who don't. Here are some of my favorite books from this year! ( I enjoyed all of them, but this way you have a kind of "top 10" list, and in no particular order)

1. 10 Secrets Wise Parents Know - Brent L. Top and Bruce A. Chadwick (lds book and had lots of good points!)
2. Intuitive Eating - Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (BEST BOOK EVER!)
3. Wins, losses, and lessons - Lou Holtz (AMAZING)
4. Life Matters - A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill
5. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
6. Final Exam - Pauline W. Chen (really enjoyed this one!)
7. 1001 Nights in Iraq - Shant Kenderian (this book really surprised me!)
8. Flawless! - Louis A. Tartaglia - (again, AMAZING)
9. American Spy - E. Howard Hunt (fascinating! - all that alias stuff is kind of true)
10. Relentless Pursuit - Kevin Flynn - (very good!)
11. Passion - Barbara de Angelis - (short and an inspiring read)

Ok, if you have any questions or want a synopsis about a book in my 45 books- let me know- and I will give you one! Reading has become a passion of mine- and I'm not ashamed to admit it anymore! I guess that means- I have grown up a little:) I will also be starting my bookshelf on the right side of my blog over- with the books I read this year. So, if you need to refer back to the books I have read in 2007- you'll have to come back to this post.

HAPPY READING!!