Touring Campus with the Warrens

We had friends come visit us this weekend! It's the first time for us to show off our tiny apartment to pre-Stanford friends. Not much to show. It gets crowded with visitors so we spent most of the day outside or playing ping pong downstairs. We had a picnic at the oval in front of campus, and then walked to different gardens. Ok, not the best picture of me, but Dani said I looked cute that day. Lately I'm grateful for any comment about my appearance that doesn't involve the word huge.
Meet Emma the new addition to the Warren family. I think she looks a lot like her older sister, but with darker hair. Sorry to state the obvious. This is the New Guinea Garden, or as we like to call it...the totem pole garden. You'll have to see it for yourself when you come to visit. Yep, most of our pictures were imitating statues. Dani and Paige posing with one of the weird plants in the cactus garden. Our last stop was the Stanford Mausoleum. This is where the Stanford family is buried. I thought it was pretty creepy the last time we went there, but it's not so bad when you're sitting with the sphinx.

Ultrasound Day!!

Well, the ultrasound technician has spoken. 53% of you were wrong, and we are actually having a boy! You can see his handsome silhouette above. Please notice the larger dark spot in the chest is his heart, and the smaller one is a kidney. Just kidding, I don't really know, but the technician was showing us all four chambers of the heart, the different sections of the brain, and the lenses in his eyes! It's amazing she could find all that even though he was moving constantly and I didn't drink enough water. She really had to jam that thing in my belly, but it was all worth it to see his cute little face. We're almost halfway there to see him in real life.

I'm Organic

Well, I've never really bought into the organic hype before. Organic to me = more expensive at Safeway. But thanks to our friends the Conti-Browns, we made organic omelets this morning filled with fennel, spinach, mushrooms, and swiss cheese. There's some local farms that actually deliver fresh vegetables and fruit on campus. We missed out on the strawberries last week, but we did get some fun carrots, radishes, fennel, leeks, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, parsnips, mustard greens, that grassy looking stuff, and some other kind of big green leaf. So we get all kinds of fresh, healthy food delivered for only $10 a week! It's amazing! I just have to figure out what to do with it now... Nikki let me borrow her vegetarian cookbook, and so far we've made zucchini soup, and fennel omelets. Let me know if you have any good parsnip recipes, etc. Thanks Kate for the potato leek soup recipe on your blog!

As Promised...

I did promise there would be more tutus, babies, and ravioli in my blog...here they are!


Do people really do this with their babies?


The ultrasound is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and I can't wait!!! I finally felt the baby kicking for sure last week at work. It was just like one of my friends described, "like a flopping fish." So my little flopping fish is about 8 inches long now, and should weigh about 9 ounces I think. I can feel it flopping in all corners of my belly, but Britton can't feel it yet. Good to know it's there and getting comfortable kicking my bladder and pancreas out of the way. 4-ish more months left...

Here's another tutu picture just for fun.

Traveling

Britton and I have both been traveling away from each other a lot lately! First I took a trip to St. Louis to see my old roomie Amy get married. It was like a college reunion. I got to see four roommates, one roommate's husband, and one roommate's fiance turn into a husband!
Before the wedding I got to visit the St. Louis Arch--Gateway to the West right next to the Mississippi river. We rode up in these cozy little claustrophobic "pods" that went through the middle of the arch and dropped you off at the top where you can look out these little windows at the city and river far below.It's 630 feet tall! I'm not really scared of heights, but it was so weird to be so high up in well...an arch. Instead of having floors of a building below you it was so unsettling to be kind of hanging in the air. It also didn't help that Amy said there's a 3 ft sway at the top. Anyway it was fun, and I got to see Amy get married at the St. Louis temple to a great guy. Here's a picture of the happy couple.After I got back from my trip which ended in a 6 hour flight in front of a screaming kid. I just remind myself I will most likely be the parent of the screaming kid someday. Anyway after I got back Britton finished his finals, and then took a skiing trip to Bear Valley with his mom and little brother.



Then I met Britton back in Brentwood for the Easter festivities. Yet another video:)




Right after that...Britton flew to Dayton, Ohio (stopping in Chicago to see his ol' buddy Bill). He toured an air force research facility because he was investigating a possible fellowship(money for school) and internship possibility. His favorite part was visiting the airplane museum. He was like a kid in a candy store, a vampire at a blood bank, or a missionary in Peru. Anyone else have a good analogy? Britton suggested a pedophile in a nursery. He would. Check out Britton in front of an SR71. Oh yeah. It looks like a space ship. Brings back memories of Flight of the Navigator.
We are finally reunited! I picked him up from the train station and we had some Indian food together, and then I made him hang out in my cubicle for the rest of the day:)

Lately

We headed for the hills President's Day to try out mountain biking. There's some trails up in the redwood forests. We barely managed to fit our bikes into our four-door car by taking wheels off, and hanging the handlebars out the windows. Once we found a parking lot we felt a little under dressed because everyone else was totally spandexed out, and using their fancy bike racks, and talking about investing in property in Europe...no joke. So we set out for the trails anyway, and chose a bad one. We rode down, down, down...and never stopped our descent until we ate lunch and I started pouting on this log here.























We found some cute little banana slugs. Which are also the mascot for UC Santa Cruz. Then we rode up, up, up (and walked) and called it a day. It was probably not the best introduction to mountain biking, and Britton is trying really hard to convince me to go again except start with the uphill and end with the downhill.

We also planned to do a bonfire out at the beach with some friends. The day got really windy so we opted for a bonfire at Lake Lagunita instead. It's kind of a glorified water retention area on Stanford's campus. But this time of year it has water...and DUCKS! We got a fire going on the sandy beach-ish area, and ate Girl Scout cookies and told embarrassing stories about each other.

What is NORMAL eating?

It was Wellness Week here at Stanford, and Nikki and I went to one of their activities together. It was 90% for the free t-shirt, 9% for the free food, and 1% to learn about joyful eating. I was expecting her to review the food pyramid and tell us the saintly qualities of broccoli and spinach, but her approach to nutrition was more like freshman roomate number three. It was more of a stay in tune with your body kind of thing rather than being strict with all kinds of rules.
The first thing she said that kind of shocked me was about getting rid of society's rules about good and bad food. Cookies are not bad, and carrots are not good. We need to keep good nutrition principles in mind, but eat what we feel like eating, and the amount we feel like eating. She gave an example of someone who took that advice to an extreme and asked herself everyday what she wanted to eat. She ended up eating raw cookie dough for two weeks...and then never ate it ever again.
Please forgive another post about food/nutrition. But I really liked her message about being in tune with what your body needs. Here's some highlights from the handout she gave us.

Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your times and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.
Instead of thinking about nutrition as "What I shouldn't eat," ask yourself the question, "Am I getting enough?" For instance am I getting enough calcium? Iron? Vitamin C?

Variety & Balance: Just by including a wide variety of foods & food groups in your diet, you will get a lot of the nutrients you need without even thinking about it.
Individuality: No one diet is right for everyone. We have different nutritional needs based on factors such as: gender, age, activity level, and medical history.
Body awareness: Am I hungry? What do I want to eat? Am I full? We need to learn to tune into our hunger and satiety signals, and most importantly, to trust our bodies.

10 Ways to Feel Good in My Body
-I pledge to...
-Not read magazines that make me feel bad about my body.
-Appreciate all of the things my body can do.
-Watch my language! Would I talk to someone else the way I talk to myself?
-Not use exercise to justify what I eat.
-Be flexible and adventurous in the foods that I eat.
-Do nice things for my body, such as go for a walk or take a long bath.
-Be a critical viewer of negative images and messages that tell me I am supposed to look a certain way.
-Not compare myself to other people.
-Show respect for all body types.
-See my body as part of what makes me unique.

She wasn't a fan of diets because they tend to get people into a deprivation-binge cycle. Nikki and I were snickering during most of her speech thinking about our husbands and their calorie and weight charts and graphs. Anyway, I actually felt better and more confident about myself after her nutrition speech. Being pregnant I definitely have felt my body's nutritional needs change, and have been paying more attention to it especially when I don't feel good. "I feel sick, I feel sick...eat...NOW! But eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich not that other sandwich your husband packed." That's what my body says to me. It's so demanding nowadays!

The Dieting Diaries

My freshman year at college I remember making fun of my roommate as she stuffed as much sugar-free, fat-free ice cream as she could into a 1/2 cup measuring cup. She was trying to splurge with sugar-free fat-free ice cream...isn't that an oxymoron? This roommate actually had a great success story losing weight by counting calories. Well, she didn't have a lot to lose, but she went down a couple sizes by keeping track of her caloric and fat intake and running. There were six of us living in that apartment that year, and just about each of us had a different style of eating/dieting.

There was another roommate on the Atkins diet. She fried bacon every morning, and the rest of us went to school smelling like it. She sent away for oily, flavorless Atkins brownie mix. She was really trying to lose weight so she was on the strictest version of Atkins avoiding carrots even. I am so glad the Atkins fad is dying down. To her credit, she actually lost a lot of weight that year. The next roommate followed a kind of diet that kept her in touch with her body. She had some food allergies so she started off with a safe, basic kind of meal. She ate rice, grilled chicken, and vegetables because her body felt good with that combination. She would try adding some other variations and explore what kinds of foods helped her feel healthy and energetic. Moving on to roommate number four, she didn't really diet at all, or need to, but we decided her eating style was to make a lot of food, and give it away to other people.

Roommate number five was my eating buddy. We kind of learned how to cook together that year. We have a picture of our first casserole, and then another one of us feeding it to the ducks. It was a great casserole. Of course I considered myself and this roommate the only "normal" eaters in our apartment. But really, we had our quirks too. My eating buddy liked to balance out all the "bad" things she ate with "good" things. Good things were frozen peas and corn. I tried to balance out eating bad food by running. And our apartment was not unique in it's dieting/bingeing at BYU, or the rest of the nation. Our society has so much quick preparation, unhealthy yet yummy food within reach that we have to come up with crazy ways to deal with it.

Right now I'm not trying to lose weight don't worry. But Britton and his friend Peter decided to lose some pounds by keeping track of calories. Often I think we don't really don't realize how much we eat. So they started sharing this Google document that keeps track of how many calories you consume each day. It looked kind of fun so Nikki and I joined it too. I thought we were close before, but now we know each crumb everyone eats every day. Nothing like peer pressure to change your habits. We also use this force to get us going to the gym every morning. No one wants to be the one to call and back out. Anyway, Britton and Peter are slowly changing their eating habits and working towards their goal. They want to be able to play ping pong downstairs without shirts. And do walking handstands. Very lofty and noble goals.

So what kind of eating/dieting style do you have? Any experiences with diets? Any successes?