My Life Is Now Complete

So I just got tagged. I hate these surveys when they come in the form of an email, but for a blog, I'm all for it. I did the math and if everyone follows through, tagging five legitimate bloggers, and those tagged actually visit the five blogs on the list, your blog will receive 3,125 visits by the time your name falls off the top of the list. If they like you, they might come back regularly to read more. If your readership expands, that's cool. Because you can get, like, money and stuff... and that's cool. So here I go.
______________________________

Remove the blog from the top, move all the blogs up one, and add yourself to the bottom.

Novembrance
The Lyon's Tale
Sundial in the Shade
Inksplasher
ShrekLovesFiona

What were you doing ten years ago?
I was 15 years old, in my first boyfriend's room teaching him how to play the guitar. He thought Stairway to Heaven was so cool so we were listening to it, trying to pick it out. That song was entirely too long and old for me, but I enjoyed it anyway because I was "in love". He's now a famous guitar player. My claim to fame.

What were you doing one year ago?
Working on launching my company, Urban Botanic. It's been an amazing ride and so much fun!

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Vanilla protein shake mixed with a handful of oats, a pinch of banana creme pudding powder, a spoonful of peanut butter, and ice... swirled around in my Magic Bullet for 15 seconds. Better than icecream and my breakfast every morning I'm in the mood to cheat on my diet.
2. Green apple slices with Laughing Cow cheese on top.
3. Fresh strawberries.
4. Butterdillas (quesadillas, but with butter instead of cheese)
5. Carter's cheeks.

Five songs you know all the lyrics to:
1. Baby Got Back
2. Ice, Ice, Baby
3. Shoop
4. Edelweiss
5. You Are My Sunshine
I know the words to many more, but these are the ones I'm most proud of because 1-3 are particularly difficult and fun to sing, and 4-5 make my son's face light up.

Things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Build my dream house and hire a full time personal chef and housekeeper.
2. Start an insurance fund, providing the best health, car, life, and home insurance money can buy for all my friends and family.
3. Visit all the corners of the world and watch people live in their own unique ways.
4. Grow my money through businesses and investing.
5. Buy my Tokidoki purse... several of them.

Five bad habits:
1. Sleeping in
2. Working too much
3. Swearing
4. Letting the mail pile up
5. Not calling people from church back

Five things you like to do:
1. Create fragrances
2. Watch SYTYCD
3. Create music
4. Talk nonstop
5. Graphic Design

Things you will never wear again:
1. The pair of jeans I just took to goodwill because they're now one size too big.
2. Tapered leg pants
3. A retainer
4. Eyeliner (it's now tattooed on)
5. Acrylic nails

Five favorite toys:
1. Computer
2. Dance, Dance, Revolution
3. My under-counter-mounted radio, DVD, TV, and iPod player, the only thing that keeps me sane while cooking and cleaning.
4. It's really sad that I can only think of three toys.
5. I think it's because I work all the time.

Where will I be in ten years?
In the Bahamas with my UB Fragrance Designers or my family.

Five people to tag:
1. Natasha
2. Steve
3. Chante
4. Ryan - you KNOW you want to!
5. Dooce, since she visits my blog all the time.

Summer Reading Thing!

I decided to join Karlene over at InkSplasher in her Summer Reading Thing Program. You make some reading goals for the summer, link up to her website, and then write at least one review on the books you read. She's giving out prizes, books, and gift certificates for participants. If you want to join, click here, it will be fun!

So, I've chosen my books for the summer:

Bridge to Terabithia
I read this one in about 4th grade. I can't remember anything about it except that I loved it very much. I missed it in theaters, so I thought I'd give it another read before renting the movie.

The 5th Horseman
James Patterson's 5th contribution to his lazily written Women's Murder Club series. I say lazy because clearly the man can do better, but his fame allows him to go for quantity instead of quality. Plot-holes and all, it's still very addictive.

New Moon
My friend, Kristen, turned me on to a book called Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. To be honest I only bought the book for its cover, despite Kristen's warning that it was a poorly-written piece of teen lit. Several hundred pages later, I found myself worrying what I'd do when I reached the end of the story. There would be no more nights with my favorite vampire, Edward Cullen. I later found out this is Stephenie's first book, which is pretty impressive. If you can get through some awkward dialogue, it's a magical tale. New Moon is the sequel. It's saying something when I tell you I'm reading it even though it's only in hardback. I can't hold a hardback book up while lying in my back in bed for more than 5 pages, and it's no use propping on the pillow, because the last 3 lines of text on each page get swallowed in feathers.

The 4-Hour Workweek
Sounds very appealing, doesn't it?

The Four Agreements
This book just makes me happy. It's a book on Toltec wisdom that teaches four agreements you should make with yourself in order to lead a life where you're completely truthful to yourself. I read the first half of it some time ago when it was given to me as a gift, but never finished.

So there they are, my 5 books for Summer reading. Which order I read them in will be played by ear, but I promise to review each of them here.

First Smiles!

Okay, I'm not intending this blog to turn into a Carter gallery, but it just so happens I never have time to write about anything useful and even then, I can only do it one-handed, so that's my lame excuse. Not that it's torture to look at Carter though. Seriously, could you die?

He started smiling several days ago and we just today captured one with the camera. YAY!

5 Weeks Old

Loving his swing.

Loving his sling.

They taste like chicken.

With his buddy Gavin, they were born on the same day.

Hello, Mommy!

3 Weeks Old and He Found a Foot Rest

First Bath

Five Days Old

This is a big mystery... how I found, you found me.

Yeah, Baby!

I don't have time to pour my heart out, which is the only thing I want to do for an announcement like this, so this will have to make do - along with the dishes :)

Yesterday afternoon we brought home our beautiful baby boy. Here he is all bundled up and ready to leave the hospital, showing his first little bit of attitude.

Is it just me?

Or is everyone most thoroughly enjoying Simon's relentless sexual harassment toward Haley Scarnato week after week?

"Unleash The Wild Side of Sanjaya"? Come On!

Sorry, but I just can't handle the first several grueling weeks of American Idol auditioning. It doesn't entertain me in the least bit and although America seems to get her kicks out of those few gems who are exceptionally "special", it's painful for me to watch. Truthfully, I'd rather shave my tongue. Ew. Now that we're in the bottom 12, I can actually bear my way through watching the rest of the season. Tonight's vote-off was no surprise. I felt it was justified. True, Sanjaya shouldn't be here but every season has that one person no one can stand that keeps going through to the next round so can you really be shocked?

Skipping over Chris Richardson, Chris Sly, Stephanie, Gina, and Phil (my next several picks to go home)...

The only reason Haley's not in the "no-comment" list above is because I can't help but point out the double-sided tape holding her shirt on for dear life. Am I the only one who noticed?

I felt Jordin sang fabulously, but needs to gain a little more control over those long notes. I sensed a nervous vibrato.

I'm so sad for that poor little girl crying in the audience. Everyone thought she was crying because she's Sanj's biggest fan, but it looked more like she pooped her pants and didn't know what to do about it. She looked terrified, although she's trying so very hard to keep it together and act natural so no one will notice.

Watch and you'll agree (sorry it's interspersed with lots of Sanj-nastiness):


Melinda Doolittle's "As Long As He Needs Me" was simply amazing. Top 4, I say.

Totally beside the point, every once in a while glimpses of Peter Noone look exactly like a blonde version of my uncle Steve.

A Much Needed Vaca

Steve and I have been married five years this May. We took a honeymoon but didn't travel far - just to Park City. We didn't have any money and knew we'd end up seeing the world together throughout our life anyway, so we figured why rush? It was perfect.

We keep planning vacations...Vegas extravaganzas, Hawaii, Italy, European tours, several cruises... even got SCUBA certified (well half of us...click to read story) we just never would put a date on our vacations, and somehow ended up here five years later without taking a one.

About 8 months ago we finally planned a vacation and promised this time we couldn't back out or postpone. And now it's upon us! We leave this Saturday on a 7 day cruise. I wish it would sink in with me...I can't picture myself on the plane or on the boat or on shore excursions or even packing clothes into a suitcase for that matter. It's so surreal and I'm completely freaking out about leaving my Dino and my Urban Botanic for 8 whole days. Breathe in.... Breathe out... On the other hand I'm totally excited to breathe in and breathe out in Belize and Honduras and Costa Maya and wherever else we're going.

Several of my friends had babies over the last few months and if there's anything I've learned from carefully watching and interviewing them, it's that this vacation of ours is much needed and in perfect timing. Apparently as soon as our baby arrives, vacations will be a no-go for several years. Well, we'll just have to see about that.

Digging Through Pictures

I was digging through some pictures today and found a few of my favorites from our wedding day. My how time flies.
I love this man.

Surprise, Surprise

Last week I received some exciting news. Utah Valley Magazine is a great, high-end magazine distributed locally. I was just flipping through the February issue and was very surprised to find that the magazine named my company in the top 3 "Best Products Made in Utah Valley". I was so excited, I asked the magazine to send me a PDF of everything so I could send it to my friends. Click here to view the article in a PDF... Very exciting!

An update on my smelly endeavors - Urban Botanic is now in 17 states and we're growing day by day. It is such a JOY to build this company and come to work each day with a great support system and the most wonderful fragrance designing Scent Consultants around the nation who are excited about our products and creating a business for themselves!

For those of you that missed it, I was also on TV last fall. It's pretty mortifying - what will I wear? What if I mess up? What if you can see beads of sweat running down my face? What if I accidentally snort while laughing? OMG WHAT.IF.I.FART.ON.TELEVISION? Then what???!?




So, it turned out okay. I didn't make a complete fool of myself, but it's still complete torture to watch. I cringe at my voice and my laugh... but I guess wouldn't we all - it's the self-critic thing. The bright side? I consider it practice for being on the Oprah show.

Pushing for $6300

It's Thursday again and I just had my weigh in for the week. I am now 242.3 lbs. That's 5.3 lbs less than last Thursday and another 2.13% body weight.

I promised I'd tell you what I am doing to lose weight. There are two things. One is my diet and exercise regime and the other is my motivation source. And here they are:

Diet
I'm doing a program called Isagenix and it's the easiest diet I've ever followed (and I've followed pretty much all of them). It's easier than Weight Watchers, South Beach, etc. My mindset has changed, so I know that's some of it, but what I love about it is that it is completely automated for me. I don't have to THINK about food which is a great thing because as soon as I start thinking about food, I start drooling over cheese and chocolate - although not together... hmmm maybe something to try as a reward sometime.

Motivation
I'm in a group of local people competing to lose weight. We all put in money each week which goes into a bank account set up for the group. Each week is a mini-contest on its own because the "Biggest Loser" for the given week, doesn't have to pay anything for the next week in the contest. 2nd place only pays a small fraction, 3rd place a bigger fraction, 4th place gets a small discount, and everyone else pays full price. There's enough people in the competition that the end winning pot includes $6300 cash for the one with the most percentage of weight loss. For me, because I'm bigger, this will be a challenge because if I lose 10 lbs and someone small loses 10 lbs, their 10 lbs kicks butt all over my 10 lbs. Last week with 4.9 lbs and 1.63% loss, I was in 16th place - still 15 from the bottom! ROUGH COMPETITION! Results don't come out until tomorrow morning but I did better this week than last and I have a feeling this is going to be a "tortoise and the hair" race. I may not be losing 14 lbs per week like our current winner (what on earth is she doing!?) but she'll slow down and I'm NOT backing out!

Wish me luck for next week.

Beginning Weight: 252.0
Current Weight: 242.6
Next Weeks Goal: 236.6lbs

Back In The Saddle

Ok I know rule #3 for blogging is to never make excuses about why you haven't been posting... So I won't! I was going to wait until my one year anniversary of slackerdom, which I believe would be May 17th but SURPRISE! My three readers get an early treat!

I have always hated New Year's resolutions. My New Year's resolution is usually to avoid the peer pressure of making a New Year's resolution. Simply because it's usually just a set up for failure and I believe if you want to improve upon yourself, you shouldn't wait until the new year. Do it now. Same with starting diets on Mondays. "Well, it's Thursday now, so I'm going to go ahead and order the onion rings because my diet doesn't start for 3 more days." We do it all the time.

This year, I'm taking a different approach. I do have some resolutions, but I'm trying not to associate them with the new year because of how that pattern goes. One is to stop swearing and the other is to lose weight. Both are out of control.

About 4.5 years ago I had some sort of endocrine FREAK OUT and in a couple of months time gained almost 100 lbs. It happened so fast I didn't even realize it. It was like one day I woke up, looked in the mirror, and went... "whoa, I'm fat!" I went from a size 10 to a size 20 but I didn't have time to buy any of the sizes in between because it really happened that fast. There are still imbalances in my body from the FREAK OUT, but things have in general worked themselves out. Now it's time to get this weight off. The only problem is, I've been faking myself out with negative thoughts like, "My body can't lose weight because I've been diagnosed with PCOS and dis-metabolic syndrome, and Syndrome X" Yes there really is a "Syndrome X". If you Google it, you'd think I couldn't lose weight either, but it's time for me to STOP letting the negative things doctors have been telling me all along affect my mindset. These negative thoughts I've had the last 5 years have been a toxic and enormous contributor to my maintaining this unhealthy state. I really have tried healthy ways of losing weight. But all the while, in the back of my head, I've wondered if they will work because of my Syndrome X. That shred of doubt is what failed me.

So time to poke a little hole in my mitote and start a new agreement with myself: I can lose weight. I have the same miracle human body as everyone else.

I'll tell you later about my weight loss plan, but for now, every Thursday at 11:30am is weigh-in time. Last Thursday my starting weight was 252. Today it is 247.9. That's 4.1 lbs in one week, people.

PS - Mitote is a "dream" or a haze we all have that makes up our perception of the world around us. Read about it in "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz. I love this book.