July 31: Tomorrow is the month of August. The month of family birthdays, end of summers, the cringing at school supplies stocked in every store. It's the last moment to squeeze in our last late-night affairs with outdoor movies and popsicles, all the while dreading what the months of farm chores and play have done to our math skills AND our morning skills.



The Mister and I are on different body clocks, by which I mean that he is a wake-up-and-go guy, and I steal a few hours from the night to increase productivity of my day. That is my preference, and I fight it; but this summer I gave in to it. It's summer! I had a newborn, we had movies in the park, sunsets at 9:30 and middle-of-the-night feedings. But what with my expanding gut not getting smaller even though it's no longer housing offspring, and the impending doom of school schedules and homework, I felt an experiment rising to put me back on track. This August I am implementing a simple plan. Four elements that start with the letter S, to keep it simple and do-able. Think about joining me if you are in the same boat, as any extra support is welcome.

SALAD
SCRIPTURES
SEVEN
SLEEP



Here's the rules:

SALAD-A-DAY*
In an effort to avoid the annoyance of calorie counting, and to help curb my sweet-tooth, we're going back to a raw green salad a day. It might be a breakfast spinach smoothie, or steamed cabbage for dinner, or a big fat salad for lunch. But EVERY day we're getting some greens. For extra inspiration in the salad department, click here.

SCRIPTURES*
"Bridle your passions, and I'll feel you with love". I completely recognize along with celebrations and parties, food helps avenue my stresses about parenting, motherhood, beauty, etc. For whatever HOLE we have that food often fills, I will be trying to fill instead with some holy word instead.

SEVEN*
Try to eat dinner every night while still in the seven o'clocks. 7:30 pm would be ideal. In tandem with this is the hope that I don't eat for at least 3 hours before going to bed. Because I'm nursing, and I don't want my plan to fail, I'm allowing myself ONE PIECE OF FRUIT between dinner and bed-time. But that last meal is taking place before that clock hits 8!

SLEEP*
The irony of this rule is that I am now writing this at 10:42 p.m. But it's still July technically, so here goes. GET TO BED EVERY NIGHT BY 10:30. My reasoning behind this is that most avenues to good health should require a sleep plan, and that lots of good intentions to make better health changes are derailed when we lack sleep or are extra tired. Late nights also pose temptations to snarf some sweets.

Also note: one last movie in the park in August so I'm allowing myself a couple of nights to break the rules...but definitely they will need to feel like exceptions and not routines.

That's it! So that is my plan for August. I'm hoping that once I've laid this groundwork, I can add to it with a more consistent exercise routine.

Won't you join me?

Because we chose to hire a Certified Nurse Midwife with a Birthing Center over 100 miles from my little valley, I have taken lots of little day trips to The Great Salt Lake. One of the bonuses of these trips, and because I rarely leave home otherwise, has been reconnecting with old friends.



Here's Paula with her latest offspring {insert longing female sigh here}. When I called my old high school buddy Paula and said I'd be in the neighborhood, she offered to make me lunch. "Oh, you're doing your salad thing! My husband made some awesome smoked salmon...does that sound good on a salad?"


"YES" I said truthfully. Though excited, I felt a little guilty.

I hate salad right now. Wait, let me rephrase that...

I ate an entire package of Girl Scout Cookies yesterday, and the thought of rinsing, draining, chopping, & layering fresh greens seems like an undue chore most days.

What with my blogg-y pronouncements of keeping up with the greens until the end of this pregnancy; with my holiday sugar buzz leaving me resolute to walk (not even jog, skip, or run) the 3-mile-loop three times a week during my last trimester; my intent to infuse this child with a love of vegetables in the womb and because I was already on a roll...I'm not sure why I have turned into my own worst enemy. Perhaps I'm finding a reliable scapegoat in these hormones. The truth is, I stuck my middle finger to my green leaf resolution and I feel awesome/horrible about it.

And yet, fix me a salad, especially like the delicious one Paula gave me (with a golden fork no less!) and I'm in heaven. It tastes delicious to me, and deep down I know that I still crave it.



What is up?!

Not only did Paula's visit give me a guilt trip about not keeping my word, it gave me clarity that salad is still a huge part of my future. More importantly, the visit gave me some cute, clean, non-stained hand-me-down baby stuff for the little mutt growing in my gutt. Check it.

Paula is super creative. I had no idea she could sew in high school, but she seriously makes the cutest stuff! Check out her craft blog here.



The outfit and bib she embellished with fabrics from the awesome custom car-seat blanket. The reversible car-seat blanket is in place and waiting for my baby son.

As a bonus of going through bins of baby stuff, I found the doll that was crocheted by my Grandma Anderson. I'm pretty sure every granddaughter received one. I remember her invitation to come and pick a doll, where there was an array of color combinations you could choose from. I used to love to wrap this doll up in her never-to-be-lost blanket.

For now, this little doll, a labor of love, is a place-holder inside the soft, clean, and longing to snuggle my son blanket from Paula.

A little over 3 weeks to go!

Last year's reckoning was depressing. This year I'm not deep cleaning under my stove as a consolation prize. That is good.

My salad a day for 2010 was a positive arc. I'm feeling good! I got my cheekbones back in June and then promptly got pregnant.

My goal: try to keep my cheekbones until this kid arrives. With holiday goodies and a resurge of sugar cravings distracting me, it could be a task indeed.

So to carry through to better health for the sake of my new crop growing in my womb, I decided to keep going on a salad a day until my green Martian appears on earth (he has to be green after all that roughage right?).

Better documentation is key to staying on track...so here I am scrambling for my greens via spinach smoothie at 11:14 pm.

Nighty night,
Mrs. Olsen

Good eye Jenna. I did not in fact prove my greens for my Derry Day, but I definitely did eat, and it definitely was amazing. Thanks for noticing, now here's my proof.

Wednesday, September 15th marked our only full day in London. Could we tackle it all in one day? Would we feel like we had a handle on the sights, the history, or even the food? So in order to digest it all, we paid for an open-bus-tour. There were several routes throughout the city that we could hop on or off with our ticket, so it was a good way to digest the city in a day.



There's was so much I had heard of London, but without any true frame of reference. Things like Picadilly Circus, The Tower of London, and Big Ben. So I decided to sort it all out on the bus. You'll have to forgive my obvious ignorance. Here's what I learned in a glance.



Some dude built this for Queen Victoria's Castle. She did not like it. She purposely had a carriage built too wide to pass through, so it stands near some park instead. Sheesh!




like I had previously surmised.




Just after we digested the sights, we decided where we wanted to visit. Too bad the city and the busses stop running around 5:30. Hello? So like everything else, St. Paul's just got our drive-by and it's famous whispering hall will have to wait until I return to London as a senior citizen. Same goes for Shakespeare's Globe, Tower of London, and everything else. Boo!




The Rosetta Stone! When we found it in our 30 minutes inside The British Museum, The Mister of the House exclaimed This made our entire trip to London worth it!


I thought The Rosetta Stone was cool too, but the real thing that topped off the day like a maraschino cherry was a little play we got to see together- with real singers and real dancers and real chocolate covered raisins.

On Monday we hit the coast and headed to the Giant's Causeway. On the way, we went across a rope bridge across to a lush, soft, green, coast rock thingie. Looking down from the bridge was....um....exciting.

Over the weekend, we took a ferry from Ireland to Scotland and headed to the capital of Edinburgh. Just about the entire weekend we practiced our pronunciation: which is to say {Eh-din-burr-eh} (try to roll those r's just a bit) instead of Edinberrr-g. I have to admit, Edinburgh could be my favorite stop so far. There really is only one word to describe the town, towering with high rise stone buildings, lining the royal mile leading up to the castle, with parliament buildings, churches, and banks so grand each building could easily be a highlight if placed in a regular town. Okay so the one word to describe it before I began my run-on sentence is this: majestic.

Today I caught a more gritty perspective of Ireland. The idyllic rolling hills, leprechauns, and pots of gold took a backseat on my black cab tour through Belfast. Evidently, this town in Northern Ireland was not, should we say, "tourist friendly" ten years ago. We are here after a concerted effort at peace and new beginnings. It has worked to the point that we walked a couple miles to the farmer's market, safe as a baby in a carriage, and bought some goods for dinner. So to start, here's my salad for this day, Friday September 10th, 2010.