awesome chasm

favorite hike that i have done in a while. a new route for an old hike. loved it!

sisters

photo from a spontaneous saturday with my sister. love it. love her.

everyone moved away

. . . and i hardly got any pictures. brad and kendall and family and aaron and sabrina and family both moved up to seattle, wa. i am pretty bummed about it. but mostly i will miss the kids. :) notice that's who I got the most pictures of.

sabrina and kendall at grandma elaine's a few days before they left.

dominic. i took a million pictures of this kid and he wouldn't look at the camera. he is so cute though.

landon and kailyn, the night we helped them pack the moving truck. not sure why landon is in his power ranger outfit, but i love it. i miss these little bugs.

red rock and beatles love

visited leah in vegas with cody in september. it was a much needed weekend of hiking at red rocks {just outside of vegas}, going to bikram yoga for the first time {super hard and super HOT, but uh-mazing}, shopping and seeing my first cirque de soleil show: beatles love.

scary descent.

entrance to beatles love. such an amazing show!

loved my mini-vaca with cody and lea lea. :)

zion with the girls

hiked hidden canyon with mom and sara back in july. :) I finally uploaded a bunch of pictures. this was such a fun day. we hiked hidden canyon {sara was sorta scared of the parts with chains}, went swimming in a fun swimming hole and then had lunch at oscar's in springdale. perfect day with the girls.

road to raw

about a month ago, on my way up to one of my yoga intensive weekends, as I was eating cooking dough and driving up i-15, my sister called me. she wanted me to do this raw food cleanse with her. . . huge pause on my end of the phone. now, when i think of raw food, i think of a certain thanksgiving where my aunt made almost all raw food and everyone there was like, "what? this is NOT thanksgiving food." The pies were weird, the crackers were bendy. basically, not a good first impression. BUT i decided to do it anyway . . .

. . . fast forward a month later. i’ve lost about 10 lbs, just by changing my diet. i still exercise, but don’t feel that guilty if i don’t every day. when i do work out, it’s usually around half hour, unless i’m doing yoga. i feel so healthy. i eat a lot of fruits and veggies. i did the raw thing for about 3 weeks, which included a juice feast (like a fast, but you drink a lot of juice that you must juice yourself.) i didn’t love the juice feast, but did it for 4 days. now, i would say that I eat about 60% raw and the rest pretty close to vegetarian. i don’t want to say that i am vegetarian because i feel ike that labels and restricts me.

the interesting point i want to emphasize is how my view of food changed drastically. i used to have STRONG sugar cravings and usually NEEDED some type of sugar after each meal. now i really don’t. i do occasionally, but I tend to fill that craving with something more healthy then a handful of chocolate chips. i know i had a least a mild case of candida, most people in America have it and don’t even know it. it was causing me to be addicted to sugar. another thing that i thought was an interesting side effect was the way i felt about meat. i used to love meat and planned my meals around it. now after being more aware of what i am putting into my body, and seeing clips from “food inc,” i am more meat averse, unless it is the good grass fed, true free range stuff.

resources that have helped me along this journey are:

-www.roadtoraw.com: the website that hosted the raw food clease and had amazing videos and support.

-www.therawalicious.com: an amazing blog with so many how to videos and great ideas for total health. i want to be this girl's friend!

-www.greensmoothiegirl.com: loved her site and have used it for yummy, healthy recipes. i have a green smoothie almost every morning now.

-“the kind diet” by Alicia Silverstone: a lot of great recipes

-www.bountifulbaskets.org: amazing food co-op that allows me to get lots of fruits and veggies for great prices. pictured above.

-my sister amy: it was so good to have someone to call anytime i was craving something or wanted to talk about how we both were progressing, or other totally gross things that only sisters share, or when i stepped on the scale and it was lower than i thought it would be and when i fit into my thin jeans.

i didn’t mean to make this post so long, but i haven’t really written about this transformation at all. i have learned so much about my body, the food i eat and so many other amazing nutritional things. a month ago, if i read this, i would have probably thrown up all over this post and told whoever wrote it that there was no way i was going to even try to get healthy this way. so don’t judge too quickly. go to one of those websites, and if you are feeling adventurous, sign up for the roadtoraw.com cleanse. it will change your life. i promise.

also, am considering doing more health related posts that have to do with my discoveries . . . so stay tuned. :)

have an amazing day!

how to be alone

i know it's been a while. i would imagine posts will be few and far between for a little while at least, but when i do post, it will be about something i really like or that is important to me.

this video fits under both categories:



i liked it.


in other news:

i started my hatha yoga teacher training. :) my 3rd intensive weekend is this weekend. am loving it.

and school starts next week for me. my last semester. and i will have my bachelor's degree in business/finance. excited to get it over with. :) i had to save the classes i don't care about for last.

cable mountain

hiked cable mountain a few sundays ago with cody and leah. we had never done this hike in zion. the views are breathtaking. and somehow we picked a day where the temperatures were in the sixties! that combined with going to oscar's for the murder burger after . . . made it a perfect day. :)

looking down on angel's landing.

they used to lower timber down the canyon with cables . . . hence the name.

since i've been gone . . .

it seems i've been a little distant lately . . . i guess until i get into a new routine i let a few things slide. the blog being one of them.

new work is finally feeling normal. :) yea!

school has been out for the summer for at least 2 months now.

no summer classes = me cleaning and organizing my house, and looking for other projects. what's with my obsession with being busy? no clue.

this fall will be my final semester before i officially have my bachelor's degree.

i'm already thinking about the next step. more thoughts to come later. . .

considering 8-month certification in kundalini yoga, but after doing 108 sun salutations for the summer solstice, am rethinking how much more practice i need before i teach.

other than that, here are a few of the pictures i have managed to take over the past month or so . . .

took a quick trip to slc with mom and sisters to see my cute niece and nephew in a play. they were darling and would totally wave at us during the play. we sort of instigated that though. :) they got trophies cause it was their last night.

planted a garden. these are the strawberries. also planted artichoke, tomatoes, raspberries and lots of flowers!

enjoyed my banks' roses blooming. only one month out of the year, but love them!

took the family on a hike for mother's day. mom's request. and cami was in town!

lovely summer days. hope to be back more often.

happy late mothers day!

saw this on mother's day weekend when driving home from slc. those are cranes! how rad is that?



i pretty much have the best mom ever. and i don't mind that i am becoming more and more like her everyday. amen.

great expectations

the other day, i was talking to a friend that has great expectations for her life. amazing goals and aspirations. this is one of the many things i love about her. she is extremely ambitious and is a goal setter. i am this way as well, but she started planning a little earlier than me.

my point is, this friend, was talking about how she wasn't where she expected to be in life. she was disappointed and frustrated.

i have been thinking about this and my question is: are we ever where we expect to be?

if you would have told me that i would be doing what i am doing now when i was younger, i probably wouldn't have believed it.

i'm in such a different place than i expected. in some aspects of my life, i would say i'm in a far better place than expected.

but what are these expectations we have of the future? of someday i will be traveling the world or someday i will have the job of my dreams?

do we grow complacent as we grow up? do we just change? or is it more of putting our priorities in order?

some people say that being content is bad. but on this subject that brings up more questions than answers, i would have to say that there is a strange balance in there somewhere. it's not a compromise. it's a creative solution that mixes your expectations and goals with real life.

it's actually pretty amazing how it happens. for me, it's brought me to a place that is a mixture of moments where the fairytale i dreamed of as a child is true and the reality of the world slapping me in the face come together in an odd mixture that makes me happy.

the key is enjoying the fairytale and responding to the slap in the face by being better.

oh i still have my great expectations and they keep me reaching higher. writing to do lists and goal lists. these expectations help us hope and plan for something more.

it's crazy how life can have you high on happiness one day and pulling out your hair the next. makes me grateful for the times of happy contentedness.

so to my friend with her great expectations: know that we all have these. they are our balloons that keep us looking up into the sky and if one of them pops every now and then, it's okay. god has a big helium tank that's there if we want it. it's there so we can fill up another balloon with our dreams.

DIY: wall hanging

i started making this flowery wall hanging thing back in january and just slowly worked on it as i had time. i finished it a few weeks ago and am just now posting it. :) i spray painted the frame that i found at a garage sale and sort of arranged them together on one of my bedroom walls. not sure if this is the final or if i will actually put something in the frame, but here it is for now.

and you will never guess what it is made out of . . .

. . .toilet paper rolls!

i got the idea here and added a few more petals to it. it was fun and super cheap!

these are a few of the steps and i used paper clips to hold them in place while the glue dried.

the final project one more time. :) i love it on my wall.

how cute are these kids!?!

found these pics on khulett photography of my cute niece and nephew. love them and had to share. kevin did an amazing job!

are you kidding me? so darling.

camping on carlsbad state beach

snuck away for the weekend a couple weeks ago with cody, leah and alesha to go camping on the beach. what a perfect weekend. right on the beach. relaxing, roasting hot dogs and falling asleep to the sound of the waves.

pretty impressive photography skills.

i love this pic of leah. man i am good.

we also went to huntington beach and stayed with some new friends really close to the beach in a way sweet house. it was a blast!

DIY: homemade freezer jam

i grew up with homemade strawberry jam and don't like any other jam. so instead of stealing bottles from my mom's freezer . . . i decided to make some of my own. it's so yummy and so easy. it only took me about an hour and a half. perfect for this strawberry season.

i used the recipe inside the mcp pectin box. according to my mom you have to use mcp pectin. sure jell is the other brand that you don't want to use. mcp pectin is the best. (but it's from the makers of sure jell) and i only found it at harmons.

i just made two batches and it made 6 jars! i didn't expect that much. but i'm excited to enjoy it all!