Juice Fast

Posted on by elyse

Lately I’ve been really into food and health documentaries. I don’t even know how it happened. It started with me trying to find things to watch at night when Aron falls asleep early. My friend at work, Anne, watches a lot of documentaries, so one night I decided to try watching one called Food, Inc. It was fascinating! It was all about some of the food industries and the wrongs they do to animals and their employees. A lot of it was pretty disturbing… poor animals and poor workers. But I left feeling enlightened. I wanted to watch more!

The next Netflix recommendation was one called Food Matters. Instead of food industries, this one was about health and the medical industry. That one left me feeling even more guilty about the foods I eat. It made me feel like I needed to give up most of the things I eat and take better care of my body. It made me question the medical industry and start thinking about how a lot of medications just treat symptoms without addressing the causes of illnesses. Why wouldn’t food, the stuff that we ingest to nourish us, matter to our health? I mean, everyone knows that too much food can make you fat, and that fruits and vegetables are better for you than things like fried foods, but this documentary goes more in depth into the importance of good nutrition. Again, I found it fascinating.

The most recent food documentary I watched was one called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. In this one, a guy does a 60 day juice fast, loses 82 lbs, and helps others to think about and try to take charge of their health. This documentary must be a popular one right now because Aron heard that our friends Ryan and Mark did a juice fast for a few days. So we decided to try it out…

We’re leaving for our annual Florida trip soon, and in preparation to look a little better and to enact some of these health practices I’ve been learning about in these documentaries, we decided to do a 2 week juice fast. We made a trip to Best Buy to buy a juicer, then went to HEB and bought a cart-load of fruits and veggies. The idea is to have nothing but fresh juice all day for 2 weeks. It’s supposed to be a “reboot” as the guy in the FSaND movie states. It’s meant to detox by overloading with “micronutrients” and flush out all the toxins to rejuvenate your cells and your body overall.

We started on a Monday…

We got up at 5:00 Monday morning to give ourselves time to do our first juicing…

 

Aron's trying to fit the first apple down the chute!

The first thing I wanted to make was the Mean Green juice from the documentary. It called for 2 apples, 4 celery stalks, one cucumber, 6-8 kale leaves, 1/2 a lemon, and 1 tbsp ginger. It was… not good. It’s the one on the left below. The one in the middle is the 6 kale leaves that smelled too gross to add the whole thing to the glass I already had. The far right is carrots, oranges, and strawberries. That one was not too bad, but all of those ingredients are fairly delicious.

Our first concoctions!

 

We’re trying to convince ourselves that this juicing is a good thing… :)

The first day went okay. We were starving, but we pretty much expected that that would be the case. I mean if you’re just having juice, wouldn’t that be the logical thought process?

Unfortunately, come day 4… we were still starving. We had to go to HEB for the THIRD time (we were having to go ever other day) and we finally just threw in the towel. I was thoroughly disappointed. I had high hopes for this fast, but it was so hard! Maybe next time we should ease into it a little more instead of just having cake and ribs one day and then only juice the next.

The night we quit, I convinced Aron to watch some of the Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead movie. There was one part that I didn’t remember where he said in his Aussie accent, “If you start out to do a 10 day juice fast, but you only get to day 7, well good on you for trying! Not, oh you’re a failure; good on you for trying.” So that I took to heart. We’re not failures. Good on us for trying. :)

Redecorating

Posted on by elyse

So I’ve decided that I want to redecorate! Do I need to? No. Did I ever feel like I’d finished decorating in our current color scheme? No. Am I bored with my stuff and just want an excuse to buy new stuff? Yes!

Unfortunately, we’ve started a strict budget and there isn’t a lot of wiggle room for unnecessary things, like mirrors and paintings… but it’ll take me forever to formulate a color palette and decide what I want and don’t want, so that will buy me time. My inspiration for redecorating came while watching NBC’s Up All Night (fun show). Their house has a mid-century/eclectic feel that I’ve always kinda liked.

So, that’s all I have to go off of right now. The style of this house is a little more mid-centry than I prefer, but it’s definitely more of what I’d like to try.

I need to pick a color palette first, and I found a couple pictures that I liked on design-seeds.com:

    

Apparently I’m liking orange and aqua.

I’m excited about getting to buy new things! I’ll try to update often on ideas and purchases!

Aron’s Birthday Weekend

Posted on by elyse

To celebrate Aron’s birthday, we both took Friday off work to go to San Antonio for the weekend! It was so fun! Here’s what we did:

Friday morning, we slept in and didn’t get up until around 9:00. While Aron promptly started playing the new video game he got for his birthday, Modern Warfare 3, I went to the grocery store to get stuff to make him his favorite breakfast: chocolate chip pancakes. This picture pretty much sums up the morning:

Aron's birthday breakfast and MW3 in the background

After breakfast, Aron played more MW3 until we met my mom for lunch at Freebirds. After that we went home, packed, and headed out for San Antonio!

We got there at like 7:30 and went straight to meet Aron’s parents at a Mexican restaurant called Rosario’s that Aron’s dad picked out. It was a pretty cool place with loud music and bright colors that serves Mexican food, not Tex-Mex. This was discovered when Collin asked for queso and the waitress promptly informed him that they didn’t serve that because it wasn’t a Mexican dish. They also served their fajitas with corn tortillas, which apparently is an authentically Mexican thing, too. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and got checked in and whatnot. We got a riverside room with a balcony, and I went out on the patio to read for a little while before we went to sleep.

The next morning, we got up early-ish to make the free breakfast that ends at 9. We met his parents downstairs and ate breakfast with them, then went upstairs to get ready to go to Six Flags(!!!). The drive there wasn’t long, and when we got there Collin mentioned how Jay Richardson ran to the entrance last time he had gone, so the three of us then ran all the way to the entrance :) it was fun!

Once in, the first ride we came to was a smaller roller coaster that took on this high incline and then excelled you forward like you were falling… At the top of it before the drop, I was starting to get scared and was wishing I wasn’t on there, but we didn’t stay there long and I was soon having fun. We laughed the ENTIRE TIME! Aron decided to scream the whole time and would say things like “WE’RE UPSIDE DOWN!!!” which just made Collin and I laugh even harder.

 

Me and Aron at the first roller coaster of the day!

After that, we hurried from ride to ride. I think the next one we did was called Scream and it was one of those towers that takes you to the top and then drops you. We saw a weird couple in line there that we had seen when we were in line to get into the park and from then on, we saw them ev-er-y-where. Collin even acted like he was taking a picture of the roller coaster behind them and got a picture of them. We thought we were pretty sneaky, but I think they might have known… Oh well! (I’ll have to see if I can get a copy of it from him)

 

Picture from the line to ride Scream!

We rode several other rides, including singing “I Believe I Can Fly” on the Whirligig and riding the Superman ride before I decided I needed a break because I was starting to feel sick. We decided that was a good time to get lunch. Food in amusement parks is ridiculous!!! We spent $40 on a crappy pizza and 3 drinks. But it was good to sit in air-conditioning for a while. After lunch sometime, we rode a ride called Roadrunner (which was one of the tamer rides in the park, no flips or anything) and Aron screamed the whole time and sounded like he was dying… It was HI-larious. The people in front of us kept turning around and looking at us, and afterwards, people were playing along and screaming while we walked out. It was fun! I caved and bought a picture from that ride:

 

Before the Roadrunner ride :)

 

Weee!

After that, we rode a couple more rides before deciding to throw in the towel and go home. We rode one called Goliath last, and we liked it so much, we rode twice! The lines weren’t long, so it was good. Overall, it was a really fun Fiesta Texas experience and I’m glad we went! Collin kept thanking us for letting him go with us, but the truth is he made it even more fun than we probably would have had by ourselves, so think YOU, Collin, for going with us :) Here’s some more fun pictures from the day:

 

Bro love... oh dear...

They were playing music :)

Saved the best for last!

Back to the hotel where it was time to shower and take and nap before dinner. I love naps, and this one did not disappoint. When my alarm went off, we got up and got dressed to go on our date for Aron’s special birthday dinner at The Little Rhein Steakhouse on the Riverway.

Birthday date night!

The weather was perrrrrfect. We sat outside on the patio and only felt slightly out of place with all the older, nicer dressed people.

Aren't we cute?

With both ordered the fillet, I ordered the petit and Aron got the full size. It was massive! And we ate until we could eat no more.

Medium rare

We got the waiter to take our picture and then had some nice talking time. It was cute and nice to reminisce and I wished I could bottle up that moment together on the patio forever! It was delightful, and mostly because of the company :)  We then enjoyed the scenery while walking around the Riverwalk. Lovely!

Sunday morning, we woke up and lounged around. I started writing this post while sitting on the patio and Aron started reading his new Steve Jobs bio he got for his birthday. Then we got ready, checked out, and met Aron’s parent’s for lunch at Casa Rios.

Lovely lunch with the Trimbles 1.0

We had a good lunch before heading out of town. I’d been dreading the drive… but off we went. Aron’s work friends were having a dinner for his team in Katy, so we stopped on the way home and I got to meet his team members.

Now we’re finally home. I’m tired. It’s 8:00 and Aron’s already dozing off on the couch. We had a really fun weekend, but I wish we had had more time at home today. BUT, on the bright side, one more full week before the week of Thanksgiving! Woohoo!

 

Home Invasion

Posted on by elyse

So, I found a roach in our bedroom tonight. I know it’s a strange thing to announce to the world… “Hey everyone! I found a disgusting, possibly disease carrying, pest in my house tonight!” but I can’t stop thinking about it. Every time I walk past the place where I found it desperately trying to burrow itself into the fibers of the carpet so I wouldn’t find and kill it, I feel as if our home has been invaded. I’m having a stronger reaction than you might expect.

I went through a very strange mix of emotions upon discovering this intruder. My first thought was the dogs must have dragged a leaf in the house. Turns out no. It’s a disgusting roach. I yell for Aron, “Oh my gosh, I found a roach in the bedroom!” Die! Die! Die! I have to hit it several times with my shoe since I found it on the carpet and it’s not the ideal place for squashing insects. Then I think that I’ll fling it to the tile where I can really get it good. It takes a couple tries before I give it just the right momentum to make it to the bathroom, and even though it’s probably already dead by this point, I give it one last thump for good measure.

So now it’s time to dispose of the dead body by, of course, flushing it down the toilet. I walk over to get some toilet paper, being sure to watch out of the corner of my eye just in case it comes back to life and scurries back to where it came from to reproduce into 100 times as many pests. Even though I know there’s no way it’s still alive, and that there’s practically a roll of toilet paper between it and my hand, the act of picking it up terrifies me. I move in slowly… and then grab it! Squeezing it as I pick it up in one last effort to be sure it’s dead.

I carry it to the toilet, and as I throw it in as fast as I can, I miss the toilet! How is that even possible!?! It must not have been as firmly lodged into the toilet paper trap as I thought, because the wad of paper makes it into the toilet, just not the roach! I’m sure that I couldn’t reproduce these results again if I tried. So now I have to go through that whole ordeal again.

I feel better after it’s gone, but now I’m on high alert as I walk through the rest of the house. Every bit of dog hair (and there’s a lot of it) and every speck of anything else the dogs might have destroyed recently is a possible threat. I’m sitting on the couch trying to read my book, but I can’t concentrate. Who would have thought that such a small creature could cause so much uncertainty?

Needless to say, it’s time to call the exterminator. Sadly, we used to have one come out every few months to prevent these types of invasions, but he recently told us we were too far of a drive… Sigh… So next time I see you, I will probably ask you who you use for pest control.

 

We’re Back from Florida!

Posted on by elyse

The sign as you turn onto the bridge to get to the beach!

So we just got back from our annual Florida trip! It was amazing, as always. It’s very bittersweet to see it have to end, but I am glad to finally be home after being in the car for over 10 hours yesterday. And it’s very lucky that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend so we get two whole days to enjoy at home before we have to go back to work.

We left on Friday, the 20th, at 4:00 in the morning… after Aron and I only had gotten about 2 hours of sleep. Very tired, but VERY excited to get moving to Florida! We got to Navarre around 3:30 and here is the view that welcomed us:

Our usual condos were taken and Tina really wanted a condo we could all stay in instead of having to get two next to each other, so we were in a new fancy condo this year! It had 4 bedrooms and we all had our own bathrooms! We really wish we could buy a condo and go all the time! I think if Aron could, he’d live on the beach full-time. He flies into work, so he could fly to work from Florida, right?

The first day we went to lunch and then made the joyous trip to Walmart to buy all the food for the week. Just the girls went, so we divided and conquered and got out of there in under an hour. The bulk of our time was spent in the checkout line. Christina won the “Guess the Total” game… I never win. I’m pretty terrible at estimating. And by the time we got back, we were soooo tired.

Saturday was beach time! We were happy to finally be sitting in our beach chairs! Can’t you tell?

We stayed out alllllll day! And that night we played Phase 10 and Catchphrase. I love family game night! Generally, the girls dominated game night, but there’s nothing new about that.

James and Jessica were there to greet us when we got there and were so sweet to set up our umbrellas and chairs every morning! They are the owners of VIP Beach Services which rents umbrellas, chairs, and kayaks to people staying on the beach. They are a lot of fun, and we’re so glad to have them as friends! I didn’t get a picture of them with my phone, so I’ll have to add their pictures later.

We continued to have more fun in the sun the next couple days. Aron and I both got somewhat burned, but we were both determined to be tan by the time we went back home.

We stayed out until fairly late in the day most days. Usually until the sun was setting…

I had just woken up from a nap in my chair on the beach. So relaxing :)

And then there were the glorious Sno Balls! Delicious! My flavor this year was Hannah Montana, which was Bubblegum and Cotton Candy. Yummy…

We also did a lot of reading:

And we played frisbee (by we I mean the boys, and by played I mean there were several times the wind took over and the frisbee almost hit the girls in the head):

And we made a new friend: Herman…

He’s my Herm boy

He was the biggest crab that was hanging out by our chairs. We watched him for like an hour. You might say we have no lives, but I say, “Whatever, we were on the beach! You were at work!”

We even had one thunderstorm Thursday night and we sat outside on the patio and watched the lightning before the rain started. Aron and Collin came up with a new hit Hip Hop song entitled “Where my bolts at?” in honor of the occasion.

Sadly… our beach vacation had to come to and end. Herman came to the parking lot to tell us bye while we were loading up the cars on Saturday, which I thought was very thoughtful.

And, like I said, we’re home now. Not really looking forward to getting back to the real world, but looking forward to next year!

Elyse Got a Job!

Posted on by elyse

I got a job! Woohoo!

My wonderful in-laws found out about the job opening from their neighbor (whose parents own the company) and let me know how to apply. Shortly after sending my resume, I received a call scheduling an interview! I went in for the interview on a Friday, and the following Monday, I was offered the job!

Although my major was Human Resources, this job has nothing to do with that. It’s a water testing lab, and I work with one of the managers who deals primarily with the customers. I don’t really know what my official title is.

I’ve been there now for a week and two days, and I like it a lot so far. Today has been the best day yet. It was the first day that I had something to do all day. Unfortunately, working alongside a manger means she’s busy and doesn’t always have time to train me, but I’ll get it eventually.

Although I’m really thankful to have been blessed with this job, it’s bittersweet giving up all my free time. I was getting some work from my dad and in-laws, but for the most part, I could do whatever I wanted during the day (which included sleeping until 9:30). I miss my afternoon naps, but I don’t miss being bored and lonely when everyone else is busy working.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for me! I’ll try to keep everyone updated!

–Elyse