Paper Airplane Contest

 We had 2 races this week!!  Pinewood Derby and a Paper Air Plane Contest!!  the Tuscon Air and Space Museum was having their annual paper air plane contest, so blaine entered!!  we all got in the museum free for the day, which was fun, then he got to compete, free lunch and snacks and a free t-shirt...which was pretty cool.  Ty still loves planes, so it was a great day!!

 he is blaine....registering his plane!

 Ty found the planes he could play in and was the happiest i have ever seen!

 our cousins...HUBERS...entered the contest too...we love playing with them.  Blaine and Aubrey were actually in the same racing heat.

 ty found a giant mm!!  true happiness.  i had to tell him he can NOT bite this mm!!  haha

the race was fun...unfortunately none of our kids went on the the next round, but that was fine with us because we were tired and wet (it was POURING RAIN) and ready to go home.  but we had a great time! good friends/family, airplanes, free food, and fun competition!  super fun!

Pinewood Derby

Blaine was able to race in his second pinewood derby, and it was so fun!  we were a little worried since we now live in a ward with tons of engineers, but Blaine held his own.  we didn't take home any medals, but we had a good time.  the race was different because the track was all done by time trail, so it was very exact.  the kids were cheering and screaming...like little boys!

 Blaine couldn't decided on the design of his car, so he went with ninja turtle mario....the front has a TMNT face, but then there are mario stickers all over.  perfect for him

 and daddy made his CUB MASTER debut....with a little helper by his side!

Blaine and some of his buddies.

Happy Birthday Blaine

i think i say this every year...but SERIOUSLY...I CAN"T BELIEVE I HAVE A NINE YEAR OLD!!!  what?!  happy birthday Blaine!  you are getting way too old....but pretty cute too!

 we got to celebrate with the Hubers...it's so fun having family close by to party with you all the time!

 we think we got a WINNER gift with this one...Lego Ninja Turtles!  i think i won mom of the year right there!

 my handsome boy got some new church clothes for his birthday since it was on sunday!!

the boys both look so cute...they both need to stop growing up!  i couldn't have asked for a better big brother for Ty...Blaine is the best anyone could ask for and such a great example to look up to!

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET BOY!!  my 9 year old!!

Mario Birthday Party

Blaine has been really into MarioKart lately...so it was no surprise that for his birthday, he wanted to have a MARIO party!  he would even practice online with his Uncle Rich to get him ready for the BIG EVENT!!

 The kids each took turns racing and we worked out a bracket system to determine a winner.  it was more intense then i thought it would be...and quite emotional...but the kids were cute cheering each other on!!

 we are proud to say that Blaine came out on top!!  i guess it's only fair that the birthday boy wins...right?!?!  but man it was a close race!!

we sure had a great time and Blaine enjoyed being Mario for the day!  happy birthday B!!

Juice Detox

i wanted to wait until we were done with our juice detox before i posted about it.  NOW that it's officially done, it's time to report,(worried about skeptics!...i was one too once!)...

*****WARNING, LONG POST*******

it all started a couple weeks ago...i was sick in bed with a super bad migraine an "attention migraine" as jake calls it (TENSION migraine).  while laying in bed i was browsing Netflix, and i found an interesting documentary called "HUNGRY FOR CHANGE".  it was so so good.  if you are trying to lose weight or make life style changes i  highly recommend it.  during the movie i learned so much about the food we eat and how it effects our bodies and essentially how bad most stuff out there is.  anyway, i could go on forever about all the good stuff i learned, but one thing that interested me was the concept of "juicing".  after watching this movie, i decided to watch a "related interest" movie called "FAT, SICK, AND NEARLY DEAD"...again another really good movie and super inspiring.  after that i was committed...i was going to do a juice detox fast...and i was able to rope Jake into doing it with me.  10 days of NOTHING BUT JUICE!!!  3 times a day.  the main purpose for this was to "reset/reboot" our bodies....and to lose some weight of course.  we wanted to re train (or trick) our bodies into liking fruits and vegis more than other processed food.  

 i was able to borrow a good juicer from a friend of mine (thanks Tabatha)...i didn't want to run out and buy one incase we threw in the towel after a day....we went to costco....loaded up on produce....and we were on our way!

DAY 1- not too bad!  it think we were still just pumped and motivated for change.  we can do this!  it was exciting to try different combinations of fruits and vegis PLUS it was fun pushing them thru the juicer! a whole apple or orance, unpeeled!! cool

most of our drinks were either green or brown.  i would only put our drinks in a clear glass if it was a "pretty color".  if it was brown, or poo color, then we would have to drink it in a dark color cup!!

here is our pretty juicer and some yummy food!!

this is what most lunches and dinners looked like!!

DAYS 2-4 were kind of a blur...it was all kind of the same!  for the most part we liked our juices.  morning juice was mostly fruit....lunch was half and half fruit and vegis and then dinner was mostly vegis.  i used spinach in EVERYTHING!! it is awesome and you can't even taste it.  we weren't really ever tempted to "break"..sometimes at night it was hard making dinner for the kids and smelling it knowing that i couldn't have any, but i could handle it!  even (whole grain) Mac and Cheese smelled heavenly!

Day 5- was just fine until we realized that the next day would be fast sunday!! ummmm...would be be able to fast 2 meals while already "juice" fasting.  we decided that we would allow ourselves to have only ONE piece of wheat toast.  mmmmmm, it was sooooo good.  

Day 6- fast sunday!!!!!  let me tell you...sacrament bread has never tasted so good!  it was the best bread i had ever tasted!!! and it was walmart great value bread (gross)!  we managed to stay strong...and we broke our fast on juice!  wahoo.  aaannnnndddd, we allowed ourselves to have ONE piece of wheat again and again it was amazing!!  we needed some substance!

we think having fasted, it kind of messed up our motivation, cause it was hard to keep with the juice...but the pounds were coming off and we liked that!!

Day 7- Jake's first day back to work.  i got up extra early and juiced breakfast and lunch for him to take to work!  that's true love!  he stayed strong at work and i was good while it was just me and ty at home.  (Blaine started back to school that day too)

Day 8- we were hungry....it's getting hard, but we did 8 days!  that's awesome! as Joe Cross would say "Good on us for trying!".. we should celebrate with a yummy dinner!!  yep, day 8 was our last day!  we decided that it was time to be done!  we were hungry for real food not to mention i was getting a little crabby!  

we had a gift card to BJs pizza...probably not the best thing to break a juice fast on, but we wanted it!! so we went out, but a funny thing happened...we both only ate 1 piece of pizza and had a couple bites of pizookie.  the pizza tasted weird and the cookie was wayyyy too sugary.  WHAT?!?! BJ's didn't taste good? that's one of our favorite places!!!  what is going on!!???  maybe this fast thing actually worked.  maybe our bodies wanted just the healthy stuff.  when we got home, i went straight to bed because my stomach hurt so much, and Jake woke up feeling pretty gross too.  the next morning i woke up and juiced!! that was what sounded good and what my body wanted.  

will be juice forever?!  NO....i had to give the juicer back!  but it was great and i would do it again sometime, probably for a shorter time period.  while we were doing our fast, we were also switching the food in our house to whole grains.  no more "white" or processed foods.  i don't want to be a hippie, granola girl, but i really like the difference in myself since the fast.  i've been having fun trying new recipes, and eating good healthy food.  ok, so i even made my own granola bars today too with organic stuff.  (i promise i'm not hippie granola girl!!!) 

OH, i never shared our results....we lost a combined 20LBS in 8 days!!!  Cindy-7 and jake-13!  we've managed to keep it off since starting back on solids! haha, now i look forward to making healthy living a new part of my life!  

this is a picture of some of the prettier drinks.  some of my favorite things to juice were, apples, cantaloupe, spinach, carrots, parsley, sweet potatoes, and pears...

we tried ginger root and it was NAAAAAASTY!!!!

Blaine was IN LOVE with fresh apple juice, pear juice and orange juice!  he wasn't into the vegi stuff!

Snow day

who would have guessed it snows in AZ!!! and close to home!!!  we went up to Madera Canyon, only about 20 mins away, and got our snow fix!!  we don't think Ty has ever even been in snow so it was pretty fun!

 bundled up!!

 daddy helping get Ty up the little hill!

 The priors came up too!  it was so fun! (for about 20 minutes)

 cute carlee even had a good time!  such a sutie!!

 the only thing we had were sand buckets...but they worked in snow too!  california baby...i think so!

after about 20 minutes Ty was sooo cold!  we were done.  we just snuggled back to the car!

we were able to bring home 2 buckets of snow so Blaine could build a snow man in our backyard!...

...but in the sun in melted, melted, melted... small, small, small!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!  we invited a few people over for new years eve...then a few more, then a few more after that!  we had a "kid friendly" new years, meaning we watched the ball drop at 9 so we could then go to bed at a decent time.  the kids all spread out and had fun playing anything and everything!

 the adults were able to play some games too.  our friends the Jackmans provided the fireworks, and we had some sparklers too!

 new years bubbly!  clink!

 ty and his cute friend hannah!

Happy new years from the Robinsons...here's to an awesome 2013!!  so far so good!