Thankful Thursday

• I'm Thankful that it looks like exercise should be able to get my heart beating correctly again and that it wasn't something more serious.

• I'm Thankful that today is payday so I can go out and get my fridge stocked up.

• I'm Thankful for a great man who goes to work everyday and makes it so I can be at home with the kids.

• I'm Thankful for the good weather. It's been beautiful here and I have enjoyed seeing the blue sky and the blooming flowers.

• I'm Thankful for yummy bbq's mmm..... I've cooked outside twice this past week and I'm thinking I may do it again tonight.
  

Ponderings from this mornings walk

This is where I spent most of my walk this morning. It's a lovely walk with water in the canal and the breeze blowing. Some things that went through my mind as I strolled along.

• I don't like walking underneath power lines where I can actually hear the electricity going through the lines. They freak me right out. I can't imagine living next to them.
• I love the not only the sights of Spring but the sounds of Spring as well. The birds singing, dogs barking, bees buzzing, kids playing and laughing. Some of the best sounds in the world.
• I really dislike diesel powered vehicles. I realize that people love them and love to drive them. I really do not like the smell of diesel fuel. It makes me ill. Plus they are usually really loud.
  
• The double yellow lines on the road look orange to me. So do school buses. But everyone calls them yellow.
• Lilacs, especially heirloom Lilacs, have one of the best smells on God's green earth.

• And finally as I was walking along this lovely gravel road I came upon this cool little niche. I fell in love with it. I love the style and the fact that it's pretty secluded but you can still say hello to the travelers on the canal road.
  

So if you are the people who have created this amazing spot and by some weird twist of fate you read my blog I'd love to come and hang out with you. I could bring some peeps we could roast them over a fire in that fire pit. I could even bring some yummy smoked sausages. And stuff for smores. Email me. We'll talk.

To my bloggy friend Martha.....

You might want to reconsider your search for an under wire free bra.

Bra deflects bullet aimed at woman

DETROIT (Reuters) - A 57-year-old Detroit woman avoided serious injury when the underwire on her bra deflected a bullet shot at her from next door, police said. The woman, who lives on the West side of Detroit, saw a group of men breaking into a neighbor's house on Tuesday morning.

When the men spotted her, one of them fired a shot at her, a police spokesman said. The bullet struck the underwire on the woman's bra and that saved her from a more serious injury, police said.

"It did slow the bullet down," said Detroit police spokesman Phillip Cook. "She sustained injuries but they're not life threatening." The woman, who was not identified, was treated at a nearby hospital. The suspects in the shooting drove away.

(Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

It's all good...sort of.

Ticker is fine.

I've been instructed to exercise for three months and see if that will correct the heart problem. Lovely.

I'll be completely honest here. I hate to exercise. Why? I'm not totally sure.

All my life I have been pretty athletic. Enjoyed sports and playing them. The workouts that went along with said sports I did not enjoy as much. Even though I knew it would improve my performance.

Now I'm older I'm not into the sports as much. It's harder to find a team to be on and then there's the money you have to pay to play...usually. And it takes time away from family etc. I'm sure that sounds like excuses. Maybe they are.

One thing is I hate sweating. I do enjoy water aerobics because you can sweat and not even know it. That and it's kind of hard to get over heated in the water. And a big plus is that it's easy on the joints. This is especially good when you weigh as much as I do.

I know I not only need to exercise but I also need to watch what I eat and lose some of this weight. The dr. didn't say as much but I know I need to. I'm not stupid.

Here comes my second problem.

I. LOVE. Food. Love it.

I also know that I am an emotional eater. I eat when I'm happy. I eat when I'm sad. I eat when I'm frustrated, angry, tired, pmsing, worried, scared, annoyed, exhilarated, amused, hopeful, bored or even ambivalent.

I enjoy eating and I don't enjoy exercising. And it shows.

Now I need to ask myself. What do I love more? Food or my family.

And just in case anyone is wondering my answer is ... my family.

And is my family more important to me than my dislike of exercise? Do I want to be around to see my kids graduate from school, get married, have kids? Do I not only want to be there for those things but be healthy enough to enjoy them?

They answer to all of the above questions is a resounding Yes. I need to take care of myself, I need to exercise and have better eating habits.

I know this. Now I need to put it into practice. Maybe if I put it down here then I will be more inclined to follow through. I sure hope so.

How do you feel about exercise? What has worked for you in learning to enjoy exercising more? I need some ideas. Something to spark my plug. I'm all types of plugged up in this area.

Treadmill Time

This is going to be me this morning.....
Well without the facial and chest hair and a little more hair on top and hopefully I'll be wearing a shirt. I would feel really sorry for the technicians if I had to go shirtless. Plus I'd be kind of embarrassed.

Sunday Wordle

Green Day

McKenna decided to get in on the action of the Green day. Her teacher was a party pooper and didn't even decide who wore the most green.
George went again with the multiple shirts...three....again. And shorts over his pants. He also has a camo handkerchief on his head with a camo hat over that. He won! A nice big candy bar.
And Jilli pulled out her striped socks and capri's again. She even had green ribbons at the bottom of those cute braids. Unfortunately she lost out again. To a girl who wore three green shirts. She dealt with the second loss much better than the first. Which is good.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

I have someone who asked me if I would pose these questions to you. Good questions.

When is it okay to say no (and not feel guilty)?
When someone asks you to do something for them that they CAN do for themselves, when is it okay to say no?
When someone asks you to do something that might actually be more trouble for you to do, is it okay to say no?
If you're like me, how do you say "no" and not feel guilty?

Red Ribbon Week

Yesterday was the beginning of Red Ribbon week at our school. This is a week to talk about not doing drugs and staying safe.

It was Red day. They said that Red is the color of abstinence and they had a contest to see who could wear the most of that color. This is what my dear Jillian came up with....Yes she is wearing a cape. And striped knees socks (because they have pink stripes), with inside out capris and pink snow boots. In Jilli's mind Pink is just a lighter shade of red. She is also wearing one red mitten and holding a red pencil. Oh and of course her Red Ribbon week bracelet. They are supposed to wear those all week long.

And here is George in his Red day outfit. He has a red swimming suit on over his regular shorts. Three red shirts on and a red tie. And his Red ribbon week bracelet.


When Jilli came home after school she was very disappointed because she hadn't won. She sat by me on the couch and cuddled for a good half an hour before she could get over her loss.

George lost by one red bracelet. The person in his class who won was wearing two of those Red ribbon week bracelets. So close!

Friday is Green day. I wonder what they will come up with then.

Integrity

Is something I think is incredibly important. Unfortunately in this day and age it is becoming less and less important or "politically correct" to have integrity.

My definition of integrity comes from the LDS Young Women values:

“I will have the moral courage to make my actions consistent with my knowledge of right and wrong.”

I have seen Integrity in action today as I have watched the clips of Miss , Carrie Prejean, answering her question last night in the Miss America Pageant.

For those of you who don't know what happened one of the judges (I'm not going to say which one because I don't want his name on my blog) asked her if she thought that the rest of the states should follow Vermont in legalizing same sex marriage. The judge that asked the question is openly gay.

Miss California then proceeded to give this answer:

'"Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um–we live in a land that you can choose same-sex or opposite marriage and, ya know what? In my country and in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think that it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you."

You could tell that she was caught off guard by this question especially by who asked it. I think she knew that by giving an honest answer, by having INTEGRITY, it would hurt her chances at the crown. She was even booed while giving the answer

It was basically THE SAME ANSWER THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA GAVE WHILE CAMPAIGNING FOR OFFICE.

Miss California didn't win the crown of Miss America last night. She was the first runner up. Her answer probably cost her the crown. But she stayed true to her beliefs. She knew what she had been taught. She spoke the truth. She had Integrity.

She was the real winner last night. I don't care what anyone else says.

What the King of Hearts had to say

This morning was my follow up with the heart doctor. The actual heart dr. wasn't there but I got to talk with his PA which was all good.

The King of Hearts monitor did pick up a good amount of irregular heart beats. The PA drew me a picture and explained things to me in technical and not so technical terms. It seems that little nerves inside my heart that should be firing off in a synchronized manner have decided to go against the flow (as it were) and fire off at different times causing an irregular heart beat that makes me feel crappy. And at times I feel like I'm going to pass out. The mis-firings are occurring in the lower chambers of the heart, or the ventricles.

I have to do a couple more tests to rule out deficiencies in certain areas that may be causing this. They took some blood while I was there for those tests. Next Monday I get to go and run on a treadmill to rule out more serious heart problems but if I get the all clear on the treadmill it looks like I will be looking at an exercise program.

There is a medication called a "Beta blocker" that helps with this particular problem but the side effects are a lowered heart rate and fatigue. Since my heart rate is already in the 50's or 60's the medicine would not be good for me. And I already feel like I suffer from fatigue and I don't need to take a pill that would exacerbate that.

Supposedly when you get done exercising your body produces a natural "beta blocker" so I'll go with the exercise program. I know I need to lose some weight. I'm sure that would help. Part of the reason I went into see the heart doc was because my little beater flipped out when I was exercising so I thought I better get it checked out and see what they had to say before I went on with my exercise program.

If the exercise doesn't work they have a procedure where they take a little wire and go up through a vein into your heart and basically "cauterize" those nerves that aren't with the program. But I don't want to have to do that unless it's absolutely necessary.

So we still have a little bit to go before we can get a definitive answers on how to deal with this. I'll keep you all updated.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Do they make these....

With out these....
?????????

Because I'm thinking that my heart doctor really has no use for them. What do you think?

Kites

I love flying kites. I have loved it since I was a kid. Every Spring I would buy a new kite. We had a large sheep field behind our house my friends and I would spend hours and hours out there flying those kites.

I would often stay out there until almost dark or until it started thundering and lightning. We would put rolls of string together to see how high we could get the kites to fly. I lost kites and never found them because they were up so high when the string broke or I lost my grip that there was no way to know where it came down. Some times my friends and I would search the neighborhoods surrounding our kite flying area for rouge kites. We did find two or three but most were lost for good.

Now I buy my kids those dollar kites at WalMart every year. I'm thinking of up grading though now that they are bigger. This year I bought myself a nylon ladybug kite and it flew like a dream. Even doing loop-de-loops a couple of times. It rocked.

I want to get one of those big stunt kites with two strings so you have to fly it with both hands. I didn't think that we would get the chance to do this over Spring Break but Saturday pulled through with good weather and enough wind to get those magical pieces of plastic or nylon up into the air.
Here is my ladybug kite up against the clouds and blue sky (held by my man hand).

Kites against the sky.George flying my kite.

McKenna flying her kite.
Jona enjoying the kite flying.
See this picture? I was actually trying to get a shot of Ty and George standing together flying kites. I didn't even realize I had captured this image until I uploaded them to my computer. That is Ty starting to run after the string of the kite that he just dropped. I tried grabbing it but missed and actually caused the kite to go higher. The kite made it all the way to a large tree. Fortunately it was not a kite eating tree and Ty was able to get it out of the tree and save the kite.
And finally here's my little Jilli enjoying the wonderful weather and the kites. She actually got tired of it pretty quickly and wanted to go and play on the playground area. That's okay. To each their own.

Death of a Snowman

My daughter built a snowman on Wednesday. During SPRING Break. This was what was left of it today on our front lawn.

Sayonara my cold weather friend. I can't say that I'm sad to see your hind end Frosty. Hopefully we won't meet again until sometime in December.

Bring on the 70 degree weather please.

My Sister's Keeper

I'm not so sure how I feel about this. I just heard today that they are taking this....On of my favorite books of all time.

And they are making a movie out of it. It has a good cast of actors...Cameron Diaz is playing the part of the mom with Alec Baldwin playing the dad (not sure how I feel about that). Sofia Vassilieva plays Kate, the older sister and Abigail Breslin plays Anna the younger sister. I do enjoy Abigail Breslin and I LOVE Sofia (she plays the oldest daughter in the tv show Medium). Oh and it looks like Joan Cusak will be in this as well. Not sure what role she'll be playing.

But really this is one of my favorite books and I wonder if they can do it justice. I think that they will have an easier time of it because it is something that "could" happen. I hope that the screen play is well written and I hope Mrs. Picoult has a big say in how things are done.

Do you have any favorite books that they've made into movies? Did they do a good job or not?

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

I love hiking. I'm hoping that my family can do some fun hikes this Summer. So my question to you is....

Do you have any favorite hikes that you like to go on? Hikes in Utah are probably ones we could do but I'd like to hear about any and all favorite hikes that you have.

What are you favorite hikes?

Thankful Thursday

I'm thankful today that I have this amazing internet thing that I can search when a tune on a commercial catches my ear and I want to hear more of it. Because usually you only get to hear a blip of the song during the commercials.

Here are three of my fav's

This one is from a Lay's Potato Chip Commercial



I can't embed this one but trust me it's WORTH it! It's from an AT&T commercial....

Falling In Love at the Coffee Shop
by
Landon Pigg

And the final song comes from a Diet Coke Commercial that was aired a few years back.



I am also Thankful today for a wonderful Mother-in-Law. You know all those mil jokes? None of them applies to her. Not one. She's A-Maze-Ing. I'm really thankful that things are looking better for her in the health department. Keep getting better Mom.

Spring(?) Break - Day 5

It really is Spring. As the lovely red and yellow tulips in my front yard will proclaim.

Unfortunately Mother Nature didn't get the memo.
Houston we have a problem. That four letter word. Snow.

I know we need it so I tried to make the best of it.

I loaded the kids up into the red station wagon and headed over to the nearest campus of higher education. (This proves that I love my kids because I HATE driving on this campus. It's insane. My kids owe me. Big time. We are talking changing of Depends owing here.)

At the time we drove over it was only raining cats and dogs.

Our destination? The Museum of Art and the Walter Wick Exhibit.

Who is Walter Wick you ask?? Maybe this first shot will give you a clue.
He's the guy that does all the pictures for the I Spy books. I love these books. I wish they had been around when I was little. I would have loved them. I used the Richard Scary books instead. I loved those. Anyone remember those?

We got to the exhibit right as it opened because I knew that the rest of the county would be headed over there as well with the rain that was in the air. I'm glad we did too because as we were finishing up it was getting too crowded for my liking.

So join us if you will on our tour through this fun exhibit. (I took pictures and there were museum staff around while I took pictures and no one said anything. Then we went into another exhibit and they said I couldn't take pictures so I hope I wasn't breaking rules. I didn't see any signs that said no photography...plenty of signs that said no food or drink and Please do not touch but no signs about no pictures)

Throughout the exhibit they had the actual models that they used for the photographs in the books.

This first area had the models from Sky High. The models were all made from recycled stuff. It was cool. The picture that they were used in was above them but I couldn't get a good shot of it.
I love this robot shaped building. Thought it was very cool.

My favorite though was the movie theater that used
the water bottle and a pie tin in it's motif.

I think that this picture of the alphabet blocks was my favorite. I would love a big print of this in my house. And the blocks are actually a maze. You follow the letters to get through the alphabet to get from A-Z. Which is fun. Here is Jillian with the print. In the second shot she is pointing at the letter J for Jilli.I love the look on Jilli's face as she is looking at this print. I think she may have been looking for "Seymour" who was in a lot of the prints. He was a little clown type of toy that was hidden in amongst the other pictures.
This was an Alice in Wonderland type of picture where there were differences between the mirrors and what wasn't in the reflections. You were supposed to find the these differences. There were three different levels. At the highest level there were 32 differences that you could find. I think those are my favorite type of I Spy things. I love finding differences.

This is the one that McKenna liked the best and wanted her picture taken with.
McKenna bringing out her inner Vana or Prices Right model, showing off a village model.
This is George in front of Smugglers Cove. We have this book and love it.
And the model was George's favorite part of the exhibit.
He liked that you could push a button and the village would light up.
Some up close shots of the village. Isn't that moon cool?
This was a cool print called balloon pop. You tried to figure out how it was supposed to work for the balloon to pop. They they had a video next to it to show you if you figured it out right. Here are Jona and McKenna trying to figure it out.
A model of the shot Puss n' Boots.
This print is called Scary Shelf. I think the scary prints and pictures are my favorites that he does. There were a bunch in this exhibit but they were towards the end and the exhibit was filling up fast with kids that were running around and touching things that weren't supposed to be touched so it was time for us to leave.
This was a picture of a snowflake in another part of the museum. Very cool.

Another exhibit there was made up of things like black garbage bags, Styrofoam peanuts and partially burned out lights that were in a room so they looked kind of like a big strobe wall.

Here is a video of what they did with the Styrofoam peanuts and some blowers....



And my absolute favorite part of this whole trip? There was this cool huge rectangular art work that looked like orange fringed paper but it was actually little separate packages of orange duck sauce. (kind of like packets of ketchup) Stapled to look like fringe. I wanted to get a shot of McKenna in front of this cool orange rectangle but was rebuffed from taking pictures by a museum gaurd. Poo.

Ah well. When we came out it was sprinkling a little and we saw a couple of ladies from our ward pulling into the visitor parking as we were leaving. We then drove to Artic Circle for lunch and while we were there the four letter word began falling in earnest.

We now have about two inches in our front yard. And Jillian can now put "Built a snowman" on her resume of "What I did over Spring break." Oh yeah.