Arizona Trip

In July, Lily, Madeline and I went to Arizona for a long weekend. It was fun to have a girls trip with my little girls! We had a wonderful visit with my parents and I got to see my aunts and uncles and my grandmother. Grandma Lucy is turning 80 next month! My family is throwing her a party, but we can't make the trip out for the party. It's the weekend following Lily's first week of Kindergarten and I think it would be too stressful for my family to travel then. So, we went in July and it was so nice because we got to spend time together without the stress of the party and lots of guests.

The first thing we did when we got to Arizona was go to the Phoenix Zoo. Uncle Nick was able to meet us there. We rode the carousel (5 times!) and took the Zoo Train and played in the splash park. It was great! We got really lucky with the weather too. Phoenix in July isn't really much of a gamble, you can bet it's going to be HOT. But, it was an overcast morning with a little breeze. It really wasn't too bad!

After the Zoo, we had lunch at Grandma Cindi's house and we had to dress up a little too. Then we jumped in the car and headed up the mountain to Grandma Cindi and Papa Kenny's house in Show Low.

Madeline with Great Grandma Lucy.

Aunt Arnie and Grandma Cindi with Lily and Madeline.

Blast From The Past!

In July, I got a special girls weekend with two old friends. Piper and Tracy were exchange students with me when we were all in High School. We lived in Denmark and went to school together. They were my best friends that year and we remained close for years to follow. We lost touch after we all finished college. Our lives took us all in different directions and we had a hard time keeping up. Through facebook, we reconnected and then Tracy inspired us to have a girls weekend this summer.

It was so wonderful! There is something very special about reconnecting with friends that have known you through different stages in your life. I feel so lucky to have them both back in my life, and I hope we don't lose touch again.

Thank you so much Piper and Tracy for coming to Austin! I had a ball and I can't wait until we can make plans to do it again!!

Vegan-ish

This summer, we made a major change to our lifestyle that must be mentioned. Back in May 2010, Scott and I both read the book The China Study and it changed our lives. Since then, we've been trying to eat vegan-ish. It's a BIG change, but I think we are doing pretty well! It took me a couple of weeks to wrap my head around this shift in how I think about food. I had to figure out new staples to keep in the house. New ideas for meals. It took me a while to figure out what exactly made a meal and how much food is enough. The kids had to adjust too (they are also eating vegan-ish). We are now more that 2 months into the change and it's going great.

The results so far... we all have more energy and crave the healthy whole foods that we've been eating. I'm sleeping better. I've lost some weight (although, that's not the goal). Lily is now off of her constipation medicine! That's been a battle for most of her little life and we solved the problem with a healthy diet. Whoo hoo! My tastes have changed and now I don't really like the flavor of animal foods. It's amazing.

I say Vegan-ish because we are not strictly vegan. We're trying to eat a whole foods plant based diet. We're trying not to eat too many processed foods, but when we do, if they have traces of milk or eggs, I'm not worried. I'm not worried about the piece of cake at a birthday party or an occasional cookie. In my opinion, if we have desserts and treats rarely, it doesn't really matter what they are. We try to have some fish every other week. I think there are benefits to having some fish, but not too much. Scott really didn't want to give up bacon, so we have that sometimes too. None of us have a food allergy, so there is not reason for us to be very strict.

We still have some things to work out with our diet. We're finding Austin to be very Vegan friendly, but when we travel, not as much. I've got a bunch of cook books I'm trying to work through and we're figuring out what we like and don't like. Having guests over is another challenge. Since I am constantly trying out new recipes, I don't yet have good meals to serve when we have company.

I certainly would love for everyone to read this book. However, I found the book to be very powerful and it changed my life. If you aren't ready to take on a big change or don't want to, then it's not the right time.

This is a life change for us. It doesn't happen overnight. I'm sure I'll have more to post about it later.

Sookie Stackhouse Novels

While Lily was sick, I really needed something to keep me from going crazy. It's really hard to be stuck at home with 3 crazy kids for 15 days. We're usually on the go a lot and we like to keep busy.

Well, I found something to keep me occupied! I read the Sookie Stackhouse Novels. All of them. They are quite entertaining. I read the books pretty quickly. I have been watching True Blood, so I knew the story line of the first two books, but once I got past those it was all new to me. There are currently 10 books published, and more to come.

My favorite book was Dead As A Doornail (Book 5). Eric is definitely my favorite vampire and in book 5 he loses his memory. I don't want to give any more away, in case you decide to read these books. Enjoy!

A case of the sillies!

So, with summer, came the summer viruses. Ugh. Lily got the ADENOVIRUS (I think I'm spelling that correctly). It's a virus that causes a variety of symptoms. For Lily, she had a fever for 15 days, a rash and red eyes. On top of that, she got a staph infection in her nose. It was no fun at all. Luckily, nobody else in our family got sick. However, 15 days at home waiting for others to get sick was no fun at all and it was a big chunk of our summer. We had to miss 3 birthday parties :(. Lily's good friend Ella Garber was one of the parties we had to miss. Ella's mom was so sweet to drop off at our house the party favors that she was passing out at Ella's party. In these bags, were sheets of tattoos! Lily and Madeline entertained themselves for hours putting on all of the tattoos. It was great fun and exactly the kind of distraction we needed in the middle of all of our sick days.

Lily is fine now and the virus has completed running its course. We were of course concerned that this was related to her illness this spring, but it was not.

A visit from the Jaaskeleinen's

Over the Fourth of July, Annette and Sakari came to Austin to visit us. We really enjoyed seeing them! They left little Mattie at home with Grandma and got away for the weekend. Annette is expecting baby number 2 (a girl) this fall. We're so excited for them! Thank you Annette and Sakari for visiting! We hope to see you again soon!

Meyer Family Vacation

We spent a week at Lake Ouachita in Arkansas! It was a wonderful vacation and we all had a great time. Here are a few pictures from our trip. I took hundreds and I can't post them all. These are some of my favorites...

We went out on the boats most days. We'd go out in the morning and then about 2:00, it would be time to go in. Every time, Madeline and Wyatt would fall asleep on the trip in. It was so sweet!

Madeline playing in the shallow water. The lake was clean, but in some of the shallow parts it looked a bit murky because of the clay like dirt.

Uncle Dick and my silly girls.

One evening we gave all of the kids glow sticks. Cousins Kim and Heidi sat with the kids in the bathroom so they could all see their glow sticks.

Scott made Corn Hole boards for the trip. Of course they are in Steelers colors!

Road Trip

This summer we took our first family Road Trip. We drove up to Hot Springs Arkansas for the Meyer Family Reunion Vacation. It was a wonderful trip. The drive there took about 8 hours to Hot Springs and then another hour to the cabins on Lake Ouachita. We were nervous about the drive. Our kids had never been expected to be in the car that long, so we weren't sure how they would handle it.

We decided to leave at about 2:00 AM. Scott had gone to bed that night at about 7:30, so he got several hours of sleep before we left. The kids and I mostly slept until about 6:30 AM. At that time, we stopped for some gas and to stretch our legs. We stopped at a Denny's for breakfast at about 8:30 and then after that we had less than 2 hours drive to get to Hot Springs. The kids were great!

We got to Hot Springs around 11:00 or so and we had some time to kill. We walked around the mall, played some goofy golf, at lunch and then did some grocery shopping for our week. After that, we headed out to the lake.

There were thousands of these tiny frogs all over the golf course. Wyatt and Madeline spent most of their time catching and releasing these frogs. They were so cute!

Happy Birthday Scott

Happy Birthday to my sweet husband! I love you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day!!

These pictures are from Father's Day. We went to see Toy Story 3. Wyatt and Scott got matching shirts that are also chalk boards, so we wrote "We Love Dad" on Scott's. Wyatt's shirt said "I Love Dad".