Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Olympics:
* We've enjoyed watching the Olympics together. Snowboarding is so fun to watch, as is figure skating. Still haven't figured out how to feign an interest in curling.
* Did anyone else cringe a bit when one of the Russian figure skaters, after winning gold in the team competition, went on a long spiel about how grateful they are for their wonderful president for putting on such a wonderful games and how their President is so great? (I couldn't find a video to link to, but it was during prime time coverage). It reminded me of the praise heaped upon the North Korean "Great General" in this documentary. After the visiting doctors performed eye surgery, each recipient fawned over how it was only possible through the goodness of their dictator (starts at about the 40:00 minute mark).
* One of my favorite parts about the games is learning more about the individual athletes. Lately, though, I find myself feeling a bit cynical, as a lot of the profiles seem to be some variation of "I worked really hard and my parents have a lot of money to pay for coaches, so that's why I'm here," with the underlying message being, "Live near the right coaches and have enough money and enough obsession, and you too can be a one-hit wonder at some future Olympics. So it's always a treat to see a story like Alex Bilodeau's profile last night. Seriously, go go watch it -- I can't embed it here. What a great testimony to the power of family and the love of a sibling.
* Other cool Olympians this year: Torah Bright & Kate Hudson.
Biggest Loser?
* One show I have enjoyed the last few years is the Biggest Loser. I've always understood and explained to my kids that the way the show works is not realistic nor is it the best way to lose weight -- losing so much so quickly sets people up to gain it back quickly as well. But I've still mostly enjoyed the show and I've thought it was pretty amazing what the human body is capable of if given the chance to focus full-time on weight loss. Last week's finale, though, was shocking to me. I watched the season with my kids and one girl was a stand-out, winning all the challenges. A former swimmer, Rachel Frederickson applied herself amazingly to the challenges, lost weight consistently, and looked amazingly fit her last week on the ranch, weighing in around 150 lbs. They showed a clip with her visiting the doctor, who informed her that she was just five pounds away from having an elite athlete's body fat percentage.
I figured Rachel didn't have as good of a chance to win the overall show because she didn't have very much more weight to go while her two competitors had plenty to lose. So when she stepped out at the finale, it was jaw-droppingly sad. She'd lost the muscle in her arms and legs and her face looked as though she'd aged twenty years. She weighed in at 105 lbs, much too small for her frame. This article does a good overview of the reaction.
Some have complained that people just want to "body-shame" Rachel for being too thin, others have said that she isn't that far off, and others think hey, it's a weight-loss competition and she won, good for her. I personally hope she doesn't have any long-term consequences to her health or her relationship with food and I hope that she can get back some of the muscle she used to have. I wish her the best.
But I think I might be done watching the Biggest Loser. I think the producers should have seen this coming and put a stop to it. They supposedly have trainers, doctors, and nutritionists supervising the contestants. I've since read a few articles and thought about a few others things that make me think I should have stopped watching long ago.
Projects
* I've been in a project mode the last few weeks. Last week, I made an inventory of our food storage and this week, we've been working to fill in a few gaps. Yes, we Mormons do try to have a year's supply of food, but it's less about a potential zombie apocalypse and more about being self-reliant and prepared. The zombies might get all the attention, but I've known a lot of people who have been able to endure unemployment better with a full pantry. And in the event of a national disaster, I want to have enough and to spare.
*Yesterday, I deep-cleaned and organized my laundry room. It was nice to go through my cleaning supplies and get organized as well as to wipe down all the dust and lint that's accumulated.
* Today, I made some strawberry-blackberry freezer jam. We go through that stuff like crazy.
* I'm trying to use my camera more and I've challenged myself to take a picture every day in February. Except I missed yesterday. Still, it's been good for me to take more candids of my kids.
* I got to do newborn pictures for a friend last week and I'm loving how they turned out.
* We've enjoyed watching the Olympics together. Snowboarding is so fun to watch, as is figure skating. Still haven't figured out how to feign an interest in curling.
* Did anyone else cringe a bit when one of the Russian figure skaters, after winning gold in the team competition, went on a long spiel about how grateful they are for their wonderful president for putting on such a wonderful games and how their President is so great? (I couldn't find a video to link to, but it was during prime time coverage). It reminded me of the praise heaped upon the North Korean "Great General" in this documentary. After the visiting doctors performed eye surgery, each recipient fawned over how it was only possible through the goodness of their dictator (starts at about the 40:00 minute mark).
* One of my favorite parts about the games is learning more about the individual athletes. Lately, though, I find myself feeling a bit cynical, as a lot of the profiles seem to be some variation of "I worked really hard and my parents have a lot of money to pay for coaches, so that's why I'm here," with the underlying message being, "Live near the right coaches and have enough money and enough obsession, and you too can be a one-hit wonder at some future Olympics. So it's always a treat to see a story like Alex Bilodeau's profile last night. Seriously, go go watch it -- I can't embed it here. What a great testimony to the power of family and the love of a sibling.
* Other cool Olympians this year: Torah Bright & Kate Hudson.
Biggest Loser?
* One show I have enjoyed the last few years is the Biggest Loser. I've always understood and explained to my kids that the way the show works is not realistic nor is it the best way to lose weight -- losing so much so quickly sets people up to gain it back quickly as well. But I've still mostly enjoyed the show and I've thought it was pretty amazing what the human body is capable of if given the chance to focus full-time on weight loss. Last week's finale, though, was shocking to me. I watched the season with my kids and one girl was a stand-out, winning all the challenges. A former swimmer, Rachel Frederickson applied herself amazingly to the challenges, lost weight consistently, and looked amazingly fit her last week on the ranch, weighing in around 150 lbs. They showed a clip with her visiting the doctor, who informed her that she was just five pounds away from having an elite athlete's body fat percentage.
I figured Rachel didn't have as good of a chance to win the overall show because she didn't have very much more weight to go while her two competitors had plenty to lose. So when she stepped out at the finale, it was jaw-droppingly sad. She'd lost the muscle in her arms and legs and her face looked as though she'd aged twenty years. She weighed in at 105 lbs, much too small for her frame. This article does a good overview of the reaction.
Some have complained that people just want to "body-shame" Rachel for being too thin, others have said that she isn't that far off, and others think hey, it's a weight-loss competition and she won, good for her. I personally hope she doesn't have any long-term consequences to her health or her relationship with food and I hope that she can get back some of the muscle she used to have. I wish her the best.
But I think I might be done watching the Biggest Loser. I think the producers should have seen this coming and put a stop to it. They supposedly have trainers, doctors, and nutritionists supervising the contestants. I've since read a few articles and thought about a few others things that make me think I should have stopped watching long ago.
Projects
* I've been in a project mode the last few weeks. Last week, I made an inventory of our food storage and this week, we've been working to fill in a few gaps. Yes, we Mormons do try to have a year's supply of food, but it's less about a potential zombie apocalypse and more about being self-reliant and prepared. The zombies might get all the attention, but I've known a lot of people who have been able to endure unemployment better with a full pantry. And in the event of a national disaster, I want to have enough and to spare.
*Yesterday, I deep-cleaned and organized my laundry room. It was nice to go through my cleaning supplies and get organized as well as to wipe down all the dust and lint that's accumulated.
* Today, I made some strawberry-blackberry freezer jam. We go through that stuff like crazy.
* I'm trying to use my camera more and I've challenged myself to take a picture every day in February. Except I missed yesterday. Still, it's been good for me to take more candids of my kids.
* I got to do newborn pictures for a friend last week and I'm loving how they turned out.
Friday, February 7, 2014
I haven't been doing Friday Favorites for a while, partly because when I find a link I like, I just share it on Facebook and then forget about it. But I'd like to start gathering the best of what I encounter and share it here more often.
Here's one of my favorite reads from this week: A Screwtape Letter for the Unappreciated Mom
If you've read the The Screwtape Letters (and if you haven't you need to), you know the drill. A senior devil writes letters of encouragement to a lesser one, advising him on the best ways to turn his assigned subjects towards evil and away from God. So the letters are written as if any sign of sin is good and the Enemy is God. That said, go read the post.
Here's one of my favorite reads from this week: A Screwtape Letter for the Unappreciated Mom
If you've read the The Screwtape Letters (and if you haven't you need to), you know the drill. A senior devil writes letters of encouragement to a lesser one, advising him on the best ways to turn his assigned subjects towards evil and away from God. So the letters are written as if any sign of sin is good and the Enemy is God. That said, go read the post.
"I was thrilled to hear you have been making progress with the mother. You have a good lead, from what I hear. She’s feels over-worked, unappreciated, and discouraged? I’m so glad to hear it. If you tread carefully, this can be a great opportunity. With the kids waking her up every hour last night, we already have an advantage. A tired Mom makes for a more emotional Mom, and an emotional Mom is a vulnerable one. ..
Sometimes it’s the less obvious things, things the husband doesn’t even realize, that we can use to offend her the most. When he comes home from work and dumps his things on the counter nearest the door (instead of hanging his coat or putting away his keys), let her think of it as a direct assault on her work as a homekeeper. When he treks mud in with his shoes, let her think it is because he does not love her. Such extremes of thought may seem ridiculous to you or I, but to the exhausted mortal woman, it can seem possible."
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
* My husband and I saw the movie the Saratov Approach last week and wow, it was intense but very good and inspiring. It tells the true story of two missionaries kidnapped in Russia in 1998. Be sure and see it if you get a chance. Afterwards, I had to look up how accurate it was to the real life events and loved reading this interview with the original missionaries. They said that the movie was 95% accurate. The movie handled the story of the missionaries well but also the story of their families back home. The moral dilemma of a ransom was handled really well -- one set of parents had the money to pay but realized they couldn't do it without making every other missionary a target.
Interestingly, I just read a book about the shipping industry at sea that spent a good deal of time on piracy and ransom. In those cases, it's standard practice to pay out, eventually, and that just encourages more pirates and piracy.
* I'm late to the game, I know, but we just saw Man of Steel last week and I was
disappointed. The storyline had a lot of potential, but I felt it was overshadowed by the special effects department who overdid tons of scenes. The one where Superman learns to fly? Super cheesy. Then the mayhem and destruction through New York that went on, and on, and on was a major turn-off. I've read several reviews where there was a lot of criticism of Superman for breaking Zod's neck. That didn't bother me a bit. The collateral damage of the earlier fight was a whole lot more troubling for me.
* And on that note, my kids love the "How it should have ended" series. Here's the one for Man of Steel:
& Lord of the Rings:
* I just watched the Mitt Romney documentary on Netflix. It's good, but also sad. He would have made a great president, and perhaps could have headed us away from the cliff he refers to at the end of the movie. You know, the one we're headed towards as we continue to expand entitlements, raise the tax burden, and borrow to pay for it all? As George Will said at BYU last fall, "What we are practicing today is a kind of decadent democracy," he said. "We used to run deficits to borrow for the future. We borrowed to win wars for the future, build roads, highways and airports for future generations. Today we borrow from the future, to finance our own current consumption. This is a fundamental immorality, if you will, burdening the unconsenting and unpresent future generations with the costs of our appetites. The problem is that we are 'wealing' a network of dependency, making Americans more and more dependent, in more and more ways, on government we really are not paying for." (source).
* And if you have time, the entire speech George Will gave can be viewed below. It's much more informative than the HISHE series. ;)
* We've spent most of our marriage without access to what our kids call "channel TV." We like it that way because it cuts down on the advertising our kids are exposed to, cuts out a lot of smut and garbage (even commercials for good programming often include this), and gives us more family time together. It also makes us more selective with what we watch and buy for our DVD collection. We love watching old episodes of The Cosby Show and wish there was clean, quality comedy today.
Being without TV doesn't mean we don't have media, though. We've had Netflix for a year and have enjoyed watching Merlin (the whole family) and My Little Pony (the little girls).
Every two years, as a family tradition, we've found a way to get TV for the month of the Olympics. We love watching the athletes compete and hearing their individual stories. Sometimes, we've had to creatively use rabbit ears, other times we've just paid for a month of cable.
This time, in an attempt to keep their customers happy when Google Fiber comes to town, Comcast contacted us a month ago, offering a free upgrade to our service. Faster internet and a "basic" tv package for the same price we were paying before. So we now have channel TV again and we're eagerly awaiting the opening of the Sochi games. In the meantime, we've been recording a few old favorites and discovering some new ones. But it sure seems like the pickings are slim for educational, interesting, engaging, and CLEAN programming. Anyone have some suggestions? We like Restaurant Impossible, and Mythbusters. We've also recorded some realtor programs like Hawaii Life and Island Hunters (a girl can dream, right?), some waste-of-time shows like Finding Bigfoot (my boys love it, I just roll my eyes) and Too Cute. And of course, shows for the little girls like Angelina Ballerina and Sofia the First.
So far, it's been nice to have some new shows to watch, but I haven't felt drawn to anything in particular. I'm getting tired of the same tired cliches on The Biggest LoserAfter so many years of being very discerning about our watching, I'm pretty sensitive to gore, violence, and innuendo (which is why I only lasted one episode of Downton Abbey). With that in mind, what's on your watch list? What do you recommend for a mom who wants something engaging to watch while she folds laundry? For the whole family?
And what good movies have you watched recently?
Interestingly, I just read a book about the shipping industry at sea that spent a good deal of time on piracy and ransom. In those cases, it's standard practice to pay out, eventually, and that just encourages more pirates and piracy.
* I'm late to the game, I know, but we just saw Man of Steel last week and I was
disappointed. The storyline had a lot of potential, but I felt it was overshadowed by the special effects department who overdid tons of scenes. The one where Superman learns to fly? Super cheesy. Then the mayhem and destruction through New York that went on, and on, and on was a major turn-off. I've read several reviews where there was a lot of criticism of Superman for breaking Zod's neck. That didn't bother me a bit. The collateral damage of the earlier fight was a whole lot more troubling for me.
* And on that note, my kids love the "How it should have ended" series. Here's the one for Man of Steel:
& Lord of the Rings:
* I just watched the Mitt Romney documentary on Netflix. It's good, but also sad. He would have made a great president, and perhaps could have headed us away from the cliff he refers to at the end of the movie. You know, the one we're headed towards as we continue to expand entitlements, raise the tax burden, and borrow to pay for it all? As George Will said at BYU last fall, "What we are practicing today is a kind of decadent democracy," he said. "We used to run deficits to borrow for the future. We borrowed to win wars for the future, build roads, highways and airports for future generations. Today we borrow from the future, to finance our own current consumption. This is a fundamental immorality, if you will, burdening the unconsenting and unpresent future generations with the costs of our appetites. The problem is that we are 'wealing' a network of dependency, making Americans more and more dependent, in more and more ways, on government we really are not paying for." (source).
* And if you have time, the entire speech George Will gave can be viewed below. It's much more informative than the HISHE series. ;)
* We've spent most of our marriage without access to what our kids call "channel TV." We like it that way because it cuts down on the advertising our kids are exposed to, cuts out a lot of smut and garbage (even commercials for good programming often include this), and gives us more family time together. It also makes us more selective with what we watch and buy for our DVD collection. We love watching old episodes of The Cosby Show and wish there was clean, quality comedy today.
Being without TV doesn't mean we don't have media, though. We've had Netflix for a year and have enjoyed watching Merlin (the whole family) and My Little Pony (the little girls).
Every two years, as a family tradition, we've found a way to get TV for the month of the Olympics. We love watching the athletes compete and hearing their individual stories. Sometimes, we've had to creatively use rabbit ears, other times we've just paid for a month of cable.
This time, in an attempt to keep their customers happy when Google Fiber comes to town, Comcast contacted us a month ago, offering a free upgrade to our service. Faster internet and a "basic" tv package for the same price we were paying before. So we now have channel TV again and we're eagerly awaiting the opening of the Sochi games. In the meantime, we've been recording a few old favorites and discovering some new ones. But it sure seems like the pickings are slim for educational, interesting, engaging, and CLEAN programming. Anyone have some suggestions? We like Restaurant Impossible, and Mythbusters. We've also recorded some realtor programs like Hawaii Life and Island Hunters (a girl can dream, right?), some waste-of-time shows like Finding Bigfoot (my boys love it, I just roll my eyes) and Too Cute. And of course, shows for the little girls like Angelina Ballerina and Sofia the First.
So far, it's been nice to have some new shows to watch, but I haven't felt drawn to anything in particular. I'm getting tired of the same tired cliches on The Biggest LoserAfter so many years of being very discerning about our watching, I'm pretty sensitive to gore, violence, and innuendo (which is why I only lasted one episode of Downton Abbey). With that in mind, what's on your watch list? What do you recommend for a mom who wants something engaging to watch while she folds laundry? For the whole family?
And what good movies have you watched recently?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
