As you saw yesterday our house went up for sale on Friday.

We had our first open house on Sunday and it went really well. About 25 groups came in to look at it, meaning that about 50 people saw it.  There seemed to be a lot of interest and numerous people asked for a disclosure packet.  The broker’s tour is today and we’ll know more information after that.  I’m eagerly awaiting the call about how that goes!

The overall feeling of most everyone that walked into our unit was that they didn’t expect it to be so nice.  We put A TON of work into our house.  When we moved in, it was straight out of 1978.  White tile with brown grout, original vinyl flooring, brown cabinets….we even had a brown ROTARY phone in the kitchen!  Insane. We completely remodeled the kitchen, put in wood flooring (it was carpet), remodeled the guest bathroom, and painted almost every room.

What do you think? I apologize for the not so great quality of the pictures-they are from my realtors website.  I really should ask her for the originals.

Kitchen:

Living Room/Dining Area:

Living Room:

Master Bedroom:

Master Closet/Changing Area/Bathroom:

Lu’s Bedroom:

Bathroom 2:

It was a good house.  I’m proud of what we did with it and I hope we find a buyer who will love it as much as we did.

I’m going to try and recap the last week of my life.  I feel like a month has gone by!

We started last week with Lu and Mommy going to Vietnamese for a little date.  Lu decided that she loves everything Vietnamese!

My brother-in-law and nephew left.  And then we said goodbye at daycare :(  It was very emotional.  I gave each of Lucy’s main teachers a keychain with her picture and all her teachers got thank you cards and giftcards to Starbucks.  They cried, I cried, it was the worst part of moving :(.

On Friday, the movers came and made short order of our house!

And as you can see, the For Sale sign went up on our house!

We then hit the road! Shaun in his Element with the bird and tons of boxes and me with Lucy, the kitty, and tons of boxes.  We left the Bay Area around 3:45 and didn’t get to our overnight stop until 12:45. NINE hours in the car.  Everyone did great, although Lu woke up around 11:45 PM and didn’t go back to sleep until about 1:30 AM.  Here she is at 12:45 in the hotel room:

That next morning we slept in until about 9:45, got breakfast and then hit the road.  The desserts desert of Nevada are surprisingly beautiful!

As was Oregon!

And then we hit Idaho!

Those are pictures taken with my camera as I was driving.  It was pretty desolate and a VERY straight road.  It was gorgeous but a bit tedious.  Lu wasn’t such a happy camper.  She did pretty well but had about a 45 minute crying streak before we got to the ONLY town to stop in (there was literally nothing for hundreds of miles).  And then she cried a bit right as we were driving into Boise.  She promptly fell asleep (for the first time of the day) right as we hit Boise city limits.

We left Winnemucca at 10:30 and got to Boise around 4:30.  Minus one hour for the time change and it was 5 hours in the car.  MUCH more manageable than the 9 hours the night before.

We were finally home!

I walked into the house to find this:

and this:

and this:

Courtesy of my Mom and sister.  It was a nice way to be welcomed home.  My brother-in-law also mowed the lawn for us and his mom (who lives here) planted us 3 planters full of beautiful flowers.  I thought I had taken pictures but evidently not.  I’ll get to that 😉

Oh and of course my sister left the infamous bears!

These bears are so not my thing and so my sister torments me with them whenever she can.  I’ve come to embrace them 😉

We have an empty house, with just the essentials-food, a pack n’ play for Lu, and a blow up bed for Shaun and I and THAT’S it.

We’ve been spending a lot of time at my sister’s and having picnics on the balcony.

Our stuff should be here by Friday and I can’t wait!!!

We arrived in Boise on Saturday (long post about that to follow!) and man does it feel like summer here!  It has yet to feel like summer in the Bay Area so the heat and sun were a welcome change.  It was in the 80s on Saturday, the 90s on Sunday, and it’s rumored that we’ll hit 100 today!  No worries, it’s supposed to cool down to the 80s by mid-week and stay there for awhile.

POM Wonderful contacted me last month to see if I’d like to contribute to their POM Summer Menu Series.  Y’all know how much I love pomegranates-I wrote an homage to them back in November! I gladly accepted even with all the moving madness.  So for the next month, you’ll be seeing a POMegranate inspired recipe once a week.

This week I was asked to make a dessert. Last night, we headed over to my sister’s for dinner and I had plans to make a granita. It’s cherry lime flavored as an ode to my old favorite Sonic Cherry Limeade slush that I now think tastes awful.  Super easy, no fuss, cool, and healthy-perfect for my moving madness! This is way better than a Sonic Cherry Limeade slush-hands down!

You only need four ingredients.

Ingredients:

-16 ounces POM Wonderful pomegranate cherry juice

-1/4 cup honey
-1/4 cup lime juice
-3 TBSP vodka (this only serves to keep the mixture from freezing solid-no real alcoholic content. Alternately, you can use no vodka but will need to place the frozen mixture in a food processor.)

Instructions:

-Mix pomegranate juice with honey in a small saucepan over medium heat to combine.

-While that’s cooking, squeeze the limes.

-Whisk the juice mixture numerous times. When you start, you can feel the honey on the bottom of the pan.  You know it’s done when there is no longer any resistance from the honey.

-Whisk in the lime juice and vodka and add to a shallow pan.

-Place the pan in the freezer.

-Go play.

-After an hour, use a fork to break up the ice mixture.

-Place it back in the freezer.

-Go play for another hour.

-Mix it up again.

I had to put this down in my brother-in-law’s man cave freezer-hence the cooler in the above picture. 

-Go enjoy dinner and watching the cousins giggle hysterically and kiss each other unprompted (and know that you 100% made the right decision moving to Boise).

-After about another hour, your granita will be done.  Mix it up a final time.

-Scoop it into pretty serving bowls.  Garnish with lime and mint (optional) and enjoy!

-Seriously YOM.  Shaun rated it a 3.5 out of 5 (high praise for a dessert from him) and my sister rated this a 5.  She LOVED it, as did I.  She thought that it would be delicious with a thin mint or a chocolate wafer cookie for those of you out there with no gluten allergies.  I may pair it with a square of good dark chocolate next time.

I would make this again in a heartbeat. It’s perfect for warm summer evenings-very refreshing and cool.  It was thousands of times better (and better for you!) than a cherry limeade slush.

YOM!

One of the things that is so great about having a blog, is all the amazing people that you get to meet.  I met up with 2 in the past 4 days.

Lynn of The Actor’s Diet was in the Bay Area for a shoot and it turns out that she was staying only 10 minutes away.  We arranged to meet for drinks late Friday night and it was FABULOUS!

It was like reconnecting with an old friend.  We could have spent the whole night talking but cut our night “short” at midnight as Lynn had lines to memorize and I had guests to entertain.

Today, I drove over to Jill’s house for lunch and to meet the sweet Isabella. We met once before about a month before Isabella made her debut.  I’m so glad I was able to make it work to actually meet Isabella.  We went to Jill’s Whole Foods (the biggest and best one I have ever seen) and had a nummy lunch.

How cute is she?

She was in a dress!

A dark (but sweet!) picture.

How amazing is she?!?!?!

This weekend we took my BIL and nephew to the California Academy of Sciences.  If you’re ever in the Bay Area I HIGHLY recommend visiting this museum.  It’s amazing.

Lu LOVED touching the stuff in the tide pools.

There were awesome Jellyfish (I love Jellyfish).

This was a big round tank and Shaun wanted me to take a picture THROUGH the tank.

My BIL has his eyes closed but this is a cute (but dark) picture of us.

There were awesome “fishies!”

Alien froggies:

Snakes:

An albino alligator (Yes this guy is real):

And a low water garden on the roof!  The roof is the garden.

Here are skylights into the rain forest:

It was a nice way to spend our last Sunday in the area and Father’s Day.

I hope you had a great Father’s Day!

A friend from my Mommy board who lives in Kansas is in the area visiting her family.  We met up at the mall yesterday and had so much fun.

Mel and I met while pregnant on Baby Center and our group of girls always talked about Starbucks, Target, and Sonic Burger.  We just so happened to go to a mall that had a Target, a Starbucks and a Sonic Burger.  Kismet!

We met at Target, got some Starbucks, and then went and played.

Lu and Emme!

The four of us (kind of).  A better one of Emme:

A super silly one of Lu:

I finished the trip with a Cherry Limeade Slush.

I used to LOVE these things and I was so excited to have a splurge BUT this was utterly disgusting.  It was so sweet and just tasted of syrup.  I drank about a fourth of it and had to stop.

Many of you have asked how I’m doing with my health issues and taking time for myself with all of this stress.

I have to tell you that I’m doing GREAT.  I pretty much follow the plan that my ND spelled out for me in February. Anytime that I try to stray from it, it spells bad news for my tummy and digestive tract.  In the past few weeks I have been a little lax about sugar, tomatoes, fruit juices, and alcohol and man can I tell!  I’m trying to stick to it to the letter because it really does make me feel SO.MUCH.BETTER.  I am NEVER lax about gluten, corn (I am oh so allergic to corn), dairy, pork, or citrus.  If I get it accidentally, it’s awful.  Pork especially 🙁

I see my ND every 2 weeks and she tweaks my supplements some but I think we’re on a good path and I’m feeling really great. Once I’m in Boise, that will drop to 1 visit per month over Skype.

Additionally, I don’t know if I mentioned it but the therapist that I started seeing back in February didn’t work out.  I went to an appointment one day feeling really low about my body image and she basically told me that I was acting crazy and then recommended I either get on Ritalin or Anti-Depressants.  She also brought up liposuction.  It was a bad bad scene.  She was great for everything EXCEPT body image and that’s what I needed help with the most. 

So…I broke up with her and got recommendations for therapists from my ND.  She recommended both a Life Coach and a therapist.  I saw both to see who I liked better and it turned out that I liked BOTH for different reasons.  I see the therapist once a week and I see the Life Coach every 3 weeks or so.

Let me tell you-they have helped SO MUCH.  I am in a better place emotionally and body wise than I have EVER been in.  My headspace is getting healthy and that makes me so happy.  We’ve been working on mothering myself and showing the care, compassion, and intuition that I use with others on myself.  I’m a very loving person and I follow my gut with other people. For myself, I’m extremely analytical and very MALE. I use almost NO intuition with myself.  I expect perfection from myself and when I can’t deliver I berate myself and tell myself that I’m a bad person.  I’m trying to find more balance in all areas of my life.  Bringing more female energy into MY head and bringing more male energy to the outside world.  This all sounds very crystals and butterflies and basically is BUT it’s HELPING and that’s what matters.

When I get up in the morning I say nice things to myself.  I say the things to myself that I wish others would say (many do but I’ve traditionally had a hard time believing them).  If I ever start talking badly about myself, I stop it right then and there and try to figure out why I’m feeling that way and reinforce that I’m really a good, beautiful person.

Instead of hating my body and fighting it, I’m learning to love it and appreciate it.  I don’t like the weight I am right now but for some reason my body thinks it needs to be this weight.  My body/mind is trying to protect me from something by keeping this weight on and I need to thank my body for trying to take care of me and just try to be the healthiest person I can be. I’m still the same weight I was a few months ago but when I look in the mirror, I see a beautiful, healthy, able body.  I really do see a different person in the mirror.  And?  I’m not going to lie-sometimes I have really bad days but they are getting fewer and further between and I haven’t self-soothed with food in I don’t know how long-months maybe?

I try stay away from the scale now and only hop on it occasionally to just check in. When we move, the scale is going down in the garage so that it’s less of a temptation for me.  Yesterday I jumped on and I saw a number that would have sent me into a tailspin a few months ago (160) and yesterday I started to have those thoughts and then said, “No, you know what, you’re feeling really great and the number on the scale doesn’t matter.  You’re doing great.”  And then?  I didn’t think about it AT ALL yesterday.  Not once.

I wrote that down in my notebook of wins!  I used to carry a notebook to note everything that I ate.  Now I carry the same notebook to write down everything that I’m doing right for myself.  It’s the win notebook and I LOVE it.

I’m working really, really, really hard on myself and I’m really proud of me for doing that.  I’ve also learned and have been working on setting better boundaries with people and that has been HUGE for me.

I do a lot of talking to myself in the mirror and maybe that makes me crazy but I feel good and that’s what counts, right?

Last therapy session, my therapist had me think of 20 thinks that I enjoy just for me and not to please anyone else.  It was a struggle to come up with 6 but we pushed through and I now have a list of 21.  Anytime I’m feeling down or negative or like I’m a “bad person” I’m supposed to stop immediately and do one of those activities.  It’s been working!!!  Guess what’s on the list?  Blogging/writing 🙂

Another huge things on the list?

My little smoothie stealer.

She downed a good quarter of it!

So there’s your answer-I’m doing really, really, really GREAT.

Thank god for telephones and Skype because I’m not done yet with my therapist or Life Coach OR ND-that’s for sure!

Heather’s post today is a perfect explanation of how I’ve been feeling about the blog lately.  I have been extremely busy but at the same time, I’ve also been struggling with what I want to do here and what’s healthy for me.

I’ve been doing a TON of soul searching and have plans for a revamp of what this space is once I move and I’m settled.  I KNOW I’ve lost readers while doing this soul searching but that’s okay.  My philosophy is that once I figure out what *I* want this space to be that it’ll be more genuine and attract more people.  And?  I don’t necessarily want it to be about attracting more people.  I want this to be a space where I can write and share useful information that may help people.  That’s it.  I think that’s a pretty good goal, don’t you?

So that’s the story.  I’m still thinking on it and hopefully will have A TON to write about once this move is OVAH. 

We leave in 11 days!!! And our house is about 90% packed.  WOO HOOO!

In the meantime, here’s a cut picture of Lu from a few months ago.  She wore this outfit yesterday and I can’t believe how long her hair has gotten.  Otherwise this is a perfect representation of my cute daughter from yesterday 😉

P.S. She is not happy with this move stuff. :(  Her schedule is all off and the last 2 nights she woken up screaming “AWAKE! UP! AWAKE! UP!” Both nights we went in and rocked her and she’d fall fast asleep and then as soon as we’d put her down she’d start screaming again.  On Saturday, it was 12:30 am – 1:30 am and last night it was 4 –4:20 am.  I’m tired. *yawn*

Sorry for disappearing.  Life has been more than hectic but I’m sure you’re tired of hearing that.  A HUGE project at work that I’ve been working on since February 2009 is about to launch, it’s review time at work, we’re packing, we’re getting our house ready to sell, oh and we’re moving 1000 miles away in about 2 weeks.  Add to that, everyday life things AND all the people who want to see us before we go and we’re overwhelmed to say the least.

My favorite picture of the last few weeks?

She learned to say “Cheese” while getting her picture taken and so this night she kept saying “Cheese” and I’d take a picture and then she’d say “More! More! More!”  I have about 10 pictures from that night.  One is the background on my phone and it makes me smile EVERY time I see it.

Lucy’s favorite past time? (other than Duplos):

Playing with buckles.  She LOVES to buckle herself in.  She hasn’t figured out unbuckling (yet!) thankfully.

We went camping this past weekend (our last California camping trip with our good friends and constant camping companions Josh and Parish *sadface*) and went on a beautiful hike at Pinnacles National Monument.  We saw some gorgeous flowers:

And scenery:

Caves!

Lu was quite the trooper in the caves:

And my little Les Mis girl keeping cool:

Daddy and Lu:

And now we’re back, dealing with the bomb that is our house and trying to get organized and packed before the realtor takes pictures on Monday.  This morning Lu wanted “More bows! More bows! More bows!” and Daddy was all to happy to oblige.  He even said that the flower would look “pretty” behind her left ear.

(she wouldn’t smile because she wanted “MORE BOWS!”)

Even though it’s hectic, I do love my life!!! 

Hopefully you’ll see me again soon.  I can’t make any promises until after the end of the month-how sad and anxiety inducing is that?!?!?!