JUICE DIET!!!!! Episode 1

Hey everyone,

In the midst of being busier than we have ever been, it seems pretty difficult for us to eat properly. I have lost 10 pounds since my second son was born but it has almost been a full year now and 10 pounds in a year is a sad set of results. Several friends of mine (and myself) decided to try a juice diet (or juice fast). Yesterday I went out and bought a juicer and I decided to buy one of the cheaper ones ($35.00) just in case I end up only doing this for the 10 day health reboot. Today ended my "Trial" day which was basically just throwing a bunch of random items into my juicer to see what would happen.

The basis for our juice diet actually comes from a documentary that is currently on Netflix called "Fat, Sick, and Almost Dead" or something like that. It is fairly boring but if you pay attention to the health details it is pretty informative.

On to the juice side of things.....

Today I tried a few things that mostly involved Apples, Carrots, Celery, and Peaches. Right now while I'm typing this I am drinking Apple, Carrot, Peach, Grape, Ginger Root, and a Pinch of Cinnamon. It is a bit heavy on the ginger root so it is fairly bitter but still not too bad. For tomorrow I bought quite a few things that consist of everything mentioned above and also Cucumbers, Spinach, Kale, Lemons, Parsley, Mint, Oranges, Grapefruit, and Bananas.

The original juice fast is suppose to be a solid 10 days of nothing but vegetable and fruit juice. I was considering only juicing for breakfast and lunch and then eating a regular meal for dinner but seeing how easy and quick it is to juice I think I am going to hit this juice diet full force.

Currently I weigh 217 pounds with my goal weight being 180 pounds. My senior year of high school (2005) I weighed 185 pounds. When I got married in 2007 I also weighed 185 pounds. After we had our first son at the end of 2009 I had jumped all the way up to 220 pounds. With a little bit of diet control I was able to reach 190 pounds but it was short lived and my weight made a new home at a solid 200 pounds. In 2012 I found myself all the way up to 230 pounds for the birth of my second son and my weight seemed to level off around my current weight of 217. Lets see if we can't knock some pounds off right??????

My reason for deciding to eat healthier and also do this diet is to try and gain more energy with my hectic lifestyle. While running a business 7 days a week with my wife, still working a full time job, and also playing Mr. Mom on my days off it seems that there isn't a whole lot of time to recover. Processed foods really put the drain on you and it seems as though the busier I get the more fast food I eat. I hope to put a stop to all this garbage entering my body. I plan on making several blog posts over the next 10 days and lets see if this "juice thing" actually works shall we? :)

Over 8 Months.....

Well, it has been over 8 months since I last blogged, apparently that is a good sign.

Our business has been blooming and we are quite busy. Running a business from home is definitely a lot of work but it's completely worth it. We (I) have several lofty goals for our busy season (through Halloween) and despite the few people who have zero faith in these goals being reached I am quite confident that we can nail those goals.

I won't post the actual goals here on my blog because some of them are a little bit confidential but one of these goals is to almost triple last years revenue in October. This goal may be a little bit high to reach but some of the measures taken and different items that we are offering should influence our income. Not to mention that about a week and a half of last October we weren't able to sell items due to some inconveniences with some of our hardware and software. So, if you take into account that the last shipping day to get items out by Halloween is the 27th and about 10 days of that our items weren't available online we only had 17 days in October to make sales. I think that with the combination of 3 more sites that our items are listed on, roughly 6 more Halloween items (including glow in the dark being added to some of our existing items) and the fact that we should have the full 27 days to make sales we should easily make over double from what we did last year.

Hopefully it happens, we are doing everything we can to make it happen despite all the negativity that is being thrown our way.

Anyways, this was my rant post that I was hoping would get some of my excitement out. We are already selling quite a few Halloween items and its only the 2nd of August :)

Thanks for reading, I will try to keep up on my blogging but I don't know if I will have the time.

Why I LOVE being a parent - Episode 6

I have been pretty sick for the last few days and it seems that I may actually be getting slightly better (maybe). For this episode I wanted to talk about a conversation I had with Korver this morning.

I filled Korvers little pepsi mug up with some root beer this morning for a treat. This is the conversation we had:

Korver: Dadda, will you drink my root beer with me?
Me: Buddy, I'm sick and I don't want you to get my germs.
Korver: You're not sick, your Dadda.
Me: (as I laugh and cough up half a lung) Well buddy, I am daddy, but I'm also sick. Can't you hear me coughing.
Korver: Don't cough, just share my drink (as he smiles huge)... you can drink the little straw.
Me: Sorry bud, I don't want you to get sick. Wait until I get better and I will share a slurpee with you.
Korver: Dadda, I have to poop

HA HA HA HA HA HA

Oh man, I love this kid. I about died.

This just goes to show, that it doesn't matter what you are talking about....... a good poop is all it takes to make you LOVE being a parent.

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 5

A super quick trip to the grocery store and we get episode 5 :)

Korver and I make a quick trip to our local Smith's store tonight and knowing that Korver absolutely LOVES "Crane Games" I grabbed a couple quarters out of my truck to throw in the machine on the way out of the store.

We get a few items and checkout and head to the exit where the crane game is sitting. I have never before seen anyone using this particular crane game before but it happens (like always) that I end up having to wait in line to give Korver a big smile. We watched the lady burn through several quarters not getting anything before I realize that she is trying to hook a "Mitt Romney Plush Toy" (kinda weird thing to have in a kids crane game). She turns and apologizes for taking so long but apparently she just HAD to have this for her dad.

Korver is getting pretty restless so I pick him up and say softly to him: "Hold on buddy, she has to get her stupid toy first"...... moments later Korver watches the crane drop (with no catch) to which Korver yells out: "Did ya get your stupid Toy?" Needless to say my face went a little red (like always) and she finally gave up to go cash out some bills to get more quarters... we hurried and spent our .50 cents (with no win) and exited the store.

This just goes to show that if you really want something important to get out to everyone, tell your kids!!! It's moments like this that I LOVE being a parent.

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 4

The other night my in-laws watched our two kids so that we could go on a quick date (to Red Lobster). The nearest Red Lobster to us is in Layton and happens to be pretty close to a Toys'R'Us. After Dinner we hit up Toys'R'Us and once inside I headed right for the Thomas Train sets (Korver has tons of them but is missing a few characters). I found this sweet track set that has a huge hill and little mechanism that pulls the trains up the hill... its pretty sweet. It was a $45.00 set and it was on sale for $35.00 so I HAD TO HAVE IT FOR KORVER.

K'Dee said: "he doesn't really need it" to which I replied: "but I will give it to him for Christmas, I'll save it". She gave me an interesting look and said: "I really doubt it will last that long". We get home and I put it on a table in my bedroom and it was still in its large bag.

Later that night we are on Skype with my brother and his family and Korver runs up to me and says: "Daddy, I need my big Thomas" and I thought he was just asking for his big Thomas pillow. He kept asking and asking and at one point was giving me a little screaming. About the time I finally realized what he was asking for he ran over to me and said: "Daddy, can I have my Big Thomas PLEEEEEASE"...... "Daddy, I said Please" and then he gave me a huge smile and pointed toward my bedroom....

..... Needless to say it was cute enough to score him a brand new toy and K'Dee looked at me and said: "I told you it wasn't going to last til Christmas".

It doesn't matter how terrible the "Terrible Twos" are.... A little smile and the word please can still make your heart melt and make you completely glad that you are a parent.

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 3

Hey everyone, it has been over a months since my last post and as many of you know we just had our second child earlier this week. For those of you who don't know we had a little boy (BIG boy actually) He was 9 lbs 12 ounces and 21 inches long. We named him Griffin Randall Wood.

Now to get on with the episode. I am writing this while Griffin is completely zonked out on my chest so I will try to not have too many grammatical errors :)

Korver (our fist son, almost 3 years old) is a little skittish around kids so naturally we were a bit worried how he was going to handle the new little one. It took some time but after a few hours he finally got warmed up to the idea that he had a little brother. He would sorta think about touching his hands and petting his head but wouldn't really have much to do with Griffin. Several hours had gone by and it was time for bed and like every night Korver started getting upset knowing that he had to retire for the night. He was making rounds giving kisses to everyone and stopped by his mommy and in the softest voice I have ever heard he said: "Can I kiss Little Brother?" It was awesome, maybe all our worrying was for nothing. Korver went to bed and was out cold in less than 3 minutes (gotta be some sort of record).

It doesn't matter how stressful things can be and it doesn't matter how tired you are but the simplest little phrase can make everyone in the room completely happy to be a parent!!!!!!

Uinta Mountains Trip July 19-22 2012

Joe and I left Brigham City and headed towards the mountains around 3 p.m. Thursday. We set up camp at Butterfly Lake and decided to just fish there for the evening. Generally I catch TONS of fish at Butterfly but wasn't really having much luck. Joe was out-catching me 4 to 1 (which sucks because he is the newby ha ha).

Friday we played around some more at Butterfly and decided to hike the short trail-less hike to Castle Lake. Again, Joe caught all the fish at Castle. We decided to head back to Butterfly and my wife, son, and my in-laws were fishing and waiting for us at Butterfly. We drove down to Pass Lake and played around a little before returning to camp to cook some dinner. After dinner they went home and Joe and I drove down to Kamas to meet my brother and bring him up to camp.

Saturday is where the story gets good. We decided to go for another small hike to Ibantik Lake. Trying to find a place to park was pretty ridiculous but after a while we finally were able to. What a crazy packed weekend. We got a pretty late start but the hike started out really well.... until we realized we took the wrong trail. We ended up at Watson Lake and realized we took the wrong trail so we hiked straight over over the "mountain" next to us and dropped down to Wall Lake. We fished there for a few minutes but decided to get on our way to Ibantik. The clouds were coming in at this point but we didn't really think it would be too horrible so we trucked on. We ran into several people that were hiking out, none of which had been all the way to Ibantik. Most of the people we talked to said they were catching lots of little bitty brookies but nothing big. We finally made it over The Notch and it had been lightly sprinkling on and off.

We hiked down passed Lovenia and the several other small lakes right there and the rain started to pick up pretty good. We started seeing lightning and hearing lots of thunder and were going to head back but decided that hiking back over The Notch wouldn't be a good idea with the lightning, not to mention we were so close to Ibantik that we decided to try our luck with some fishing.... but just before we got to the lake THIS HAPPENED:

After the hail stopped we went down to the lake (there were several tents at the lake) and we threw in some flies and some lures, none of which proved to be productive (with the rain and all we didn't think the fishing was going to be good anyways). With a break in the storm we decided to hurry and head back over The Notch. We got hit with rain pretty hard on the way out and decided to just hit it hard, needless to say we were completely soaked by the time we even got to back to Wall. From wall I made another small error and we headed down towards Trial Lake (which was the best error of the trip). We had to hike back up to the Crystal Lake Trail Head from Trial. We finally got back to the truck and drove to a camp host site and purchased a few bundles of DRY firewood. We headed back to camp and ate some dinner and cooked a sweet cobler (Cherry Apricot Cake over peaches) it was fantastic. It took us a while to get warm since we were all soaked straight to our bones, but it was completely worth it. Ibantik was quite beautiful, even if we got completely hammered by hail and rain.

Needless to say I was trying to ruin the Uintas for the two brothers with me that were first timers in the Uintas. However, they were already planning next years trip so I don't think it was completely ruined for them.

Aside from Joe catching all the fish (JERK), my constant lack of correct trail picking, and the horrible weather.... It was a great trip.