Note to self

I thoroughly believe that once a year you should have a day to eat whatever you please! Watch what you eat on Thanksgiving? NO! Eat countless raspberry chipotle lil' smokies before dinner. Gorge on Dad's butter, brown sugar, and marshmallow yams. Enjoy those homemade rolls. Pour that gravy on the turkey, potatoes, and stuffing. Have three slices of pie? YES! But note to self: Don't ever step on the scale the morning after Thanksgiving! Did you really think you were going to have good news? Bad. Bad. Bad. Time to hit the treadmill!

New Toy

Can anyone guess by these pictures what I got as an early birthday present?! That's right! A Canon Rebel Digital SLR camera! Oh the things I need to learn about photography now!

This girl loves the camera!

I have been getting more and more adventurous with Bryndi's hair. She's getting better at sitting still!

Such a sad little dirty Bella face. But she was too cute at the same time.

Gingerbread Pancakes

I saw an ad for IHOP the other day that featured pumpkin pancakes, eggnog pancakes, gingerbread pancakes, and pecan pie pancakes. Uh....YUM! Well, I decided to make my own. I already make pumpkin pancakes frequently, so I decided to try the gingerbread pancakes. Of course I tweaked the recipe a bit to be healthier, but if you want the original it comes from this site.

It's worth it to make this just for the amazing smell that fills your kitchen!!


Gingerbread Pancakes
(From the Magnolia Cafe, Austin Texas)

3/4 cup liquid egg whites or 3 eggs
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup water
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ginger
1 tablespoon nutmeg
1/4 cup light butter, melted

Cream eggs and sugar together. Stir in buttermilk and water; set aside. In a separate bowl sift together remaining dry ingredients.
Stir egg mixture into dry ingredients, then mix in melted butter.
Add more water or buttermilk if necessary, but batter should be thick.
Cook until done on a lightly greased hot griddle or in a heavy skillet (turn once when bubbles appear on upper side and start to break).
Pancakes will be thick and cake-like in texture.
Makes 8 to 10 five-inch pancakes.

I made buttermilk syrup to go on top and it was divine! (and not the least bit healthy ;)

Buttermilk syrup
(from Michelle Lloyd)

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp corn syrup
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

Bring butter, buttermilk, sugar, corn syrup to a boil in a deep pot. Take off heat. Add baking soda and vanilla. The mixture will bubble up. Stir until it settles.

Halloween pictures are up!

Bryndi was a care bear this year: Bedtime Bear to be exact. She LOVED it. She would giggle everytime she put her costume on and say I'm a care bear! over and over.

I had to take this pic so you could see the little heart on her bum :)

Bella was appropriately a fairy princess.

She loved to twirl around with her wings on.

Richard was a gorilla. He makes a really good one and can scare even the older kids!

I put on a Harley Davidson bandana, leather pants, and a leather jacket. What a rebel... NOT!

Veterans' Day

Veteran's Day is November 11th. I'm writing about it early because I just happened to listen to my playlist at the bottom of our blog this morning and Letters From Home by John Michael Montgomery came on (go play it now while you read this!). I hadn't listened to that song in a long time and it still makes me bawl like a baby. For those who don't know, Richard served in Iraq for a year in 2004. Every time I hear that song a flood of emotions and memories come back. I think about him being gone half way around the world--in 130+ degree heat, with sand EVERYWHERE, with mortars coming in and sirens going off, carrying a weapon on his back 24/7, kissing my fiance goodbye, 4 months later marrying the love of my life and then kissing him goodbye again only 10 days later, eight months of being a long-distance newlywed, living for emails, phone calls and chats with the webcam. To all those who have loved or lost or said goodbye to someone in the military: God bless you. To all the veterans: Happy Veteran's Day next week; thank you. What will my veteran be doing on Veteran's Day? Putting flags up around the neighborhood--just like he does every year. I love you Honey!!

Bella's bath and Bryndi's hairdo

This little girl is growing up so fast!

Last week Bryndi yelled, "Mom! Bella's getting wet!" I went in the bathroom to find this scene. Bella had climbed up onto the toilet, then the counter and got into the sink and turned the water on full blast. She was quite enjoying her little bath!!

I decided to try a fancy hairdo on Bryndi Sunday morning. I don't know how certain of my friends who I won't name (C. Shepherd, K. Earl) do their daughter's hair so perfectly, but it sure was fun to try out. There are so many cute girl hairdo blogs to get ideas from.





The other morning Bryndi says to me, "Mom, Jesus loves you." "Yes he does," I replied. She said, "And Jesus loves me. He made the apples for us." After a thoughtful pause, "I love Jesus too." I love it when children say things like this. They have so much faith!

Big or small

I just finished reading a book on nutrition by Dr. Joel Fuhrman entitled Disease-Proof your Child: Feeding Kids Right. Unlike other books I've read about what is and isn't good for you, this one is chalk full of scientific studies and evidence to back up his advice. I'm still trying to process all the information in the book and decide what I think and how I'm going to change what we eat. In a nutshell he recommends TONS of fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds, whole grains, little meat and little to no dairy (no happiness?). Yeah, we all know we need to eat more fruits and veggies and whole grains and less junk. Its crazy to actually see the numbers on children who were raised on that diet vs. the typical american diet (the number one vegetable that toddlers in this country eat: french fries. That doesn't even count as vegetable!) and the correlation between them having cancer, diabetes, and heart disease as an adult. A few more thoughts on this:

1. In the scriptures eating meat and dairy is not forbidden, but it does say to eat meat sparingly. I used to think that meant once or twice a day. Now I think it really does mean sparingly, 2-3 maybe 4 times a week?

2. As I was reading in 1st Nephi in the Book of Mormon, I noticed that as Lehi and his family were traveling in the wilderness they ate a lot of meat. But once they got to the promised land, what did they do? Planted their gardens and sowed their seeds. THAT was their main diet once they got to Bountiful.

3. As a nurse I always thought it was odd that when we want a child to gain weight we push foods like butter and cream. It is odd. Those foods are just as bad for a child as they are for an adult. Children who eat a lot of saturated fat have heart disease as adults. So what do you feed them instead? Avocados, seeds, nut butters that have plenty of good fats and proteins and other nutrients to boot.

4. How on earth is a person supposed to eat healthy in this culture? There are goodies and treats everywhere you turn! Every social function revolves around food. I'm afraid to even ask what they are feeding Bryndi for snacks at preschool! (she says its M&Ms)

5. I'm not willing to jump right in at once. Small changes. I have outlawed buying more fruit snacks (read: gelatinized sugar with some vitamin C added so the box can at least claim some relationship to actual fruit). But I'm not going to toss out all the Dora, Backyardigans, and Princess boxes of sweetness in my food storage room either.

6. One thing that Dr. Fuhrman advocates that I LOVE is to continue special occasion eating if you want to. Have birthday cake and ice cream for birthdays. Have your holiday foods. Just keep them to occasions and not to the daily diet.

So anyway, I've been trying to teach Bryndi about healthy eating. Now before she eats anything she says, "Does this help me grow big or small?" If I don't answer right away she chants, "Big or small? Big or small? Big or small?", until I do. If the answer is big, she grins and giggles and happily eats the food. If the answer is small, like with a cookie, she says, "oh", but usually eats it anyway. Every day she also tells me she is "growing big like a mommy." After all, when I asked her what she wants to be when she grows up: a mommy.