I'm grateful for:

A safe trip to and from Florida
That Dave and I are best friends
Home-school preschool!
The 'spooky path' that leads to the lake behind our house
Playing board games
The prospect of homemade Little Lad's Popcorn!

I am grateful for:

A clean house
Air conditioning
Our trip to Florida
My good, good husband.
The atonement.

I won't be posting for a week. We're off to Florida for Dave's commissioning to the US Army.

I'm grateful for:

The opportunity to go to College.
My parents!
Princess dresses
Our timeshare
Yummy breakfasts

I'm grateful for

Warm baths
The will to work out!
Clean teeth
Beautiful weather
Vacations!

I am grateful for

Balloons from Mother's day.
Getting up early!
Alone time.
Going to the Zoo!
Sarah and Andrew
My fairy garden.
Dave.
Lds.org's conference videos

Things that happened:

1) Week 1 of my raw diet. Didn't cheat. Feel great! 2 more weeks until I weigh in.

2) Sold a car! Dave will ride the bus to work, not only cutting down on gas but also his stress level. Estimated savings per month: $400! Can you believe it? Accident Insurance here is murder.

3) My flower sproutlings are up. I planted them a couple weeks ago and have since checked on them every five minutes like a small child.

4)Saturday we went to Indianapolis Saturday, and saw original famous paintings at the IMA for FREE. It pretty much made my day.

5) Fixed the hhr, our other car. The fuel pump went and it would randomly turn off while driving. Not fun.

6) Started our pre-marathon-training training program. It consisted of running once together because it rained all last week. This week we run 20 miles or something like that. Bring it on!

7) Dave is seriously reconsidering the military as a chaplain. We haven't decided anything yet, but the possibility is there. We'll update if anything happens!

Day 1.

I have a couple new rules to help me last 6 weeks, and hopefully change my lifestyle.

1) Whole grains are yes when I want them. Oatmeal, Barley flakes, Rye flakes can be breakfast when I want it. Just no milk and no sugar. Dinner I'll eat legumes and/or whole grains (quinoa, brown rice) only when I want it.
2) No sugar, milk, butter when cooking or seasoning
3) Menstrual first aid kit will include extra-dark chocolate and recipes for raw desert.

I'm hoping to lose 20-25 lbs in 6 weeks, and drop 2 sizes. Hopefully all this will happen before my 25 birthday at the end of June! Wish me luck. I'll be here!

Six weeks

Tomorrow is the first day of my six week fruit and veggie cleanse. I have done probably a total of four weeks on and off, but now I'm ready. I want this weight off and I want it off now. I'm ready to change my body! I know it's going to be tough, but my desire to change has outweighed my desire to stay the same. Here I come, summer swim suit.

So, wish me luck. I'm tired of little to no results. Let's just do this and then I won't have to worry about it. Bam.

Here we go!

What if.

What if everyone had a job that was meaningful for them?

Maybe the deeper question is, what if everyone cared for each other?

It's been a year since the BP oil spill in the Gulf, and it's everywhere I am. Stories of people slopping through oil today in commemoration, the dark depression in the minds of the fishermen and women, and rage in the hearts of Americans directed at the faceless stone wall of British Petroleum.

There was an interesting caller today on the NPR program On Point. He was an activist. I liked him. He echoed the call that BP needs to take more responsibility (which they do, by the way), and then went on this fantastic little rant on how we only run into these problems because we, as a people and society, feel that it's worth the cost. We buy everything (even plastic) wrapped in a layer of plastic, in a plastic bag and take it to our plastic cars and then to our plastic home with our plastic dishes and countless other objects with petroleum derived ingredients. He argued that we have to accept accidents like this because we continue to live a life that requires us to drill off the coast of Louisiana to support it. His conclusion was that we don't take alternative energy seriously because it won't meet our needs, so maybe we should carefully review our needs.

The other week our family went on a hike at Bald Mountain state park. I love running and hiking with our family. After an hour or so has passed, the kids are lulled into silence and Dave and I have the most wonderful, random conversations-- just like we did when we were dating. This time I opened up and actually said out loud a lot of my political and environment views about the problems of society (which I haven't done for, literally, years because we've been living in Utah and I didn't want to upset the flow too much).

What came out of my mouth was something very similar to this gentleman's point, which he argued so vehemently. If people would just conserve just a little bit, like only have two televisions in the house, and only have then on for 3 hours each day, just think what that would do for our energy consumption. If everyone found a way to ride the bus once a week, or ride their bike or walk to work just once a week; If everyone picked up 1 piece of trash a day, or carpooled with a co-worker, or turned off their power strip at night or put on a sweater or put up one solar panel or-- the list goes on.

What if people cared?

What if everyone had a job that was meaningful for them? And we could stop making plastic bags and assembling pieces of junk and spending more time helping people and feeling happy, instead of selfish and alone.

What if, indeed.

Marathon plan

Fallsburg Marathon
$60
Saturday, Aug 20 2011
Lowell, Michigan - 2 hours away

http://www.fallsburghalf.8k.com/index_1.html

I found a great excel sheet that will chart your progress as you go. http://runninginthefamily.com/blog/training/16-week-marathon-training-plan. Let's do this.

Happy

Yesterday I:

Planted flowers for my window sill
Sang Puccini beautifully!
Went to the gym.
Cleaned my house.
Played with those kids.

Today I will:
Color easter eggs
play some music
Gym it again
Buy feta cheese! <3
Probably go outside.

Life is happy!

Summer Saturdays: Renessance Center

We have decided to go do something fun every Saturday this summer. We have compiled a long list of necessary sightseeings to accomplish while we live here. This week we visited the Renaissance Center in Downtown Detroit, which houses the General Motors International headquarters. The complex overlooks the river. We had a relaxing morning.

These were taken in the showroom. The guy who designed the Camero is in our ward!

This is a suburban-- the rural Utah mom car that I swear I will never own. I'm minivan all the way!

 We had trouble getting buddy out of the cars...

Fashion show, Fashion show, Fashion show at lunch!

I would like to report that I just had a pre-pregnancy fashion show in the which I fit into my prep-pregnancy clothes I had saved! The pants are even a little big in the leg! I am now officially a size ten! AND, when I stepped on the scale this morning it said 158! Which may mean I'm finally breaking my plateau! I'll tell you, the weight loss is worth the wait of months and months of little to no results. Just stick to it! 2.5 weeks left of Body for Life. We'll see what happens!

Decidedly,

It is time for an update. I feel like my life is so cool, even though society labels 'stay at home mom-dom' as mundane and full of stress. Well, it is, but life can still be pretty cool, too.

I don't even know where to start.

We have decided to sign on our house. We looked around Vernal for an apartment, and even had some good friends think of us when a townhouse came open to rent in our ward. But in the end, this investment is worth the risks, even thoug we really don't deserve a house this nice. So, yay for stability!

Dave's job is getting better. They are resolving issues with the management in the store, and he wants to stay in Vernal until something better opens up with DI (experimental jobs out east and international).

We went up to Salt Lake this weekend. It was like a week of Party. Earlier in the week we drove the 2 hours to Grand Junction, CO to go to their Chick-fil-a and the Bananas Fun Park. We did Bumper boats, where Dave and Sarah got soaked, mini golf, and a Dora & Diego bouncy house. I caught a game of lazer tag while Dave and the kids did the arcade. Then we went shopping at Kohls. Dave spent $100 and saved $500. We loveKohls. Then I went to Old Navy, where I'd like to say I found similar saving, but I didn't. However, I did find that I am officially a Medium shirt size again. I didn3 think it was possible, but I really am that small again! Thank you, Body for Life. I also bought a pair of size 10 pants to motivate myself these next couple weeks. Also they were cheap and I don't have pants smaller than 12s. 3 weeks to go!

Thursday we went to the beach without Daddy (who was at work). Steinaker State park is only about 15 minutes away, and has some really nice sandy beaches. It is $7 per car, which means we can't go all the time, but we can swing it every couple weeks. I didn't but sunscreen on and got a nice burn that is turning into an even better tan. But- no more sun for me this season. I put sunscreen on the kids, but they got burned anyway. =( Not to badly, but I was rubbing baby oil on their backs that night, and it felt so good to Christian that he smiles and says 'woil' every time he sees the bottle. That boy. He says mom, dad, hi and woil. =)

Friday I spent the whole day cleaning and packing. At 4 we got dad from work and left for Park City to the Deer Valley Music Fest again. This time it was the Utah Symphony playing the 1812 Overture with live cannons! It was an audience picks concert, so we enjoyed a lot of classics: Willaim Tell, Beethoven's 5th symph, Kannon in D, Porgy & Bess, Flight of the Valkuries, Four Seasons. Dave's parents met us there. It was nice to do something with them. So, Sarah and Christian danced the night away, and then almost fell asleep until the 1812. The cannons were awesome. Sarah was familiar with the song from Little Einteins, and she talked about the parts of the episode that were associated with each part of the piece (monkey, volcano, playing too loud.) It was tons of fun.

The next morning we went to the Zoo with Kat and Nick. The kids really enjoyed it. At the end we played on a playground there and headed home. It felt like we spent forever there, but it probably was just the sun.

That evening I bought Dave some strawberry cake rolls, red vines and ordered out for Papa Johns Pizza, all his favorites, and talked him mom into letting him open and use his present, Star Craft II. He has been waiting 12 years for this game to come out. Star Craft was his game of choice, and apparently he could womp most people growing up. It was fun to play with him. Star Craft is a lot like War Craft, which I played as a kid, just set in space instead of a medival fantasy world, so I got the hang of it pretty quick. We, along with Dave's little brother Michael, started on Very Easy against 4 computers, and got all the way up to Hard by 1 am, when we decided to call it quits. Because kids don't care if you didn't get any sleep the next morning.

We got up on time, though, and went to church with Josh and Carrie. Carrie gave a wonderful talk on living a balanced life. She's so amazing. I'm always surprised when they want to hang out with us because they're so cool. After church we hung out with them and Josh let me eat some Ranch Doritos. They were yummy.

The last thing to do was family dinner, which is now a bit of a blur. There are so many people, and his parent's house isnot small, but there is too much sometimes. His mom made lots of great food, as always, and we had cake and pies and opened presents. Christian had his own little cake, which he had fun riping apart with his fork. It was wonderful.

There you have it. Any question?

Tidbits

Good morning! I feel like my mom when I get up this early. But actually, it's 5:30, which is sleeping in for her. I'll write and go to the gym.

Some more interesting things have been happening.

After a couple of long conversations, Dave and I are seriously considering not buying this house. We haven't closed on it because the seller is a bank that is being foreclosed by the FDIC, so our paper work goes from us to the Credit union to the Bank to the FDIC and all the way back before it's official. We've been living rent free because we qualified for early occupancy, but there's no contract yet. It's been a great trial run, because I love this house, but it's too expensive. I mean, not too expensive to live a regular life, but to expensive to live the life we want to live. We can't pretend that we don't both have student loans and Worldmark, and we still battling revolving balances on a credit card. I just realized that having equity in a house meant nothing to me if we weren't making some serious payments to our loans.

So, we're looking for an apartment. The only thing we'd owe for living in this house is $500 for the appraisal. That's not bad at all in my book. We'll have to see how things pan out, but we don't have any concrete plans as of rigt now.

Now to change gears for a moment. I'm about to go to the gym, but I wanted to give another update. I've been hovering at the 160 mark for a couple weeks now, and been trying to break the plateau. A friend of mine sugggested to start eating as many gross-tasting vegetables as possible, because their low calorie and aid in weight loss. So, I bought some snack baggies and filled then with green peppers, broccoli, celery, (gotta be), carrots and wilted collard greens, which have to be the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted. I've also started adding spinach to my protein shakes, which actually isn't too bad, you can barely taste it. I bike the half mile o the gym in the morning, and have started running with the kids to the gym at 9:30 for class. I'm really hoping this will be the week. And that next time you see me, you see me, you'll hardly recognize me! Let's hope.

I'd still like to write about the rst of the fun things we're going to do this summer, like camping, and our races, and concerts, but I've got to go pump some iron, as it were. ;)

The ward potluck.

Greeting from Vernal.

We had an interesting experience at our ward party yesterday evening. It was under a pavillion at a park. The activity was a pot luck and cooking contest for the men. Just as everyone (probably 150+ people) was getting food and starting to eat, dark clouds rolled in and it started pouring. Everyone huddled in close so they wouldn't get wet, but then the wind started blowing 45 mph throug the pavillion. Then it started hailing. I remember looking up into the crowd while my back is being pelted with stinging, cold balls of ice, and seeing parents huddled with crying children, holding plates of food, most of which has blown away, and just hearing general screaming and chaos, and lauging outloud. It was such a comic scene. Eventually people started making a break for their cars, and then the wind died down. We were soaked! It felt like we had just jumped into a cold pool. The whole thing probably only lasted ten minutes, but it will be a fun memory. If the point was for us to bond, I think it worked.

Family Home Evening

Tonight for FHE we decided to start keeping a record of our kids. I have, in the past, through e-mail and my own journal, recorded mile stones for our kids, and we definitely have plenty of pictures, but we don't have them all in one place. So, tonight we got each of them notebooks. Here are some of the things we wrote:

Sarah

Age: 2.5
Favorite things to do for Sarah Time: McDonald's play place, go to the park, paint and sing.
Favorite movies: Shrek, Toy Story, Muzzy, Dora and Meet the Robinsons.
Likes to read with mom and dad
Favorite color: purple
Favorite foods: Milk in a sippie cup, instant oatmeal, hot dogs, Dora Spaghettios, sugar and peanut butter toast.
Loves to have her nails painted, but eats it off her fingers! Yuck!
Loves to dance to the music during the crdits of a movie
Loves to build with legos, take a bath, and Loveslovesloves putting on makeup.
Can do summersaults!
Not potty trained, and doesn't want to try.
Pushes buddy down twice a day. At least.
Has 12 teeth


Andrew Buddy Christan

Age: 11 months
Favorite thing to do: eat.
Also loves: playing with Sarah, Dancing, and cruising
First words (in order): Mama, Dada, Hi, Bye, Hello
Signs: More, Milk, Waves goodbye.
Claps hands to 'If you're Happy and You Knowit'
Can give 5 up to 100!
Randomly dances when cars with loud music drive by.
Walked 10 steps unassisted today!
Eats anything off the floor
Climbs on child size chairs and sits down
Swings one leg when he feels accomplished or happy
Pretends to talk on the phone. Says, 'Hello?'. Uses various other objects as phones.
Loves to color, and pretends he is coloring by moving his hand around when he has paper but no crayons
Has 7 teeth
Goes down the slide (headfirst!) by himself
Plays princesses with Sarah! =)
Makes everyone smile!

school, music, races

Dear Blog and the people who read it,

We are fairing well in life. A lot of things have come together for me this past week. The first is very exciting. I talked with the ladies down at the USU extension, who are going to get me into school this fall! I still don't know how many music courses I'll be able to take (still need to e-mail Mr. Jessop!), but I do know they offer online Italian language classes, which will most certainly count toward a voice emphasis. I've applied, but still need to take care of FAFSA and scholarship applications. We can also breath a sigh of relief because we won't have to pay on my student loans come fall (just in time to start payments on Dave's, though!).

Another fun thing is because we have a piano in our home, I could teach voice lessons! From what I've gathered, there aren't many voice teachers in the area, so hopefully we could make it viable source of income? We'll see how things roll. I plan to advertise in the classifieds and around town, and quite possible start up a website... I'm not sure. Everything is still in the works.

Intejection: I was reading a history of Maine until I got stuck in the seventeenth century (near the beginning =/ ) and now I just want to read To Kill A Mocking Bird because that's all they're talking about on NPR this week.

Body for life is going great. I had a rough spot last weekend because we partied way too much. My free day spilled over into other days a little bit. But, no long term damage done. I'm back on track again. Actually, I've started going to the gym during the day again, too. It feels really good, and I've ended the last few days dead tired around 8. It's turned me into a morning person! I actually am foregoing the Temple tonight because I knew I'd be too tired to focus on what I want to. I'll go Saturday, early morning.

Dave and I were asked to speak on Sunday. I'm to speak on Sacrifice, and I was a little nervous at first because I couldn't think of anything to say. Really, for 3 days nothing has come to my mind when I think of it. Finally, this morning I found a few Conference talks that got the thoughts flowing. But it was a kind of scary couple days. I thought I was going crazy!

So, now that we know where we are going to live for a while, Dave and I are preparing to finish the race season. We still have a 10k, half Marathon and another Sprint Tri to complete before the family Turkey Trot 5k in Draper at Thanksgiving. It's kind of hard living so far away from everything. They had a Tri a couple weeks ago here in Vernal, but it was on my birthday, and a little too close to our move. There are plenty left in the season, but we'll have to travel. If any of you want to race with us, let me know! We could even do it from a distance-- you find a race, we'll find a race, and we'll pretend we ran it together! Let me know!

So, that's all for now. I'm ready for bed! And it's before eight! Silly girl. =)

Birthday

I haven't posted about my birthday weekend yet? It was amazing.


David had Friday, the 25th off from work and told me to make sure my day was clear. After doing my upper body work out and eating a healthy breakfast (of whole wheat german pancakes, which, without the butter qualify for BFL =), he dropped me off at the local cosmotology academy. This is our secret. The service is decent by itself, so when they charge sometimes less than half the price of salons, it's a no brainer. I do like my $35 pedi every once in a while (once every couple years). So, I got a manicure, pedicure, facials, scalp treatment and a hair cut, but don't worry, it was only a trim! It felt fantastic! Got to know the girl pretty well, and I liked her a lot. I think I'll facebook her.

Dave showed up 4-5 hours later, and asked if we could go to Lowe's. I said sure, we had some stuff to return and to Specifically, we had to pick up some decorative light bulbs for the bathroom. On the way home Dave asked what my plans were. I told him I'd probably put Buddy down for a nap.

-
For the past couple weeks Dave had been talking about an old piano that a friend in town was getting rid of. She was willing to give it to us for free. Dave seemed kind of put out by it, because apparently it wasn't in very good condition. I expressed that I'd be happy to learn how to restore pianos, but I didn't push it because I know that restoring means money, and time away from babies.
-

So, we drive into the garage and Dave asks me to bring in the light bulbs so they won't get broken. I, of course, suspect something, but I try to suppress the inherent Governale gift of seeing through subtlty so I can be genuinely surprised. I walk through the door and notice that the loveseat from the front room is now in our somewhat small living area. Regardless of any supression, I now know that the old, broken piano is in the front room. I'm happy at this surprise, and don't know whether to go see it, or go back to the garage to thank Dave.

After the split second hesitation, I decide to go in the front room, where there is sitting, not an old broken upright, but a beautiful, brand new black baby grand. But, no, it's not a baby, it's technically, by length, a grand piano. Dave walks in the front door to see me in shock. My first thoughts, like a good wife, are, 'We can't afford this,' but I think I had the decency to thank him before I said it out loud. Then, of course, tears come, and I cry into his chest for a while. I think it scared our kids a bit, because Buddy started crying too, and Sarah became ultra sensitive and kept asking if I was feeling sad.

David had set aside the next couple hours for me to play it, which I did, interspersed with comforting confused children, hugging and thanking a happy Dave, crying some more, and dancing around the house like a crazy person. It was pretty awesome.

That night I had figured we were going to see Damn Yankees at the local amphitheater, mostly because I specifically asked to go see it. Every year in Vernal they put on one show on an outdoor stage that runs something like three weeks. If we had moved here a few months earlier, I probably would have auditioned.

So, while we were eating one of our 6 daily meals, I asked if I could open his presents to me and a package from my parents. My dad had given me a strange warning about one of their gifts for me, how they were going out on a limb, and if I hated it, that would be okay, and I could donate it to DI or something. That warning fueled an excitement to open that package. It had to be something weird, unsual or awesome, or all three. I was iintersted...

Dave got me springform pans, and he stacked them and wrapped them to look like a birthday cake. It was cute. He made me a deliciously rich 4 layer chocolate cake with strawberry filling that we had on Sunday. My parents' mystery gift was a flute!! It was perfect! I know have the four most common solo instruments: violin, piano, flute and voice. I could only get (can still only get) about thre notes out of it, but apparently that's normal. I'm excited about the challenge.

We ended the night with Damn Yankees, where I volunteered Dave for the pre-show gag and he won me a baseball. It was the best birthday ever! And it was only day one!

Satutday, my actual birthday, we spent probably 8 hours cleaning and organizing our house in preparation for family to come over Sunday. Contrary to the drudgery you imagine, I loved it. It was like some housewife's fantasy to be able to deep clean every surface of the house in one day and have it remain so all at once. It's a triumph that I'll probably hold on to for the rest of my adult life. ('Remember that one magical day when everything was clean? Sigh!')

Dave's family came Saturday night and stayed for Sunday. They had spent the day in Tooele watching Dave's mom, April, sky dive for the first time. She did great! I saw the tape. I was proud of them for making the 3 1/2 hour drive out to see us. We attended church, ate cake and they didn't throw things at me when I played the piano. I really enjoyed having family in our house.

A few days later, to top everything off, I got cards in the mail, and the family I used to tend for sent me flowers! It was by far the best birthday ever, even though we went to a hot air balloon festival last year.

Thanks to all who were involved! Next year I'm expecting a harp! =)

Remember when I said, 'nifty' all the time?

I gotta learn that there's no catching up with blogs once I'm behind. I've just got to pick it up with the most recent thoughts. I think I get this from my parents: if I'm going to write, it better be good and heart-felt.

That reminds me of Body for Life. We're in week three, and I've lost five pounds, which doesn't mean muchunless I keep it up. The similarity is that when I eat unhealthy foods during the week, I've just got to pick it up and keep going. I can't dwell on it or let it bring me down. I've got to remember that my actions are not matching up with my goals, readjust, and move on.

There are three ladies at the gym every morning who are doing body for life, too. I was excited to meet them, two of them are in week two, and the other is in her second challenge. She lost 20 lbs! I can't wait for that to be me. If this program really works, then I know what everyone is getting for Christmas: a book.

We're adjusting to our new life. Our house is still beautiful. We can't close on it until some minor plumbing and electrical problems are solved. Just flickering lights and fluxuating water pressure.

We just bought some more Bum Genius cloth diapers from Kelly's Closet. I commented in the order that I was from Norway, and the daugter of
John Governale, and I got a response from a girl I went to high school with. It was neat.

We also bought some cloth swim diapers from a different online retailer. Our membership to the local Rec center includes the pool (with slides, splash park and lazy river), climbing wall, weight gym, indoor track and machines. We got swimming probably twice a week, and diapers were getting expensive. One Swimmi is the same price as a package of swim diapers. I think we've already made them worth it.

My birthday is this weekend! I keep forgetting. Dave keeps saying I'm gonna love my presents, but he already bought me a house and I don't really know what would top that. Maybe a piano.

I'm trying to get back into school to finish my degree, but there aren't many options. Berklee offers a BA all online, but it's abut $400 per credit, meaning $20,000 for the remaining classes I need, or 40,000 for a complete degree. You'd better hope for a high-paying job after graduation!

It has been suggested that I e-mail the dean of the college of music at USU to persuade him to offer music courses through the extension in Vernal. This dean is actually Craig Jessup, former conductor of the Tabernacle Choir, and I'm kind of scared out of my pants to e-mail him for fear that I'll be dismissed and miss my one chance to be on a first-name basis with him. I've already drafted two e-mails and Dave, one, but I need to get it out there soon or there won't be time to structure the course. Sigh. Wish me luck!

So, I will be 24, as many years as there are hours; then tomorrow is a new day! I'll be a new me and I hope you still like me. Until then, friends.