Spaghetti Slurping

I love hearing Chris laughing on this video!

Trying to be Healthier

I want to make better food choices for our family. I am concerned about the increase in cancer and other diseases. I have to think that it is something that we are doing by what we put in and on our bodies, in addition to air quality and environmental factors. This may be an area where my obsessiveness will start taking over. Maybe it already has. My interest in healthier foods started about two years ago when I started Arbonne and began to learn how the chemicals and ingredients in our personal care products get into our bloodstream and have an affect on our total body. This made me start to research the food that we put in our bodies. Then, when I got pregnant with Mckenzee I became even more concerned because now I had a tiny life to look after. I stopped eating french fries, stopped my caffeine intake, tried to cut out nitrites as much as possible, ate whole wheat breads, and began washing my fruits and vegetables with soap. I feel like this has been something that has interested me for a long time and I still only know a little bit about it. There is so much to learn.



I remember being at this crazy woman's house when I was pregnant and she began to show me everything in her pantry and refrigerator. It was all from Whole Foods and everything was organic...she was made of money. I thought wow...how cool is she? I want to be just like her! At that point I still did not know the importance of organic.



We have been making some slow changes in our diet for awhile now, and in the last few months we have started buying some organic. We are not made of money and cannot have a pantry like the lady above right now, but we are trying to do better. The Swinneys are sharing their knowledge with us and us with them. As Connie mentioned, Levi definitely contributes to my food obsessiveness... I have been known to throw away food straight from the fridge. Chris and Connie try to let us know when we are too crazy...and sometimes we listen. It makes for a good balance and good conversation. I wanted to share a couple of my favorite products right now and list the top 12 dirtiest foods and top 12 cleanest foods so if you are like me and have to be choosy with your organic you can choose the dirtiest things to go organic in first.

Horizon Organic

What a great company! Learn more at http://www.horizonorganic.com/

We started buying this milk for Mckenzee and now buy it for us too. I wish I would've known it's importance sooner. It is made without added growth hormones, pesticides, or antibiotics. They treat their cows well and use 100% clean wind energy. They also make yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese, butter, sour cream, ice cream, smoothies, and eggnog. I have to figure out where all these things are sold. Now for the price. It is over $6 for a gallon. You might be thinking "We cannot afford $6 milk!" I ask you this...."Can you afford to go out to eat?" I had to get real with myself one day because I kept saying that we were going to go organic when we were making more money, but then I thought we go out to eat regularly. We can be sure that going out to eat is not increasing our family's quality of life and buying this milk is. So we made some adjustments. Trust me, the more I learn about food, the less I want to eat out anyway.




Laura's Lean Beef

Learn more at http://www.laurasleanbeef.com/
Okay I'm not going to go into this beef. It is pretty much the same principle as the milk. It is not organic, but there are no antibiotics, growth hormones or food additives and the cows are treated well.

Okay, are these two things the very best milk and beef that are out there? No. The best beef would be a cow you raised yourself that you knew for sure what it ate and how it was processed, etc. Same with the milk. These are the things that I have chosen for our family for now and I feel good about it.

The Dirty Dozen
The 12 most pesticide-laden types of produce
Peaches
Apples
Sweet Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Pears
Imported grapes
Spinach
Lettuce
Potatoes

The Clean 12
Consistently showed the least amount of pesticide residue
Onions
Avocados
Sweet Corn
Pineapple
Mango
Asparagus
Sweet Peas
Kiwi
Bananas
Cabbage
Broccoli
Papaya

Info from data by the USDA and FDA 2000-2004

Best place to buy your produce is from a local farmer that you can talk to about their farming practices or grow it in your own backyard.

Hopefully, this did not bore you completely. Like I said before, I am no expert on this subject, and if you see any incorrect information PLEASE tell me...I want to know! We are trying to learn all we can to give our family better safer foods.
Join the "Band Wagon" or "The Band Wagon Extreme!"

Peed on Twice in One Day!

Pee #1:

I like to put Mckenzee in the sink to fix her hair. She likes to look at herself in the mirror and sometimes I even get her naked and turn on the water for her to play.

Today I was fixing her hair and letting her play in the water and I picked her up out of the sink to dry her off. I put her on my hip while Chris got a towel for us.........and then I felt the warmness.

How a little one year old could have that much pee in her I can't figure out. She never pees on me straight out of the bath or sink because I know she has just peed in the warm water she was sitting in.

There's nothing you can do once it's started. It doesn't benefit you to hold her out because then you have a mess in two places. So I just held on to her while she continued to soak me and then I handed her off to her daddy.

Pee #2

We spent the evening at church for a special event and visited with friends afterwards and got out of there way too late. Kenzee needed a diaper change very badly when we got to the car. I was all ready to change her and get her in her pajamas which I was very proud of myself for remembering because I knew she would probably fall asleep on the way home.

I took off her shorts and her diaper and was waiting for Chris to hand me the next diaper.

If you are a mom you have probably already noticed the mistake here. Important rule of diaper changing: Do not remove the first diaper until you have the new diaper positioned underneath it.

Then, he says to me there's not one. What? How could there not be one? I just refilled the bin we keep in the car.

Then, I look down to see that my naked child is peeing on my back seat. She is also smiling.

Again, it is not beneficial to move the peeing child. It would probably scare her and just drip pee in more places.

So now we have a naked baby and no more diapers. I found a cloth diaper in the bin that I would just use for messes. I wrapped it under her and tried to put her in her car seat.

She did not want to go.

Wall-eyed fit begins!

I begin to wrestle and fight with her to get her little hiney down in the car seat. If I can just get her to bend then I can get the harness clicked.

She is very strong.

It takes both of us to get her pinned down and she is screaming and I am sure people walking by wonder what we are doing to torture her.

In the meantime I have gotten myself in the pee on the seat.

It really doesn't matter to me right now. She is in her car seat with the cloth diaper wrapped under her little naked self and we are going home.

Early Mornings

Mckenzee has an ear infection.... AGAIN! I am not happy about this, especially because I was, for some reason, under the impression that breastfed babies don't get ear infections and this little one has had five! She doesn't sleep well when she has an ear infection, but it has actually been very sweet to get up with her the last few nights. The first night I got her and went and sat with her on the couch. I turned on Baby Einstein and she sat on my lap facing me. I closed my eyes. A few minutes later I feel some tiny soft fingers barely touching my nose. I open my eyes and she is right up close to my face and kisses me and smiles real big. I love that! A little while later I doze off. Then I feel a tiny soft mouth kissing me awake again. What a sweet girl. It makes it so worth it to get up from my cozy bed in the middle of the night to get kissed by my one year old.

This morning she woke up at 5:30. Daddy and I both got up to get her and she and I were sitting on the couch and he turned on the TV to get the dvd ready and we saw that the Eukanuba AKC dog show was on. Kenzee started pointing and whispering pup pup pup. So we decided to watch the dog show. She sat very still and pointed every now and then at the ones she liked. She loves puppies! It was fun. After awhile we put her back in bed and she slept until 9:00! Woo hoo!

God Cares about Mascara

I have been reading Connie's blogs about God taking care of us, even in the smallest details of our lives and I just have to share what happened to me today.

I have had pink eye this week. I need a new mascara. Arbonne's mascara is just the best and my eyes are super sensitive and that's what I need. However, it was not in the budget for this month, as Arbonne's mascara is not cheap. I got a shipment in today and my sister had ordered black mascara and........lo and behold there were TWO mascaras in there!

You might think that was just a coincidental mistake, but I am thanking God for bringing me some new mascara for FREE!

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"

Matthew 6: 25-27

I love the weekends!

Chris works 9 hour days Mon-Thurs and only 4 hours on Friday. Granted this doesn't always hold true because things do come up at work, but for the most part we start our weekends at lunch on Friday. Chris makes pancakes on Saturday mornings and Kenzee plays naked in the living room. I wear my pajamas all day. I love spending time with my family.

These 2 and a half days make me long for more though...it is never enough. It makes me think every weekend how I need to conquer my fears about Arbonne and talking to people and get into high gear and make this happen for our family so everyday can be like the weekend.

I do work hard at it and I have talked to tons of people and I have had lots of setbacks, but there is always more I can do and always someone out there who has it really rough that made it happen for their family that inspires me to keep going.

Sometimes I wish I could see the future, but what fun would that be? I know that I am learning from every rejection and every hard night, every cancellation and zero volume party and God is growing me in personal development. I know that my story will someday help out another struggling consultant the way so many consultant's stories help me now. When will it happen though????

I know many of you reading this (not there there are that many people that read this blog) may not understand what I am talking about, but it helps me to get it off my chest. There are also probably those of you out there who think that I will never get there, that NWM doesn't work. That only inspires me more.

I have to keep telling myself that I will be an RVP! I will drive a white Mercedes! I just so badly want it to be soon!

Thanks for listening!

Fantasy Football

For those of you not familiar with fantasy football I'll give you a brief overview. In late August we have draft day (pictured above). On draft day you are allotted $40 million to purchase players for your fantasy team. You have to do some studying to be ready for draft day. The draft takes about 6 hours and is conducted in auction form. You have to buy players at every position to fill your roster, starters and backups, to make up a 24 man team.

My team is the Fightin' Junebugs. I won the championship three years ago. The next year I came in 4th in the playoffs. Last year I didn't play...I was having a baby. This year the Junebugs are back with a vengeance.

Chris' team is the Texas Stampede. His team has had the best record twice but has never won a title, he desperately longs to.

Last week was the first game of the season and we played each other. The final score was 129.15 to 129.05. Closest game in history! Chris won. I was sad.

Football will be on at our house all season no matter what, so this helps me get more involved and care about more games. This is something we can enjoy together and it's also very competitive. We are both out to win the championship....stay tuned to see how this season ends up!

Note: flags are Chris Roberts' originals