Strong Women

I have been working out a lot and only lifting and not running. While I know I will go back to running in the future, this has been a great change and so fun. Jeff has been helping me and I feel like I have never been so strong in my entire life. I was close my sophomore year in college when I was playing volleyball at Dixie, I could bench more, but my abs were not so strong. It has been so fun and a great thing for Jeff and I to do together. When I was running, I felt in great shape cardiovascular wise but I did always feel a little skinny and wimpy. It is so fun to always flex my arm and feel muscle there. I always tell Cheyenne to feel my muscle so now she will do it to me and it is the cutest thing EVER!! We will be eating dinner and she will stick out her elbow toward me and say, "Mommy, feel my muscles!"

When I taught health and learned about eating disorders, I learned it was really important to emphasize to your athletes (as a coach) or daughters (as a parent) the importance of being strong and not skinny or thin. Your strength is something much easier to control in a healthy way than your thinness, because that has so much more to do with your genetics. And really people look better when they have some muscle!

Growing up I was always smaller and skinnier than most on my sports teams and my dad would praise the girls who were bigger and stronger. That was so great because that is what I aspired to be was bigger and stronger. When I got older and hit puberty, he would tell me I needed to lose 10 pounds so I could jump higher or run faster, which honestly made me feel bad, but I knew he was just trying to make me a better athlete. I think those comments could have been dangerous if I didn't have a good relationship with him and a good self-image and hadn't already decided when I was young that the perfect body was strong and sturdy.

My parents both loved sports and that is something Jeff and I both love. My Dad was a great athlete and competitor at University of Oregon as a hurdler. He even got invited to the Olympic Trials. He later ran marathons with my mom after they were married. My mom especially set a great example to me of lifetime fitness and I want to do the same thing for my girls. She was a pioneer of sorts for women's sports. When she was younger it was not popular or common for women to be athletes. She grew up on a farm and was a rebel of sorts, never working in the kitchen or inside but always doing the manual labor outside with her dad and brothers... milking cows, moving pipe, etc. She played what little sports were available at her high school. I think I remember her saying she ran track, but girls weren't allowed to run over half a mile, because they didn't think it was good for them or something. In college she played field hockey for Ricks and BYU and some other sports too but I can't remember. Growing up my mom would run or ride her bike to work so my sister or I could drive to school. She was always on a million different adult sports teams (softball, soccer, racquetball, volleyball, etc.). Now she is 61 and still plays on a softball and volleyball team and plays racquetball all the time and rides her bike to work. If there were boys playing sports, my parents would encourage me to play with them, "If they can play, you can play!" they would say. They never made me feel like I couldn't be as good as any boy. Especially for my mom, if she wanted to play at all, much of the time it would have to be with boys.I mean, when guys are really good athletes, I can't beat them, but I could beat a lot of boys I dated in sports, so just because people are boys doesn't mean they are automatically better at sports.

This blog is like a journal for me, since I don't have time to do both and I have been an extreme journal writer my whole life (I have about 20 or so journals from my youth). These are just thoughts I have been having about raising my girls to be strong women with self-confidence and a great body image! I hope we can succeed in doing that:)

An update on Cheyenne

• Cheyenne will be 3 in about 6.5 weeks! That is so crazy to me! One of my favorite/funny things about Cheyenne right now is that she has two imaginary friends "Dohdoh" and "Gahgah." They probably don't have H's in their name, but that is how you pronounce them:) She pretends to carry them in her hand and she will often say, "Mommy No!!! Dohdoh was sittin there!" or "Come on Gahgah, we're going to the store!"
• She really has a great imagination.
• She loves doing different emotion faces (sad, scared, angry, happy, surprised, etc.).
• She loves to pretend she is helping some animal find their home/mommy/family (courtesy of Dora I believe).
• She is always pretending she is on some adventure.
• I have been trying to instill our love of sports in her, but it is not catching on as quickly as I had hoped... she does like to pretend she is doing gymnastics finally after months of me trying to teach her things. She will randomly do a table, candlestick, straddle, pike, stick-tada, pointed toes, kicks, walking on the "beam" (any long skinny object). She also likes to throw and catch balls, but not all the time. She knows what every kind of ball is and what you are supposed to do with it (soccer ball uses feet, volleyball uses hands, etc.)
• She always tells Jeff, "Daddy you are a really good football player." Which is funny because we never said that to her.
• She will pretend to play something and I ask if she is playing and she says, "No, I'm coaching."
• We go on walks and she can run/walk the entire .75 mile loop.
• She loves to sing
• Her favorite songs in the car are in order: "Hehehehe Dance song." (I think it is by Kesha or Katy Perry or Britany Spears or one of those people, I can't stand it, but it was on a CD one of my vb players made for me and she LOVES it). "Riding Solo" is her next favorite which I am okay with because I love it too. and then the "Curious George Song" by Jack Johnson. Then the "Grandpa Frank Song" (when Grandpa comes Primary song. She asks over and over for one of these songs until she hears it. Then when it is over she usually says "again!" She totally dances and sings along too. It is pretty funny, but I am ready for some new favorite songs!
• She is always randomly coming up to me to give me a hug and a kiss.
• She always randomly says, "I love you."
• When she wakes up in the morning she asks, "where is daddy." When I tell her he is at work she is disappointed.
• She will often ask, "Is Daddy making money so we can go to the bouncy house?" Because I told her one time, Daddy goes to work to make money so we can have a house, food and do fun things like go to the bouncy house. The other day we were at Moe's for dinner and Jeff usually gets Nachos which comes with this cheese sauce to dip chips in, but he had gotten a burrito this time. Cheyenne was saying she wanted dip and I told her we didn't have the money for it this time, but maybe next time. She turned to Jeff and said, "Daddy you forgot to bring the money for the cheese dip?" It just cracked me up, because she knew Daddy made the money so he must have forgotten. Its not that cheese dip is that expensive, I just want her to grow up being aware of the difference between wants and needs and know that we can't just buy everything we feel like.
• She will often say, "I need (fill in the blank)," then I look at her and she laughs and says, "I don't need it, I want it!" I love when she says that. Who knew you could teach a two year old such a concept that many adults don't even understand?!
• Whenever Jeff is home, she will randomly say, "Daddy, I'm really glad you're home."
• She LOVES to color and there will be drawings on any paper that is left out. She can draw people as circles with eyes nose and mouth and then 4 lines coming out of the circle for arms and legs. She also likes to draw caterpillars (a bunch of circles together) and jellyfish/octopus (circles with lines coming out of it).
• She always wants me to draw things for her. Mostly I draw her friend Layla or Layla's mommy, Heidy or her Daddy, Zane. They would probably be creeped out if they knew how many drawings of them we had in our house, haha!
• She can write the letter L, T, F, E, and H. Mostly she will just do H. She has to feel like writing the letter too, because if you tell her to do it she usually wont, but when you are not looking you will see her write them.
• She can recognize all of her letters upper and lower case.
• She can almost count to 20, but sometimes she gets mixed up in the teens. She also repeats 19 sometimes.
• She loves sweets and wants to eat them for every meal. I usually give her some sort of healthy snack (fruit/veggie) while she is waiting for me to cook dinner, lunch, breakfast and she always asks, "Can I have candy corn while I am waiting?" She thinks one time I will let her I guess.
• She loves to dress up and act like some character (mean witch, beautiful princess, Grandma's kitty, etc.)
• She loves to play with friends.
• She loves to be silly, especially with Daddy.
• She LOVES Family Night.
• She still loves Dora, but has expanded her repertoire to include Diego, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Blues Clues and Sesame Street. She still has yet to sit for an entire movie, except in the movie theatre we saw "Lion King" in 3D and "Winnie the Pooh." The only reason she made it through those is that she had goldfish crackers which are her favorite but I never buy them, so she ate the entire bag both times.
• She calls the Movie theatre the "Movie Figator" I love it.
• Everyone comments how they "love her voice." I have no idea what this means, because I hear it all the time I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. I remember when she was like 3 months old people would always laugh and say, "oh her hair, its so funny and cute." I had no clue what they were talking about but now that I look back it looked so weird because she was balding around the outside of her head, it wasn't so much cute, people were just trying to be nice. So now, I don't know if something is wrong with her voice, but about 5 or 6 people have commented on it and I have no idea why it is different. I think she may have a deeper voice than most little girls and she is only two so she pronounces a lot of words differently... I have no idea, but I am sure I will look back in a few years and know what people were talking about:)
• She loves going to Daddy's football games. Last year her favorite thing was the band and this year it is the Blue Devil.
• She is learning the days of the week and knows that we go to church on Sundays, Family night on Mondays and Friday football day. She says her favorite day of the week is Monday.
• She loves Berkeley, but is always making her cry.
• She is still a sweetheart, but has gotten more of an opinion on things and doesn't always do exactly as she is told anymore.
• She is fully potty trained during the day, but has gone back to wearing a diaper at night. She only wets it about 1 time every couple of weeks, but that is enough for us to keep a diaper on her, because we really like the bed she sleeps on.
• Her biggest excuse for getting out of bed is to go potty, but half the time she actually does go potty so we have to keep letting her.
• She now always has to have a night light on.
• She still loves to "read" books. She will say a lot of them pretty well from memory. They are not word for word, but she tells the story well.
• She is always saying something to make Jeff and I laugh.
• We love her soooo much!

An update on Berkeley

• Berkeley will be one in just over two short weeks. We just got her shutterfly book in the mail today. We make one for each kid on their birthday and I love it, but it is SO MUCH work! Anyway, it was crazy to look back at how much she has changed, yet, how much she is still the same little baby! Some things about Berkeley right now:
• She is developing her own little attitude and personality and she is a little sassy. She knows what she wants and she goes for it.
• She loves to pull Cheyenne's hair. If she gets the chance, she doesn't let it pass her by.
• She knows how to fake cry and totally tries to get Cheyenne in trouble. Cheyenne is always poking, pinching and picking on Berkeley, but usually Berks just takes it. However, if she sees me watching, she will totally do this whole cry face that is so fake and stops if I don't get mad at Cheyenne. If I do get mad at Cheyenne, she does it more to make it more dramatic. It is crazy how she has already figured that out!
• She is so snuggly sometimes, especially when she just wakes up.
• She is still nursing several times a day, but not for very long periods at a time. The longest is the first in the morning. And she usually spits it back up shortly after on my face, in my mouth or all over me somewhere while I am sleeping.
• She loves to put her hands on the ground with her legs straight and look upside down between her legs.
• She is always trying to play in the toilet
• I can always tell when she is hungry, because she goes under the kitchen table to look for food to eat.
• She loves to say, "Hi" and it is pretty much the cutest thing ever. She always holds the phone to her ear and says, "Hi."
• She can also say "Mama" and "Dada" and when I say shoe, she says "Shhhhhh"
• She LOVES Jeff. She gets so excited to see him when he gets home and she wants him to hold her. I don't remember Cheyenne ever reaching for Jeff when I was holding her, I swear she always preferred me, but I think Berkeley mostly prefers Jeff unless she is hungry.
• She gets so excited to see Cheyenne in the morning. Usually she will be in bed with me (I get her in the morning to nurse her), and when Cheyenne comes in she smiles and gets so excited.
• She loves to bounce on my bed, holding the railings looking at the mirror when she wakes up.
• She can stand up and sit down easily without holding anything, but hasn't taken any steps yet and doesn't seem very close. She of course cruises along the furniture though.
• She does this adorable puppy dog breathing thing through her nose that I love. It is too hard to explain so I need to get it on video.
• She is a pretty good eater and will eat most everything, but she gets way more sugar than I let Cheyenne have, so I hope she stays a good eater.
• She hasn't learned any of the sign language yet. We have been working on milk, more, all finished and eat, but nothing yet.
• She has 8 teeth and I think some more are close, because she has been drooling like crazy.
• She still sucks her thumb a lot, but not as much as a few months ago. Now, it is just mostly when she is tired or nervous.
• She will play with Cheyenne in the playroom without me in there for a good 30-45 minutes. Dream come true!
• Her hair pretty much fits in piggie tails now!
• She loves balls and often carries a golf ball around with her all day.
• I LOVE her!!!

Preschool

So some friends and I got together and are doing a little preschool for our kids once a week. Each week we learn a letter. So far I think we have done, L, F, E, T, and H. Cheyenne LOVES it. If she wants to she can write those letters as well! Sometimes she does it perfectly and sometimes she squiggles lines like she has no clue how to do it, but I know she knows how, because one day I went outside and there were letters written all over the back patio in sidewalk chalk. We also use wood pieces to make letters, so one day I was playing Lincoln Logs with Cheyenne and she was taking the roof pieces into the other room. I was concentrating on building my own little house of Lincoln Logs so I wasn't paying much attention to what she was doing. Finally I finished the house and went to find her and this is what I found:

She was making Hs! I love seeing things like this, because you realize things are really sinking in! She is also working on the days of the week which is really nice to help her know what day we will be doing what. Oh and she has been wearing some sort of Halloween costume everyday this month.

A good friend

This is my friend Rachel Whiting. She is in my ward at church and is the girl that I trained for the half marathon for 4-5 months with when I was pregnant with Berkeley. She had just had her third boy at the time we were training and had to go through a surgery right after she had him. We ran together several times a week and anyone who is a runner knows that you have a special bond with your running partners! We had deep conversations and were able to help push each other (mostly she pushed me) when we were tired. She is someone who is so selfless and is such an awesome wife and mother, I wish I could be more like her! She is also gorgeous and has three cute cute kids. After we ran the race, being pregnant, I needed to take a break from running and since we live so far away from each other and we each are so busy with our kids and families, we weren't able to get together much at all, but I still think the world of her and wish we lived next door to each other so we could get together more.

So, yesterday, I was looking for a babysitter for a girls' night out I was going to. Jeff called me and asked what happened to my friend Rachel. I said I had no idea. He said he got an email from the Elder's Quarum that an activity at the Whiting's house was canceled because Jason's wife had been in a serious accident. That was all the information that was given. Oh my gosh! Hello? What is with boys? Seriously, either don't say anything at all about it or give ALL the information. I was calling everyone I know that is good friends with her trying to figure out what was going on and in my head I was thinking the worst: Is she dead? Is she in critical condition? Were her kids in the car with her? Are they injured as well? Of course I let my imagination run away with me, thinking that I may never see her again. I was trying not to panic, but I was so worried about her and felt helpless that there was nothing I could do to help her! Finally, I got a hold of my friend, Andrea, who is good friends with Rachel. According to her, Rachel was on her scooter, collided with a car, was unconscious for 30 minutes, and broke her jaw and her leg. She is going to have to have her jaw wired shut and not walk for 3 months. I was so relieved that she was not in critical condition and that she was going to live, but I my heart was broken for her. She is an amazing runner and was about to run a marathon, so I know this is going to be so hard for her. She has put in so much work training for the race and it was something special she and her husband were going to do together. I feel so terrible for her and wish there was more I could do to help at this point. I know soon, I will be able to watch her kids and take her meals, but I just wish I could give her the comfort that I know I can't. I was going to go visit her in the hospital, but as of now she is heavily sedated and her family has asked that there be no visitors. I have just been praying for her and I can't get her out of my mind. I just pray that she will recover quickly and keep her spirits up. She really is so strong so I know if anyone could handle it, she could. It also is a strong reminder of how precious life is and how quickly you can lose a loved one. Jeff and I had talked about getting him a scooter previously and I am so glad we didn't! He travels on fast roads, so that was the main reason we didn't. I just always need to make sure that I am living right and showing those around me that I love them so I will be more prepared in the event of a tragedy.

Atlanta weekend

On the last night my mom was here, my step-dad, Steve, was so generous and used his points to get us a hotel room in Atlanta! So, we left about noon on Friday to go to the hotel to check in and use the pool, but the traffic in atlanta was so bad because there was a braves game, it was the chic-fil-a bowl where Georgia played Boise State, there was a science fiction dragon convention and I think there was one more thing but I can't remember. Even with the carpool lane it took us forever to get there. We had enough time to swim for about 45 minutes and Cheyenne loved it and did not want to get out. Then we had to hurry and get ready and go to the football game. We stopped by Burger King to eat dinner first. We were playing a private school just outside of Atlanta called Wesleyen. Holy cow, it was so nice! It looked like a wealthy college! Oh and every single car was Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac, etc. It was the first time I have seen a Honda look like a lower class car!! Haha... The stadium had beautiful landscaping around it, it was pretty amazing. If I was a millionaire I would probably send my kids there! Anyway, they are always a really good team and they beat us by a field goal in overtime last year and were our only loss up until state. We beat them solidly this year so it was fabulous! After the game the games were lined up facing each other and I thought it was going to be a fight, but then their coach gathered up both teams and they all said a prayer together. It was fabulous to see people remembering the Lord and his significance even in something such as a football game. I love these pictures of the girls playing by the fence, we had a great time! After the game we went back to the hotel and then Mom took the shuttle really early in the morning and caught the first flight home. The girls and I slept in, got the hotel breakfast and then headed to a school in Atlanta area to watch a girl I coached play in a volleyball game for her high school. It was a fun weekend:)

A visit from Grandma Sylvia

My mom came for a week in August and it was so much fun! Cheyenne really connected with her this trip and wouldn't leave her side! It was the sweetest thing and my mom and I had a really great time too. I did her hair and make up one night and we went out so that was really fun. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful mother who loves me and my family.

Blue Devil Game

Berkeley is always attached to my legs!

This was the picture I was so sad I lost... so cute:

Close-up of my cutie-pie:

Jeff by the scoreboard:

Chit-chatting:

The girls playing on the field after the game:

My mom and I:

Cheyenne Stacey:

Berkeley Lynn:

Our little family after the win:

Cheyenne and Grandma Sylvia with the Blue Devil Mascot

cheerios do a lot of entertaining during the games:

So while my mom was here we were able to go to two football games. This is the first one. I got so many great pictures that night! We played Stephens County and won 29-28. It was a great game for my mom to go to. Cheyenne spends the whole night trying to find the Blue Devil Mascot. We did a Family Home Evening Lesson about the pre-existance and I taught Cheyenne about Jesus and the Devil. I was drawing with a blue pen and she goes oh! That's the Blue Devil! Now she is always asking if the Devil is nice or mean, and it is so hard to help her understand, so I told her the regular devil is mean, but the blue devil is nice. I should just start referring to the regular devil as Satan or Lucifer I suppose. Anyway, she made my mom go see the blue devil with her after the game, but she was scared when they got by it and made my mom hold her, but we got a picture so that is good. Cheyenne also loves to play on the field after the game. As soon as the game is over, all the kids run on the field and start playing. It is fun.

Date Night

So when my mom was here, she babysat so we could go on a date to Longhorn Steakhouse (with a gift card from Jeff's parents for his bday- thanks guys!). I have a ton of pictures from my mom's visit, but it is so late and I don't feel like waiting around for them to upload so I will do them later. LOVE Date night with this hunk! Oh and we went and saw Super 8 because it has Kyle Chandler in it from Friday Night Lights (Coach Taylor is one of Jeff's idols, haha jk... well, kind of). It started out funny and reminded me of Goonies, but about halfway through the movie got Super Weird!! It was a fun night though!

Picnic

Cheyenne loves to have Berkeley and her dress up and then eat a picnic on the box flipped over with their pretend food. Berkeley does not like dressing up, but since she is the youngest, she doesn't have much of a say. On a side note, I really need to go grocery shopping, but I am trying to make the food we have last and put it off as much as possible... so we were trying to decide what to have for lunch today and this was our conversation:

Cheyenne: I want applesauce.

Me: We don't have any applesauce.

Cheyenne: I want yogurt.

Me: We are all out of yogurt.

Cheyenne: I want a chocolate Monkey! Yum! Chocolate Monkey!

Me: We are all out of bananas so we can't have a chocolate monkey.

Cheyenne: Soooo... we don't have any food? All the food is gone?

It was so funny and cute and sad at the same time! I told her I would put applesauce, yogurt and bananas on the grocery list for next time. Then I remembered we still had leftover squash soup and peas in the fridge so we feasted on that! It was delicious and nourishing and the girls gobbled it up:) I still have ingredients for two more dinners, but I think I better give in and go to the store tomorrow! Why am I avoiding going grocery shopping? Well, a friend told me the less times you go to the grocery store the better, because that means the less times you grab something you want but don't neccessarily need. I think it is so true, so I have been trying to go less:) Plus, every time we go I let the girls get a cookie and when they start eating a lot of sugar, they don't want the healthy stuff!