Special Experience

On Wednesday, May 20, for the first time ever, my entire family was able to be in the temple together since my youngest sister, Lindsey, is preparing for a mission. Words cannot describe how special it was to be able to share in this experience. I hope that we all always strive to remain worthy to enter so we can continue to share in the wonderful blessing of attending the temple together.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Food storage has always been one thing I am very uninterested in and have had a lazy attitude towards. I knew it was something I needed to do, but I kept putting it off. It seemed such an overwhelming project to take on to try to build a year supply of food! Every time hurricane season came around here in Texas, I would feel guilt, guilt, and more guilt as food storage was a topic that was hit hard. Then hurricane season would pass, nothing would be mentioned about food storage, and I would once again put it from my mind. I was very grateful when church leaders altered the goal to 3 months. Finally something that felt doable! So in the last year or so we've worked up what I thought was a 3 months supply of food. Feeling pretty good about ourselves, mentally checking off this goal, food storage had again been pushed to the wayside.

In the recent months, however, I've been feeling that we still need to do more and it needs to be our main focus right now (painting rooms in the house etc. can wait). I have had the opportunity to attend several classes through my church about topics I needed more knowledge on. One class was about the importance of food storage in general. The speaker really put people in their place about the excuses we all use to not start food storage. I thought some of her best comments in that regard were if we can manage to go out to eat, go to movies, get our nails and hair done, etc., then we can afford to start our food storage. It's all about priorities. The class was so good and gave the extra push of motivation Matt and I needed.

So, here's how Matt and I have started. I confessed to Matt that the responsibility of food storage seems to fall on women's shoulders, but it was something that was too overwhelming for me to take on by myself. So we first took an inventory of what we have. Then I put Matt in charge of finding/building places to store our added food storage. We've worked together to come up with menu ideas and the actual food that we need to build up, and I'm in charge of watching for sales and doing the actual shopping. For Family Home Evening one night, we sat down together and came up with a week's worth of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, desserts, and snacks for our family of 3 right now. We then multiplied it by 12 weeks for our 3 months. As I started tabulating all the ingredients and converting them to how I'm going to buy in bulk, I realized that we are not even close to having a 3 months supply of food like I thought we did. We have a 3 months supply of some meals, but not everything.


As a part of my task of shopping, I am finally jumping on the band wagon of shopping with coupons. Two of the websites I use to print coupons are couponmom.com and coupons.com. I like these websites because I don't have to register (a lot of online coupon sites require this, and it makes me uncomfortable to fill in personal information!). We have also started requesting the Sunday Chronicle for the coupons located there. One of my biggest hang-ups about coupons is that it requires shopping for deals at more stores instead of doing all my shopping at one store, Wal Mart. I also think that when people use coupons, they buy stuff they normally wouldn't buy just because they're getting a deal. So they may save $1 on an item, but they still spent $2 more than they normally would have spent! I'm going to really focus on using coupons for stuff I already buy. I decided that I am going to try the 1 month trial of the grocery game, since I know some friends that really like it, after I build up my supply of coupons (I hear the grocery store deals usually match up to coupons from 1 or 2 weeks ago). As you can tell, I am quite the novice when it comes to couponing! I attended a class about 6 months ago, but it sounded so overwhelming as the two teachers said it is their second job...after the kids go to bed, they do their couponing. That's another concern: I don't want it to take up so much time! I would love advice from any expert couponers out there!!!

Finally, I am looking more into canning. I attended a meat canning class through my church where I canned some raw chicken. It looks really nasty, but I'm making it tonight in a casserole to see if canning meat and chicken is something I'm interested in doing for our storage. (It would sure make things easier as far as not having my freezer full of chicken and beef.) I don't enjoy storebought canned chicken in my cooking! Hopefully home canning will taste better. We shall see!

I can't tell you the amazing feelings of peace and joy through the small progress we've made so far. It just feels good to be doing something towards being prepared for the disasters that lay ahead. Other progress we've made: we went ahead and purchased some can rotater shelves (not necessary, but helps with organization), and I finally went and did some bulk canning at the store house through our church. Now it's time to start making wheat bread (I'm going to a class on that this week)!

There is still much more information that I need to glean from those more knowledgeable than I (maybe some herb and vegetable gardening?), but I'm becoming excited about this project of food storage. It helps that my sister and sister-in-law are becoming more educated about it too so we can all share our knowledge and do it together!

Starting Young

We read one page of the children's scriptures before bed every night with Caleb. Most of the time he sits real well and listens (unless he doesn't want to go to bed since he knows that's what will shortly follow). A real treat the past couple of weeks is Caleb wanting to 'read' by himself. If we're in his room playing and he sees the scriptures, he'll sit in the rocking chair all by himself and start flipping through the pages looking at the pictures. We finally caught it on camera. Here are some pictures to browse through. You'll notice in one picture he's pointing to a boat since that's something he recognizes! I hope this love of scripture reading will continue always as that's the best present he could ever give his mom on mother's day!

Happy mother's day to all the mommies!

Bragging Rights

This past Saturday, Matt did what Matt does best...organizing an activity. We hosted a ping pong tournament at our house. We had 3 ping pong tables (our 4th table backed out last minute) and 16 serious players all ready to battle it out for the top spot. It was a double elimination where the winner of the winner's bracket plays the winner of the loser's bracket for first and second place.

I was one of two girls in the tournament, so I was very nervous. I won my first match and faced Matt's uncle for the second match. Matt has difficulty beating him and the one time I've ever played him before, I lost. Matt's uncle smoked me the first game (we play best of 3), and I think no one was as surprised as I was when I won the next two games sealing another victory.

My 3rd match was against my older brother, Jared, who taught me everything I know about ping pong, including my serve which is the best thing I have going for me. I knew that I would be heading down to the loser's bracket at this point. But I seemed to be on fire as no one could return my serve. I beat him in two games, although on any other day this probably wouldn't happen again.

I ended up the winner of the winner's bracket...the only player who hadn't lost a game. When I faced the winner of the loser's bracket, however, my victory streak ended. He had this one serve with a very tricky spin that I had difficulty getting back to him, and he was the first player all day that didn't have trouble with my serve so that eliminated my greatest strength. The only game that my opponent had lost (putting him in the loser's bracket) was to my older brother though, whom I beat, so it worked out kind of funny.

Anyway, not much interest to those who don't play ping pong, but I was on a high all day yesterday because I got second place out of 16 very good players. Matt did pretty well, I never had to face him obviously, but he said his game was having an off day. He did a good job organizing it all and making sure it all ran smoothly. It was a fun morning!

Tea Party

A week ago on tax day, Caleb and I attended our first rally. Ariane, Zane, and Dallin accompanied (Matt wasn't feeling well). It was really neat to see so many conservatives and so many people voicing their opinion. I feel that the world is continuing to lean more and more left and taking everyone else with it, so it was refreshing to see so many people come out and support this cause. Here are some pics from the event:

Holding our signs
Caleb's sad face

Other good signs:

Easter Egg Hunt

Caleb's first hunt. As you can see the eggs were not too difficult to find. :o)

Dallin stealing Caleb's Easter basket

Daddy helping Caleb

Mission Accomplished

I set the goal to train for a half marathon at the end of December, but it was more wishful thinking than anything else. I gave up the idea of running an actual race pretty quickly when I couldn't find a half marathon that was close by (within an hour). Running has always been something I've forced myself to do to stay in shape and to try to control weight gain, but never something I was passionate about. I have run 3 miles three times a week pretty faithfully since high school. Running anything beyond those 3 miles wasn't something I even ever considered, so each Saturday during my training when I did my long runs, every additional mile I added on was an amazing feat for me.


My awesome friend, Stacie, found a half marathon that was only 90 minutes away. I figured that was doable, and so I now had a deadline for my training: April 11th, which helped to keep me focused. Starting out in my training, I averaged 10 minute miles whenever I ran distance. After 2 months of training, I still hadn't improved that average by much on my Saturday runs (9:45), so I was getting a bit frustrated. Then I decided that during my weekday runs, I was going to start doing some sprinting to work on my speed. I did mostly 1 mile sprints (running at the fastest speed I could push myself for the duration of the mile), but I did run a couple of 2 mile sprints as well. It was amazing to me how I would feel like there was no way I could run any faster one week, and then be able to shave a substantial amount of time off the next week I ran. The fastest mile I ever ran before my training was a 7:04 mile in 7th grade. I never thought I could beat that time, but last week I ran my fastest mile ever at a 6:28 (with Caleb in the stroller).


Thanks to the sprinting, I started to notice that I finally was able to improve my speed during my distance runs. A month ago, I ran 13 miles in my training at 2 hours and 3 minutes (just under a 9:30 mile), so my goal for the actual race was to run the 13.1 miles under 2 hours. In setting this goal, I knew it would be a stretch to actually achieve it. Perhaps it was the energy that comes from running with other people or the great new music Matt downloaded on our ipod for me, but I achieved my "mission" and ran the race in 1:58:45, which is pretty close to a 9-minute mile.


The race site was in Groveton, Texas, and we were up at 4:30 in the morning to allow plenty of time to get there and get checked in etc. We didn't check the weather for the day of the race beforehand and just assumed it would be like the previous day, which got up to the 80s. Imagine our surprise when our car read the temperature at 50 degrees. I was not dressed for the weather at all, but thankfully the race fee included a long-sleeved t-shirt! It did warm up to 55 degrees, but I was so cold for the first couple of miles!

Before the race

Beautiful sunrise!

The starting line. All the serious runners are at the front. I was somewhere mixed up in the middle.

We started and ended the race at a highschool track. Here's me at the last .1 mile of the race. I was so excited to see Matt and Caleb at this point and it gave me the extra boost I needed to sprint faster than I already had been for the last .5 mile.

In my training, whenever I ran past 10 miles, my knees hurt so bad, and I felt weak and dizzy. I definitely had nothing extra to give at the end. I was amazed that during the actual race, I felt great right up through the end of the race. I was able to pick up my pace for the last 2 miles and started working towards a sprint during the last 1/2 mile. A girl that I passed in the last 1/2 mile came up and told me how impressed she was with my strong finish. Matt quickly jumped in to brag that it was my first race and the girl was shocked. She's run 3 half marathons and congratulated me for doing so well on the first one.

This whole experience was so invigorating and just so amazing to me that I could actually do this! I really appreciate Matt's support throughout this goal. He watched Caleb Saturday mornings so that I could run without the stroller, which means he oftentimes gave up his Saturday morning football. Getting up early and driving to and from Groveton was a huge sacrifice as well, but I so appreciated having him and Caleb there for support! I'm really grateful that one of my college roommates, Laura, started getting into half marathons and marathons because that's what inspired me to do this! I don't know if marathons are in my future, but I definitely would like to do a few more half marathons...