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LIVESTRONG

"We Believe in life. Your life. We believe in living every minute of it with every ounce of your being. And that you must not let cancer, (or anything) take control of it. We believe in energy: channeled and fierce. We believe in focus: getting smart and living strong. Unity is strength. Knowledge is power. Attitude is everything. This is LIVESTRONG."

The above quote is from the Lance Armstrong cancer survivor group livestrong. I love this.  

My family has gone through a lot this last year, even the last few years. I guess with eight kids, spouses, grandkids and a large extended family there is bound to always be something brewing.  

People often ask me "how do you do it?" and I can honestly say I don't know, I don't even know what "it" is. Life?  Yea, that's it life, how do I do my life, crazy, busy, mixed-up, life?  

This morning when I read this it hit me, I Believe In Life!  

God has put me here for a purpose and to not be in the moment, energized and ready would be a terrible shame. I don't know why things happen the way they do but I know that what happens next depends on how I respond. When I am focused, and positive it is always better.

And, In Unity There Is Strength, lots of strength. Family and friends are such an important part of that.  Just this week as our most recent drama unfolded I was moaning to my daughter Kim and she reminded me, "we will get through this, we will ban together, be there for each other and we will get through this too." She is right!

Thank you to all of my friends and family for being in my life and for your support, prayers, thoughts and kind words, my life is a better place because of all of you, I am humbled by and grateful  for all of your love and support.

Today is going to be a good day, Attitude is everything!

Let Them Eat Cake

Last Sunday, Feb 13th was a fun filled day for family and friends. We had a wedding shower for Kimberly, actually more like a 'party'.  Thirty five wonderful people showed up to give their love and best regards to Kim and Edward.

We held the party at Kim's house in Indio so all of her friends from the desert didn't have to drive way up here, instead we drove that a way. No problem, it's an easy drive right?  UNLESS your bringing the cake!  That's right, Katie, Crystal and I made the shower cake here in Lake Elsinore.  That meant we had a 100 mile delivery to make...

Katie got 'Caught Red Handed' making fondant  roses

Crystal giving the thumbs up to our original design

Now years ago I took cake decorating class and always made fun cakes for my kids parties, Katie of course is our culinary student and has had a couple years of baking and decorating classes and Crystal is the families resident artist and design queen of all things crafty, so we had a great time with the design and baking and decorating.

Katie had instructions to be the human shock absorber.

Our ride down to the desert was something else. First we padded Kaitlyn and gave her shock absorber lessons then we were off.  I made sure to drive on the 'slow' side which is not my usual.  We decided to stay on the freeways so to avoid as many stop and goes as possible and were doing great until we got about half way and Katie realized the sun was melting our frosting! Whoa, time to rotate!!  Then we noticed the lean, yes we were now carrying the leaning tower of Piazza.  Well to make a long story short we made it just fine and Kimberly was blessed.

A great big Thank You to everybody who made this such a fun day!!

Kim had a great day, Thank you everybody!!

On right track!

Well today marks day seven of my new eating lifestyle, I haven't done perfectly but close. I've lost 7 pounds in 7 days!  Not eating meat is very easy for me but boy oh boy do I miss bread and butter!!
I've used this last week to really dig into several nutrition sites and gurus and have found Yuri Elkiam.  He is an awesome young man from Canada who developed the Total Wellness Cleanse that I will be starting on Friday.  (following is a link to his bio.  http://tollieschmidt.com/authors/yuri-elkaim/  )
I've always wanted to do a cleanse but have heard some unpleasant and scary things about the process so I have never pursued it, after reading all of Yuri's stuff and watching his YouTube videos (he's big on videos) I am convinced more than ever that this is the right thing to do.  His is a completely natural raw whole food cleanse with no harsh herbs involved, its 14 days of a pretty strict diet then another 14 day to ease you back into reality, my reality is already raw whole foods so I think it will be ok.  I will let you know how I do.
I'm excited for the challenge and the changes it will bring, only 11 weeks till the wedding..
So till next time;
Eat More Veggies  :-)

The first Success

Success on the first day. Barley grass and lots of water made up breakfast and a mid morning drink then a green smoothie with lots of berries was lunch, sweet peas dipped in hummus made for wonderful snacking in the afternoon and for dinner we all had quick fried veggies on pita bread.  Honestly I wasn't hungry once and all the food was delicious.
The best part is tonight I don't have any heartburn.  :-)

Hallelujah!!

About six years ago during a health scare I embraced a Raw Vegan lifestyle for about 5 months.  The program I followed is called the "Hallelujah Diet"started by the Rev. George Malkmus way back in 1976.
http://www.hacres.com/home
It's a pretty basic vegan program, no animal anything, and 85% of your diet must be raw!
Malkmus, and a lot of the others I follow, are of the theory that it is the live enzymes in our food that actually nourish our bodies and therefor cooked food is lacking at best.
During the time I was following the Hallelujah program I lost a lot of weight and felt better than ever, which was remarkable considering my diagnosis of cancer.  After being poked, prodded and scanned from every angle I was given a clean bill of health.
Praise God and carrot juice! :-)
But the very dumb ending to this little story is that I have not stuck with the program, I have put on a lot of weight my energy level is low and I feel awful all the time.

Well I am sick and tired of being sick and tired so I am embracing the program again.

Yep, and I need all my friends to rally round and keep me accountable. I am setting a very realistic goal of three months to begin with, that will take me to Kimberly's wedding.  After that I hope to be so motivated that I make this my life choice and not just an occasional program to visit.Thanks in advance for your help and encouragement, I will keep you posted of my progress and maybe in the process motivate some of you too. 

My Christmas letter (Christmas Magic)

  I Love magic and fantasy!
I  always  have, I love mythical tales of of magical forest creatures and fairies and elves, of very wise talking animals and always "they lived happily ever after".   I love all the fantasy and wonder of outer space, Star Trek and the Star War's stories of the force and of course good always  conquering evil.
My family even has a way of rating movies, "this is a Renee movie", meaning it has a happy ending or "definitely Not a Renee movie", if things don't go so good.
This past year my life seemed like a real life HallMark movie, our "situation" was Crystal and her surprise pregnancy, the "dilemma" came when we found out Olivia had HLHS, our "journey" took us to medical specialists, a special hospital, to the NICU and Ronald McDonald House but then the "ending" came, we didn't get the Renee ending.  We didn't conquer her broken heart, we didn't triumph and I was shocked and devastated by her loss.
It has been a little over four months now and I confess my recovery is going slow, I've searched for the answers in all different places, some places so silly I've laughed (people really believe this junk?) and some places I do not wish to revisit ever again,  but all the places I've been looking have not held the answers I need so I've pulled the covers up over my head, (life sucks) I just can't process this reality.  Do very bad things really happen to good people?
Today a friend of mine shared the above link to the song "O Holy Night".  I listened and I cried, then I listened again, and I cried again and then I realized, Our Story Hasn't Ended, there is still the hope of God's Christmas Magic because in the grand scheme of things Good Has conquered evil.
It's all coming together for me (somebody's been praying).
My life is like a HallMark movie but a much bigger one than I have been focusing on,we are still in the middle dilemma part of our story as long as we are here on this broken earth. The ending of the movie comes at our death and we Will Live Happily Ever After.  Olivia is healed and whole and in perfect peace in Heaven and I will see her again when my story here is through.
We win because of God's Christmas Magic,"Oh Holy Night" because of Jesus Christ, our Savior.
Please watch this video and follow the lyrics and feel the Christmas magic.
Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family, and many, many wishes for a much better Year in 2011.