I love re-purposing...Especially heirlooms

I love re purposing...Especially heirlooms.  When my dad and his siblings went through Grandma and Grandpa Larsen's home to decide who got what, and what grand kids got what, I was given the cool wall hangings that represented each of the kids.  I remember seeing these on Grandma and Grandpa's walls.  Happy memories.  Well I was wondering how that "harvest gold" color was going to work in my family room.  Well, I have made it work through the magic of spray paint, a few rags, and some sealer.  It is amazing how you can make something old look new, and be able to fit into your room decor.  I wanted to do something with this huge wall, but wasn't sure what, and now I have an amazing arrangement.  Simple, sleek, and yet holds some dear memories on my wall.  How I love pintrest and the other re purposing blogs I belong to. How do you think they turned out?  I think they look great.

New Year, New Blog Posts, and New Attitude!!

Wow, it's been a long while since I posted.  I wonder if anyone even reads this anymore.  Ive just been super swamped with so many things going on with all the holidays, and family and health issues, that I haven't really updated here.  If you follow me on face book, you can see just a glimpse of my life.  I find it easier to just post a quick blurb on there than here at times.  But I will try to keep this updated....

We had an awesome year last year, but I'm so glad the holidays are over, and I can just focus on getting back to a rhythm.  There have been so many changes in our family over the last little while.  I'll try to name just a few of the big ones here.

I'll just go in order then...
         *Will - Well, he hasn't had a good year this year.  Ending the year with a heart attack is not how we wanting things to go.  Working for Walgreen's is so much more stressful than he ever imagined.  We thought all the rumors of how bad a company it was to work for were just disgruntled employees.  Nope not true.  Everything people said were all true and then some.  Plus it doesn't make it any easier when two pharmacist's walk out after having enough, and then the company doesn't replace them.  No one wants to work for the company due to all the bad publicity, and no one wants to work way out here in the heat.  So hopefully once we can get over his contract in a year and a half (sooner if things aren't changed) we will be moving somewhere else.  St. George and the surrounding areas are looking really nice.  Anyway aside from still working 14 hour shifts back to back, and not getting days off for 10-12 days in a row, he is being a trooper and continuing to provide for us and is continuing to be a great father and husband.  He was scheduled for knee surgery (another result of working 6, 14 hour shifts back to back with no lunch or regular breaks) to have his torn meniscus repaired, but that had to be put off for a month while his cardiac stuff is being taken care of.  This Friday he goes in to have an angiogram and probably a couple of stints put in.  So keep him in your prayers.  Hopefully then in February for our big vacation he can relax and get some much needed and deserved time off and mind numbing fun. (Disneyland).
          *Amber - Well, Ive been staying busy taking care of the family.  One thing I decided to do was to finally stop messing around and being wishy washy about things, and put my foot down about how we eat around this house and exercise.  So now for the last few months we have changed to the Paleo diet.  Essentially it is called the caveman diet.  Anything a caveman ate we can have.  fruit nuts berries, veggies.  Any meat we have must have run very fast for its life.  So chicken, turkey, fish, rabbit.  All of those meats are extremely lean.  Now you ask..what about the lean ground beef...nope we don't eat that.  Its still not lean enough, and cows stand around all day.  So no matter how "lean" they try to make it, its still much fatter than the other meats.  So things have been going very well.  Except for yesterday.  I took the kids to a birthday party and they ate a cupcake, and a few items we haven't had in a few months..processed cheese food (Velveeta) chips, candy, baby cocktail wieners and BBQ sauce.  And I think they overloaded on bad foods and made themselves all sick. And to look at the portions they had, they were normal little kids portions, not big adult ones either.  Every one of them have thrown up this morning.  Anyway aside from that, I have also joined a Roller Derby team and holy cow.  Its a ton of fun, but I swear I can run for an hour or so in the gym (which I do on a daily basis at Planet Fitness), but the workouts for Derby make me feel like Ive never stepped foot in a gym in my life.  But soon enough I should be better at them, and not hurting 24/7. Its a great group of ladies, and two are in my ward.  Ive also lost about 22 lbs, and should be loosing more at a much faster rate with derby.
           *Sabrina - Wow, I am so proud of her.  She is truly a hard little worker.  She has benefited the most from our eating.  She has been going with a good friend of mine onto the military base in the evenings every night (with Sundays off) and she has been working out with her.  This friend of mine runs and Pt's all the marines on base, and so she is doing the same with Sabrina. Sabrina has lost over 20lbs in the last three weeks, and Monday is our weigh in to see how much more she has lost.  The photos are amazing to see her transformation. She is also feeling much better about herself.  Unfortunately the half a cupcake she shared with me yesterday made us both sick from the sugar.  She is doing very well in school, and is looking forward to the end of February when she gets to start with the Yuma Heat city swim team.  She has a goal set to loose 20 more lbs by then, and I'm confident she can do it.  She is so determined.  She is also going to be turning 11 this year.  Aahhhhh she is growing up way too fast.
          *Vanessa - Nessie is growing like a weed.  She is so smart, and is doing very well in school.  She too has slimmed down a little due to our eating, and people have noticed as well.  Its nice that they are getting recognized.  It has made them feel good about the sacrifices they are making to be healthy.  She is my little terror though.  She loves to be mischievous, and devious (in a little kid way) and likes to watch scary movies.  So she and I have been able to watch scary movies without having the other two crying and never opening their eyes.  She has also been taking my skates in the evening and skating on them.  She loves it.  I wonder if she too would like to do derby when she gets a little older.  I can def see her doing this. She is also looking forward to Disneyland and especially having her friend there with her.  This is her best friend of over three years now.  Unfortunately at the end of the school year this friend will be moving to VA with her mom to be with her moms fiance and such.  Vanessa is very sad about this.  She also has a birthday party coming up the end of this month at a place called Jump up.  All the gymnastic stuff you could imagine to play on and have fun.  It will be a lot of fun.
          *Isaac - Well Isaac is certainly a little ball of energy lately.  With this diet change he too has lost some weight, and is running around playing with his bow and arrow in the back yard.  Shooting the big bale of hay we have set up by the tree. Also he has earned tons of scouting badges, and is soon to be a bear scout after only being a wolf for about 3 months.  He is really moving along in this scouting stuff.  He absolutely LOVES it.  And I hope as he gets older his enthusiasm for it continues to be just as strong.  He also was baptized in December finally as we were waiting for Mom and Dad to return from their mission so we could continue our family tradition of having Will baptize the kids, and Grandpa confirm them.  It is a neat thing to see, and something that they can tell their kids about.  We had a fun time riding razors and playing with my parents when they came down.  Isaac loved the razors even more when Uncle Jaron was down for one of the days, and took him on the razor with him.  He said that Jaron was the best driver, and did all the really cool and dangerous stuff he wanted.  He cant wait till February or March when grandma and grandpa come down again, and  he can go riding with them and Uncle Jaron again.  He is such a happy kid most of the time, and loves to continue to give me hugs.  I am not looking forward to the day when he doesn't want to hug me anymore cause he's too big.  That will be a sad day.

Anyway things are going OK for right now. I promise there will be more pics to come, since I finally have replaced my camera, and have a way of getting nice photos on here.  Not having a camera has really been a drag.  IPhone pics are OK, but not really all that great.  Well I need to run for now.  I hope to be on here more often to update you all, and stay in touch.  We love you all and hope you are all having a great start to a great new year.