If Home Is Where Your Heart Is. . . .

Andy made this video of our day on the mountain yesterday!  Enjoy!

We had another perfect day on the mountain today!  I absolutely love living here. . .where we can get up every Saturday morning and head to the slopes together as a family!  I love it!  We don't actually board too much as a family.  Hays has practice from nine to four and Maggie, Tiki and Dax have practice from nine to noon.  So, Andy and Gabby and I get to board (and ski--Gabby) together all morning.  Then we all meet for lunch with TONS of our friends!  It is SO MUCH fun! The day was beautiful.  Sunny and about 44.  It really doesn't get much better than that!  I love the no coat skiing days! Some of us came home early because Maggie got plowed over by another boarder.  But hopefully we'll all go up tomorrow (and hopefully I'll get some pictures).

So, I'm starting a fitness class today called Body Sculpt & Burn.  Does anything about that title scream, "COME TAKE MY CLASS"?  No!  It doesn't.  I'm scared to death!  I'd much rather do the class called Morning Flow Yoga, but this is the only class that fits my schedule.  So, on Monday and Friday from now on (at least until the Spring Break Cruise) I am going to go to Body Sculpt & Burn.  Yikes!  I have been successfully putting it off for several weeks with wonderful excuses.  Today, my excuse is that I don't want to be first-day-of-working-out sore right before we go snowboarding tomorrow.  Seems like a pretty good excuse to me (and it still may win out. . .I still have an hour before class).  However, I am dressed for the class and ready to go so that I have more going in the "YES" column than in the "NO" column when it comes time to walk out the door.  Oh boy.

Nice title.  Huh?  Well, maybe not for a mom blog post, but it is a great title for a book!  And it is the title of Andy's new book coming out the Spring (and available for preorder on Amazon now)!  He is doing a blog with his book, too.  This book is written for parents of teens and youth pastors and it will blow you away!!!  It is unbelievable what teens are doing now. . . and the most unbelievable part (to me) is that for the most part, there are no emotional strings attached anymore.  If you have a teenager or a preteen, you NEED this book and you need to follow Andy's new blog: Secrets, Lies & Hooking Up .  Don't think that your kid isn't the one. . .this book will blow your mind!

In Tiki's class this year there are three children who are adopted internationally.  It is really fun that his class is so diverse!  His wonderful teacher, Mrs. Greenberg, thought it would be a great idea to study adoption as a part of their social studies curriculum so that the kids could have a better understanding of adoption and of other cultures. So, today they started talking about adoption and the students who were adopted and one kids raised his hand and said, "Tiki isn't adopted."  And Mrs. Greenberg assured him that Tiki is, in fact, adopted.  And this kindergartner said, "No, he isn't.  His parents just made him on a beach."  HYSTERICAL!!!  (For those of you who don't get it, Mrs. Greenberg and I are thinking that this child thinks that he is so tan because he was conceived on a beach.)  Oh to be a kindergarten teacher and hear things like that all of the time!

As I go along every day, sometimes happy and sometimes sad; sometimes ready to conquer and sometimes totally overwhelmed; sometimes content and sometimes feeling like I am lacking. . . whatever it is that I am feeling, I often feel alone in these feelings.  And I was reminded today by conversations with two dear friends that I am not alone in my ups or in my downs (mostly feeling alone in my downs).  I am not the only one hurting or struggling and since that is that case, I wanted to share with everyone some quotes and verses that have come to mean a lot to me over the past several months.  By no means is this all of the words I have found useful, but they are the ones that just came to mind as I felt compelled to encourage others. I follow C.S. Lewis and John Lindell on Twitter (among others) and these are my favorite Tweets (or whatever) from them over the past few months. So, if you are down today or if you find yourself struggling or if you are in a low place becaus...

Just a little temporary addition to my fridge!  So fun!