Drops of Awesome

Sometimes Good Food Tastes Good

February 22, 2016 by Kathryn

I’ve been dieting and REALLY NOT DIETING and then dieting again for most of my adult life. I fluctuate in size and in most other measures of health and I work hard to shield my kids from my food weirdness. However I’m sure I shield them less than I intend to and it’s not ideal.

I’m a vegan.

Nope. I’m Paleo.

I eat whatever I want, dangit!

Whole 30 for life.

Chocolavores unite!

What my kids see is just food. On the table. Some of it’s good. Some of it’s less so. They know I’m always cooking some weird new thing and they mostly accept it, although sometimes with grumblings and rumblings.

Often, when I’m trying something new, I make two complete meals, one for me that I tell the kids is to help my body be healthier, and one for them to keep them happy.

Currently I’ve stripped it back to a Drops of Awesome approach to diet and nutrition. I try to rack up as many good choices as I can and I don’t stress too much about the junk that slips in now and then. It’s working at the moment, in that I’m not stressed about food and it’s become like a game to see how many vegetables and tablespoons of flax seed I can consume each day.

So you’ll see my plate overflowing with roasted vegetables and chicken and my kids are piling up on white rice and cheese. Everyone’s happy.

fruit-salad6

However, I was recently reading Jonathan Bailor’s book, The Calorie Myth, an exploration of hundreds of medical studies about how our bodies actually evolve with diet and exercise. It had a section about helping our kids form good habits with food and I thought, “If I’m trying to eat more vegetables, lean meats, and good fats because that’s the healthiest way to eat, why did I give up the battle of encouraging my kids to do the same?”

They may not be having problems with health or fitness now, but if they keep eating the way they are, they will have problems in their future. It’s a difficult thing to figure out because, if anything, my kids struggle with being underweight, so I feel justified filling them up with empty calories to bulk them up when what I should really be doing is helping them eat more, higher-quality foods.

The problem is, I’m willing to eat healthful food simply because I know it’s good for me. My kids expect things to taste good. So, the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on adapting favorite recipes to make them a few Drops of Awesome better for everyone. I’ve had some hits and some misses, but more hits and it’s encouraging.

Yesterday when the kids got home from school, rather than letting them get their usual bowl of breakfast cereal, I spread lettuce leaves with a Greek yogurt dip they like, filled them with sliced turkey breast and made little roll-ups. They all gave me the stink-eye at first. But every one of them ended up loving the new snack.

Then for dinner I took a family favorite, cheeseburger pie, made it crustless, and changed the topping. Instead of topping it with a bunch of cheddar cheese, I topped it with a little cheddar cheese, some low-fat cottage cheese, an egg and several egg whites, and broccoli florets.

I held my breath. This was a major overhaul. But they all, LOVED it. Even the pickiest, Wanda, asked for seconds. And in the family prayer, Magoo said he was thankful for all the yummy food I’d been making lately.

We’re making progress.

The cherry on the top came at lunch today when I surprised Wanda with leftovers. She hates leftovers on principle. However, today she was ecstatic to eat her “new favorite meal,” the healthier version of cheeseburger pie.

“I like this better than mac and cheese!” she said. High praise, my friends. “What’s the real name of this dinner? I want to know because last summer in swimming lessons my teacher had me yell out my favorite food when I did a cannonball at the end of class and if she has me do that again next summer, I want to yell, ‘THIS THING!’”

THIS THING, indeed. Drops of Awesome.

Seeking Ambassadors of Awesome!

February 18, 2016 by Kathryn

523 Ways to Be Awesome, the second Drops of Awesome book, is set to bounce April 5th from Familius and I would love some help getting the word out.

I would love that help from you.

I would love to appoint you as an Ambassador of Awesome.

Ambassadors of Awesome agree to do their best to do their duty to tell people about all the ways they are currently or can become Awesome.

If you’re an Ambassador of Awesome, you agree to receive email from me and the marketing team at Familius. The emails will contain Awesome Missions that we’d love your help with. Of course, you choose which Missions work best with your schedule and your network.

In exchange for your willingness to help with the launch, you will receive an advanced digital copy of the new book 523 Ways to Be Awesome and access to a private Ambassadors of Awesome Facebook page where we will all share positivity and have a great time together.

There will also be other giveaways and incentives exclusive to the launch team as April 5th gets closer.

If you’re interested in joining our team, please let us harvest your information below. We will never give your info to anyone besides our small team and we’ll try not to overwhelm your inbox with Awesome.

Please sign up below if you’d like to join us.

Simply Awesome – Valentine’s Day

February 10, 2016 by Kathryn

I love celebrating. I mean, you know I celebrate 100 times each day when I do something amazing like make my bed or unload a dish from the dishwasher. Drops of Aweseome! But the ever-escalating pinterest-amplified expectations for holidays leave me overwhelmed.

Here are a few tips for making Valentine’s Day special without going Pinsane.

1. Wear something red or pink – You don’t need to clean target out of very specific matching Be My Valentine holiday wear. Dig something red or pink out of a drawer and consider yourself festive.

heart-pancakes

2. Make heart-shaped pancakes. If you want to get really epic, add red food coloring to make them pink. Do you need a special As-Seen-On-TV heart-shaped pancake tool? Not so much. My special tool is called A Spoon. I use it to drizzle the batter in a fat V shape that then oozes into a sort of heart. And the crowd goes wild.

My favorite pancake mix is here. My favorite wheat pancake recipe is here.

vacation-and-HDS-191

3. Write a love note. It can be on a sticky. It can be on a napkin. It can be on a text message. In a pinch it can be verbal.

4. If you have a couple of doilies, some metallic paint and about fifty heart-shaped plastic beads… oh… you don’t have any of those things? Never mind.

Have an Awesome Heart Day!

What Can You Bear to Do Today?

November 21, 2015 by Kathryn

Sometimes I can’t bear to clean the kitchen, but I can bear to fill the sink with water so the dishes will soak. So I do that. And the kitchen is one step closer to being cleaning. I find that breaking down my tasks into lists of tiny steps and choosing which one I can bear to do helps me be productive. This and more revolutionary, life-changing tips are available in my most recent post on HowDoesShe.com.

Can you bear to click this link? [click to read more]

Red Wagons and Knuckerholes

September 16, 2015 by Kathryn

I’d been planning all my life for the first day of school, or at least all month. I often say, “DOWN WITH PERFECTIONISM!” But then there’s this small part of me that really really wants to just be perfect. Because that would make life easier and then I wouldn’t have to be obsessed with perfection anymore because I would have already achieved it. It’s like when you can’t stop playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii until you beat the game and then you never think about it again. That’s how I see my life being when I achieve perfection, total Zen.

We had planned the heck out of the first day of school, family meetings, calendar items, to-do lists, backpacks packed and clothes laid out two days early.

But when the day actually came, we ended up forgetting things, losing lunch boxes, running over little red wagons with the van, showing up late to kindergarten assessments because we were so busy trying to do all the morning routines perfectly, praying that the kindergarten teachers were not assessing personal hygiene because we forgot to brush our new kindie’s hair.

When the day ended, I popped on Facebook and saw all my friends post pictures of their kids on the first day. And they weren’t just pictures. They were pictures with props.

Framed art that said what grade they were starting.

Actual, flippin’ ART. In frames. That said what grade they were starting.

Why is this a thing? Why?

Anyway. I took a picture of the wagon I ran over. So that’s something. And I learned a new fake swear, thanks to our friends at Dragon Tales. So that’s something else.

When I signed out of the school, Wanda discovered this book in a basket in the office.

She asked me to read it. I really really needed to find out what a knuckerhole was so I sat down and read it to her.

It turns out that a knuckerhole is a magical tube you can jump though that basically takes you to nowheresville where you sit and think about how you should have done a better job cleaning your bedroom until a dragon saves you and takes you to the fireworks show.

I prefer to think of it as an awesome new slang term for pretty much whatever.

Ex. Why did Zack take such a cheap shot and punch Wheezy in the knuckerhole?

Shut your knuckerhole!

Maybe

Why in the knuckerhole did someone put the red wagon behind my car wheel?

Stop being such a knuckerhole and load your lunch dishes in the dishwasher.

So, we decided to send that day down the knuckerhole and started over. And the school year is actually off to a pretty decent start at this point. I still haven’t taken first day of school pictures for all three kids because I’m not done crocheting doilies that say which grades each of them are starting. But I am at peace with that.

Certifiable

June 7, 2015 by Kathryn

I didn’t know Laylee was certifiable but she has a card that says otherwise. I took her to Seattle Children’s Hospital for a CPR course for babysitters yesterday, handed her over to some strangers for five hours and she came out of it with this card and the ability to save your life, especially if you are pediatric in nature.

She is prepared to crack your ribs if necessary. She told me this. And, although it would be awkward, she is willing to remove any clothing that gets in the way. Because. And she was very clear on this. Your life is at stake and that’s more important than worrying about awkward nudity. I wipe away a silent tear of parental pride.

I spent the five hours sitting in a lobby at the hospital working on my manuscript for the next Drops of Awesome project due out from Familius in 2016. It’s a gift book about ways to be Awesome and it’s taking an awful lot of time and thought for so short and cute of a book. I hope you love it. You probably will. Re: you are awesome.

Later in 2016, we’re planning to release a third Drops of Awesome book, tentatively titled Autobiography of Awesome, a much more in-depth guided journal that gives you prompts to help you write the history of your beautiful life. I’m working on that right now too and it may be my favorite book yet. I’m so excited to use it!

To celebrate, we drove a mile to the U District and stopped at Full Tilt Ice Cream, where I proceeded to buy bigger-than-your-head waffle cones for everyone I could find who was a) my daughter and b) had just finished a CPR course. They were all super grateful.

I sampled the wares as well, just to be sure they weren’t poison and because my budding life saver refused to order chocolate-covered bacon as a topping on her cone. Something needed to be done with regards to that travesty.

One of us ended up with melted ice cream between our toes. Not naming names. Follow my eyes.

And we came home to a sweet and tired family who had spent the day at our small town’s yearly festival, a magical place where tractors,

unmarked wooden carts full of townspeople,

tanks,

time machines,

fruit people

and dancing Mexican horses

delight the crowds and show off our rich cultural sub-rural Washington heritage.

I was pretty sad to miss the fun, but, hey. If Laylee is willing to crack your ribs and rip your clothes off to save your life, I guess I’m willing to miss a parade with a tin man bee keeper riding in a flatbed truck. You’re welcome.

Wherein I Ramble About Pie and Loss and Being Apprehended by the Police

March 12, 2015 by Kathryn

I am blogging while I wait up for Laylee to get home from her evening activities and then I’ll sleep. I was going to wait up for the pies to cool but I don’t know that it’s worth it. Because there are no pies. Only pie soup with floating meringue. Two hours of my life in a dish with floating blobs of meringue.

And I’m good at pie. I SLAUGHTER AT PIE. But not this time. Because this time it matters. This time I’m making pie for two pie competitions, one at Magoo’s school that he desperately wants to win and one at Dan’s work that I desperately want to win because he’s in his new job with his new co-workers and I don’t know anybody and I have this irrational desire to win Stay-at-Home-Mom/Wife, Microsoft edition. It’s not a thing, but in my special brain-world it is and if I’m going to place in the top 3, I at least need to be able make a freaking pie. Right? Right?

I want to punch myself in the face for typing that because truly? Truly? Who cares? No one. And tomorrow not even me, I guarantee. But in this moment I’m epically sad about losing at pie.

I did good things today. Drops of Awesome were everywhere, but I ended the day exhausted, with liquid pie guts in a dish and I say, “Serve me up a different day, please. Because I’m sending this one back to the kitchen.”

The weather was gorgeous.

One of my kids left the house this morning seething with hormonal rage, aimed at no one in particular but flowing in my general direction. My throat hurt. I had a writing deadline and the post was taking me forever.

By 9:45am, I had heard that someone I care about had passed away, I had gone out in public unshowered and with Wanda looking like a pajama-clad orphan and I’d been pulled over by the police for speeding on a street where Dan has told me no fewer than 30 times to slow down because I would likely get pulled over for speeding.

Preschool, road construction, baseball practice, errands, more road construction, lateness, tween rage, nothing for dinner, trashed house that was clean YES-TER-DAY, instrument practice, play rehearsal, homework, shoes and backpacks everywhere, WAY more shoes and backpacks than there are humans living in my house. Way more. Like I could start a shoe and backpack emporium for people who like shoes with shredded laces because no one under the age of 30 in this family will ever EVER tie their shoes. They just let the laces drag behind them until they wear down to the length they want. Like beaver teeth.

And then Magoo and I spent two hours that I didn’t really have making lemon meringue pies from zest-and-squeeze-your-own-lemons scratch and the lemon fillings wouldn’t set at all. It was like yellow water in soggy hand-rolled crusts. And I blopped the meringue on top and baked them anyway because I was so mad at those pies, I thought a good fifteen minutes in a hot oven would serve them right.

And while I was typing this rant, Laylee came home from her rehearsal and I told her about my day and I cried a little and I told her sometimes it’s hard being the mom. And she said, “Your friend died and you got picked up by the police. That’s a hard day for anyone.” And she hugged me and told me she loved me.

And I loved her more.

I feel better now and I considered letting this post die on my computer without seeing the internet light of day. Because I am Drops of Awesome lady. I’m an author and a public speaker. I think positively. I love myself fully and never ever want to put my kids to bed at 5pm and hoover all the chocolate in Washington State. But that’s not always the case.

Sometimes I’m Drops of Awesome lady. And I’m tired.

And I’m fed up.

And I’m not rational at all.

And I murder pies.

And I thought you should know.

My little tween mom-substitute told me I should go to sleep. I think she’s right. Everything will look better in the morning.

Hooked on a Feeling – A Peace Resolution

January 9, 2015 by Kathryn

I love pressing reset at the beginning of the new year. I’ve heard a lot of people going off about New Year’s resolutions the past couple of weeks.

“They never work.”

“They’re too much pressure and then you just feel like a failure when you don’t accomplish them.”

“Pass the chocolate.”

And you know how I like to get all Drops-of-Awesomey up in here. And chocolate. BUT. I still really like the feeling of making a fresh start on January One, or rather on the first day the kids go back to school after January One.

So, this year as I thought about why so many people are skipping out on resolutions, it occurred to me that the reason resolutions stress us out is because we’re perfectionists and we’re not resolving to be better, we’re resolving to be perfect immediately and our lack of flexibility and self-mercy put us in a mental place to feel like failures because we’re improving our lives but not COMPLETELY. NOW. And therefore we suck.

This is dumb. And stressful. And counter-productive. And un-Awesome.

For 2015, I have one resolution. And it’s not about what I’m going to do perfectly or stop doing completely. It’s about how I’m going to feel. And that feeling is peaceful.

For 2015 I am resolving to increase the level of peace in my heart and therefore in my home and thusly in the world. I am resolving to make peace on earth in 2015.

This may sound abstract and it could be, but I spent some time thinking about what peace looks like for me, what choices I make that lead to peace. Basically the practical side of this resolution is to ask myself as often as I can remember to be mindful, which of course won’t be all the time, “Is this choice adding to or subtracting from my personal peace?”

There are a few things I know will help me feel peaceful:

1. More spiritual devotional time
2. Less desire to control situations or people other than myself
3. More love
4. Fewer comments I regret
5. Less time spent in the bad hotel, or as Queen El-to-the-Sa would say, more “Let it Go!”
6. More gratitude.
7. More love – I know I have this one on the list twice, but I need to not only love others more, but also love myself.

In practical use, those might look like:

1. Pour my heart out to God in prayer, rather than watch one more episode of Gilmore Girls tonight.
2. When one of my kids does poorly on a report card, try to guide her gently without feeling personally injured by the setback.
3. If Dan is grumpy, give him a hug, rather than being annoyed. After all, that’s what I expect him to do for me.
4. Say one less TMI comment at the next book club.
5. When I share TMI at the next book club, I won’t obsess about it for days.
6. Be grateful that my 80s cabinets are sturdy enough to have lasted since the 80s.
7. Spend time tonight thinking about all the good I’ve contributed to the world today.

Any time I make one of those peaceful choices, I am adding to that feeling, I am succeeding in my resolution. Any time I make a choice that slurps the peace from my life, I can always make a different choice and add some peace back in.

How do you want to feel this year?

People

December 16, 2014 by Kathryn

People. Crowds. Groups. Who wants to be one of them? One of many? I’ve got a new post up at the fabulous site I write for once a month.

[read more at HowDoesShe.com]

Thursday in Pictures

November 21, 2014 by Kathryn

Enterprise upgraded me to this cute little Jeep at no extra charge because of the possible pending snowpocalypse later this week.

Because of some work being done on the plumbing at my in-laws house, we got to drink bottled water the whole time I was there. I even brushed my teeth with bottled water. Whoever said book tours were not glamorous was obviously not me.

And raspberries in Utah in winter for breakfast? Living the high life.

Arriving at KSL Studios in Salt Lake for the taping of Studio 5 with Brooke Walker. None of the other guests had an entourage. I felt sad for them.

I had on my TV interview shoes.

And they gave me a mic.

They did not let me keep it.

They shot it like it was live, pausing between segments just long enough for commercial breaks and adding in titles, B-roll and voice-overs as they went.

Brooke was super nice and easy to talk to. She should do this for a living.

We both have excellent posture.

My sister caught this picture of me right before I went on. Nervous much?

And afterward, we got silly in the fancy chairs.

Then off to see my sister’s office in the Joseph Smith Memorial building. Gorgeous view from her floor.

Afternoon Drops of Awesome talk with friends old and new in Saratoga Springs.

Fun fancy “liquid awesome” Mary Kay stuff from one of my favorite people Myla and a thematically appropriate gift from Sina. Aren’t these cute?

I stopped by the temple where Dan and I were married and recreated this picture all by myself. I miss my boyfriend who’s at home winning Husband of the Year while I live it up in the UT.