Ben at 4 months

Ben is almost 5 months old and could not be any cuter.I adore his gummy smile, and the blue of his eyes. I love the startlingly light blue ring around is pupils. I love the feel of his chubby hand I'm mine as he nurses. I love that he rubs his head from behind his ear to his eye and then touches me before starting the circle over again when he's tired and nursing. Or he'll play with his ear, folding it over in itself. I often have to protect his eyes from his client fingers. His fingernails grow so fast. I love the feel of his soft and thickening, light hair. I love that it grows so perfectly parted. He is heavy and tall. The other day a lady guessed that he was 7 months old. We get stopped numerous times every time we go anywhere. Women, especially older ladies are always oohing and aweing over him. One lady just gushed and had to talk to him at Sprouts, and then asked if there was any way she could help me when he started crying. We saw her again a few days later at the post office. We were in line and she said, "It's Ben! I thought about you all day!" She was sweet. Something she said at Sprouts made me think he reminded her of her son. Everyone thinks he's adorable. Sean and Cate can't get enough of him. Lucy and Joe love spending time with him. Joe keeps finding excuses to come to Phoenix too stop by and hold him even for just a few minutes. Amy and Brian also love getting to hold him. A few times Ben and I have gone to Joe and Lucy's to spend the day, so I could sew with Lucy, and they have been very glad. Joe will drop whatever he's doing to spend time with Ben. He holds him high in the air and makes him laugh and keeps him entertained. Ben loves being outside. he's decided he likes the Mae tai. We took an hour walk together with it the other day. He wants grown-up food, and will open his mouth wide and dive at it. But he also did that to the rose bud I was showing him yesterday which was funny. He's biting and drooling. He loves the dumbbell rattle my mom gave him. He is very vocal and loves when Danny comes home from work to play and talk. He had discovered his feet. He loves bath time. We bathe together every night and he lives the water. I am excited to swim with him this summer. He sleeps all through the night as long as he can dream feed about every two hours, so we co-sleep. I wouldn't have it any other way; I don't like it if he's not within reach.

12And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth:

13And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die.

Isaiah 22:12–13 . A Call to Sorrow and Mourning
The descriptive terms used here by Isaiah are clearly signs of great sorrow and grief. Baldness (not natural baldness, but the shaving of the hair) was a great shame and signified great calamity (compare Isaiah 3:24 ). The Lord suggests that when Judah saw their impending doom they should have seen it as a call to deep repentance and clothed themselves with sackcloth and baldness. Instead, they acted as though they had been called to a joyous feast, and they were singing the refrain of the world: “let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die” ( Isaiah 22:13 ). As is typical of the wicked in a time of crisis, they would prefer to indulge their passions than to repent (see vv. 17–19 ). LDS Old Testament Student Manual ch 14.

A month or two ago The Blaze.com had an article about strip clubs. The point of the article was that strip clubs are thriving despite the recession; in fact all "vices" thrive during recessions. Gambling, drinking, drugs, you name it. I had just read the above verses in Isaiah and couldn't help draw a major connection between the two. All over the world we are being called to repentance, are we listening?

I saw this video and LOVED it. Danny and I think it would be so cool to live in a small home hand-built by us with natural materials. I'm also infatuated with cob houses, straw bales, adobe, and living roofs.

Thoughts, Good and Bad and Scary

Recently my very good friend, JaNae, started a great blog dedicated to health in all its various forms and approaches. www.healthonamission.blogspot.com. She invited me give my two-cents occasionally, which was a huge compliment, and awesome because I've been thinking about health a lot lately. I decided my "column" so to speak will be titled, "Simple Observations That Make My Health Easier", and I'll post whenever I have an ah-ha moment or have adopted a new technique that I think makes it easier for Danny and me to be healthy. I don't claim to be an expert or even that I know what I'm talking about a lot of the time. But I will say that I take my responsibility to take care of my body and Danny's body and any other little bodies that might one day come under our care seriously. I am to be the nutritional guardian of my home. It is my responsibility to see that my family is healthy and educated about what to fuel their bodies with and what will poison them.

Did you know they give arsenic to people with leukemia?!!! Arsenic is a poison. A POISON. Pure and simple. It's been a poison of choice for assassins and back-stabbers and usurpers and angry wives for centuries. You administer it in small doses and your victim dies a slow, miserable death. What makes the doctors think that it won't do harm to their patients while still getting to the cancer?? "First, do no harm." Hippocrates taught that, he also taught that food should be your medicine and medicine should be your food. If our bodies make cancer, I believe they can heal cancer with the right nutrients. If anyone has anything to say about the benefits of arsenic, I'd like to hear them. I may sound like I won't believe you, and I may not, but I'm still ignorant about the justification for using arsenic, and I shouldn't be.

I hope all, well the handful of you who are reading this, are keeping up on what's happening in the middle-east and in our government and in Europe. If you're not, please start. If you are and it's not putting a fire under your butt, you aren't thinking about what it all means. There are some globally terrifying things happening, and we are not out of reach even though we may think we are. Please, please, because I love you. Please get prepared to have to FIGHT to keep what little may still be yours.

So this month has been all about health for Danny and me. Well, he's focusing on school and work too, so it's been all health for just me I guess. It started when we found ourselves watching food documentaries whenever we decided to watch a movie. Yeah, I know, we're nerds. But we got totally hooked on them, and have watched quite a few. We were turned on to eating lots of organic, raw fruits and vegetables-as many as I could shove in the refrigerator in fact. I started spending hours online searching for raw and vegetarian recipes. Reading all about the specific nutrient needs of vegetarians and trying to figure out how to make sure we were both getting optimal amounts of the things we each need. (We're not strictly vegetarian, but might head that way, or more likely we'll be ovolactopescatarian since we really like cheese and eggs and fish. Here's an article I liked a lot which reinforced some things we've been learning from the scriptures and the many food documentaries we've been loving: http://www.ldsveg.org/ChrisFosterPhd.htm.) I started experimenting with foods I've never eaten before, or have hated and so avoided, like radishes. I realized that there are so many more vegetables than I could name. I had never tried a fennel bulb, and now it's one of my favorites! I can munch on it like some people munch on cucumbers or celery. I love it. I have been making huge salads full of all sorts of vegetables. I chop everything really small including the lettuce or lettuces so that you could eat it with a spoon, and that is definitely the way to go. I hide radishes in it and can't even tell! We load pitas full of salad and some simple dressing and feel like we've eaten the best meal in the world. We feel fantastic and energetic and satisfied.
I have totally enjoyed this month and everything I've learned about food. I feel so proactive and hopeful about it. I feel like health is not so much cutting out bad things as it is shoving ourselves with good things; and the more good things you shove in you the fewer bad things fit. They do always say that that's the best way to break a bad habit-replace it with something better.
I ate a cupcake tonight that a friend brought over, and I felt super icky less than five minutes afterward. My shoulders even hurt. Not all desserts are bad, but lots of them are, and I am positive I hurt everywhere because my body no longer wants all that refined, empty stuff. Wouldn't that be awesome!? Never again to want what is bad for us? Isn't that like a gigantic part of God's plan for us? Aren't we supposed to figure out how to only want what is truly, eternally good for us? Isn't that the only way we'll be able to be with him again, the only way we'll be comfortable in his presence? When we no longer want what's bad for us or holding us back or dirtying our souls, then we'll be able to fill ourselves with his light, his love, his presence, and go HOME. It is ultimately our choice, because that's what agency is.

Setting up our first Christmas

The other day Danny and I pulled the little Christmas tree that my grandma gave to me a few years ago out of the attic. We waited till we were in a particularly Christmassy mood and then we went shopping for ornaments and lights. When we got home we warmed some cider and turned on some Christmas music to be festive and connect with our hundreds of years of Christian heritage. There really is magic in the Christmas season and in the celebrating of it. We laughed and smiled so much my cheeks hurt. We sang a little and tickle-fought a little and kissed a little and it was perfect. We only bought a few ornaments, and we didn't find a tree topper (we want a classy but not glamorous or glitzy star), so we left it because it's only our first Christmas and we're ok with starting off small and building as our life together builds. I have added some red berries since though and I'm glad; they add just the right contrast of color to make it look balanced. After the tree, we went outside and put up some retro-looking, big-bulbed, multi-colored lights that we both love. I danced.


And, yes, that's a black eye - what's left of a funny accident with the car door at the end of a long day on Thanksgiving.

One weekend this autumn Danny and I went camping with his sister, Ashley, and her husband, Matt, whom we love and really enjoy hanging out with. We went to Danny's favorite place where they used to go camping as a family when he was little and where he and his dad have gone many times just the two of them. He's taken me there before, and I too think it's a beautiful place. Late one afternoon we all wanted to go down to the river to hunt for trout. Ashley caught the only one and it was big and beautiful and super delicious, as we found out later. On the way to the river we walked through an empty campsite and nearly stumbled right into a fairy village at the base of a great old tree. Abandoned by its inhabitants for quite a while, it had fallen into disrepair, but its magic lingered in the air and I had to take a photo.

Then, toward sunset, Danny and I went back to camp to start the fire for dinner. He was chopping at a big stump of wood when the ax broke and the head stayed in the wood. He tried everything to get it out, but it was not going anywhere.
I think my husband is so dang cute! Notice the light on the mountain behind him; isn't that gorgeous. Arizona sunsets are often really breathtaking.



One day, after a week of negative thinking and ingratitude when I was particularly homesick for Utah beauty I was in the backyard watering plants and sweeping and stuff when I turned the corner onto the side of the house and saw this:


It may not look like much, but the colors were so vivid and the carpet of purple was so dramatic in a world full of neutrals. It was more beautiful than anything I had seen in days and was just exactly what I needed. Heavenly Father shows us he loves us in the most unexpected ways sometimes.