Laundry

About every other day, I tackle loads and loads of laundry!  In the past I have had a negative attitude about it.  But lately and since learning about thoughts and having positive energy I have been tackling laundry with a whole new attitude.  I am so grateful for the loads and loads of stinky laundry that pile up in the laundry room.  I am grateful for the 6 bodies that wore the clothes, who played in the dirt, played a lacrosse game or soccer game in those clothes.  For Ryan's brown UPS clothes.. I am grateful he works so hard to support our family so that I can be home doing the laundry and taking care of our kids and house.  I am grateful they are all healthy and active and here with me.  I am grateful for the opportunity to be a stay at home mom.  I haven't always been a stay at home mom.  I have always worked at least one day a week up until about 4 months before I had Dallin.  Its has been 3 years now.  And every day I am so overwhelmingly grateful that I am living my dream!  All I ever wanted to be was a mom.  A mom that could stay at home and take care of my kids and house and cook them meals and make cookies and bread and help my sweet kids with their homework.  I am grateful I get to do all these things!  Although in the midst of it all I get frustrated, I yell and get impatient.  I say things that I know I shouldn't.  Someday's I feel like I am doing more harm than good when it comes to raising my kids.  I lay in bed at night and worry about each one of my sweet children.  Am I doing what I'm suppose to?  Why did I react that way?  Why can't I be better?  I know that those are Satan's words.  I know that the harder I work to have the Spirit in my home, He is working just as hard!  I know that this is the battle that I am fighting.  I won't have to fight in a battle of war with weapons and gore.  I am fighting a victorious battle for my family!  There are days when the battle is looking gruesome, but just like the prophets of old, I have the Lord on my side and He is right there waiting for me to ask for help, for strength to defend my family from the evil of the world.  "You will do no greater work than within the walls of your own home." President Boyd K. Packer  I am so grateful for the gospel in my life.  I am grateful for the Book of Mormon.  I am grateful that I am a daughter of God.  I am grateful for my mind.  I am grateful for knowledge.  I am grateful for family.  I am grateful for my eternal companion, Ryan.  I am grateful that he loves me.  I am grateful for the atonement and for the peace and joy that it brings me.  I am grateful for the temple.  I am grateful for the Holy Ghost.  I am grateful for my home.  I am grateful that I am a mom.

Imaginations

I love Gavin's imagination!  This morning Gavin and Dallin have already pulled out the super hero dress ups, and now they are dogs.  I made them a kennel out of the cushions from the coaches and they have little bowls of water on the floor in the kitchen to drink out of.  I have taken money for water and tucked them in for naps with their blankets in their kennel.   I am the human and Gavin tells me exactly what to say and do.  I love it!  They are the cutest most well behaved little puppies I have ever seen.

Cooking with the Basics

I am so excited to be starting a new blog called Cooking with the Basics! www.cookingwiththebasics.com     I love to cook from scratch.  I love that I can choose what goes into my meals.  I love to cook healthy foods.  When Dallin was a few months old, he got eczema all over his sweet little body.  The worst of it was on his face.  It was so hard to keep him from scratching it.  I had to put little socks on his hands at night so he wouldn't lay there and scratch all night.  I took him to the doctor and they just prescribed creams to put on his skin.  I did that for a while and it didn't help.  With my medical background I knew I didn't want to just keep masking the symptoms I wanted to know what was causing the rash!  You just don't get eczema.  I knew there had to be something going on in his body.  So I read and researched about eczema and found out that most cases are caused from foods and how our bodies digest the food.   I knew I needed to clean up my diet (since I was nursing him) and my families as well.  I always thought that we ate pretty healthy.  But I learned so much about what is in processed food and what it does to our bodies.   My goal was to eat less processed foods and more fruits, vegetables and whole foods. Which meant that I needed to start cooking as much as I could from scratch so I could monitor what was going into our meals.  Growing up my mom always cooked everything from scratch, so I knew how I just needed to implement it!  I learn how to make bread with a natural sour dough yeast to replace instant yeast.  I made pancakes, pizza dough, rolls, crackers and cookies with the sour dough start.  Using a natural yeast breaks down the gluten in the wheat and lowers the glycemic effect.  There are so many great health benefits from using a natural yeast.  I started a little at a time and made more and more of our food with just the basic ingredients I had in my pantry.  As I did this I bought less and less of the processed foods we use to eat.  I learned that I really enjoy cooking and when I can make an entire meal from scratch I get so excited!!!  I not only learned that what we put into our body can effect our skin, but what we put on our bodies effect our skin as well.  I learned how to make homemade lotion and skin care products that we love!

New family pictures

Evan's Baptism Pictures

Love My Family

Browne Lake 2012

Tyson is 4

Happy Birthday Tyson!  We celebrated his birthday 2 days in a row.  His birthday was on a Thursday and I had to work so we celebrated his birthday on Wednesday.  He got a awesome new bike.  He was so excited to ride it and it was so cold outside, so he got all bundled up in his snow clothes and went outside to ride his bike.  The bike is a little tall and he can't get on it by himself so we have to hold the bike up and get him started.  He can get off all by himself:)  While Gavin took his naps Tyson and I made and decorated his "dirt bike cake"!  Tyson was so excited to have a "dirt bike cake"!  We had
Clarke's over for cake and ice cream that night.  He got money, books and Grandpa Evan's made him his own dump truck and an awesome garage that he can park it in.  On his "real" birthday (Thursday) he went to preschool and celebrated his birthday there.  On March 11th we will celebrate his birthday with Houghton's and Broc, Landon, Drake and Adyson.  Lots of March birthdays!