April 30th was Leland's golden birthday. That's right bloggies, Leland is in his 30's now. You would never know it, right? He keeps ME young.
We started out the day with me going to traffic school! YAY! Ok, not. It was kind of a bummer, but Lee was able to sleep in and play some video games. After that I picked him up and we went to Texas Roadhouse for lunch. I don't really need to say much about it, it is always incredibly delicious. I gave Leland a card that said "For "REAL" this is all you get, I told you not to get too excited'. He laughed and said "Thanks babe". After having him read it a couple of times, he got it! For his birthday present we are going to:
Get it? For REAL? He has been dying to go to a game for a long time so it was a great gift (if I do say so myself). Then we just came home and relaxed until about 6. I told him that we had to be ready to go somewhere then and he was suspicious, but played along and was ready at 6. There was a knock on the door and when he went to answer....SURPRISE! Some of Leland's friends growing up had made it over with their families to Leland's surprise party. We had food, played, games, and chatted until late hours of the night.
Although Lee seems younger than I am, I still have fun teasing him about his age. This song is one of my favorite ways to "rub it in". Enjoy! (And happy birthday to you Lee, you are the best husband I could have ever asked for. I love you....ya old man ;) )
Justine was nominated for an award by her dear friend Jessica. She was given a service award by the Utah Council for Extraordinary Children......erm...I actually don't remember what it is called. BUT she was given an inscribed trophy for her service leading the hymns in church every Sunday.
She was so excited to get an award and I am very happy that she got it. She is such a great sister and a blessing in my life. Now everyone knows how great she is.
After the junk food overload from the holidays, most people decide to make a new years resolution to lose weight. Most of us gain weight over the holidays, even I will admit that I did! When it came time to make my new years resolution I wanted to make one that I could actually stick with.
Deciding to lose holiday weight (plus more) was a good idea, but not a good goal. I have done the weight loss thing, multiple times. Every time, I lose the weight and then I just gain it back again. I go back to the lifestyle that I had while being fat and guess what happens?...fat comes back!
This year I decided to make my goal simply: to be healthier. This way I could have more long term effects than short term. Weight loss is probably a side effect and definitely welcome, but that is not the goal.
In the search for health we made some changes around the Liu household and have stuck with them pretty well!
I started Weight Watchers (yay!), so far it has been a good way to try to adjust to eating healthy instead of a strict diet just to lose weight. It helps me make better decisions and I have already seen good "side effects" so far ;)
I had recently gotten into Zumba before Christmas, and was having fun doing that at home. Meanwhile, my family got Just Dance 2 for Christmas. If you haven't played it before PLAY, it is a serious workout and sooo fun! After that, Lee and I couldn't help ourselves. We bought Zumba for the Wii and Best Buy version of Just Dance 2 (more songs). The Zumba is awesome because I can do it at home, yet I can change the levels and dances that I couldn't do with the DVD's. Plus who doesn't feel sexy after they do all those latin moves? Ok...after you practice them for a few weeks...and if no one is watching. :) But all the dancing and fun doesn't make it seem like exercise. Just Dance 2 is great because even Leland will play with me and we have a fun workout together to songs we both know and sing along to. It is the hit of all our gatherings and everyone we have played it with has LOVED. In fact, I think we are introducing it to some people tonight...
I saw this on a friends blog a while back and decided to finally check it out. This documentary totally blew my mind. Too much information to share here, but everyone should check it out (Instant on Netflix). I researched some of the information and thought about it for a long time. It may be hard, but to me it makes perfect sense. Naturally grown fruits and vegetables are what God gave us as a huge source of food. Of course we should eat as much of it as we can. Also, the benefits of juicing just astounded me and seemed like such a good idea. Soo.....
TADA! Isn't she a beaut? Leland worked hard in overtime hours for us to afford this. It is great because it cold presses the juice with a grinder instead of cutting it up with a blade (killing the nutrients by raising the temperature). We have been using it almost every day since we got it. We love the fruit juice it makes. Lee and I both noted how good we felt after the first day of drinking the juice. Ask me about the fruity tutti ;) As for the veggie juice....we are trying. The first time we made it, the filter was set to let through pulp. Bad idea. We were chewing our juice! Bleck! Needless to say, it was hard to get down. We changed the setting to no pulp and had a carrot-cucumber-apple-basil juice today (Basil from the plant I have been growing since Nov. I am so proud of her). I actually thought it was pretty good for vegetable juice! Leland is still getting used to it though. We are excited to soon be using it for a cleanse. I will post later about that!
All these healthy habits are really making me happy. I hope we can continue with them. We have done well so far and it's March! Pretty good for a new years resolution I'd say. We may seem like we are becoming health freaks but believe you me, we have a long way to go still. These are just things we are trying to incorporate into our unhealthy life. Hopefully in the future we can be health freaks!
I'd like to close up this post with the benefits of juicing! OK not really, it is just a funny video spoof of the Juiceman (if you have ever heard of him, this is a fun interpretation) by Jim Carey. We can't become invisible or fly yet like him, but we are looking forward to it in the future!
I was always one who thought it was dumb to cut your hair off soon after you got married. If you wanted long hair for the wedding (so it would look best), why wouldn't you want your hair to look great always? Well I still believe that. However.....
My hair was getting tiresome. I hadn't only grown it long for my wedding, but for years and years. Long, wavy locks is my signature hairstyle after all! Though it looked lovely, I didn't want to go down in history as "that girl that always has the same hairdo". You know who I am talking about, those ladies that had fabulously feathered wings in high school and still flaunt them in 2010? I couldn't be that. I decided I just needed a change of hairstyle and it just so happened to fall a little after I got married. I talked it over with the husband, family, friends, and my hairstylist, who suggested that change was good. Besides, it grows back! Shorter hair now doesn't necessarily mean short hair forever.
Anyway, the change went from this:
To this:
I actually think that it looks refreshing and is still quite similar to my old hairstyle, just shorter. It makes my hair look healthier and thicker as well. What do you think?
My husband is awesome. Look what he made for his niece's birthday celebration we had the day after Thanksgiving! A turkey cake! So creative.
The legs were even made from spice cake to look like dark meat.
Lee had teased Anna earlier that she would have to blow her candles out from atop a turkey. She didn't like that idea very much, but soon warmed up to it once she saw that it was a turkey cake instead!
This summer our family dog had puppies again. This was the third and largest litter of all. They were so energetic and cute. So much so, that Dad was convinced that we had to keep one. After Lee and I got married we still came up to my parents house at least twice a week. We love my family and all, but the travel was mainly for the puppies. And can you blame us? Look at these cuties!
They thought it was fun to chew on our ears. It tickles so much!
It was hot in July and these puppies were always hiding out in the bushes
Since there were so many puppies, even Lee got to name one. Meet Kevin!
This is my sweetie, Fleck
We let them play in the flower garden and it was like children on a playground! They were barking and jumping, pouncing and wrestling. After a while Doug got tired and made a bed on these soft flowers. It was so cute, it was difficult to get mad at them for ruining the flower garden.
Mukwa is happy to take a break from the puppies with Lee
We wish we could have kept them all, but we were so happy to have been able to keep Bubba. He is so funny! Another post on that later!
We weren't really sure what to be this year. Napoleon and Pedro came to our minds, but that didn't really work out. Then we remembered that Lee looks just like Russell from UP! So last minute we pulled things together and created these costumes!
At work we were voted as best group costume! It was funny because people would look at Lee and say "Funny, you are a fat boy scout." Then they would look at me and become really confused. Then it would click. "OOOOOOH!!! CUTE!"
We even went into a store to get balloons. I walked up to the counter and said "We need some balloons", and the girl said "AWWWW! Of course you do!". A little girl even said "Russell!", right when she saw Lee. He does look like him! I need a little more work....not that good at frowning. Plus Leland said I don't make a good man. Luckily I was only on on Halloween! Hope you like the pics, and hope you had a happy Halloween!
I don't know about anyone else, but I love Mumford & Sons. Their music is like Coldplay mixed with folk music. I like to call it Cold Folk Music. Anyway, everyone has already probably heard Little Lion Man already. So I chose this song that I also love. In fact, just check out all their songs. They have their own sound. And the banjo and mandolin! Who does that in trendy music these days? I'll tell you who. Mumford & Sons. Listen and Love.
