Life changing stuff!

Hello family and friends,

Hope life is treating you kindly where ever you are and whatever moments you happen to be experiencing.

Here at the Schamel household it's been nonstop happy business. Starting Friday night, husband and I had a wonderful date night. It started off badly with my tardiness issues which really annoy the dear husband. My whole life I've been a late person and this terrible habit has made it on every New Year's resolution list. Husband on the other hand is exactly like my brother, super punctual. I have quotes from both men, which were directed at me. I think I once mentioned here about how a few years ago my brother and I were driving somewhere. Unfortunately I had once again made us late and during the drive I tried to smooth things over by saying "don't worry, we'll make it". My brother's reply was simply, "I don't want to make it, I want to succeed". My immature thoughts were shocked at how a person would want to succeed at being on time. Note that my brother is 3yrs younger than me.  And then years later, after being married for a few weeks, I was once again late and dear husband would announce every 5mins that we were super late. Once in the car, the clearly agitated husband explained to me that "being late implies that you do not care about the people waiting for you". My thoughts here were "YIKES, I better shape up". Still working on it. Maybe I need to start praying about it, then work on it some more, starting with better time management.

Back to the date night, after husband finished yet another explanation of the importance of time management and me promising to work at it, we began to have a good time. And as a result of my "disrespect of our time together", we sadly missed the soccer match which we were supposed to attend and instead opted for a consolation prize...a movie. Even though I was incredibly remorseful, I did enjoy hanging out like high schoolers in a movie theatre. Especially since it had been almost 2years since going to the movies. The last time was when baby boy was about a month or so and we thought to go see a James Bond film at the drive in. Bad idea. The poor little baby boy cried most of the time. The car was humid as we were in sunny California. Husband kept suggesting that I breastfeed the baby, the baby didn't want to eat, I was over it and I think it even started to rain. Terrible idea. New parents often have many awefully misguided ideas and we've had our fare share. Fortunately this was an indoor theatre and we were without a month old screaming sweet little baby boy. After tripping on some Hercules excitement, we returned home around midnight (this is a big deal!). Baby boy was being babysat by our kind friend Alyssa who happens to be single. The reason I mention her relationship status is because only a single person can stay up till 3am and not be tired. By single I mean also without kids. And since we were on the high of being young, we stayed up until husband pointed out the time. I then thought of how in a few hours baby boy would be up, full of energy and ready for the new day. Luckily husband agreed to have a daddy and baby date while I slept in. Hmm, la dolce vita! Simplecemente fantastico:)

And oh did I sleep in! They (husband and baby) got on with their breakfast and took a stroll to the park. They came back earlier than expected because husband had planned to go fellowshiping with the missionaries. Later that day we had our selves a blast visiting the Denver Aquarium. I had been wanting to visit the aquarium for a while so this was a big tick off the to do list. As you can I'm sure imagine, baby boy loved it. I have a few pictures but they're awfully fuzzy. So I guess that really means no pictures, but the memories are there. I remember baby boy running through the crowds and crawling passed knees and skirts to get right in front of the tiger (the kind that lives in water). Once he got to the glass he turned to wave at me, when turning his attention back to the glass, he jumped back as the tiger stared him right in the face. A moment I'll never forget. Husband and I had a total childlike freak out when seeing the sharks. Our excitement was immeasurable. We were all "wow, honey, look at that, did you see that, my goodness, WOW, that's crazy, it's coming this way, LOOK, look, WOW, this is CRAZY, awesome!". Baby boy didn't care much for the sharks, he started playing on a nearby bench probably bored at our excitement since this was to him just another "fffish". All in all, we love the aquarium. Husband is planing a shark dive in a month or so and he would like me to join. He's selling it as a date night and I'm not buying. Did I mention that this would be the kind of dive that has you swimming directly with the sharks, no cage protection. No thank you. I like my limbs intact.

The next day was church and afterwards we visited our friends Ty and Roberta to celebrate Ty's birthday. Roberta had made a lovely seafood dinner which was enjoyed by all.

Sometime during the days above I scored free groceries at Safeway because couponing rocks. I think I paid $0.23 for a bag of groceries. More details on that tomorrow.

So a wonderful weekend overall, followed by a busy week. I'm working on my time management because it's become even more necessary as new things have been added to our quality of life: 1) Juicing - a friend of mine started juicing and she's enjoying great health benefits. After hearing about it from her I decided that juicing is not some weird Gwyneth Paltrow like fad, not even sure if Gwyneth Paltrow juices, but the whole idea sort of looks like her doesn't it? So my uneducated self shelved this concept in the same spot as where I put vegan/vegetarian kind of stuff. Well I've now been educated and let me tell you something, if you care about your health, you should be juicing. It doesn't have to be extreme, even a little is better than nothing. Now let us all vote YES for more vegetables and fruits! And luckily husband is on board this health train. It took a little more convincing on his part but after watching 3mins of the Hungry for Change documentary, he gave me carte blanche on preparing nutritional meals. Now that we're making smart decisions I decided to take things a step further and entered into the world of...drum rolls...CANNING. That's point number 2) Now let me start by saying that canning is totally misrepresented. You're probably sitting there thinking that I'm too young and it's too early in life to be delving into that deep homemaker type stuff. But I tell you, it is not too early. As a part of the frugal living standards, canning is high on the list of saving. My dear friend Brandy, same person who exposed me to juicing, has been kind enough to agree to teaching me all that is to know about canning. If you've never heard the word canning before, here's a quick definition via google - to preserve food in a can. It's that simple. For our family this means no more food wastage. We'll also have homemade pasta sauces and canned fruit.

These two new concepts have entered our lives at the perfect time. With couponing I'm able to save on toiletries, cosmetics, cleaning products, paper products and a host of other goodies. Juicing allows me to be a better couponer as I'm more health conscious and therefore not tempted to buy junk food just because it's a good deal. And canning seals it all by giving me the ability to preserve food allowing us to eliminate as much nonsense out of our diet as possible. By nonsense I'm referring to MSG, High Fructose, Artificial colours, Artificial flavourings and many other gross things humans shouldn't be eating. The bread making also continues and now I'm slowly removing white flour for whole wheat.

Unfortunately we do not live on a farm, so we still depend on many store bought products and that's ok as long as we're more conscious about the food we consume and coupling that with regular exercise. Believe it or not, I'm not an extreme person so moderation is one of my favourite words. Who has a favourite word? Me. I do. Many in fact. Moderation happens to be one of them, the other is balance. Where is this going? Somewhere I hope because I've been typing for about 45mins and counting, slow typer here.

So, for the dramatic but life changing conclusion: Eat well now and save on the medical costs later. It's quite possible that I've snatched that quote from Suze Orman. Love that woman! Back to the conclusion because it's getting late and husband is about to return from basketball: Remember to take your time and make changes that you can maintain. 

Here's to a joyous rest of the week.

Peace!