Easter and Fun Outdoors

Look while I pose next to an Easter Basket!

Mommy showed me how to put the eggs into the basket.

More fun Easter toys from Nana and Abba in Indiana!

Yesterday Lily and I decided to try out the new backpack that Grandma and Grandpa bought for us. I need to adjust it a bit more, but overall, it was a cool ride. I felt a bit embarrassed using that in the neighborhood and not on a trail, but oh well!

Yesterday, Lily also got a ride on the bike with Daddy around the cul-de-sac.

Easter Bunny

Today we saw the Easter Bunny!

R&R Coffee

Ryan opened his coffeeshop!! David's good friend Ryan has wanted to open a coffeehouse for quite some time and now it's here!! For those of you in the Colorado area, you can visit him here.
Lily and I went on opening day last week and I enjoyed a sweet cup of vanilla latte. I plan to become a regular patron and may hold a few Mommy gatherings there.
Congratulations Ryan!!!

Proud Owner

Earth Diet and Oh Yea, it was St Patty's Day!

David and I are on our 4th day of our "Earth Diet". This is our made up name of a basically vegan/vegetarian diet. I got inspired watching Dr Oz on Oprah talking about a group of British folks who ate "the ape" diet. This diet is basically eating 11 pounds of raw fruits/veggies every day. After 12 days they lost weight, had significantly lowered their cholesterol and lowered their blood pressure. I flirt with having too high cholesterol, so I thought - "I wonder what would happen if we ate this way?" Of course I chickened out with the 11 pounds of fruits and veggies, but modified it to fit our lifestyle. David is doing the vegan way and I decided I didn't want to give up dairy, so I went vegetarian. (must have greek yogurt!) This also includes no white stuff - no white flour or sugar. It's actually going really well and I feel great! I thought there would be tears shed over bread, but not so far! We did our grocery run this weekend and spent our average weekly dollar amount on all sorts of fruits, vegetables and nuts. Later this week we will introduce some fish (there goes David's veganism). I worked on many many recipes found mostly from Dr. Oz's book, Montel Williams' book and Dr. Weil's book. I must say we have found some new yummie recipes!

Our original plan was to go 10 days. However, I goofed up and planned a breakfast date and dinner date with some friends this Saturday. Sooo, now we will just do 7 days. Perhaps down the road, we'll do this again. It's funny, I have some vegan friends who eat this way all the time. It's just their way of life. I admire them! I just would miss dairy and bread too much. :)

The Newly Stocked Fridge

One of our many veggie soup recipes

And I forgot to say "Happy St. Patty's Day" on my post yesterday. I'm not a lick Irish, so this day hasn't meant much to me. However, I do love the color green and I'm happy to support the green clothing tradition. I donned Lily in some green as well.

Ready for Next Christmas

Every year my crazy family in Indiana gets the "underwear head shot". It's tradition that my Mom buys all of us underwear. Not sure how this started, but we all decided to put the new underwear on our head and get the annual picture.

Here was last years.

This is Lily practicing the underwear shot. Yes, these are my chonies (our slang for underwear). I promise I did not show her how to do this. I was folding laundry and Lily decided to "help" me by taking the laundry out of the basket. She found a pair of my chonies and promptly placed it on her head. Yes, this is my daughter.

Going Paperless

The responsibility at my very PT job is to help the company go paperless. I'm scanning in documents and then shredding them. We found a company that claims to recycle the shredded paper - I sure hope they do as they do have quite a bit of paper!

Along the lines of going paperless, my husband and I are trying to have a "paperless" house, as much as one can. Here are a few websites to help along in the process

www.donotmail.com - petition to allow us to get on a "do not mail list", such as the "do not call" list

http://www.paperlesspetition.org/ - Found this on one of my favorite blogs: MomGoGreen. You can sign a petition to opt out of the phone books!

http://www.41pounds.org/ - this website assists in stopping your junk mail! It's $41, but would be worth your while! David and I plan to do this soon!

http://www.catalogchoice.org/ - you can opt out of the catalogs you receive here!

I'm sure there are more websites out there.
Other ways we are going paperless.

-Requesting bills be sent via email or available online
-Paying bills online
-We don't get a newspaper
-Cancel or don't reorder magazines we don't really read

It feels much lighter in our house when we aren't cluttered with extra paper, junk mail, magazines!

Girlfriends' Dinner and The Apple and Fun with Paper

me, Raz, Christine, Liz, Dian, Regina

Saturday night I went out with "the girlfriends". This is a group of women I've known for a long long time. These ladies are some of my oldest friends here in Colorado. We started meeting once a month and I'm looking forward to next month! We went to Jack Quinns in downtown Colorado Springs, which I always seem to call The Irish Lion, as that was the main Irish pub in Bloomington, Indiana where I went to college. My husband doesn't even correct me anymore when I make this mistake. He just knows what I mean.

Lily saw me eating an apple the other day and wanted a bite for herself. I let her mangle up the apple (with supervision of course). She loved it!

The aftermath

Last Thursday night, I went to "Stamp a Stack" with my stamping lady, Kimberly. We made 15 cards within 3 hours. I had a great time. I surprised myself as normally I am very chatty and loud when I'm with a bunch of women. I found stamping so relaxing and meditative that I was quiet almost all night long. I've purchased a few stamping tools and now I can stamp at home!

Just thought this was cute

Lily is preferring the walking to the crawling.

Extreme Napping, Bike Repair and Rocking Horse

This weekend was full of napping.

This is how I found Lily this weekend. Yes, she is folded in half.

This is how David found me.

David needed to work on his bike and Lily helped!

This is the rocking horse my Dad made for Lily. She loves it! She rocks back and forth so hard, I am afraid she is going to fall off!