Sometimes Life Happens!

I have know Corinne since I was 3 years old!

I appoligize for not posting in a very long time, but sometimes life happens and we get very busy. I don't blog for money so the need to post often isn't a high priority. What is a high priority is the fan requests :) I get from my friends!

Life has been busy since last September. I have had one daughter's family move out of the basement to Oregon and another daughter's family move in the basement. At lease now I get to see the 6 month old twins more often!  I love being a grandmother and seeing the next generation grow and develop. I am so proud of the way my children are raising my grandchildren. I am actually working on my third book that will be interesting to all so being watching for future updates.

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

So what has happened in the last seven months? Well, I put on a mega reunion for my high school in California, traveled with my childhood best friend to LA and Vegas, the grand twins Boston and Lyla were born, I traveled with my travel buddy to Antarctica, Argentina, and Chile, and lost 5 pounds then gained 15! Life is so fun and full of changes.

Iceberg in Antarctica

                                                                      Since I like to focus on healthy living, lets look at the weight issue first. I love food and have a few food items I cannot control myself around. One of them is chocolate milk with Nestle's Quick. It is the bane of my existence. I cannot have it in the house because I will drink 2-3 glasses a day. I cannot say it is the reason for all the weight gain, but I traveled for almost the entire month of January and didn't gain any weight! I was eating out for a month. After arriving home, I have downed two large containers of Nestle's Quick and a lot more milk than I usually drink so what else could it be? Maybe the fact my exercise has been sporadic? Maybe because I only get 4-5 hours of sleep a night?

Healthy Habits and Enjoying Exercise:
Whatever the cause this has to stop because I have what I call my pain threshold. It is a specific weight that if I go above all the pain intensives by triple. I have more hip issues, more numbness in my toes, more back issues, and need a new wardrobe! So how do you take the first step to change? I started by signing up for a 5K for every month starting this month. I have actually gone to bed twice this week before midnight, and I am back in the books studying nutrition. I am way behind in my college independent study course on nutrition. It saddens me when my friends look at themselves in the mirror and see fat when I look at them and see beauty. I guess I need to apply that to myself because all I see is fat right now. With the weather so nice a good walk outside is one of the best things to do. I don't want to be skinny, I want to be healthy.

Fun Food:
I am totalling enjoying the meal situation here. I buy the groceries and my daughter cooks the dinners. She is a great cook and is trying new and healthy foods all the time. I think she needs to start a food blog. She has a great blog on her adventures with the blessing of her twins. Look her up at: http://littleivielane.blogspot.com/

So be watching for weekly blogs, I hope, on healthy habits, enjoying exercise, and fun foods. Maybe my daughter will  even let me share a few of her recipes. Better yet follow her on Pinterest, she has a board on the recipes she tries. Have a great week and remember "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page"        St Augustine

My beautiful twin grand babies!

Food Fun #2

So today was a big day for our family. My youngest daughter and her husband had a gender reveal party letting us know what their twins would be. The hardest part was I had to make the cakes, so I knew before anyone else. That is a lot of pressure! Even getting dressed was hard because I was worried if I wore anything pink or blue someone would read into the clothing choice ;) so I wore black. Safest color choice I had. It was a lot of fun with family and friends.

As American's, anytime we gather it gives us the opportunity to eat. Usually we make bad food choices at gatherings and eat lots of chips, pop, munchies, etc. It makes it hard to make good food choices when there are more unhealthy foods surrounding you. This is one area I have been working hard on. We have a lot of family dinners. Some of the foods we have used instead of the standards for these gatherings are mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes, more salads, healthy multi-grain chips instead of regular, and instead of candy I try to serve more snap peas, peppers, fruits, etc.  Of course there is on occasion the soda pop or cake. But what I am discovering is there are a lot of healthy, tasty, and filling choices out there.

Today at the party we served strawberry/grape kabobs, and raspberry/blueberry kabobs, and hoagie sandwiches on wheat rolls. That is a huge improvement from the past. I try to have a lot more fruits and veggie choices.It is a start at eating healthier and serving healthier food to my family. I really loved the raspberries, for me that is saying a ton. Just in case you missed it along the way, I have never been a fruit eater!

But the best thing about today was finding out that I will be adding another grandson and my first granddaughter to the family! So yep, I ate some cake. The answer is moderation and control. A piece of cake is not going to ruin your eating habits. A piece of cake daily or even weekly might. So don't deprive yourself, just choice wisely and be happy about your choice. Regretting you ate something general makes you feel worse and doesn't help our self-esteem. So load up on the fruits and veggies and take your cake too, just make it a smaller piece!

 Baby Gender Reveal  
video of the revealing