The Cake Was Not a Lie

So in lieu of my recent goal to loose 40 lbs by April, I thought I would give an update. I was doing really well there with eating and ramping up my physical activity but this last week I fell of the wagon big time! I'm pretty sure I undid any progress I may have made and probably gained weight. I would like to blame it on Seth for bringing home so many cupcakes, pizza, cookies, caramel, etc., but in reality its my fault for not having the self control to just throw it all in the garbage or at least give it away to a really skinny neighbor (in which I have plenty) just to be mean. The above picture is pretty much exactly what happened to me this week. I hate admitting that I was so weak but I feel like my acceptance and admittance of my sin against health is my first step to fixing my problem. I'm a sugar addict, I'll admit it. This week I am determined to do better though! I'm going to get back to taking my vitamins every day (another thing I was doing really well at) and pulling myself together during meal times to cook healthier and tastier foods instead of just taking the easy way out and heating up some frozen foods. I lost one battle but I am determined to win the war!

Insanity or Security?

I've been thinking a lot about solitude, freedom, and self-reliance lately. Seth and I have been trying hard to get out of debt and follow the advice of getting a good food storage base and overall being better prepared for life and all it's twists and turns. I underestimated the task of getting to a point where we can feel secure, self reliant, and free of the feeling like we are under someone's thumb. Every day is a juggling act of fitting in an 8 hour work day, playing with and teaching Evie, trying not to be over run with housework (dream on, right?), finishing the landscaping, cooking at least 2 meals, finishing up my thesis revisions, balancing a budget, trying to pay bills on time, and trying to stay on top of outside the home church and social activities. That's not even touching all the projects Seth is working on. Between the two of us, I feel like we are lucky when we get a shower that's longer than 5 minutes. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my life and I'm not complaining. But its times like these I think back on the lifestyles I caught a gimps of when I visited Scandinavia.

The picture you see above is of a house in Iceland sitting alone surrounded by land and water. As incredible and alien as it seems to me, I saw many solitary homes like this in Norway and Sweden. I remember wondering why anyone would want to live like that? No neighbors, no convenient grocery store, no mall or movie theater, plus, I would be really surprised if they had internet or cell phone access. I wondered how they survived. How would you eat, drink safe water, have electricity? But mainly wondered how these people, living in their basic homes, hours from any city, keep any sort of emotional or social sanity? When I was 13 I looked at that lifestyle and thought that people living that way must be crazy. At 25 I wonder how I can stop being crazy and live like they do. These people would probably look at my life and wonder how anyone could live being absorbed in an artificial society made up of social networks and expensive pieces of paper that are supposed to tell the world that the holder is intelligent, valuable, and has their lives figured out. So far, I have collected 4 of these pieces of paper and more email, blog, and social network account than I can count and I'll be the first to admit that they do nothing for my search for peace and happiness in life, I mean REAL life.

I don't feel freer, more secure, or dare I say, happier, with my social networks, school loan debt, outrageous utility bill, or the HOA that dictates how much grass I have in my front yard. Not a day goes by where I don't worry about my 2 year old being harmed by those belonging to our "advanced" and "civilized" society. I think I would like living in that lone house surrounded by only land and water. I think I would like knowing that my food came out of my garden or from my animals that I saw grow without government or institutional  regulations. I think I would like knowing that I could put an airstrip in my front yard and no one care. Maybe one day this dream of going insane with freedom and self-reliance will come true. One can dream...

Evie's "Family"

This little girl reminds me so much of myself sometimes that it's scary. When I was about 3 I insisted on caring an enturauge of stuffed animals and dolls that I would call my "family." Evie has started doing this. Yesterday she BEGGED me to get her a Winnie the Pooh doll and the sucker of a mother that I am, I couldn't say no. So, she has been carrying around this Pooh doll ever since and it hasn't left her side. She even insisted that Pooh and her other big yellow bear sit in her high-chair with her when she eats. Here's the evidence...

My Little Model

Today Evie brought me her bathing suit and very convincingly pestered me to put it on her. I didn't want to go to the trouble of stripping her down completely so I put it on over her shirt but she didn't seem to mind. I thought it was so cute that I had to take a picture. She LOVED that idea! I finally even got her to say "cheese" on cue! 

 This lean was totally her idea. 

32 Words and Counting

After talking to one of my besties I decided it would be a lot of fun to make a list of words that Evie says!  The first word is going to be what the word sounds like, the word in parentheses the translation. So here we go.

• Mama (pretty obvious)
• Dada (again, obvious)
• Mommy (I don't care who you, do something for me)
• No (this is her favorite word)
• No (this has a different inflection and means nose)
• Go (run)
• Opp (stop)
• Tees (please)
• Moe (more)
• Pappy (puppy)
• Go-gie (doggy)
• Toe (toe) 
• Choo (shoe)
• Sock (sock)
• Jew (juice)
• Tchee (cheese)
• Gickle (tickle) 
• Ball (ball)
• Tsee (sorry) 
• Ear ee go (here we go)
• Beebee (baby)
• Boo (boo)
• Owie (owie)
• Tay (Tray, our dog)
• Ot dog (hot dog)
• Nana (banana)
• Nahnah (na-night)
• Buh (book)
• Bah (box)
• Helw (help)
• Pree (pretty)
• Duh (duck)

T-V-E-V

Just like her mother did at her age, Evie loves TV. The other morning she woke up and the first thing she did was point to the TV and babble something really cute to demand to watch a cartoon. Because she had been up a lot the night before with teething pain, I said something like "aww, you're so cute" and turned on an episode of Shaun the Sheep. This is a picture that I took of her that morning. This is what Evie's favorite kind of morning looks like. 

Spring Buds

If you have been following my yard adventure from last year you will know how amazing it is that my little crabapple trees that I planted in the hard, frozen, ground last year are alive and budding! I was so stoked when I saw these little guys poking their heads out of the twigs that are my trees. 

I planted the trees last October because we got the required trees on super-sale and the HOA was on our back to get something in. The first tree I planted lost most of it's root ball when I tried to take it out of the bucket and it is really top heavy and awkwardly drooping down to one side. Due to the lack of the root ball, the hole I dug at the recommended twice the width and to the size of the estimated root ball, the hole was WAY too big and the tree sat too low in the ground and gathered water around the base. I was sure it was going to get root rot before spring. After a week or so, I went back out with my shovel and dug the tree back up and re-planted it higher in the ground with more soil augmenter. As you can see, I can't believe it survived all the abuse! What a testament to the strength, versatility, and endurance of Mother Nature! 

Daddy Play Time

One of Evie's favorite things to do is play with her Daddy.  I took a couple of videos because I thought it was cute. They are just short with nothing really to them but I love watching Evie and Seth play, it really warms my heart and makes me grateful that I was able to marry such a great man! (See, Seth. Now you can't give me crap and writing about you on FB and the blog!)

FINALLY FRAMED!

The framers finished the basement yesterday! Yay! I am so excited to finally have some evidence of our work and planning on the house going somewhere. In this upstairs area we are putting in a bedroom, bathroom, playroom, and laundry/kitchenette. Here are some pictures!

This is a picture from the laundry area looking at the playroom and bedroom on the far side.

This is the huge bedroom closet. I think its something like 10'x3' 1/2"

This is a picture from the family room door looking at the mechanical room and laundry room area.

 Bathroom!

Mechanical room

 Bathroom and play room

 Stairs to sub-basement 

Closet and under-stair storage of bedroom number 5

 Sub-basement bedroom #5

First Box of Toygaroo Toys!

Last weekend I signed up for this genius site called Toygaroo.com. Basically, the site is like Netflix for toys. For a flat-rate monthly fee you get a predetermined number of toys per month or every two months. We signed up for 4 toys every month and today we got our first shipment! I felt like a little kid at Christmas when I heard the mailman's knock on the door today. Evie didn't know what was going on but very soon realized that this was awesome. I'm sorry that some of these pictures are not right-side up, I'm too lazy to rotate them outside Blogger. It was really fun watching her dig through the box and realize that these toys were for her. 

We opened the box (which includes a pre-paid return label) and revealed our first box of Toygaroo toys! One of the things that sold me about this company is that they steam-clean, organically sanitize, and shrink wrap each toy to make sure they are "yuck" free. I expected the toys to be in good condition but all of them (with the exception of one) are in "like new" condition! The thing that really pushes it over the top of awesome is this next part. Each of the toys I ordered require batteries, I was expecting to have to buy batteries that would be dedicated to the Toygaroo toys and removed before returning the toys but get this, ALL the toys came with working batteries! Evie and I are loving this company so far. I'll keep you updated on our Toygaroo experience! 

Evie's Crazy Dance

Slowly Decorating

Last night I finally decided that I was going to put up my vinyl tree decals in the hallway. I've had the decals for a while now but couldn't decide where to put them up! I'm glad I chose the hallway because I think it looks really good there. I was even more surprised when Seth walked by and said he really liked it too. Shocker! Usually he doesn't like it when I just start doing these type of decorating things without talking about with him first. But, this time was different because he was pleasely surprised! YAY! He said he especially liked how some of the branches were coming out of the closet door and that we should do more stuff like that. So, its now your job to keep an eye out for more decals for me because I never see them anywhere. 

Playing in Food

Forget playing with her food, Evie decided it would be much more fun to play in her food! This happened when we went to lunch with Steve, Brandi, and the kiddos yesterday. Evie was too distracted by all the coolness around her that she didn't eat very much, but she sure had a fun time making her tiger and giraffe go on a safari through her beans and rice!

Playing With Hats

Vegetables AND *GASP* Exercising???

In light of my renewed resolve to better myself, home, and family, we have finally taken the next step (no pun intended) to living better! Let me start off by saying that I used to be active but have gotten less so over the years and I miss feeling that self empowerment and pride that I felt when I was pushing myself physically. Sometimes I feel a little masochistic but there are times that I really like depriving myself of good things to eat and punishing myself physically because I think psychologically I feel like I have to suffer to be succeeding (didn't we just talk about this, Brandi?). Well, I'm not really enjoying the punishment as much as I have in the past, but I'm definitely excited to start feeling better physically. I begged Seth last week for a treadmill for an early birthday present and he was so sweet to let me get one off of KSL and even helped me pick it up in our ghetto little truck. We got it all set up and today I got my brand spakin' new running shoes in the mail! I'm so excited, I'm wearing them right now to break them in! The funny part of this story is that when we got the treadmill I was really excited and asked Seth if he was excited to use it and he said, "Not really. I'm probably never going to use it, it will all be you and Steve." Well, I have been waiting for my shoes to get here (I have the most jacked up feet) and Seth has been the one using the treadmill every day since we got it! I'm so proud of my man. Let me tell ya, he is one sexy exercising-in-jeans-and-collard-shirts man. My goal is to weigh as much as he does. Dream on, right?

The Girl Between the Doors?

On our latest trip to Lowes (one of our favorite places) Evie found out how fun it could be to hide in between 

the glass storm door display. Next up, department store clothes racks. 

Kitchen Dressup

 I was cleaning the kitchen one day when I turned around and saw that Evie had somehow managed to put both potholders onto her hands. It was so cute because the gloves went all the way up to her armpits! Here are some pictures that I took while chasing her around the kitchen trying to get her hold still for a picture. I love the little funny surprises she gives me.