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.

Mom and Dad's visit

For my birthday in October, my parents gave me the most wonderful gift: they came to visit. We had a blast the entire time they were here. I don't know how we managed to pack in everything we did, but it was awesome. We went to the Desert Botanical Gardens and spent hours strolling through spiked cacti, some of which look an awful lot like oceanic coral and other-worldly creatures, and tiny-leafed trees, and flowers which desperately struggle to attract bugs to pollinate them. Here are a few of the photos from that adventure. As you can see, I thought the people were more worthy of pictures given the limited life of my camera's battery. Mom got more photos, and they are much better. I'll see if I can get them from her.
After that, we went to Monty's which is a restaurant here in Tempe that is in one of, if not the oldest standing building in the valley. It was yummy and fun and so wonderful.
The next day Danny and I took them to our favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's, and they were mightily impressed with all the natural, healthy, inexpensive and various items for sale there. They loaded up on all sorts of food they can't get at home. Back at the house we sat around and talked and ate cheese and crackers and fruit. It was so wonderful to just sit with them and discuss ideas and politics and religion; all the things people tell you not to talk about with family, but we loved it. It's sad to me that religion and politics are such taboo subjects because if you think about it, religion and politics are pretty much the two most powerful things in this world that can have the power to build or destroy entire civilizations because of their influence over people's agency. They should be discussed regularly, deeply and thoughtfully. If we could learn to really discuss these two things respectfully, I think we'd be well on our way to figuring out how to live peaceably. After we couldn't sit anymore we went into the back yard and worked together on removing some of the oleanders that I've been chopping at for months making no progress. I have missed working in the yard with my parents. It was one of the things our family did together on a regular basis, and I think it's the reason I developed many of the character traits I like most about me. My parents are so wonderful. I couldn't, in a million life times ask for any better. I love you Mom and Dad!

Danny's ten year reunion

I finally downloaded some photos, so here we go:


In October Danny had his ten year high school reunion. It was really great for me to meet some of the people who knew him before I did, and to hear all the wonderful things they thought of him. I heard over and over, "You got a good one!" and, "Danny's such a great guy, hold on to him." Of course I knew all that, but a part of me liked hearing it. It made me proud and grateful. I liked it especially because we didn't have a typical courtship where we got to watch each other interact with other people at church or school. I never got to crush on him from afar before dating him, and pretty much all of our dating was long-distance, so it was just really fun for me to see him with other people who know and respect him, and to hear some stories from his high school days. It was two nights and two locations, only the second of which we had a semi-functioning camera. Here's a picture of one of his good friends, Matt and his awesome girlfriend, Lindsay, whom I spent quite a bit of time with.