Three random thoughts

1. Reed has this book he borrowed from school called Sun, Moon and Stars (by a Stephanie Turnbull). It has some cool pictures and the wording is very easy for a 5-year-old to understand. Anyway, I just really liked this part: "Many stars move around in pairs. They are called double stars." Makes me smile.

2. I woke up this morning and noticed that the color outside was grey. (I imagine that sounds kind of ridiculous. But I can see a sliver of sky out my window behind the blinds in the morning, and I judge the weather by the color I see out there.) So I got up and peeked out the window. At first I thought it was raining, and then realized that it was actually snowing. Now, no matter how prepared I am for the fact that Utah always has a couple of sneaky late-spring-early-summer-oh-my-word-it's-snowing-in-June snowstorms, knowing they're coming doesn't prepare me for them. After some wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally resigned and dressed my children in long sleeves. (*sigh*....How naive to think we might already be moving away from winter clothes and towards some shorts.) I settled on the couch with my book and refused to look out the window. Until now. When, guess what, it's not snowing. Not at all. There is not a single flake of snow on the ground, and the sky is a ridiculous blue with hanging-on grey parts. You might even call it spring weather. Oh, Utah. Just that--oh, Utah.

3. I think that I've discovered the way for me to eat better. My main problem is dessert. I love chocolate. Really love it. In fact, I concluded that I might be a tad addicted. Okay, addicted. No tad. So I've been working on it....that is to say, I've been trying to keep my desserts limited to one a day (I know, that shouldn't be hard) and not serving myself epic proportions. I've been doing well the last week or two. The thing that has made it easier is that I'm rediscovering my love of (certain) produce, and we've done something a little new with our food budget. I feel a little elementary that we needed to do this, but we decided to pull out the food money (we budget $200.00 every two weeks) and put whatever's left of it (after shopping for two weeks' worth of food) in a jar. It helps. It's a visual reminder that THIS IS HOW MUCH IS LEFT FOR FOOD. NO MORE AND NO LESS! I had $40.00 left over after grocery shopping ten days ago, and now we have about $20.00. Whatever is left over is usually used for bread, milk, and produce--those things that run out sooner, things that spoil more quickly, or things that surprise you and run out. (And in this case, $5 of it went to buying new chicken, because Carlisle thought it was his and tried to eat it as I was putting everything away. Gross. Cat-scratched chicken.) Anyway....what's it taking me forever to say is this: By spreading out our budget this way and having a reminder of how much is left, I've thought more carefully about what food I really want to buy. And I've been buying cantaloupe and strawberries like crazy. Most of the leftover grocery money has gone to buying produce every four or five days. Carrots, strawberries, cantaloupe, apples, oranges....it's fun to eat produce when you can buy it fresh. So I've kind of lost some of my enthusiasm (SOME) for dessert, and have replaced it with the fruit. I feel so much better, and I feel like this one little change is making a huge difference already. I'm not in this huge race to lose weight or change my life in drastic ways. But I'm trying to eat better and feel better and look better and overall do better. It's working!