Reminiscing --- Two (insert picture of a bee)-uitiful Girls

Hola!

Happy weekend once again ... times is flying, as usual! I'm glad it's the weekend.

Last night our church had a "drive-in" movie night outside after service (we have a Friday night service along with Sunday ... kinda like a Wednesday night, but on Friday instead). We didn't go to church last night, but as we were eating dinner we were watching it live online and then we remembered that the movie night was last night so we decided, hey, we should go. (Ha, last night's message was entitled "Enjoying Life", so we thought it appropriate to go and enjoy life ; )

Anyways, we didn't even end up watching the movie because we got to talking to people instead. I hadn't seen my best friend since 5th grade, Danelle, in a long time so it was good to "catch up" with her a little bit. I miss you, Danelle!! I'm convinced everyone needs a "Danelle" for a best friend growing up. I was just reminiscing looking through some old pictures and here's some pictures that capture "us" pretty well, haha. Ha, and this might only be funny to us but one time when we were looking through these pictures and we came to this next one, she very seriously and thougtfully said and I quote, "I really like this picture ... (pause) ... except for ... (pause) ... your face". We laughed a lot. I said, so basically, you just like this picture of yourself?? Haha, oh, Danelle! Here's us trying to fly kites with two dollar Disney character kites ... but it was too windy and our kites didn't work very well. I could go on and on about memories with Danelle! I probably would have been quite a boring person without her in my life ... we were constantly and always laughing our heads off!! Pictures just don't even do it justice. I'm so very thankful and blessed to have had all those wonderful years with Danelle and I'm glad nothing can take them away. We don't get to see each other much these days, even though we live in the same town (we moved from NE to MO together after high school) but not matter what, I will always, always remember all the amazingly fun and wonderful times we had together and I will never forget what a great person and wonderful friend Danelle has always been to me : )

Me, Danelle, and my sister, Karmon


Ha, and this last one's for you, Danelle, and you know why ; )

"Normal to everyone else's normal is not normal"
-An original Danelle quote-

Would You Deny For Others What You Demand For Yourself?

Happy Memorial Day!!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend! I'm thankful because my husband and I both have the day off ... yay for three day weekends! ; )

My husband has been slaving away in the backyard redoing our fence in the backyard, as our wonderful dog, Rocky, has been known to jump the fence when she sees something exciting. Along with that, she likes to bark at just about everything that goes by so as to prevent her from jumping the fence and barking at everything, we had to make the fence higher. Thankfully, he got the fence all done ... woo hoo! So we don't have to worry about Rocky jumping over anymore. Thanks, Honey, you're the best!! : ) (Here's him chillin' on the hammock that he also put up. It's been in our garage forever and I forgot we even had it!)As every Sunday morning, we went to church. Our pastor has been doing a series on "Jesus The Storyteller: Parables in Luke" and it's been really good. Yesterday was on "The Rich Man & Lazarus", which is the parable that this song, Crumbs From Your Table, is about. He talked about how Jesus calls us to pay attention to that person you see everyday who people ignore, detest. The kind of people who somehow seem to have gotten picked last in the game of life ... to regard that person as our fellow human being, not as someone insubordinate to ourselves, someone who doesn't matter ... It really hit me hard thinking that, really, if not for where I was born, who I was born to, that could be me. If I had been born in a different country, or to a different family, that could be me sitting there on the street with no food, no place to go, no money, no hope. As the U2 song I mentioned earlier says, "Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?"

Last night we decided to have a pizza, ice cream, movie night because we haven't had pizza in awhile! So, we stopped at Papa Murphy's and got a Chicken & Artichoke thin crust pizza. I had three pieces (and it was very good!). For ice cream, we had Skinny Cow mint ice cream sandwiches. It was a fun night. Random in the truck, driving down the road picture: Hope you all have had a great weekend! And if you didn't see it already, please check out my recent review of Amazing Grass here ... I was impressed!

"You save yourself from selfishness when you give to someone who cannot repay you"
-Brian Zahnd-

Amazing Grass = Amazing!

AMAZING GRASS

As I mentioned, I recently received a wonderful package from Amazing Grass to review. After looking at their website before getting the package, I was already very excited! And upon getting the package, I was definitely not disappointed. The package was full of tons of wonderful things!! Three different types of Amazing Meal powder drink mixes: Three different types of Green SuperFood drink powders and wheat grass: And four of their Green SuperFood amazing bars! (All complete with a sweet shaker bottle). One of the first things I tried was the wheat grass. I was really excited to see this because I had coincidentally recently been reading about the health benefits of wheat grass. I felt like just having the wheat grass straight up so I mixed this packet with water and ice and stuck it in the blender. I wasn't expecting it to taste really good or anything, since it was just wheat grass with water, and it didn't. I mean, it wasn't awful tasting, it's just not something I would crave the taste of. But it felt very refreshing and good for me, and it would definitely be a great addition to any smoothie or drink. I very much enjoyed all the other drink mixes as well. With the Amazing Meal mixes clocking in at 110 calories a pack and the Green SuperFood mixes at 30, in addition to the wonderful benefits of the super foods they contain, I would definitely be fine with having these mixes often! The nutritional stats and ingredients are amazing! The website says it best, so check them out here! Now getting to my absolute favorite item of this package ... the bars! The package came with two different kinds, chocolate cacao coated and non. Like all of their products, the whole food energy bars are:

Raw

Cold Processed

Alkaline

Gluten Free

Dairy Free

Vegan

My husband, who is extremely picky regarding which bars he will eat even said, and I quote, these were the "best bars I've ever seen" nutritionally speaking. (And knowing him, that's sure something when he says that!) Here are the nutritional stats. And the taste? I thought they were pretty good. They did taste a bit "healthy" but I've grown to like that healthy taste so they were really good to me. I mean, it sure isn't a snickers bar or anything and if you're not used to eating healthy foods, you may not like the taste. I try not to eat many bars but I would feel very good about eating one of these every day.

Overall ... I was very impressed with the products of Amazing Grass and I would definitely suggest them to anyone. Added to your favorite smoothie, their drink powders are a great way to easily get in some greens and detoxifying superfoods for the day and their bars are excellent for a busy, on the go lifestyle and would be a great snack or pick me up in the middle of the day all with the convenience of a bar but as well as being, as their website says, "unprocessed, organic, and delicious".

image link

So, thanks Teri Jo and Amazing Grass for this excellent product and keep it up!

Homemade Chocolate Chips, Etc.

Hello everyone! : )

I have been away too long! It appears as though lately I'm averaging about one post a week ... I've just been posting when I find the extra time and it normally only comes on the weekends these days (though I do wish it would come more often and I do wish I had more time to keep up with other blogs better than I have been!)

Buuuuut, I've been enjoying my busy life : ) Here's some recap ... I very excitedly recently received a package of some samples from Amazing Grass to review an that will be coming shortly! (hint: I really like this stuff!!) Much more about Amazing Grass to come later!

Speaking of packages ... due to my lack of posting, I haven't had a chance via blog post to thank Jennifer, from Slim Shoppin' who recently and generously sent me some of her old workout tapes aaaand nicely included these cute teaspoons. Thanks again, Jennifer : ) In other news, inspired by Angela's raw chocolate chip cookies, this past week I made some cookies and decided to make my own chocolate chips. It was so easy and they were so good. I wouldn't have ever thought of this ... I simply used:

-2 T coconut oil
-3/4 cup cacao powder
-4 T agave nectar
-2 ts vanilla

Then, I simply flowed Angela's directions to roll those mixed ingredients out onto parchment paper and freeze for approximately 30 minutes, then cut into your chips.

Before: And After: Thanks again for the great idea, Angela ... I will definitely be making these again!

Annnd, we've recently frequented a new restaurant in the mall and found some sushi that actually doesn't taste horrible for being in our town. (Though the portion sizes here are quite large). When we want a sushi fix, we're glad to have this place over our typical not quite as fresh sushi from a local grocery store we normally get it from (as there aren't a lot of options here). Anyways, that's some of what I've been up to lately. Now I'm about to eat some breakfast, shower, and go to church. Then, we'll probably come home and I'll finish cleaning house from yesterday and my husband will finish putting up a new fence in our backyard. (It's nice to get things done!)

Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend!!! : )

"Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You're in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes."
-Matthew 6:9-13, Message Bible-

P.S. -- Fitness post to come soon!

Love You Forever; For My Mom

Happy Weekend!! : )

This post is for my mom. Since it's Mother's Day Weekend and my mom's birthday is on Monday I just wanted to say, I LOVE YOU, MOM!!! It seems like the older I get, the more I realize how blessed I am to have such a great mom. This is us a couple summers ago. I always think of this book, Love You Forever, when I think of my mom: She used to always read it to my sister and I when we were little and then I would get huge stacks of books before I could read and I'd "read" them out loud by flipping through the pages and saying whatever I remembered from when they were read to me.

If you're not familiar with this book, it's about a child growing up and every night, no matter how old he got, his mom would go into his room while he was sleeping and say "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be." Finally, the son grows up and says the same thing to his child and when his mom gets really old, the son goes into her room and picks her up and rocks her and says, "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my mommy you'll be". Here's me "reading" it when I was around 3.
Now for some more pictures:My mom, sister and me at my graduation in '06.
My mom loves to sew and is very good at it. She can sew and/or fix just about anything out there. Here's her measuring how long a yard is and my sister behind making fun of her, haha.Speaking for sewing, here is a purse that she recently made. (Right now she's making one for my sister but mine is next ... woo hoo!)And though as my mom and I have talked about before, I know I don't fully appreciate handmade quilts yet like I may someday but since I'm bragging about my wonderful mom who deserves to be bragged about (is bragged a word?? ha), here is a "Winter Wonderland" quilt she made for my aunt this past Christmas. The center is embroidered and the outside are all pieced quilt blocks. (click the picture to enlarge and see details).And I couldn't help but include this picture of my dad with my mom's cat, Wilber, and dog, Harley both on my dad's lap. Haha. All our pets always seemed to like to sit on my dad's lap, no matter how big.

I'm sure I could go on and on about my mom ... she's always put us first, loved us no matter what and made us feel loved, we always had all we needed and more. (Not to mention she loves to garden and we always had wonderful fresh summer veggies ... which is another thing I didn't really appreciate until now!) One of my favorite things to eat right out of the garden was kohlrabi sliced with some salt.

Anyways, Mom, thanks for being the best mom in the world and I seem to always tell you this on Mother's Day, but I really mean it, even if I am 6 hours away from you and don't get to see you as much as I'd like ... "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my mommy you'll be!"

A Very Happy Husband

Hello! : )

What a wonderful weekend ... I sure do like weekends, that's for sure! ha.

This weekend for us consisted of a lot of grilling and a lot of lifting. And the lifting part is why this post is entitled "A Very Happy Husband" .... here is why:and this bench, as seen with my husband warming up... Erik has been wanting a bench and dumbbell set really bad for quite a long time now and he found a really good deal on Craigslist on Friday so we went and picked them up on Saturday. Unfortunately we don't have room for it in the finished side of our basement so we had to put them in the ghetto, unfinished part. But Erik says it's "raw" this way so he likes it, haha. (I think it just reminds him of Rocky III when Rocky has to "go back to basics" in training for his big fight ... lol ... just in case you're wondering, my husband loves the Rocky movies, hence why our dog's names are Rocky and Adrian).

Upon finding out we were going to get these, Erik spent part of Friday evening watching Ronnie Coleman on youtube. Ha, back when he was real into bodybuilding and such him and his buddies used to imitate him all the time so Erik just cracks up during this whole video. (Ha, since Erik hasn't lifted a lot in awhile, he's really excited to have this bench and weight set so he can get back into lifting a bit more ... and I'm excited, too, because I'm really starting to love lifting myself!)

We picked the bench and weights up near Kansas City so while we were near, we stopped by Whole Foods and ate some sushi.When we got home that night, we grilled some steak, chicken, and veggies. Yum!
The dogs wanted to help by eating all the food, but of course they didn't get to, ha. And since the weather was so nice, we couldn't resist ... some more grilling! We are now finishing off our weekend by watching some movies ... Hope you all have had a wonderful weekend also and hope the start to your week goes well!!

"Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look at the stars"
-Henry Van Dyke-

Recap and Reviews

Hey all!

So I haven't been around much lately ... life gets busy sometimes!

Who's glad it's the weekend??? I am, I am!!

Not much is new is the life of Lesley but I'm still here living ; ) I got my Barney Butter samples the other day and was very excited to try them. My take = I really liked it. My husband's take = he didn't love it. Erik is a peanut butter boy at heart and I think he always will be! haha.

I think ultimately my favorite nut butter is peanut butter also, but cashew butter comes in behind at a very close second. Anyways, back to the Barney ... I love their 90 calorie packets. It was just enough to put on my morning snack of a toasted piece of Ezekiel bread with this almond butter spread on it topped with a half of a banana. I haven't tried very many different kinds of almond butter but this one was definitely much sweeter than what I was expecting (I suspect this is due to the evaporated cane juice?) I really liked the flavor and it would be nice to have once in awhile but for now, I'm sticking with good old Smuckers natural peanut butter. (plus Smuckers is much cheaper!)

Moving right along ... as I previously mentioned the folks at Amazing Taste offered to send me some of their seasonings to try. (Along with some really nifty recipe cards with some great sounding recipes on them). They "promise you this healthful, all-natural, flavor booster will quickly and easily produce the ultimate in taste, tenderness and juiciness. Amazing Taste is a product that compliments the best of cooks and safeguards the less experienced."

So far, I have tried the seasoning packet for Burgers (used it with meatloaf) and the seasoning packet for Poultry (with grilled chicken breasts). I thought the flavor came out great. I really like how their seasonings contain no MSG and they use natural ingredients. However, my husband and I don't eat much salt at all and we found that these packets had more salt that expected. For instance the Burger packet contains 170mg sodium per 1/2 tsp (and at 14 servings per packet, that's a grand total of 2380mg sodium :s) Therefore I didn't use nearly all of it because that's way too much sodium for us. I personally wouldn't use the whole packet for 1 lb of meat simply because of all that unneeded salt.

This being said, they weren't all quite this high in sodium and I checked out their website and it appears as though most of their shaker seasonings contain a little less sodium so I think I would have appreciated them more. All in all, I think I'll stick to seasonings like Mrs. Dash and my trusty staples of seasonings. (Not to mention they don't sell Amazing Taste seaonsings anywhere near me). In case you're interested though, you can order their seasongings online and they can be purchased at any of these locations:And that's about all I have time for right now ... I hope to be back later on this weekend. I'll leave you with what we had for dinner one night last week ... we've been grillin' it up lately and here is some grilled salmon and veggies served with our favorite, brown rice.Ohh, and by the way ... this is officially my 100th post but I'll be celebrating that a little later with my very first giveway, so stay tuned! ; )

"The End"
-Erik Borger-
(I told my husband I just wanted to put a quote at the bottom of my post and then I'd be done and that's what he said : )