Things About Winter

So its winter here in Alberta (again) {{sigh}}

It has already kind of snow/frosted in the morning, and it was 3 deg C yesterday, which is 37.4 deg F.

That deserves some swear words.

So here are a few observations we've made in the last couple of weeks about winter:

1) Three weeks ago I woke up and it was dark and heavy like a blanket outside. I snuggled in and thought to myself  "ah, I'm kind of ready for winter, I can do this,"

2) Then the thought that followed immediately: "I could do winter for 3 or 4 months, not the next 8 or 9."

3) 3deg is freakin' cold now, wait till its -25deg out.

4) Went to the mall yesterday and a) blew smoke while putting the stroller away, and b) got into the car after being outside for no more than 5 min and having painfully cold ears.

Suck.

And the quote of the day.....

Brandon: Burrrr it's so cold!
Olivia: It's only September; why do we live here!!!!
Brandon: But it's never this cold in September here!
Olivia: Well it IS this year!

Boo.

 the sun setting on all my dreams

BTW

By the way....if you haven't seen me in a while, I now look like this:

Actually that was about a month ago, so its longer now.

I donated it to HERE. 

This is my second time shaving my head, so this time it was easy peesy. I did it sitting on the beach at the lake, and I let the niecies and nephews each cut off a pigtail, and then my nephew Braedon shaved it. I'm really excited to have fun with lots of different styles. Plus Lady V and I kind of get to grow it together!

  

Jarin wearing my hair :)  

                                                                

Livin La VIDA Loca

Today is sweetpea's birthday! One year ago today at 7:44 am, Vida Sabelle Lyons started a brand new adventure in our little family. She is our greatest gift, and we think she is the absolute bomb. So today I pay tribute to Lady V.

Hello Dear Ones

So I have been a very bad bloggity blogger.

I've been gone on vacation for msot of the summer, and I actually tried to post last week, but the pictures were being so lame, I got so mad I started slamming on the computer and then went to my anger managment classes instead. I shall prevail this week!

We have been very lucky to have had such a wonderful summer spending time with family. We went to Lake Cocolalla where the Lyons' families reside for the summer and did just about whatever we felt like! Yummy.

Vida helping us get to the lake, Kake and V sharing an afternoon snack, view from the beach,

and the lake in all it's glory. The hardcore going for a swim.

Then Vida and I were lucky enough to go visit my family in California! Yea, I missed them, but Vida was a little hesitant to jump right in to the beach life. She wouldn't let my dad even look at her for at least four days.

Well at least she liked Darla ;) 

She ended up doing well with everyone and loved going in the pool at Grandma and Grandpa's, having breakfast in bed with Grandmama, seeing the ocean! and eating mexican food.

Brandon and I are truly blessed to have such great families and we know that families can be together forever and so its a pretty cool thing that we love hanging out with ours.

why MEEEE????

I've always been an old soul, I think.

I used to scour the library for books on ancient Egypt, Greece, colonial times; you name it, I read it.

I wanted so badly to live in a more romantic time.

And that's how I still look at it. Time's may not have been simpler, but they seem more whimsical.

No constant text messaging, just sweet taps of pebbles on your window...or up your parapet.

Or beautiful dresses that left more to be desired, not tiny shorts that squeeze my muffin top.

I want a time of poetry and chivalry; a time to lay in the woods and hear the birds chirp.

At the very least I just want to have lived in a time where I could say

"Back in the old country..."

I love that phrase, I'm going to start using it anyway even if it makes no sense.

I bet you can't wait.

Trouble

 Me looking fiendish in my bachelorette days.

Brandon went to play church basketball last night at 9 PM.

That leads me to trouble...I turn  on the TV.

Last night I watched the Bachelorette. Oh man, I'm kinda hooked!

But mostly because it makes me wish that I was single again so I could be the Bachelorette!!!!!

Is that rude to say?

My top 5 reasons:

1) Uhhh, having guys faun all over you and turning all of their guts inside out and making everything a bloody dramatic mess. OHHHHHHH I miss that!

2) TRAVELING THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!

3) Kissing. Because if you're married you know that husband and wife's don't do that.

4) Looking pretty all the time. Who doesn't want to find their true love with a studio makeup team and quality back lighting.

5) Winning. This gets kind of complicated here, because it's really the guys who look like their competing; but, in my head it's really a competition for me, and I loooooooove winning. Actually I love beating people.


I love to be the best.

Hahaha...

Greaaaaaat Iady!

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.

I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someones garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.

I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."


-Marjorie Pay Hinckley


This lovely quote is from a very great women. She showed the world that you can be steadfast and immovable and abounding in love for those around you. That quite actions, and loyalty can make a difference in the world. She was a beautiful mother to five, a dedicated homemaker, and avid learner, and the wife of our dear prophet Gordon B. Hinckley.

                   

She was feisty, strong willed, and could hit a deadpan joke with the best of 'em. She was, and is, an example to all of us striving to be real women. 

The Prophet Gordon B Hinckley in response to the question of what he wanted for his wife, given a few years before they both passed away:

"That we might live together for as long as the Lord wills and that when the time comes for us to move on, that we might go together or very close together, without one lingering a long time after the other. We've lived together for a long time. I hope we'll continue to move on together."

For a very well written article on the Hinckley's go here.

Pictures from the Deseret News.

Florence and the Machine "DOG DAYS ARE OVER" Music Video from LEGS MEDIA on Vimeo.


Basically, if I had a theme song to my life right now, it would be this. Loves, loves, loves. What would yours be?

Why?

Why won't it stop raining here?

I don't get it.

Need sunshine to function.

Sad, sad, sad face.

I was going to run a 10K this sat, for the alberta underwear affair, but then 2 wks ago I realized it was at the same time we were supposed to be in Utah for the U2 concert. Then, last week, Bono had to have emergency back surgery, and our concert was postponed for a year! So now technically I could run; but, you have to have $300 buckaroos to run, which I didn't raise because I didn't think I'd be there, and its supposed to rain. More than anything I hate running in the cold, it hurts me ears. Real Bad. What to do?

Any suggestions....or $300....?

Healthy. Happy. Beautiful.

This post title is my new mantra. I am trying to get very serious about the things that make me feel good. Like running, and training for a 10K. Or practicing yoga for my own bodily benefits, but also to enhance my teaching. (It's strange that I never talk about teaching yoga on the blog, because that's all I really do, but that's probably why I don't) Writing poetry, getting the hubby to help me clean the kitchen, going to the park! Now that we finally are getting nicer weather. It's crazy, in California, June meant summer to us, and it was like 85 deg already. Here in Eskimo land it was 58 deg yesterday and we were sweating. Literally, it is soooo balmy to us. Gotta love it. Put V in the swing at the park for the first time yesterday, cuteness to the max that little one. She would kind of lean back everytime at the top and freak herself out.

Edit: This post was written forever ago, but I never posted it...so here...it still applies...and I think I'm coming back to bloggerville.

O

Momma

I love my mama.
She is the sweetest lady I think I've ever know.
I've seen her take a few figurative beatings, and yet she's always smiling.
My mom never gave up, and I'm so happy to have been able to see HER blossom.
She's raised five kids and they're only a little messed up...but most of all we all know that
she gave us every possible opportunity she could.
And finally I'm starting to realize what that means.
I wish I could go back and hug my mom more, tell her I love her more,

and most of all tell her how much I appreciate her.

I'm happy to have my mother as one of my best friends, a ear for me to turn to, open arms for

me to run to, and a kind word at ever turn.
She is my prime example of true love.

Love you Momma!

mas o menos?

I can't decide if this has been a good week, or a bad week....here's a list to try and sort things out.


Good (put your best foot forward I always say)    (no, I never say this actually :( )
1) I finally was able to get a library card, Saints alive! That makes it a great week already.
2) I went to this amazing whole foods artisan market we have called SunTerra and got yumminess including:
Amazing glass bottled chocolate milk, fresh carrot juice, a brilliantly executed white chocolate raspberry square, yadayada
3) Got some visiting teaching done!
4) Found out about this whoot!
5) Found out we were getting a fantabulous tax return...finally I can get some furniture for our place.

and there could be more, but we move on to....the Bad.
1) I maimed a squirrel while driving and could see him flailing in the road after; very, very heartbreaking. Plus I killed a crow last week; my car is now a death machine and I just keep praying now every time I get in.
2) I ate (singlehandedly) almost all that yummy crap I bought at SunTerra already, so I'm a porker.
3) Bebe V is sick, she barks like a dog because she's all congested.
4) We were supposed to have a play date today but can't go because V is sick.
5) Its FLIPPIN' snowed and rained all week here!!!!!
6) I have been impaired from cleaning this week and I know have half a sink that is growing a third grade science project, no clean clothes for anyone, and a burgeoning threat to not even care.
7) A very serious lingerie accident that almost cost B his eye...serious.

I will struggle to remain positive, but I see the barometer swaying towards the downside a little. Boo, going to take care of cute sick baby and read lovely library books in snow town...hopefully without finishing off the chocolate milk.

Frikity Friday

So back to the whole idea of having a taking a stand Friday type dealio....

And mixing it with some Earth Day lovin'.... brings us to....

Water.

Now, I believe in a lot of crazy stuff. Like bigfoot, and UFO sightings (or I want to believe), the ultimate power of the mind, dolphins that deliver babies, and a boat load of other crazy happen stance. But, I never could believe that we could ever run out of clean water. I just didn't get it, hello, it's called a water purifier, or some bleach. Dang, next I'll solve world hunger.

Thank you, please take a number.

But, then I watched this documentary:

FLOW

 

 

It really opened my eyes to a lot of facts. Such as:

• Water is a $400 billion dollar global industry; the third largest behind electricity and oil.
  (source: CBS News, FLOW.)
• The cost per person per year for having 10 liters of safe drinking water every day is just $6 USD.
  
  (Ashok Gadgil, Senior Staff Scientist in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, FLOW)
• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease. (water.org)
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. (water.org)
• $4 billion -- estimated annual sales of the U.S. bottled water industry (PANDA.org)
• A Canadian study notes that a one-litre brand-name bottle of flat water costs about $1.50.
  That's about 3,000 times more expensive than an equal amount of municipal tap water.
• 3/10th of 1% of all the world's water is usable by humans
• Women, usually responsible for hauling water when plumbing is absent,
  
  on average carry 45 pounds of water at a time.
• Global sales of bottled water reached $100 billion in 2005.
• The cost to provide clean drinking water to half the 1.1 billion who need it is between $10 and $30 billion a year.
• The NRDC tested 103 bottled waters and found over 25% were simply tap water. Several tested failed the bacteria test. (All other fact sources from friendsofwater.com)
• 90% of the cost of a bottle of water is for label, cap and bottle.

 

Basically what I'm trying to say is:

There are a lot of people dying because they don't have clean water, and the proper hygiene that comes with it. We in the developed world are stupid enough to pay (a lot) for the water that should be freely ours, and everyone elses. Not to mention, we use zillions of chemicals and toxins to produce, package, haul, and house our bottled water, which we then throw away and create more of a problem.

Think about:
Getting a water filter
Not buying bottled water
Using BPA free products
Being aware of who is "using" your natural water resources for profit in your community
Daily household water consumption (showers, dishes,dishwasher, etc.)

We CAN truly each make a difference as cheesy as it always sounds.
 






This is another one called Tapped

I miss my BB

I miss Big B (he hated when I called him that when we first met.)

He has been working long hours all week.

He is gone till at least 10:30 tonight.

This makes me very sad/mad. (not mad at him, just the universe)

It also makes me eat.

I had Taco Bell...don't tell him, he'll think I'm gross.

I wish it made me clean in a mad fury. My house is beyond dirty.

I will probably make peanut butter cookies instead.

And eat more.

Sad.

I used to think that I would be a brightstar,
but I knew that brightstars burnt out fast.
The fear was there, I still admit; 
 the whisper of you breath (I thought)
said you'd be the wish on my last descent.
Who did I think I was? One so young,
and with so little experience.
Like the fourth of July, I set out for heaven.
And in a flowing arc I came down fast,
and I came down hard.
And then I saw, so clearly, the chance
that I had thought was "Life",
was just another holiday to you.

I felt as deep as the sea, and as endlessly blue
A collection of moments, boundless;
leading straight back to you.
For I am a moon, one side ever dark.
The other reflecting someone else's glory.
Is it a gift, or the greatest of tragedy,
that a piece of me still made it, 
to keep company with greeks?
So that all could guide their nights
by the error of our ways.
I'll never know what could have been,
nor have a want to hear that crystal knell.
The life worth living is the one hard to foretell.


I think it might be missing something...perhaps it will come. I'll let you know, or better yet, you tell me.

My Beatiful Buns

For those of you who don't personally know me,

that's right, I like to think that there are people out there who don't know me and read my blog,

I love to cook. I cook up a storm, and especially love the art of baking. Also I try to be very health conscious, so I like to play around with different whole foods and alternate cooking methods. This is a little twist I've put on the cinnamon bun. I love cinnamon buns, they're delectable.

These are Vegan Whole Wheat Cardamom Cinnamon Buns. I know, I didn't think they would turn out any good either, but they are fabulous!!! No white sugar or flour, fat free, and tasty as can be. Oh, I lied, I used a little powdered sugar for the frosting, sue me.

Without further adieu,

Ingredients:


•¾ cup non-dairy milk  ( I use almond)
•1 packet active yeast
•3 cups whole wheat flour
•1 tbsp baking powder
•¼ cup raw sugar, or any kind natural sugar, molasses, honey, maple syrup, etc.
•2 tsp cinnamon, or I added cardamom too, and pumpkin pie spice, whateva
•6 tbsp unsweetened applesauce ( I used peach flavored, it's what I had)
•4 tbsp brown sugar
•2 tbsp raisins and walnuts(optional of course)
•1 cup confectioners sugar
•1 tsp non-dairy milk

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease whatever pan you want to use. Warm 3/4 cup "milk". Sprinkle yeast over warmed milk and let it dissolve, about 5 minutes. Combine 2 cups of flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, 1tsp cinnamon and in a large bowl. Add 5 tbsp applesauce and yeast mixture, stirring to combine. Add in another 1/2 cup flour. Sprinkle remaining flour on a flat surface and knead dough, kneading in most of the flour. Knead about 15-20 times. Roll dough out into large, thin rectangle and set aside. Prepare filling by combining 4 tbsp brown sugar with 1 tbsp unsweetened applesauce, rest of cinnamon other spices and goodies if using. Spoon filling in the center of the dough and spread it around, leaving 1" edge clear. Gently but tightly roll the dough up. Cut into however many rolls you want and place into prepared  pan and bake 20 to 25 minutes, until kind of golden and cooked through. Make icing by mixing 1 cup confectioners sugar with 1 tsp non-dairy milk (plain or vanilla), whipping until it becomes a thick glaze with no sugar chunks. Spread glaze over hot buns.

*P.S. I realize I put honey as an alternate to sugar, it wouldn't be vegan then, but still yummy. :)

Oi I'm back!

Sorry to my oh so dedicated 3 readers, but I'm back.

And do I have a funny story to tell!

Last night Brandon took Vida and I to one of those seminars on finances. That type of thing really float his boat. Normally I don't go, he takes Devon, our nephew, and they go to all kinds of them; like the Rich Dad Poor Dad guy, to get pumped up and jacked about making money and stikin' it to the man, I guess. Anywho this one has a free dinner attached so I was all over it.(There's almost nothing that I love more than "free" food) So we get there and B's kind of hesitant, flip floping between whether he really wants to be there or not. I see the huge buffet and I'm like "Hunny I got an hour for this guy", so we get eatin' and everythings going fine. We ask for a high chair for V and I set her up on her vogue diet of lettuce and a carrots.

Great. Dinner's over, and the guy starts talking. V, being the baby that she is, starts to make a few little noises; and I do mean little. B and I are pretty self consious about the whole baby interupting people's activities thing and we were not phased. And the guy, who, by the way, is wearing a head mic (classy) turns to us and says "Brandon, (you know at those cheesy seminars they always try to remember your name) I hope you can get her to settle down" STARE. So we're scrambling to take her out of the high chair and she starts talking a bit and I'm shushing her, but no one really seems to mind. I mean she was no louder than that fat old guy who's always at the place you are coughing really loud in the corner. Anywho, Mr. head mic guy does not think its so cool and he's giving us the laser eye. She peeps, its the last straw. "I don't think this is going to work out Brandon, You better go." he says! On the Mic! In the middle of the presentation! Hahahaha So we go. I thought it was hilarious and satisfying; free dinner with out the obligation to hear his stupid schtick. But the best part was B was livid. He was so pissed, he said if the mic man had said one more thing he was going to start throwing punches (right) or at least swear at him (umm humm). So I laugh at B for sounding soooo trashy and then he gets mad at me and is silent cursing in his head the whole way home! Does your husband do that, you know, talk to himself so loud in his head while driving you can literally feel it, plus he kind of moves his lips. Hahaha so funny to see him so worked up. Am I the only one who thinks its not wrong to bring babies pretty much anywhere? Were we wrong?

Such is the life I guess....                    Miss Thang workin' on her push ups. She's legit.