Things I Learned This Week

It's been an interesting week, and I've learned a few things along the way that I thought might be useful to pass on.

1. If you don't know what you're having for dinner, don't eat all of your starches before dinner.

2. Please don't think that you will be able to eat 4 cups of vegetables for dinner because you didn't bother to eat them at any other time during the day.

3. If you're craving something sweet, do not buy 2 bags of "fun size" candies because it's more economical. It may be more economical for your wallet, but not your waistline.

4. If you are an occasional drinker of "Dunkaccinos" (which is basically just chocolate & coffee flavored sugar and powdered creamer), and even if you sometimes get the "Turbo Shot", do not suddenly start drinking four cups of coffee per day. Eventually, your body will revolt.

5. When you combine multiple "fun size" candies from Lesson #3 & your third and fourth cups from Lesson #4 on the same day, at roughly 2:30 in the afternoon, several things happen.

Suddenly you just don't feel so great. You realize that it might be from your heart racing. Or from the sudden blood sugar spike. Or from the pounding headache. Maybe from the upset stomach. It could, of course, be a combination of all these things, but you're not really sure because you can't seem to concentrate on one thing long enough to make a decision.

One of your children will come to ask you a school-related question, but end up asking you if you've been eating sugar. Then she stays for the show.

What show you ask? The one that you seem to be the star of because you can't sit still or stop laughing about everything. The music in your head makes you dance. Professional comedians have nothing on you.

Then, of course, comes the fallout. Your heart will still be racing and your head will still be pounding, but your blood sugar will drop & you will need to eat some actual food. However, you were so busy being silly that you forgot to make dinner. So you order pizza. Uh-huh. In your delirious state, you aren't thinking about the fact that it's more starchy carbs, just that it sounds tasty & you don't have to think about preparing it.

Your husband may or may not use the word "detox" on multiple occasions.

Sleeping is sort of a joke. But you knew that was coming, right? YOU are more sensible than I am! What you may not be aware of is just how long the effects last. It's at least a day. Maybe a little more. All of the bad side effects without all the funny business.

6. You are never too old to learn something new. I learned how to diagram prepositional phrases!

Change that "He" to a "She" & it would be so on point for this week!

Did you learn anything this week?

Jenny, aka

Candy Crush Heartbreak

If you play the evil game that is Candy Crush, you will understand my pain. If not, you could always read any of these posts on other things My Cute Kids do.

I have been stuck on level 147 for what feels like forever. Literally, it's been weeks.

(See the lovely set up here >>>>>>>>>>)
Each of those chocolate covered jellies takes like 4 or 5 times to clear them. Those corners are just plain evil.

Yesterday morning I played my five allotted lives & started using my amassed extra moves. I decided that I needed to start using them or I may never get through this stupid level.

When I left the game, I had 70+ extra lives and moves saved up.

When I went back to play it last night I had 5. Yes, just the five. My heart may have skipped a beat or two.

Luckily, all children were in bed & asleep and therefore escaped certain wrath. I'm still not sure who the culprit was.

All of the extra lives are gone, but there is a small upside to this, though. (Whew!) All of the extra moves are saved onto level 147 for me, so I do get to use those every time until they run out.

Does anyone else get this worked up over that stupid game???

Prescribing Fruits & Veggies: Good or Bad?

 

NYC Doctors Are Now Prescribing Fruits And Veggies

Maybe I'm wrong here so let me know what you think.

On this surface, this sounds great. But when you think about it for a minute, you realize it's just another handout from the government. Hear me out...

I think the idea of prescribing fruits & veggies as an alternative to medications to treat obesity is a great idea.
Obviously, diet and exercise should be the very first thing doctors prescribe. Medication should be a last alternative & really only if there is a medical need. I think everyone should fill their diet with as many fruits and vegetables as they can!

I am also quite aware of how much fruit and vegetables can cost. This is always a bummer to me. Our entire family loves them. Yes, even the kids! Tonight at dinner K is busy eating her chicken casserole when she spots a hidden broccoli floret & yells "Yay! Broccoli!" This makes me smile. This is also the same child who was at the grocery store with me and threw a small temper tantrum in the produce section because I couldn't afford to by a $6 bag of apples. This makes me sad. And slightly embarrassed. People looked at me like a mean mommy who wouldn't by her kid a bag of apples.

My problem with this program is that it targets low-income families. Why? Are the middle and upper income families immune to obesity? Obviously not. I'm an overweight middle-class mom with 4 healthy (& not overweight) children, married to an overweight man. Despite our "disease" we would not qualify for this "prescription" because we make to much money. Not enough money to buy a $6 bag of apples, but too much money to be given $6 a day (see article) to buy said bag of apples.

On the post there was quite a discussion in the comments section, and few things stood out to me:

"It's not fair to the sick who are thin."  I agree! Just because you are thin does not mean you are healthy. What about anyone who is malnourished?

 "...where is the sense of responsibility? Being obese is now considered a disease and are being prescribed sh** they should have been eating in the first place?" Okay, to be totally honest, I could go either way with this one. Not everyone who is obese got that way from stuffing their face with Oreos. Some of us have medical issues that add excess weight or make it hard to lose any. However, we should ALL be responsible enough to eat a carrot stick every once in a while.

"There are many urban cities that do not have ready access to fruits and vegetables. They do not have large grocery chains in their area and when they can get it, produce is expensive. If your trying to fill bellies, unfortunately processed food is often more filling. Please understand their lives before you pass judgement." This one just totally irks me. Perhaps they missed the part in the article that mentions the Health Bucks are accepted at 140 farmer's markets. 140! In one city! That would signal access to fruits and vegetables. And I'm pretty darn sure that NYC has a few grocery stores. Maybe not next door to your house, but probably within walking distance. Yes, processed food is filling. However, that sounds like a good educational program is needed, not another handout.

"Can I get health bucks to help us stay healthy? So those who are not smart get an incentive to get them to eat healthy but those who know better get nothing?" No, apparently not. Yes, apparently so. SMH

My last point is this: This program appears to only be available to low-income families, which means they are all probably recipients of food stamps. (I have no problems with food stamps for people who need them.) I read somewhere not too long ago that my family of six COULD qualify for up to $900 a month in food stamps. If we didn't make the bazillions of dollars that we do. (Can you feel the sarcasm in that one? Ok, good.) $900 a month for groceries would have me catapulting over the house! With this "prescription", we would get another $180 a month to spend at the farmer's market. I'm salivating at the thought! Can you add? That's over $1,000 every stinkin' month to feed my family. Organic & grass-fed all the way, baby!

But, we're not low-income. We're middle-income, which means we have a much smaller budget for groceries because nobody gives it to us. We still manage to eat relatively healthy. We do not get to buy as many fruits and vegetables as we want because they ARE expensive. We do not fill up on convenience foods just because they are cheap.

And apparently it's okay for us to be fat.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2012!

I know I haven't been very faithful in keeping up with my blog this last year. I can't promise that this year will be any better, unfortunately. I still enjoy blogging very much, but find it hard to maintain. Many things have changed this past year & I'm finding it difficult to find a good balance as many things are still up in the air. Hopefully, things will begin to fall into place and I can return to the things I take pleasure in. Please keep checking back often as you never know when I might surprise you with a post!

May this new year bring joy, happiness & peace!

I have a new love...

It's name is Pinterest. Have you discovered it? Oh my. I have avoided it for quite some time, but finally gave in when I kept forgetting where I found all these really great tutorials. I wanted to be able to easily locate what I needed when the time came. So I caved. I have over 1,000 pins in just a few weeks! Even my husband looks at it & and we have Pinteresting conversations. LOL It's my new favorite friend. Do you Pinterest?

Where we've been

We have not disappeared, I didn't decide to quit blogging, and nothing (too) terribly bad has happened to any of us. Everyone in our family DID get sick, some of us more than once, one person for a whole month, and at one point all four children plus mommy were sick at the same time. Fun. I'm sure you've guessed that since nobody would let their child be sick for a whole month the long-term sickie was me. You know how it is: "Everybody else got better, I'll be better in a few days." or "I don't have time to go to the doctor." Yeah, I see your heads nodding! :) At any rate, I put those "can't get off the couch" days to good use by reading a ton of books, so I will be doing some more reviews shortly.
Sadly, when I finally did go to the doctor, she discovered that I have diabetes. What a bummer! I knew it was coming eventually due to family history and gestational diabetes w/ all my babies, but I still wasn't prepared. The medication she gave me has brought my blood sugars down to a safer (but still too high) number. I go back in next week, so hopefully it comes down even more.
Well, there is another huge thunderstorm rolling through & the lights have flickered a few times, so I better get off here. Bye! :)

Shiny New Pretties

I have finally arrived to the party. I'm a little late. Okay, a lot late. What party you ask? Why, the smartphone party of course! Check out this cute little phone I got last night:

The Motorola Citrus (it's powered by Android)

I've sort of resisted the whole smartphone thing because I really just wanted a phone that made phone calls and maybe a few texts to the hubs. Last time I got a phone I got the Samsung Alias (now called the Zeal, for whatever reason) which had this ultra cool keypad that rotated...but not on a touchscreen. I really liked it. Then the day after we arrived here in New York it fell out of my pocket & I ran it over with the car. Suprisingly, that caused little damage. A few days after that Boo put it in a glass of water. That caused quite a bit of damage. My really cool keypad no longer had images and the phone turned itself on and off randomly. I had to try to dial from memory, and we all know how great my memory is! Then, sadly, the battery died in the middle of the night a couple weeks ago & I never could get it to turn back on. :(

So I've been cell phoneless for awhile. It hasn't been all that bad. I was holding out until my upgrade came available which luckily was just a few days ago, so we went phone shopping last night. I was also really considering waiting for the iPhone. Guess what the best part of this new phone is? Guess, guess! I bet you'll never guess!

It cost $0.00 for 2 phones!!!

I know, right? Oh, so exciting! That totally beats the $299 iPhone! (I had no idea the iPhone was going to cost that much until I got there last night). Only problem is they just added the new plan to my old plan instead of replacing it, so we need to get that fixed.

So for all you smartypants smartphone users out there: How do you access your applications (i.e. games) on Facebook??? :)

Other People's Craftiness - Valentines

In lieu of my own craftiness :(  I would like to share a fabulous blog that I just found that is a plethora of awesomeness all in one place! Today's Top 20 shares all the cool stuff from blog land in one place. I am particularly smitten with these adorable valentines from Style Crush. "You are the cheese to my macaroni" had me laughing hysterically for several minutes. I just found out that's a quote from the movie Juno, but since I've never seen that movie, I didn't know. I find it terribly funny, though.

Speaking of Valentines, I'm a sucker for cute and original. No more store bought cartoon characters for us. Not that we give out a whole lot of Valentines anymore, but hey. Check out these awesome iPhone Valentines from Living Locurto:

They are actually covers for candy heart boxes! So clever! She has lots of cool designs on her site.

Hopefully soon, I will have my own craftiness to share. Until then, enjoy these other talented people!

Tuesday's True Confession: The Trouble with Posting

If you haven't read Twelve Crafts Till Christmas, you really should. The idea is simple: craft one Christmas gift each month so you're already done by the time Christmas rolls around. I love it! Also, she does this thing called Tuesday's True Confessions. I don't know if it's a thing that lots of bloggers do or just her, but I find it refreshing to know something real and true about someone on the internet. It's easy to pretend like you live in perfection when hiding behind a computer screen. Being real is really nice. Really.

So here is my first ever Tuesday True Confession:

You see, I WANT to post nearly every single day. I do, really. I have a million things I want to blog about. (okay, maybe a million is stretching it a bit, but it's a LOT). The problem comes when I start thinking I shouldn't. I shouldn't be blogging because I should be doing something more important like teaching or playing with my kids, or cleaning, or cooking, or couponing, or sewing, or crafting...and the list goes on. I mean, that's what I'm supposed to do, right? And I definitely shouldn't be blogging if its not about my kids. That would just be totally wrong.

That's probably not true at all, but that's how I feel most times. The real problem is that I'm too concerned with what other people think about me. I have spent my whole life trying to win approval from the people in my life. Usually from people who are incapable of it. Do you feel like that? Like no matter what you say or do, nothing will ever be good enough? You can never measure up to this person or that person?

I find myself feeling that way in blog land too. Although it has much more to do with the my real life people than my fellow bloggers. I'm always amazed and inspired by the bloggers who aren't afraid to tell it how it really is. I was reading this post from A Year of Slow Cooking where she confesses that she storms from the table saying she will never cook again & might have also stuck her tongue out at her family in the process. This is real life and how some of us feel sometimes. However, if I were to ever admit that I had done that, I would probably be fielding a dozen calls admonishing my parenting skills (or lack thereof) and quite possibly a visit from social services.

For those of you who have been faithful readers (thank you, thank you, thank you) you might remember this post about the Wright Brothers Museum. You'll notice that it's the "revised edition". I don't really remember what I wrote on the first edition, but i do know I express disappointment and annoyance at not being able to spend more time at the museum because the kids were ready to go. Apparently this was rude and upsetting to certain people who wasted no time in telling me so. In an effort to please I revised it. It's all very polite and smiley now.

Now let's talk about how I really feel: That day totally sucked! We only got to see about 1/4 of what was at the museum because everybody else just zoomed right on through & then wanted to leave. Some of the things in my pictures I didn't even get to see! When we visit places (especially places we're not likely to ever get back to) we like to take our time and explore everything they have to offer. If we had told our kids that the ocean would still be there later and we were going to have fun at the museum for awhile, they would have agreed and enjoyed themselves. But we weren't given that option. Then we went to the lighthouse where none of my pictures turned out which totally bummed me out. I would have loved just one semi-good picture of my kiddos in front of that lighthouse!

That's how I feel. It's over and done with & can't be changed. Please don't call or e-mail with nasty comments. Let's just be willing to accept that sometimes it's okay to be all polite and smiley. Sometimes it's okay to be really honest. Really.

Happy 1-1-11!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2011 is finding you well. As you know 2010 was an eventful year, but then again, aren't they all? :) We managed to trek our way from south Texas to south New York, survive weeks in a motel, find a rental house (which seem to be in VERY short supply here) & get a Christmas tree up just in time for Christmas Eve. Christmas was small and simple but centered on family and the all important gift of Jesus' birth. A few days ago we finally got our TV, internet & phone all hooked up. About 1/2 of all the boxes are unpacked and we're starting to get settled in. I'm thankful that my children are able to deal well with change. They've dealt with all of the ups and downs of this move really well.

New Year's is typically a time for making resolutions. I can't remember ever really following through on any resolution I've ever made, so I quit making them a few years back. I have ideas about what I'd like to accomplish in the year ahead and may set some goals for those that are really worth pursuing. Last year I had a goal of reaching 100 blog posts. I fell a bit short (although I might have made it if I hadn't taken a sabbatical...lol), so I'm going to set that goal again this year. To reach 100 post in a year, I only have to blog an average of twice a week. That seems doable. And I certainly have a lot of catching up from last year that should definitely help the count!

I want to say thank you to everyone who has stopped by my blog in the last two years! I really appreciate and enjoy knowing that you find (at least part of) my blog interesting. Please feel free to leave comments & suggestions because they totally make my day! I want this blog to be interesting to YOU, not just me. :)

THANK YOU!

MAY GOD BLESS YOU IN 2011 & ALWAYS!

We're Moving!

Did you see that? We're moving(again)! This time we're headed back to New York. No, not the city. Which is good, cuz we're not really big city folk. We are planning on making many trips there, though. And no, not Fort Drum. We've been to Fort Drum. Except for the lovely friends, once is enough. And we aren't in the ARMY anymore. This time we're headed to the southwest part of the state.

Oh, and we're leaving in a week and a half. 11 days. It's all been a bit rushed. We only found out for sure about 2 weeks ago. Did you know that moving yourself really sucks? We're used to the ARMY movers coming in and packing everything in 2 days & all we have to do is clean. This is way more time consuming when it's just 1-2 people (plus 4 little non-helpers who like to take stuff back out of boxes when you're not looking). It does have advantages though. I'm not going to pack pictures with silverware or a trashcan full of trash. Plus, you get to see everything you own & realize you have way to much junk and can get rid of tons of stuff. I have way too much junk. The people at Goodwill know us by sight now. When we only bring a few bags they've actually asked "Is that all today?". Yup. For today. LOL

I've been trying to load pictures onto photobucket for my slideshows, but they aren't all loading for some reason. That's why I haven't posted anything lately. I'm trying to pare down to just a few instead of a slideshow, but that's really hard for me. I like displaying ALL of my good pictures. But I will try. Once we leave I don't know how long it will be before we have internet access again, so I want to get as much posted as I can before we go. Here's hoping!

The Ike Special - Varsity Edition

Okay, who saw this awesomeness on the Yahoo homepage? If not you must watch! I cried through my laughter. It's so super sweet. These boys rock!

There is good in the world after all.

Just checking in!

We've been super busy again! Granny & Papa visited us for 8 days. We had a great time with them & as always, I have pictures of that to share. We're also back in the full swing of football and cheerleading again and I am so excited to tell you about what happened at Saturday's game. As soon as I load the pictures. We have lots of things to catch up on, but I will try to be back later today to post something!

Oh, yeah. I have a big announcement coming soon. I have a few more kinks to work out. Please check back often to see what it is! Thanks!

5:56 AM

I'm awake! I'm awake! I just wanted to have at least one post in my life that showed that sometimes I get up before 9 am!

Words to live by

Break time's over!

I'm back! I've really missed blogging, but it took me a while to just figure it all out. I needed to decide what was really important to me (and why), and let everything else go. I'm still working on that! As it turns out, blogging is important to me, but I was doing it for other people. Now, I'm going to do it for me. Sounds a little selfish, huh? Hmm...well, I'm hoping that blogging about what I like just might be interesting to you, too. That is, if anyone is still out there. Are you out there???

*crickets chirping*

For those of you still here, there have been so many things going on here at the Beaz Hive that I will tell you all about. We have been very busy beaz these past few months! We've celebrated holidays, a milestone birthday, played and watched baseball, and we've spent oodles of hours at the library. These updates are going to come quite randomly rather than chronologically just because some things are ready to post & some aren't.

Now for the change. This blog will no longer (solely) be about my sweet, adorable and incredibly smart children. It will now be (mostly) about my love of crafting. I love to craft. All kinds of crafting. And I've discovered a whole community of crafty blogs that I can't wait to share with you. I'll be sharing whatever happens to be interesting, and for those of you who are here just to see the baby beaz...I find them interesting too! ;)

It's not really goodbye...

It really annoys me when I go to people's blogs and they've just disappeared without any explanation. That's what I've done here, and I apologize. It seems as though (although I'm sure it isn't) that the world is conspiring against my blogging right now. I really enjoy blogging & I plan on posting again in the future, but I don't really know when that might be. So, farewell for now.

A Funny Story

The other night I made cookies on a piece of aluminum foil rather than a cookie sheet (I hate doing dishes) and when I pulled them out, a corner ripped dropping several cookies down inside the oven. Today, I turned on the oven to make lunch & could smell smoke after a few minutes. That's when I remembered that I forgot to clean up the cookie mess. But when I opened the oven door, there were flames!!! The leftover cookies were on fire! I dumped baking soda on them, turned on all the fans & waved the door opened and closed to get all the smoke out. Luckily, Boo Boo Bear had dumped out half a bottle of carpet deodorizer earlier in the day, so the two smells sort of mellowed each other out.

Superbowl XLIV Party

What would the Superbowl be without a party? Just another football game. And that is why we had a party! Woohoo!

Party Animals:

Supercool Homemade Decorations:

Yummy Foods:

Football shaped brownies, 7 layer dip (7 layers of deliciousness, my friends), chicken wings, veggies, and more!

My Favorite Superbowl Commercial

I love the Superbowl and I (mostly) love the commercials. My favorite one came from HEB this year. Since HEB is a grocery store located mainly in south Texas, not everyone got to enjoy this. I took me a while to find it, but here it is: Status Meeting

Now everything makes sense!

Let me know what you think about my favorite Superbowl ad, and tell me what YOUR favorite commercial was this year.