One Day

I am always trying to to find yummy, filling, and HEALTHY snacks for the kids. It's a tall order, as any mom can attest to. I mean, for like 1000 days they only want pretzels so you stock up and suddenly they don't want pretzels anymore. My kids like smoothies, but let's face it, making fruit and green smoothies gets costly. Especially when they want fruit for breakfast, lunch and supper! So, for something fun I decided to make them a chocolate "milkshake," which they excitedly said, "CHOCOLATE SMOOTHIES!!!!!" And, I think that's a much better description. They are easy to make and with the exception of the chia seeds and hemp seeds you more than likely have all the ingredients in the kitchen already. The chia and hemp seeds aren't hard to find either. I add them to add protein, omega-3s, fiber, and a lot of other healthy factors. My kids aren't dumb and if I were to hand them some chia or hemp seeds to just munch on they would quickly turn u...

Weeds. Blech! I hate to weed. We have lived in our house for almost 5 years now, and I don't believe I have EVER seen flower beds as riddled with weeds as ours are. I'm serious. It's a constant fight to keep them at bay. I have tried weed killers, both chemical and all-natural. We have done mulch, I have tried staying on top of them by pulling them as soon as I see them. But, they just keep coming. It drives me nuts. About 1/2 way through the summer I just stop. I stop pulling, spraying, mulching. I get tired and stop. The truth of the matter is, that I have often wondered if when I stop is that when I'm about to get ahead of them? I don't know. I haven't continued past that point yet! I stop. I stop all of my efforts. I let the weeds win. You know what happens? They take over. The thistle and crabgrass is especially bad and they infiltrate every blasted nook and cranny. Soon one can't tell where the weeds are and where the good plants are. They're the...

I have been taking Plexus for about 2 months now. I talk about what it is  here . Let me tell you, the first month was rough. I had terrible detoxing. I felt horrible. I felt sick. But I plugged along because I've detoxed before and know it's bad before it's better. Then, we went on vacation, and I wasn't diligent at all taking my supplements. And we didn't eat very well. We ate more sugar and junk then we do at home. We came home, and I felt dreadful, and I felt even more determined to get back to taking my Triplex. All last week I was diligent. I was also diligent in drinking my water. (Side note: I can not stress ENOUGH how important water is for our bodies. It is SO important. And in case you're wondering how much you should drink, you need to drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces. That means if you're 100 lbs. then you need to be drinking 50 oz of water a day. For those of us who weigh more than that, well, it can seem like an awful lot of water.)  Yo...

I better get our vacation time finished up today! You're going to think I have nothing better to talk about! Maybe I don't...ha! Thursday was perfect as far as weather went. It was sunny, warm, clear blue skies! The water was back to its calm self and so it was a perfect sit-on-the-beach kind of day and play in the water! I took my camera down because the kids were so cute playing in the sand. Talk about contentment. They LOVED digging and building in the sand. Ben even got buried by his Uncle Travis! That night Travis built a fire on the beach and we made s'mores again. We talked up the sunset to the kids and then it got cloudy...oh well! It was such a fun and relaxing time. The kids were EXHAUSTED by bedtime, but they thought it was exciting to stay up late. We are so thankful for "Ma-ma and Pops" and their generosity in providing all of us such a wonderful week away! Cora with Aunt Dei (and the baby, who we...

One afternoon (I think the same day we went to the museum) the sun came out in the afternoon but it was still chilly in the air, too cold to swim anyway, and the waves were pretty big due to the storm that day! But! I had planned ahead for such things and we got out the $3 kites I bought at Walgreens and taught the kids how to fly kites! They had so much fun with that!!! Ben was an immediate natural, we barely had to show him what to do; Cora was competitive, trying to keep hers higher then David's! She even tried to knock his kite out of the sky! And Bekah, was not interested, therefore David flew her "Dora" kite! It was fun, it was relaxing and kites are so pretty up against the blue sky! We eventually let the kids wade in the water, which then turned in to Ben and Bekah "accidentally" falling down in the frigid water. Ah well! We were on vacation! Who cares, right? I was determined to get some bette...

Our 1st full day at the beach was nice and sunny so we spent the day swimming! I didn't take any photos of us all in the water that day. We were too busy swimming, playing in the sun and getting sunburned! HA! HA! HA! Yes, even with being slathered in sunscreen I still burned really well. Oh well. Such is life when you're fair-skinned! The kids had so. much. FUN! They loved being able to get all sandy (ick!), and just dig and play and build and swim. They were exhausted by lunch but after a rest they played more. That evening we cooked out and roasted marshmallows on the grill and made s'mores. The kids had so much fun with that, and so did the adults. What's NOT fun about s'mores? The following day was rainy and cold (only mid-60s!) so we decided to go out for lunch with Ma-ma (what the kids call my MIL), and then visited the local children's museum. What a cool place! We had been fussing at Ben to stop touching every blasted thing  thi...