Camping

Growing up I hated camping and fishing and anything that had to do with the outdoors. I tried to carry that into my marriage, but when Mike and I decided to go camping for the first time a couple years after we were married, I have not been able to carry that since. I decided that when I was younger I didn't like being cooped up with my siblings. We also would always go camping to Island Park reservoir and we would sit on the bank all day with our fishing poles out there just waiting to catch something. I more than hated fishing for this reason. I thought it was so boring so I learned to bring books or cross stitches that I was working on at the time and sit out in the sun and try to stay busy.

When Mike and I decided to go camping and fishing a couple years into our marriage, I didn't know if I was going to enjoy it or not. We bought fishing licenses for Wyoming, we camped at Grays River, in a tent, which I had only done a handful of times before because we had a trailer growing up. He also taught me how to fish in the river, which I absolutely loved!

So over the last almost 12 years of marriage, we have been camping quite a fe times and fishing lots of times! We love the river fishing and were able to go into the high Uintas last year for our anniversary and I was pulling spawning cocane salmon out of the river right and left. When they spawn they turn red, so it was so fun to see all these red fish in the river. That was my most memorable fishing/camping trip and anniversary!

This year, we decided to go somewhere different.  We decided on Starvation Reservoir, which is right about Deushne. Once you get past Heber City through the next canyon, it all of the sudden gets so baron! It is all desert! Lots of sand, sage brush, jack rabbits and lizards. Camping was much different, since it was mostly sandy.  We even got our can stuck once and had to find someone to pull us out.

My kids are good at making new friends wherever we go, and they made friends with some people that were fishing for crawdads. It was so much fun, we will definitely be doing that again! It is really easy. You just tie a chicken leg in a piece of twine to a stick and put it out there like a fishing pole and just wait. That crawdads come out from under sticks and rocks and grab onto the chicken and you slowly pull them up and catch them with a net. They were going to have a crawdads boil and eat them, they say they are really good.


The kids also had fun playing in the reservoir and trying to stay cool, it was pretty warm during the day. Warm days and cool nights are so wonderful! We also had a little rain here and there. One night we decided to make the hour plus drive to Vernal. They have a sit down Pizza Hut, where we had dinner. We also wanted to drive by and see the temple there. It is very different. It's not white like most are, it is brick. We also went to the Museum of natural history there, where they had lots of dinosaur fossils that were dug in the Vernal area. Really fun.

By the end we were so exhausted and just wanted to get home, so we just packed up first thing and took off when we were ready. We stopped back in Heber City and had lunch and let the kids play at the park and then on to home. It really was the most wonderful camping trip full of fun and crawdads! We plan to make it back there another time. Hope your family camping trips are just as uh fun as ours have been! Now on to planning the next one!

Challenge: day 11

Day 11 went well! Doing good with the shakes, just finding out that I need to modify a few things. I realize I have been getting way to many fruits, not enough veggies and the wrong kind of snacks. Had some trail mix, which is pretty good for you, other than the yummy m&ms. The couple cookie I had that day though, aren't the right thing to eat. I need to be more strict with myself. Had a double turkey burger with cheese, lettuce and tomatoes, yum! And some cauliflower. I was going to go to the gym this night, but I had an allergy treatment and you are not supposed to exercise within 6 hours of a treatment, so instead I put on my Hot Pants and cleaned my kitchen! I worked up quite a sweat, and my kitchen was so clean! I haven't seen my counter top in I don't know how long! Months maybe! The only thing I didn't get done was the floor mopped. I even got the towels folded and put away and the family room cleaned. I got a lot done and may have lost a couple inches in the process, very pleased with myself. So I am learning from my mistakes and day 12 will be just great!

Challenge: days 6 - 10

So it has been a little while since the last post, as I said it would be. So to backtrack, day 6 was busy and full of preparing for camping: packing, cleaning, finding everything, you know how it goes. I did pretty well with my diet, trying to eat good, etc. I did have a candy bar that night, which I shouldn't have, but in finding things, found that one of my kids had taken it from my room and was hiding it, so obviously something had to been done about that. I did find one of my favorite treats that I want to keep on hand. I don't know how bad they are for you, but they are called apricot coconut logs. You find them at Winco in the bulk section. I think they are dried, ground apricots rolled in coconut. It's not even sweetened coconut I don't think, but they have just enough sweet and flavor and are yummy. I love shopping at Winco!

Day 7 was our first camping day. I had my shake in the morning and figured while camping I would just try to take it easy and have a shake for breakfast and then we planned sandwiches for lunch and hamburgers and hotdogs for dinner, not the best I know. Well, I had my shake in the morning and then by lunch, we didn't want to stop somewhere and try to make sandwiches, so we stopped at Carl's Jr. I wasn't very good. I had a crispy chicken sandwich and sweet potato fries, but I am doing good with no soda, I had light lemonade. Then we headed on to Starvation reservoir.  (I will post pics and more about that later).

We set up camp that night and made some hamburgers and hotdogs. I had a hamburger with a whole wheat thin bun. Have you ever tried those? We love them for burgers and sandwiches. I don't feel like I have a huge bun with my burger. I was good though, I passed up s'mores!

Day 8 and 9 were pretty much the same, shake for breakfast, sandwich for lunch with chips, but on Friday we decided to drive into Vernal. It is just over an hour from Starvation, and it was going to rain, so we decided to go see the temple there. It is quite different than most, it is not white, it is brick. We also went to the museum of natural history, since there are many dinosaur bones and fossils that have been found around the Vernal area. It was kind of fun, a good way to kill time. Then we stopped at Pizza Hut, since they have a sit down one there, and had some pizza and cheese sticks. We were so exhausted the end of that day, Mike was asleep sometime after 9, I didn't go to sleep until after 11.  The next day we had breakfast and packed up. It was hot and we worked hard and it took us at least an hour to get everything packed up, so I felt like I worked off e everything I ate, which was a shake and some hash browns. That day we stopped in Heber City and let the kids play at the park and had sandwiches. We were home early enough that day to relax and put some things away and then to have left over hamburgers and hotdogs that we didn't eat there.

Day 10 was Sunday again, always an easy day to be good. I weighed myself first thing and noticed, that even with camping and not eating well, I only gained 2 oz, so I'm not to far behind what I was a week ago, but now I need to make this week really count! I had my two shakes yesterday and for dinner had ratatouille! Have you ever had it? I love it! I found the recipe at www. Zonya.com under her recipe section. It has eggplant, zucchini/yellow squash, onions, peppers, chicken, spices and tomatoes. We got eggplant for our co op last week and I decided to make that. We eat it over brown rice, it is really good, so I got my lean meat, lots of veggies, a fruit and a whole grain. Not bad for a balanced meal. So I am learning. Hope you all have a great day, I will post about our camping trip and later when I can pull pics off my camera and will post my accomplishments again tomorrow.

Day 5

Day 5 of my challenge went well. I did well with my shakes and eating wasn't to bad. I do need to eat more veggies though I realize. I love the energy drink mix, I think that is my favorite in how I feel. I was starting to get kind of tired by 1:30 or 2 and just mixed that up and immediately felt so much better! I love that it is natural to, no caffeine! It is all herb based, so very good for you! It just perks you up and makes you feel good.

I did exercise a little, which consisted of my shake weight. A 6 minute workout with that make we fell like I have been lifting weights for hours. My arms were sore! I have to firm up my "relief society arms" though so Sundays aren't embarrassing for me.

Overall my 90 day challenge is going great! I am loving every minute of it. I feel great, I am starting to lose weight and inches and I foresee a shopping trip in my near future!

A couple weeks ago I discovered something called energy profiling. It is quite fascinating! I have come to find I am very much a type 1! I am bubbly, animated, want everyone to be happy, have many ideas that most get started and not finished, even down to the way I cook and clean is very much type 1! I just need to learn what kind of things to wear for my type and my wardrobe will be much less hanging in the closet and more wearing. If you are interested in learning more, go to www.myenergyprofile.com. You can learn about your energy profile for free. It is pretty fun. Carol Tuttle is one that discovered this and she lives in Salt Lake, so kind of fun for her to be so close. Go check it out for yourself.

I may not have another post for a few days, since we are leaving tomorrow to go camping for a few days. It will be so much fun, but I don't know how well it is going to work with this challenge. I will take enough for shakes in the morning, but we will be hiking and out and about after that and I don't know how well a shake will do being packed around, so I am taking trail mix, fruit, veggies and will just take it easy and try not to overdo it on my eating. One thing nice though will be that we will be walking a lot, so I should work off most of what I eat. Wish me luck and everyone have a fun few days. While I'm gone, check out my older posts, there are some yummy recipe concoctions of my own as well as other ideas and fun things. See you when I get back.

Day 4 Body by Vi challenge

Day 4, this seems to be going pretty fast. Maybe I'm just looking forward to our camping trip in a couple days that it just seems like time is going fast.

My day yesterday started out kind of rough. I was hoping to have gotten out early to go running, since it has been a couple weeks since I last did that, but when the alarm went off at 6:30, I literally COULD NOT pull myself out of bed. I didn't get to bed all the late the night before, so I couldn't figure out why it was so hard. I had done everything the same as the day before, but then I realized that I had forgot to take my omega pill the night before. Don't know if that was the reason why I couldn't get up, but none the less, I couldn't get up, so opted to do some Pilates, which is great to flatten the tummy and get long, lean muscles.

Still loving my shakes, even when I make one that I don't care for to much. Dinner was chicken salad, since I had two heads of lettuce and a package of romaine hearts that really need to be used, plus I am blessed to have kids that love salad! So we had lots of veggies. We went on a hike after dinner since we are planning on hiking while we are camping so we are trying to condition ourselves, but more the kids for walking longer than 10 minutes. We are so blessed in Ogden to have some of the most wonderful hiking trails! One of our favorites is Bird Song trail. We took rainbow trail last night up to the fork where you can either go to 22nd street or Bonneville shoreline. Round trip it took us about an hour. It wasn't to hot and it's not steep but just perfect. We love living in Ogden! 

One thing about salad...you work it off quick! We were all kind of hungry after, but it was bed time for the kids by the time we got home. That could be why they got into my cold storage and took a bag of chocolate chips and were up before 6:30 this morning. Crazy kids. So even when I want to sleep in, I can't.

Now we're into day 5, can't wait to see what today brings! We got paid today, so now I need to pay bills and go shopping for camping. Hope your days turns out sunny and bright!

Reading

I am so hooked on reading lately! I absolutely love my kindle app and have over 800 books just waiting for me to read! I get new ones every week, and I think I have only paid for 3! Some of these books that I have read so far have been so good! I am loving it! Murder mystery are some of my favorites. One was by a gal in cache valley that took place there and was about a girl who ran a 5k and then won an entry to the St George marathon and went through her training, while at the same time, she finds out her dad, who was shot years ago is still alive and has been helping free slaves outside the country who are being shipped here. It was so good and got me started into running.

My most recent book is one that I bought from  Desseret Book to get discount Lagoon passes. It is called "The Walk" by Richard Paul Evans. I have loved his books. This one I couldn't put down and finished in two days, only to find out that there is two more books that come after and another to come. It was a great story about a guy who loses his wife to an accident and leaves everything to walk from Seattle to Florida! All the books go through the people that he meets along the way and how he helps them in one way or another. I am going to go look for the next books. I found them on kindle for about $8, but I think I want them in print. There was something in this first book that really touched me and I want to share with you, because you never know who might come into our lives and even though they may not be with us for long, they always leave something with us that we remember and learn from, so here is what I want you to think about:

"God puts people in our lives for a reason. Only through serving others can we save ourselves."

Isn't that great!? My challenge to you: find someone you can serve today, in anyway at all! You will be blessed and so will they, and our world will a little better because of us! Love you!

Day 2 & 3 Body by Vi challenge

Can I just tell you how good I am feeling! I am absolutely loving this challenge! Now I need to start off by saying if you are interested at all in this product and getting the best health, go to this website: http://drbradford.bodybyvi.com/challenge

This is the Dr that is my mentor through this. He and his wife are some of my most favorite people! They are young, like me :), and health conscious and want the best for everyone. He sells these products and can be right there with you helping you down this road! He can also answer any questions you might have through your challenge!

Anyway, day 2 was Saturday, which is usually a hard day for me to be good. I actually did pretty good, but I didn't eat much of a snack in the afternoon and by the time I had dinner on the table, I was famished and we got a pizza from Walmart to bake (these are really good pizzas). Now this wasnt really all that bad, I cut the pieces pretty small, but I was just so hungry, I did over eat a little *hang head in shame* but I still felt it wasn't too bad. Just need to control.

Day 3 was Sunday, an easy day for me to be good. I started off by weighing myself. I weighed last Sunday morning as well and within the week, lost 4 lbs! Two days of that was on my Vi challenge. I love that I was just able to lose instead being the same from Sunday to Sunday. Anyway, Sunday is pretty easy because of church, I am not home for 3+ hours during the day to worry about food, so I take a small snack to eat in between my classes, this works well. I also took my energy drink to drink during the afternoon. Sunday dinner was chicken enchiladas, which were very yummy, and I only had one, so yay for me not taking another! This is one of my favorite dishes and I usually go overboard, so I feel I did well. Then I had some popcorn with my hubby when we watched our show. I have the 99% fat free kind and it is really good, but I should get even more healthy and just pop my own from bulk kernels, I have tons. So I feel that I have done really well over the last week.  I am loving life! I feel great! And I feel that I am on a good path to where I want/need to be. My goal to lose 20 lbs is well within reason and I am very confident that I can get to that goal within the 90 days and if I exceed that, then all the more better! Now I need to just figure out how to firm up the skin on the back of my arms! I lead the singing in sacrament meeting and I think I had some very "relief society arms" going on! (that's what we called it when I was younger) so I need to get rid of the flapping arms, hopefully lifting weights will help that, I plan to start this week lifting, so that I don't have people laughing at me as I'm leading. I would probably start laughing with them, even knowing they are laughing at me! It's good to laugh at yourself though, right? All the more reason to get it in shape fast to save myself the embarrassment! Well until tomorrow, keep on living!