My Week as a Vegetarian

To be a Hanks is to love meat. Steak, chicken, pork, you name it. But I've decided to switch things up a bit.

Let me start at the beginning. There was a Biggest Loser Club formed at our church at the start of the year. Each week we receive a new "health challenge", which sometimes I follow and sometimes I don't. This last week's challenge intrigued me. The challenge was to eat "no meat."

I was almost afraid to tell my husband of the 7 day adventure I was about to embark on. We both come from red meat-loving families. The Hanks Family used to raise and slaughter cattle (sorry Marc...a story for another time).

This was the breakdown of my week:

My staples:

• salad
• nuts
• eggs
• cheese
• milk

The verdict?

I love meat. I could never be a full-fledged vegetarian.

I am, however, grateful I took the challenge. I realize I eat way too much meat. I thought more about the food I was putting into my body this past week more than I have at probably any other time in my life. There were many times I chose healthier alternatives. I ate more vegetables, fruits, and healthy nuts.

The resolution:

I will eat less meat (especially red). I will cook healthier alternatives for my family (much to my husband's dismay). We will fill our bodies with more good, nutritious, raw foods, and less caloric-dense processed foods with additives.

Please cheer us on. We need all the help we can get.

Postscrip...The family didn't exactly follow this with me. They did, however, eat what meatless meals I made for dinner.

Also, I ate fish. I have a hard time putting fish in the meat category.

And again...

Andy makes up for how careful my other two boys are...




For more info on this, you can click here, or here, or here.

I have a friend (she's a nurse) and I call her whenever I think I may need to take Anderson to the doctor. When I called Kerry about this particular incident, I asked "Does the Instacare in Hurricane do stitches?" Her response: "Is it Andy?"

How can I not eat this kid up?

Love Story

This is a late Valentine love story of sorts. And the condensed version goes something like this...

Boy meets girl.
Girl falls in love with boy.
Boy finally realizes he is in love with girl, also.
Boy and girl get married on July 21st, 2001.
Boy and girl live a great, fun, married life with no kids for 4 years...Pleasant Grove, American Fork, and then onto Louisville, Kentucky for graduate school (boy is getting closer to dream of becoming a marriage therapist).
Boy graduates from grad school in May, 2005 and girl delivers 1st son 2 months later.
Boy and girl leave Louisville in June 2006 and drive across the country to live in good ol' Hurricane, Utah.
Boy starts new job.
Girl delivers 2nd son 14 months and 22 days after the first (no, this was not planned).
Boy and girl purchase a beautiful home in Hurricane.
Girl delivers 3rd son in March, 2009.

We never know, starting out, what life has in store for us. I'm so glad that ours has taken us where it has so far.

Ephraim and I celebrated life last weekend and took a trip up to Salt Lake. We dropped the kids off at Chris and Heidi's (thank you guys) and spent a glorious weekend in the snow. Food, movies, snowboarding, shopping, more food (did I mention that I didn't have to cut up anyone else's food?)



Thank you, honey, for a blessed life. I wouldn't change a thing.

I love my town...

This is why I live where I live...

Hurricane Weather (click here)

Compare this to where I grew up (sorry mom and dad)...

Springfield Weather (click here)

(of course the rain wasn't in the forecast when I first did this post)

And the winner is...

No, I'm not sponsoring a giveaway on my blog.

We took the kids up to Cedar City to see the Harlem Globetrotters with our friends, the Clarks. And of course, the Globetrotters won!


This was my first time to see them play and it was so entertaining. Ephraim has seen them a couple of times but he said that this was his favorite! (it must have been because I was with him...)

There was dancing...


dunking (ephraim's favorite part)...



crowd-pleasing stunts...


lots of cheering (just look how captivated we all were...)



and some tired kids on the way home...


except for Andy, who runs like the Energizer bunny...


I think we may have to do this again.

My New Best Friend

Megan, meet the KitchenAid Mixer. KitchenAid, meet Megan.
And so the love story begins...with the appliance I never knew I always needed.



I have been making my own bread for a while now...hand kneading it and everything.

The plan this past year was to purchase a KitchenAid Mixer at a Black Friday sale...but my parents beat me to the punch. They surprised me with one when they came out in October. Fabulous, right? I use it multiple times a week.
And to top it off, my husband bought me a wheat grinder attachment.

I haven't bought bread in 4 months.

And now I don't buy wheat flour.

I love this machine.

On another note, I just realized my blog started doing "comment moderation" all on its own. Sorry to the comments I just discovered back from November.

This Morning

Every morning (upon waking) I go through the same battle in my mind. Do I work out? Do I start cleaning? Do I start breakfast for the kids?

This morning I woke up (before anyone else) and fixed myself a cup of hot chocolate. And a slice of pumpkin chocolate chip bread (made from 100% freshly ground wheat flour...more on that later). It felt good.

And then I worked out.

I have yet to clean and get breakfast for the kids.

I think it's going to be a good day.