Sushi Makes Me Happy

What makes me happy?  Friends, Family and Sushi.  Last night we combined all of those things and had a wonderful night!

  Every mom should have a friend that went to culinary school :) This feast was prepared by the wonderful Chef Steph!

My wonderful hubby was incharge of the tempura veggies and shrimp, he did a fabulous job...YUMMY!

And we should all have a friend that has a talent for decorating...Check out the super cute decoration made by Dawn for the party!  She had our whole house looking very festive :)

 Turns out I make a pretty mean sushi platter myself.  As long as it doesn't involve that silly bamboo wrapper thing-a-majig, I did good!  Trust me you don't want to see a picture of my rolled sushi!

Ok, ok, I will treat you with a picture of my rolled sushi.  This is "Alex's Special Double Stuffed Explosion Roll"  Trust me, it tasted great!

Most of all we had a fun night and everyone ate enough sushi to last us at least a few days!

4 lessons to make your life easier!

I have had a very STRESSFUL week!  But when I took a deep breath and reflected on it all, I figured out that I learned 4 important lessons this week.   And to make YOUR life easier,  I thought I would share my stupid mistakes with you.  You can take this time to learn from me and save yourself the time and frustration of dealing with them on your own!

1)  Be sure to put the coffee pot completley on the coffee maker....Because when you don't, you get a big mess when it overflows out the top.  I'm still finding coffee grinds everywhere!

2)  Back up your important files on a flash drive.  I have about 100 flash drives within my reach every day, and I did not back any of my files up.  I clicked on a link on FB and my whole computer crashed....So here is my friendly reminder, BACK UP YOUR COMPUTERS.

3) Lock your car.  Yep, we have a video of someone walking up to my car in our driveway and going thru all my stuff.  Luckly he didn't find anything he wanted!  But he did take some things from other neighbors who apparently "theif worthy" things in their car.  I guess he doesn't like Veggie Tales  or Barney because he left all my CD's in my car!

4) Listen to your body.  I've been having issues with my arm for a long time and have been ignoring it.  This week I finally listened to my body and started physical therapy.  I'm kicking myself for not doing this a LONG time ago!  It's painful, but it's heaven!  After one visit to DASH Therapy, I am a new person.  And I have 8 visits to go, I am looking forward to feeling better.

So there it is.  Four trials I experienced this week, that if you follow, YOUR life will be easier!  Oh and if that doesn't work, here is a Stress Reduction kit for you.

Things I adore

Thigns I adore...This is a random blog, but will help you to get to know a little about me!

We all know I adore my family, friends, kiddos, and the bible, so we will skip those things and focus on the silly stuff, things that really I can live without, but having these things just makes life a little sweeter!

So lets start with this list no particular order, just the first things that come to my mind.....

1. sushi
2. sweet wine
3. tervis tumblers
4. tervis tumbler with sweet wine in it
5. nascar
6. nascar crashes and close finishes
7. tulips
8. veggie tales
9. avocados
10. bacon
11. maple bars
12. maple bars with bacon on top
13. all you can eat crab legs
14. Vegas
15. Farmville
16. Angry birds
17. flip flops
18. The Duggars
19. comfy clothes

We Survived the First Five Years!!

Uriah is 5 years OLD today!  They always say the first 5 years are the most important years of a child’s life. It is a vital time to learn how to build relationships, trust, speech, language and social skills.  It is of the utmost importance that children have stable and loving relationships in their life.

I remember when Nathaniel turned 5, I said, “well I don’t think we did too bad!”  And today I can say the same thing about Uriah!  He’s an amazing kid, and I think he thrived the first 5 years of his life!

So tonight we are going to celebrate!  He’s a lucky boy because he gets 3 birthday parties!  He told me this morning he thinks he should get 5 birthday parties because he is turning 5.  I asked him if that means I get 35 birthday parties this year because I’m turning 35.  He thought for a minute and said, “mommy that is too many birthday parties”  I love five year olds!

Uriah says the cutest things, the way his mind works is so imaginative and fun.  I love his innocence and creativeness.  I remember when he was looking through his valentine cards from school and he said, “mommy guess what, the coolest kid in class gave me a valentine.”  I said, “Really who is that”  He started laughing and said, “ME I sent myself a valentine”  I love it!

So happy birthday to you Uriah!  The next 5 years will be just as fun as the first 5!

My New Goal

So I wrote a blog 2 weeks ago, but apparently it was a bit depressing and someone recommended I take it down! It’s a long story but I was reading blogs of all these fabulous mothers that feed their children things like home-made oatmeal with orange zest and fresh smoothies for breakfast.  And I was feeling like a bad mother!  So that blog got taken down J 

Last week’s blog was more inspiring, and heartfelt.  So this week will be about my fat A$$, oh I mean this week will be about my new goal to lose weight! 

I went to the doctor a few weeks ago for a checkup and he told me I should be back down to pre-pregnancy weight by the time Z man is 1 year old.  Well I looked at the calendar, the scale and crunched some numbers……YIKES!  That’s 40 lbs in less than 3 months!

That is when I saw the couch to 5k running plan on my friend Abby’s face book page.  Well, this is the end of week 2 and I’m still alive! Abby and I have made a few adaptations to the plan, but we are running and running well! 

My wonderful hubby got me an IPod for my birthday last year.  And this week I found a cool pedometer feature on it.  So I used it and the next time I charged my iPod it asked if I wanted to upload my info to nike.com.  So I did.  And now I have all these great charts and graphs of my work outs!  Wow technology is great! 

So here’s to my new work out program and to losing 40 lbs as soon as I can! Watch out everybody this mom is on a mission!

Grace

I was very inspired this week by a story a friend shared with us this week.  Her father was in his 80’s and very ill.  One Thursday night he was rushed to the emergency room. While lying in a bed his daughter began praying for him.  She and others had spoken to him about the Lord many times, and this time while praying together he accepted Jesus Christ into his life.  He had lived his life without the love of the Lord and at the end of his life he realized he had made a mistake, and in that hospital bed he said yes to the Lord!  

As his children came to see him that weekend, he opened up to each one of them and said those precious words “I love you.”  The most heart wrenching part of the story for me, was hearing how he spoke about his regrets and what he would have done differently if he had the opportunity.  Four days later he took his last breath on earth and went to be with the Lord.  I can only imagine the party that the Heavenly angels threw for him that day!

Now, I did not have the opportunity to meet this man, so I do not know what his life was like.  But I imagine that those four days were some of the best days of his life.  However, part of me aches for him because he only had four days to experience God’s love here on Earth.  But how amazing is it that our Lord has such abundant Grace.  It doesn’t matter if it is four days, four minutes, four years or four decades, he gives grace and he forgives!

This story was a huge reminder of how important it is to be the best I can be EVERY day. The best believer, best wife, best mother, best daughter, best sister and best friend so when it comes to the end of my life I do not have any regrets. We never know when our last day is upon us.  So today is the day to make a difference. Today is the day to give an extra hug to a loved one, today is the day to volunteer at church, today is the day to play with the kids, today is the day to do something special for your spouse, today is the day to find time to read a book to a child, today is the day to dive into the bible and most of all today is the day to be the hands and feet of Christ.

 I thank the Lord that this man found Jesus, and I pray that his story continues to encourage others like me to be the best we can be every day.

Thank you Lord for your Grace!



Drink a pot of coffee and save the day!

Human multitasking is the performance by an individual of appearing to handle more than one task at the same time. Some believe that multitasking can result in time wasted due to human contact switching and apparently causing more errors due to insufficient attention. 

 I am beginning to feel that my ability to multi- task may be the death of me!  Earlier this evening I caught myself doing the following tasks all at the same time.  Playing Angry Birds and Farmville at the same time, while cooking dinner and being responsible for two young children.  Now keep in mind I had complete control over the situation, dinner did not burn, the children did not escape, and yes I finally passed level 11-7. 

My excuse is that Farmville and Angry Birds relaxes me and takes my mind of having to listen to the same episode of "Wonder Pets" for the 100th time.  And I believe my multi-tasking does save the day sometimes.  Without multi-tasking I would not be able to do a load of dishes, a load of laundry, dress 3 kids and get out the door by 7:15am.  All while drinking half of a pot of coffee!

But I highlighted one word in the definition of Multi Tasking above.  "Appearing"  I may be appearing to be handling more than one task at a time but maybe I would be a better cook if I stopped multi-tasking!  Hmmmm....that's thought provoking....maybe too thought provoking for me!  I think I'm off to watch a chick, turtle and guinea pig save the day!  Until next week my friends, think about the dangers of multi-tasking!

Singing.....Wonder Pets, wonder pets we're on our way, to drink a pot of coffee and save the day!