Mormon Bloggers

My passport has expired.  I’d lost my driver’s license and was hunting for the legal documents I needed to replace it when I came across the well-worn little blue book.  I opened it up to take a mini-trip down memory lane and instantly felt a dagger of pain tear through my traveling soul.  I let out a scream and started to cry.  My husband came running to see what was the matter and then stood in a stupor fearing I’d finally completely lost my mind.  I felt like my life was over. The truth is that my life has been changing.  I’ve noticed over the past few months that my travel-planning is more of an afterthought.  The dreams are constantly in my mind, but the opportunities pass and I’m left reflecting on how I let practicality or financial responsibility make the decision for me.  Where in the past I would have spent the last two months spontaneously road-tripping, the farthest I’ve actually been is 2 hours from... Read the rest of this entry »

Wonderful book! Neal A. Maxwell is one of my all time favorite writers. For me, he is the ultimate wordsmith. Elder Maxwell (an LDS apostle) had a gift for packing volumes of meaning in a few words. So when Missy (friend for life) gave me the “Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book” a couple of days ago, I was thrilled. Missy and I met in the mission field (Honduras) over 25 years ago. The bond from our companionship has endured mightily through all these years and the long distances. Who can explain why chemistry happens between two souls like ours? We’re nothing alike, and yet ridiculously paralleled in our life experiences. Almost like paternal twins sometimes. We’re convinced we were made to experience life together. She’ll be mortified to find her picture on my blog, and since I’m visiting in her hometown right now, I’ll have to be extra cautious. If the world does not hear from me again, check for any freshly mounded dirt in her backyard... Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you can tell from my gorgeous, voluptuous body shape, I am not the most balanced, posed, and flexible woman around.  Not that I haven’t tried over the years… I just don’t have the patience to get down and do it. When I found out that P90X had a yoga workout, it would be an exaggeration to say I was a little bummed.  Yoga has never been my thing.  I never really saw a point in twisting and contorting yourself into unnatural positions to make yourself feel good.  Because it didn’t feel good!  Then I was really upset when I found out it was 90 min long!!!  The first time Ben and I did it, I complained bitterly through the first 45 min until Ben told me to shut up (rather rudely too!)… then I complained under my breath for the last half. It wasn’t until the next week when I started to realize that yoga actually made the other workouts a little easier!  I couldn’t believe... Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and I have 1 more week of phase 1 left of the P90X program.  In just 3 weeks I have lost almost 2 inches all over my body!  I can barely keep my happy jig inside… okay, so I didn’t… but I am not going to show it to you so don’t ask! Ben has lost 10 pounds, but gained a ton of muscle too!  He walked past me this morning with no shirt on, and I had to take a double take momentary thinking their was a strange man with no shirt on sneaking around my house!  He has been showing off his muscles all day and bragging about his amazing feat of doing the whole Ab-X program without stopping.  Just rub it in… I am trying my best.  And I never fail to work up a great sweat.  I have more chub to get off than he does, but considering the fact that I am not military and I am overweight, I think I am doing pretty dang good!  AND I flexed my arm today and I am starting to show a little definition!  I showed Ben. “What am... Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I had the great privilege to teach a lesson at church on family responsibility (basically, parenting).  A week ago I was irrevocably convinced I was the last person on earth qualified to teach that particular lesson and almost called to back out.  As the week progressed I thought to myself, “If any of my neighbors are in class on Sunday, I’ll have to feign immediate illness.”  They would surely call me out as a completely unqualified hypocrite.  But the Holy Ghost does wonderful things when you turn over your life in humility.  When it was all said and done, the 35 minutes I spent in front of the class was the most spiritual time I’ve ever felt while teaching. Here are some of the things the spirit taught to me:  My kids are children of our Heavenly Father.  They have His spirit, and their spirits studied with Him, learned from Him, and grew to maturity before they were given the opportunity to come to me. When... Read the rest of this entry »

I have been having a hard time getting out and doing official miles lately.  It’s harder with three kids than I had thought.  Mainly because my little guy isn’t big enough yet to ride in the jogging stroller, and my boys want to ride their bikes when we go and they are so unpredictable that I spend the whole time yelling at them to stop and stay out of the street, that our exercises are cut short due to stress. Most of my workouts I have to do at home AFTER the boys are in bed.  And they are workouts that don’t count on this challenge.  BUT the good news is, that I am still getting in shape and losing weight!  I have officially lost 1/2 of my pregnancy weight gain!  Woo Hoo!  I have been patting myself on the back all week for my hard work.  I am finally starting to feel like myself again… instead of living in a fat-suit. Once I get this pregnancy weight off, I will start posting my updates again with pictures.  I don’t... Read the rest of this entry »

So it has been a while since I have posted anything on here, but I have been working on something for a few weeks now that I wanted to share.  It is not quite finished, and I will continue to add to it in the future but I thought I had better share this.  Just a little while after I got home from my mission, several conversations that I had with people reminded me of a song that I had on a cassette tape when I was little.  It was a song about a bucket and it went something like this . . . I always thought that this song was very silly and it made me laugh when I was little especially the version I had on the tape because the two voices sounded much older and cranky.  As I listened to this song again, I started thinking about how we can just chase our tails around in circles and get nothing done in our lives if we we don’t try to expand our horizons and think outside of the box.  This all comes down to what we really want out of life.  I have... Read the rest of this entry »

Since last week, I have had quite a few people signed up for challenge, woo hoo!  But I would LOVE to have more!  So email me!  We have some great stuff going on this summer and would love to have everyone involved.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask in a comment here or in an email.  My email is:  nutsinanutshell(At)gmail(dot)com Also SPONSORS are needed.  If you or anyone you know may be interested in some free advertisement or would just like to donate some money or anything to help out the challenge, please contact me!  It doesn’t take a lot to be a sponsor and I get enough traffic here that it will be worth participating in the challenge.  I have a few sponsors now, including myself (my hats shop) and my husband (some free personal training) and I have some on the burner…. so we’ll see. For more information about the challenge, click on the link on the right side. (Para los que hablan espanol, por... Read the rest of this entry »

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”                                                                                                            ~ Steve Jobs  Read More →

I gave up treats (cookies, cake, candy, etc) for Lent. I didn’t blog about it at the start, because I wasn’t sure how it would go. Fact: it was successful. I kept to my goal the entire 40 days except for two exceptions: 1. At the Seattle Bike Expo my friend handed me a Smartie from the candy basket at one of the booths. I popped it into my mouth and then realized what I had done. After I spit it into my hand, he ate it. 2. I also took a Swedish fish out of another friend’s mouth at a dance party. So apparently, I am really good at avoiding eating sugar as long as it doesn’t involve someone else’s mouth. Heyo.  Read More →

Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom I admit to enjoying a Malcolm Gladwell book every once in a while, but often those “entertaining non-fiction” genre pieces turn out to just be one massive exercise in stating the obvious. This book claims to revolutionize our ideas about why people respond to advertisements the way they do, and some of the brain studies he mentioned were kind of interesting. But he seems shocked to learn that people lie. Duh. Of course people aren’t honest about why they buy things, because the real answers are usually pathetic. I know this, and I am neither an advertising expert nor a scientist. Additionally, in his afterward about the 2008 financial crisis, he mentions that since the recession, condom sales have gone up. Lindstrom postulates the reason for this is that in times of stress, people find solace in their sexuality. Or maybe people are just worried about getting pregnant during a financial crisis? Sheesh.... Read the rest of this entry »

Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman I didn’t realize this until after I bought a copy of each volume, but there are only two volumes in this series and they are more often sold condensed into one book. Art Spiegelman was apparently approached by people who wanted to make his books into movies, after-school specials, etc. I’m glad he didn’t. One of the best things about this series (and about a lot of autobiographical graphic novels, more so than other biographical works, in my opinion) is its unflinching honesty. Spiegelman is very blunt about his flaws and his father’s flaws, and it makes the entire work much more humanizing. Whereas sometimes we continue to dehumanize those that survived the Holocaust by refusing to acknowledge their human flaws, this does the opposite. These books are incredible. Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Dooland I don’t read a lot of this type of non-fiction, but I’ve been following Dooland’s... Read the rest of this entry »