I Dig This Article

Some might disagree, but I think women have it harder in a lot of different aspects in life. Being pregnant is one of them - it messes with your hormones, plus you get big, then try and lose it all (success if you do) and then you do it all over again. I know some might not have a problem of losing the weight after (I hate those of you, okay so I am jealous) but most people, including me, have to exercise and watch what we eat. We do races, triathlons, eat less treats and the day finally comes when you reach your goal weight and ideal body fat percentage and then you get pregnant again. Right now I hope to have a healthy pregnancy and that is all. What brings all this up? I read this article today and I wanted to sing 3 cheers. Plus I haven't taken pictures in forever and I am at a loss of what to blog about ;) I thought I would share the article. Some of you may not feel the same way, but this is surely how I feel about celebrity fitness. Enjoy....

The December issue of Shape magazine is getting quite a bit of attention—it's the one with 41-year-old Faith Hill on the cover in a bikini.
As she puts it, "Wearing a bikini on a magazine cover is my 41st birthday present to myself."
Well gag me with a shrimp fork.


Faith Hill is a tremendous singer. She's raising three kids, which is hard, hard work. But this photo is just another in a long line of annoying "Aren't I amazing" celebrity features that really ought to come with a warning label.
If Faith Hill's abdomen looks that good after three kids without plastic surgery and a bit of Photoshopping, I'll eat my hat. (I could probably use the fiber anyway.)
Here's my suggested text for that label:

WARNING! ARTICLE CLAIMS DIET AND EXERCISE GAVE 41-YEAR-OLD CELEBRITY A BODY THIS SPECTACULAR. SHE'S ACTUALLY PROBABLY HAD PLASTIC SURGERY, A PERSONAL CHEF, HOURS WITH A TRAINER, AND A LITTLE HELP FROM PHOTOSHOP, SO BEFORE YOU START FEELING GLUM, JUST REMEMBER WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT IS AN ILLUSION, A MANUFACTURED IMAGE TO SELL MAGAZINES DESIGNED TO MAKE YOU FEEL BEASTLY SO THAT YOU SPEND MONEY TO IMPROVE YOUR LOOKS DESPITE THE CRAPPY ECONOMY.

I don't know that Faith Hill is a faker, of course. And at least she's not one of those celebrities who claim to have lost baby weight without exercising. As if, Elizabeth Hurley. And Angelina Jolie, is it possible you had the "mommy tuck" after the twins arrived—and that has a lot more to do with your flat belly than breastfeeding alone? Nobody would blame you for it. You had twins, for crying out loud.

I suppose it's possible that stars like Hill are freaks of nature, unravaged by time and childbearing. After all, the ability to sing that well is proof that Mother Nature fiddled with the recipe a bit. But I seriously doubt it. She claims Pilates three times a week and regular sessions on the elliptical trainer were all it took to give her that perfect body.
"I was always very athletic," she said, "playing basketball and softball and running track. But in my 20s and 30s, I'd go through phases with exercise, working out for four weeks before a big tour or video shoot and not doing much afterward.

Then I had three kids and turned 40, so I decided to make a lifestyle change."
If you're not one of those people who'd describe themselves as "very athletic," you might buy this line of hooey and believe that exercise and diet alone can, in fact, give you the body of a 20-year-old even if you're 41 with three kids.

It's not true, at least not for most of us. I've been an athlete my whole life, not just the two weeks before I shot my music videos, I mean, my driver's license photos. I get it from my mom, a marathon runner who can beat that muscle-bound slacker Ryan Reynolds, even though she's almost 65. (My mom can also run circles around that blowhard Diddy, something that gives me unseemly amounts of joy.)

But Mom's had five kids and even as fit as she is, her abdomen droops like a tea bag. Mine is the same way after just two babies. This is why I thought I'd up my exercise significantly this fall to see whether I could get a celebrity-fit body.

To my regular running and yoga routine, I added four vigorous kickboxing classes a week. This meant I'd need to find more than 8 hours a week to exercise—practically a part-time job--but if that's what it took for me to restore my abdomen to its former (though never spectacular) condition, then it seemed worth it.

I didn't go on a diet, but I didn't add any calories to what I'd normally eat, and I was careful to make myself protein-rich, carbohydrate-light organic meals at home.
The result? Nearly three months later, I can now do 65 pushups in 60 seconds. This is a good score. If you want to pass basic combat training in the army, for example, you only need to do 50 in two minutes. I can do more than 50 sit-ups in a minute, which also beats the army's standards. (Um, does anyone else think the army should have higher standards if middle-aged mothers can beat them?)

So how's my belly? One word: pathetic. It looks like a bowl of rising bread dough, or like sand dunes at a really sad beach. Wait, no. It's a tube sock that has lost all its elastic. So in other words, a person can be in great shape and still look like a cross between the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Little Lulu.

I'm more or less at peace with this. Having kids certainly changed my life. It's no wonder it changed my body. I wish I look like a 20-year-old, but I wouldn't trade my kids or the experience of raising them for anything. Nor would I have purely cosmetic surgery, not when there is such great need in the world.

The celebrity mothers who pretend they don't go to extraordinary lengths to look the way they do should be ashamed of themselves, though. They're not coming clean with fans, and they're making it seem like you can achieve physical perfection if you do all the right things.
The truth is, those of us who are regular folk can do all the right things with diet and exercise, even if means we have to get our flabby old selves out of bed before dawn. We can try our best, and we can still be completely and utterly flawed. So it is with life in general.

When my 41st birthday comes around, my present to myself won't be a bikini shot on the cover of a magazine. I hope I'll be able to appreciate my ruined stomach for what it is—a map of my life's experiences, and something to be loved more for its very imperfections. When your next big birthday comes around, I'll wish the same for you.

Good Times. Good Times.

I had an exceptional weekend. It started with my friend's husband watching out chillin's Friday morning while we went and saw Twilight. What a sight. We went to the 10:15 AM showing of the movie and I would say about half of the people there were my mom's age (we were kind of thinking it would happen since the teeny boppers would be in school). Little did we know they would be just as gitty to see the movie as the teenagers. I kid you not, the lady in front of us yelled 'I love you Edward!' when the movie started. What the?! I love it.

Another peculiar finding was that once again about half of the people in the theatre had their OWN ginormous bucket of popcorn along with their huge soda. Okay so some people had nachos with their huge soda or a huge bag of candy with their soda, but we were like do people not know that is 10:15 in the morning. Weird.

Here are my thoughts on the movie. I went to it with low expectations. After all, movies based on books are never as good, they always leave (what I feel) are important info out and the like. Plus, had any of you seen the posters and pictures of who they picked for Edward? Enough said.

However, overall I liked the movie. Yes, there were awkward moments (the heavy breathing during the kissing scene, anyone?) or things they changed that didn't seem to fit: how Edward showed her what happened to his skin when he is the sun, or the grandma sweater Bella wore to the Prom that Alice would have never picked out. But there were things I loved. Like when Jessica was telling Bella about the Cullen's and Edward walked behind her smirking (although you wouldn't know he was reading her mind if you hadn't read the book). Or that Edward ended up being much better looking in the movie than on the posters. And I loved the entire baseball scene. It was just how I imagined it. And Alice pitching the ball with a straight leg and a pointed toe? So Alice. So what are your thoughts on the movie?

Saturday morning we woke up early and drove to see our friends from Colorado that were visiting family in Monroe. We haven't seen them in a year and it was so nice to hang out and catch up. They have a daughter who is 6 months older than Anna and they had so much fun playing together...minus all the struggles they both had with sharing. LOL. In fact, the night before we left, Anna was struggling to fall asleep and so I told her she had to go to bed so that when she got up we could go see the kids. Ross went into her room at 6AM (she normally wakes up at 8) and she was so tired, but she looked at Ross and the first thing she said was 'we go see the kids?" She was so excited she never fell back asleep in the car...oh well.

Saturday the boys watched the 'Holy War' and much to Andrew's dismay Ross was extremely happy with the results. And then Sunday morning we packed up to come back home in time for church. While we were packing up, Jane and Anna sat at the top of the stairs and watched the night light change colors at the bottom. They had so much fun yelling out the color that it changed to and then signing that color to each other. Why do I even by kids toys? These were the only pictures I got of our family or kids during our stay. I was having way too much fun and totally forgot about taking pictures - whoops!

Sunday after church my wonderful cousin Pam invited us over for dinner. Have I told you much I dispise cooking right now? It was thoroughly enjoyable to have a home cooked meal that I didn't have to cook. Plus Anna loved to go and play there too. This isn't the best picture of me (I am in a deep coversation with Pam about Twilight of course), but it shows how happy Anna is when we are there - even when it is her bed time and she did not have a nap that day - impressive!

To Answer Your Question,,,,

Yes, I am indeed pregnant. No, I don't fully understand what I have gotten myself into, but we are very excited nonetheless. There are definitely days when Anna seems to think pushing all of my buttons is the funnest thing in the world that I wonder why I thought I could handle another one...but then I remember that I felt the very same way when I was pregnant with Anna and so far nothing has made me happier (sans marrying Ross) than having Anna in my life, so why not double the joy if you know what I mean.

Hopefully I will answer all your questions. I was just going to answer them in the comments section of my last post, but then I didn't know if any of you who actually wanted to know would go back and read through the comments to find my response. So I guess now everyone is forced to know - bwa ha ha. And contrary to what it may sound like from reading this, I am happy and enjoying the fact that I am pregnant - I am just in the not so fun part and you can most likely expect my posts to sound the same come weeks 35 and on. LOL.

This pregnancy has not been similar to Annabelle's, in fact because it wasn't, I was convinced that I was indeed not pregnant at all for a while. That is until about week 6 when I woke up wanting to puke and have continued to have that feeling with me almost 24/7 since then. Now I don't actually puke, just want to, so I know I shouldn't complain because there are many a women out there who have it much worse than I. About the only thing that will help calm my stomach a little is carbonation...something I haven't drank in 8 years...naturally.

I have had no weird food cravings (with Anna I wanted hamburgers every meal for a week- Ross was in heaven), but if something sounds good I can't stop thinking about it until I eat it. Then I just have to eat it once and I could care less for it in the future. Right now I could really go for some sort of spinach salad with fruit and a yummy vinaigrette dressing, but that is only because my previous craving for Chick fil A was fulfilled due in part to my great mom. One food aversion? Liquids, especially water. Weird. I know. And something I kind of have to force myself to get over because ummm, something about not living without it? But just thinking about it...bleh. Another thing that sounds terrible is anything involving cake or pumpkin. I am pretty sure it is because I made the cake pops and pumpkin cookies with pumpkin kisses right before I got sick. So if anyone is wanting some of the bags of Pumpkin Spice Hershey Kisses, I would be MORE THAN WILLING to unload them.

I am still running and exercising, although it is not happening 6 days a week like before. Mostly because I was an A.M. person and that has become no more. Not because I feel any better in the evening, but because at least then I don't have to drag myself out of bed as well. So hopefully that will change when the first trimester ends.

Speaking of, my due date is around June 20th. I say around because they first said it was the 11th (which I never believed) but had figured it to be the 18th and then the doctor told me it would be the 24th and I don't agree with him at all. Can I do that? Well I am, cause if his due date is right then I shouldn't have been able to have a positive pregnancy test when I did. But in my head I am just going to tell myself that I won't have this baby until the end of July or something so that when I go late, like I did with Anna, I hopefully won't go as insane.

On a somewhat related note. Last week I got together with some fabulous friends to eat and chat - two of the things I am very best at - and I made some of these. Since we have no Sprinkles cupcakes here in Utah, this would have to be the next best thing. When I had decided to make the cupcakes, they still sounded good....not so much by the time our GNO rolled around. I don't even know if they tasted any good because I didn't try one, but I think they still turned out pretty.

Annabelle's Quirks

Annabelle got tagged by Amelia about a month ago (sorry Becky) and I am supposed to list 5 things you may not know about Annabelle.

1- She knows cars...well. Ross' parents have a Buick and there is one parked in front of our building and when she walks by it she will point at the Buick logo and say 'Grandpa's car'. Also, my cousin that frequently watches Annabelle, owns a Ford Focus. There happens to be a Ford focus that parks next to our car (not even the same color, mind you) and refers to it as 'Sydney's car' (Pam's daughter). There are more examples, but I will spare you....for once.

2- She wants nothing to do with cookies, cake, or ice cream (which is actually a blessing). But candy is another story. It can be so hard to say 'no' to her when she says 'Pease Mommy candy for Anna.'

3- She has the energy of 5 kids (as you may have witnessed in the previous post) and can run around, swing from my treadmill and giggle non stop. However, if 'Signing Time' or 'Word World' is on there is no way you could break her attention from the TV.

4- Annabelle has always loved to read - ever since she was a couple of months old. She loves being read to and 'reading' all by herself. She will read anything with letters on it (she loves to point them out). If she is being quiet for more than 2 seconds, most likely she is in her room surrounded by books and/or tearing my house apart.

5- Annabelle loves this baby set my mom has at her house - she played with it for 5 hours straight one Saturday. So she got one of her own. Every day when she wakes up in the morning and from her nap she no longer asks about her broken binky, but 'Where is da baby?' or 'Anna play with baby now?' She has hardly touched her other toys since she got it. I am hoping it will help prepare her for when she gets a baby brother or sister. My doctor mentioned something about it happening in June.....

Have You Ever Wondered?

Do you ever wonder what your child does when you put them in their crib to go to sleep? As I have mentioned before, Annabelle will talk herself silly before she actually falls asleep. Some days, like today, it was only 15 minutes. Others, like Saturday, can be much longer. Saturday Ross put Anna down for her nap while I went running. When I came back he told me that he wanted to see what Anna does when she is not sleeping and making so much noise. So he set up the camera to record Anna. The video was originally 51 minutes (that's right!) long, but Ross sped it up 8x to make it a very entertaining 6 minutes. The video was taken after she had already managed to take off her shirt and play with the flowers on her wall (the reason why they are crooked, the eyes on my head aren't lop sided). So if you got 6 minutes, sit down and enjoy. It is worth your time and now you can all know what your kids do when they are supposed to be sleeping :)

A Very Belated Halloween Recap

It's been crazy around here, including the girl on the 3rd floor of our building flooding her apartment and it leaking through the second floor and finally to our floor last night, so I haven't had much time to upload these photos and write this post. I am a week late, so humor me while I do a recap of our Halloween weekend.

It started Wednesday evening when our ward had a trunk or treat, chili cook off and a party. It turned out awesome. Even though I am saddened that more kids go trunk or treating than door to door, it's quite the way to make a killing on the candy very quickly! Anna was more interested running up and down the hill than collecting candy and her new favorite thing to do is to dump....anything - it gets really fun. Here she is dumping out her candy as I try and stop her.

They also let the kids decorate sugar cookies. I tried to frost Anna's as quickly as possible while she was already trying to add her toppings. She dumped a huge handful of both sprinkles and m&m's on top of each other in one spot on the cookie.

She wanted nothing to do with the cookie or the sticky frosting - she just wanted to eat the candy. She is triumphant as she held the m&m in the air and yelled 'Oh Mommy! CANDY!'

Friday night Anna went trick or treating with her cousins Bradee and Maddison and afterwords we headed to the 2nd annual 'Hutchison Halloween Hoopela'. Seeing as how I am an honorary member of their family, my family too was invited. We had all sorts of yummy and festive food - I only got a picture of a few things because I was soon distracted and just began eating it all.

My mummy pizzas

We played lots of fun games. The Hutchisons know how to do holidays right people and dressing up WAS required. So I sported the last Halloween costume I have worn, which was my senior year of high school...I was a waitress from the Crashdown Cafe from the show Roswell :) Thanks Jenny for the idea.


The main event was the Halloween Olympics. I borrowed these pictures from Marie's blog because I was not able to take pictures of the events seeing as how I was in them. We had Donut Eating Contest (winner-tie between Natalie and Ross), the Broomstick Pull (I dominated at this game, thank you very much), Candle Blowing Contest, Jello Hunt, a Howling contest, and a game where we spelled a Halloween word with our bodies. I am very proud to say that team 'Peanut M&M's a.k.a. Marcia and I (our motto was 'we are nuts') came out victorious. For a full recap please see here.


Saturday night we went to a Halloween party with some of Ross' friends (who just so happened to have married some of my friends too - great how that worked out). The little kids had fun playing with each other while we ate yummy soup, went on a scavenger hunt, had a donut eating contest and filmed the most random short story/movie I have ever seen.

The donut eating contest was hilarious. Everyone but Faith and I participated, as there needed to be judges and I eat slow so there is no way I would win. It was so funny to watch everyone try and eat these donuts. One even fell to the garage floor and it still got eaten. The winner was Chapman because he chose the wimpiest donut I ever did see (see picture below).

Thanks Ben and Ash for hosting. It was so fun to see everyone and their kiddos (or soon to be kiddos)! After this Halloween I realized Ross and I are lame for not dressing up like everyone else. So for the next year I will be thinking of costumes we can all sport and ways to convince Ross to go along with it....

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

My post has nothing to do with the song, other than the fact that these wonderful events happened yesterday, Sunday.

First, while giving my child a bath I laughed at her farting in the tub. She laughed too and said 'bubbles!' Bad idea. I should have known. Seconds later she quickly stands up and looks down at her feet. I followed her gaze to see her staring at, you guessed it people, poo! She pooed in the tub. I wanted to hurl! I then had to fish out the poop, drain the water, clean the tub and fill it with water again to give her a bath. A bath in which she was scrubbed like she has never been scrubbed before. All while Anna was scrambling to get out of the tub because she was 'all done Mommy pease' and I was trying to restrain her.

Then I got her dressed for church, she ate lunch and I put her down for a nap. (Daylight savings actually worked great for a nap and late church yesterday) Any who, I went in to wake her up to go to church and this is how I found her.

Mind you I had checked on her after she had fallen asleep and she was not like this. Somehow she managed to take off her dress and pull down her leggins and diaper in her sleep. I have no idea how she managed to take off her dress either because it was still tied in the back and everything.

When she saw her tub this morning she said 'Anna poop in da tub. No poop inna da tub huh Mommy?'