self control & geriatric dogs

I've been feeling a little blah! lately, I eat too much sugar and watch too much TV, these things are becoming apparent as I have gained about 15lbs since leaving LA which sucks because I have also been working out 4 days a week, I'm also tired most of the time because I stay up late watching TV, then I'm tired the next day so after my girls go to bed I'm too tired to do anything and so I watch TV, stay up too late and the cycle repeats itself. So this week I am on a no sugar no TV break, I'm an all or nothing type and saying I am just going to eat a small treat each day or just watch 1 show doesn't work. Anyway, so far so good, a few sugar cravings but I'm managing and for my diversion from TV I checked out a book from the library, An Assembly Such as This, its Pride & Prejudice from Darcy's perspective, I'm only 1 chapter in but enjoying it so far and not feeling so brain dead from watching TV.

Then this is our dog, she's old, she just turned 12, see all that gray? the past few weeks she's been hobbling around, on Saturday 1/2 way around the block she gave up and sat down, Eric had to wait with her until she was ready to get up, we've been pretty worried about her so I took her to the vet on Monday, guess what he told me? "she's old" he also told me 3 of her 4 legs were hurting, he gave me some pain meds for her so we are going to see if they help, its really sad to watch her struggle, I think it makes me wonder if this is what old age is like, it creeps up on you and kinda sucks.

Spring break adventures day 5

Yeah, again not so adventurous, here is what my girls did Friday morning, something they do fairly often and love to do, color while listening to Junie B Jones on the ipod, then went grocery shopping, oh and apparently Kate did some photography.

Spring Break adventures - day 3 & 4

Yesterday and today have not been so exciting or adventurous, the girls went to grandma's yesterday to play with their cousins and I headed to the DMV to get my Utah license and register my car here, I guess that means we're staying. Today the girls and I went to see HOP, I know it got terrible reviews but I actually thought it was OK as far as a movie could be with a talking bunny in it, the girls liked it too. What made it even better was that for the 11:45 show we were having some projector issues, by the time they decided it wasn't going to work it was 12:20 and the next show was at 1pm, we all got free tickets plus if you took your ticket stubs to the kiosk we could exchange them for the 1pm showing, so we got to see HOP for free plus now I have 3 free tickets. I'm a little frugal when it comes to buying concessions at the movie theater but as it was lunch time and we had free tickets I bought a big tub of popcorn for the girls.

When we got home from the movies Sara's new doll house had arrived, she began talking before Christmas about getting a new doll house, she already had the fisher price one so I told her if she sold the one she had she could get a new one, we sold the other one a few months ago, after it sold I asked her if she wanted me to order the new one to which she replied that she wanted to wait a while, not sure what we were waiting for but fine by me, then on Monday Sara asked "when is my new doll house getting here?" and so I ordered it, today it arrived, took about 2 hrs to put together, its cute and she and Kate had a lot of fun playing with it. Also I hit a home run with dinner tonight making these, usually someone doesn't like dinner but tonight everyone loved it, I substituted ground turkey and doubled the sauce.

Spring Break Adventures - Day 2

So day two didn't bring anything as exciting as hiking the Y, the girls wanted to go swimming and so that was pretty much our outing of the day. During spring break or any holiday from school for that matter my kids I'm sure are like most others in the fact that they want to watch TV and play video games to their hearts desire, I'm not opposed to either of these but if I allowed it I'm sure these activities would begin as soon as they woke up, in order to delay this as much possible I make the girls a chore chart. I'm not great at giving my girls chores, I never had chores growing up but I have come up with somethings that I want them to do each day, their chores aren't all that difficult, some are just good habit forming things like saying their morning prayers (we usually do a family prayer in the morning but I am bad at having them kneel by their bed an saying their own individual prayer), brushing their teeth and some are things that I want to get done like walk the dog, tidying up the bathroom and wiping down the counters, making their beds and some are just things they need to do before TV like reading for 20 mins (for Kate) and practicing letters for Sara. I did add a few things that I haven't done before that I want the girls to start doing like set the table for dinner and clear the table and wipe it (if they finish everything else they can watch TV or play the wii before these chores as these can only happen right at dinner time), so far so good, another I added is for one of then each day to help prepare dinner, here is a picture of Sara peeling sweet potatoes for dinner, she really liked doing it and did amazing and yes she made a mess but it swept up in no time once she was done.

So anyway, like I said its not really stuff they have to do, I like them playing together and if they do that for a few hours in the morning and don't get their chores done until 3pm so be it, the only consequence of not doing their chores is no TV or video games until they do, yesterday (yeah only day 2) Kate announced she wasn't doing her chores that day, fine with be but by 6pm she was scrambling to get them done because she wanted to play the wii for a little while.

Spring break adventures - Day 1

The girls have the week off school this week, yipee, I love it. Today we hiked to the Y on the mountain in Provo, it was a beautiful day, the trail which is 1.2 miles to the top wasn't too bad, fairly steep on the first few switchbacks but the last 5 or so aren't too steep, good thing because the closer we got to the top the more snow there was. The Y was covered in snow so I really want to take the girls up again when they can actually see it. Beautiful day, beautiful spring weather and we got totally fried, got to remember the sunscreen next time!

The beginning of the hike and around the first switchback there was still snow.

View from the top, Kate is flexing her "I made it" muscles.

Field Trip Friday

Today Kate has a field trip to the Hogle Zoo, wish her 1st grade luck, today it is rain/snowing and in the low 40's but you couldn't find a more excited 1st grader. To get the girls to school on time we need to be out of the door by 8:20, usually around that time I'm hustling them "hurry up, we gotta get going" today however by 8am Kate was asking "can we go already?"

crafty

I have a project list that is as long as my arm, I love crafts but right now at the top of my list is getting my genealogy going and food storage, all that said I found a super cute store here in American Fork called Crafters Corner, they sell crafting kits and if you pay $5 you can use their craft room and supplies, totally worth it to me as I can get someone else's place all messy and don't have to go and buy a bunch of stuff that I will only use a little of, anyway, I made a couple of St. Patrick's day things and then went back to get some cute Easter stuff up in the house.

Also my new calling is activity days, I had an idea of what to do with the girls this Thursday but as I was listening to conference yesterday someone said "wouldn't it be great if each child had a picture of the temple in their rooms" I've heard this before but when I saw this temple block tutorial I thought it would be super cute to do with the activity day girls, for a practise run we did it tonight for FHE, I wasn't quite as organized as I needed to be but it turned out well and now each of my girls have a picture of the temple in their rooms.

The tutorial shows the wood block painted black but I let the girls choose from the paint I had and I like that they each chose a color that reflects them, I think they turned out super cute. The girls were excited to do a craft for FHE, we usually pick pictures out of the gospel art picture kit and each present one to the rest of the family (thanks for that idea Veronica). If your interested - we had I Love To See the Temple as our opening song, talked about what stood out to me in conference and the fact that we were going to make temple pics for their rooms, painted the block, while the paint dried we had our treat and talked about the importance of temples, then we distressed the block, glued on the pic, embellished and closing song and prayer and we were done. It was fairly cheap too, I bought a 2x6 piece of wood from Home Depot for $2.99, that will make about 6-7 of these, 40¢ for the picture and I had scrap ribbon, I also used tulle that I had made the girls tutu's with but they don't use anymore so I'm happy to rip those up and re-use. On the tutorial website she had tons of pictures of all the different temples. Now back to my genealogy and food storage, still waiting for it to magically get done by itself!!