So I haven’t finished yet. I actually just started but this goal setting stuff I’ve been doing lately has got me pumped on positives! Say it’s happening and it will. Leave no wiggle room! Let me give you a little back story as to why …
The area I hear people complain about the most is their back, and I’m not just saying that because my husband has degenerative disc disease. Second is probably the knees (my biggest struggle), but that’s a topic for another day. Did you know that approximately …
Not only is my health important but so is the health of my family. My pups are included in that. I actually had to put my girls on doggie diet food because they were putting on too much weight. (Yes, I know we need to go on walks more often.) Since I’ve become a stay at home mom, they are exposed to more food droppings in the kitchen. (I’m a messy cook!) I’ve since discovered that they love broccoli as much as I do. 😍
But the whole point to this is that my girls have become a little spoiled with the boys and I being home all the time. We are going to be working on some behavior issues. They are food motivated dogs, so it shouldn’t be hard to break these bad habits. Although, keeping them out of the kitchen might mean I have to sweep more often.
I used to buy treats at the store and cut them up into small pieces for training. I don’t like buying the store bought dog treats anymore because I learned that they have a lot of unnecessary filler and stuff that isn’t necessarily good for dogs. A friend of mine gave me a recipe for treats a while back and I decided to tweak it for a couple of reasons. Reason number one, wheat doesn’t agree with my girls, it tends to make them gassy. And number two, since my diet is vegan, not saying my dogs are vegan, I just don’t keep cow milk in my fridge. So tweaking was done and my pups seem to approve. Dogs love coconut so I figured why not use coconut flour and coconut milk to give them an extra dose of love?!?
Ingredients:
First step: Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix all ingredients. Add a little more milk if mixture is too dry. Next time I’ll probably add a little more milk.
Cut into little treats for training purposes or big ones just for puppy lovins, or you could roll them into small balls and smoosh with a fork. They don’t spread out much when the baked so you can space them pretty closely together on the cookie sheet.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes and let cool. Store excess treats in an airtight container in the freezer until ready to use. Otherwise keep in an airtight jar in a cool place for easy access. All good girls deserve treats!
I think the best part about these treats is there are only 4 ingredients and super fast and easy to make. The amount of treats I got out of this batch should last for a couple of months without having to make more. Plus my girls seem to like them. After they ate their man cookies they were licking the floor for every crumb they could find! Hope your pups like them as much as mine do. <3
There are 3 core reasons for what made me change my mind about eating animal products. If you’ve known me for a long time, you have seen me go from vegetarian as a teenager, back to meat eater, then to vegetarian/vegan in my mid 20s, …
Yes, I still am missing the pumpkin spice latte that I enjoyed at least once a week last year. So on a mission to add more pumpkin to my life I decided to quit the carving and paint our pumpkins this year. It may have …
Growing up I remember Hood River doing lots of fund raising to have a skate park. I remember all the wooden ramps and boxes and everything being made as cheap as they could but I always thought it was an awesome place to be during my teen years. Now I look at the parks here and think, WOW! They have since upgraded the Hood River park and it’s super nice, I’ll have to take my boys there some time. No I didn’t skateboard, I wasn’t that cool, I loved my roller blades though. I actually still have them in my closet now. Maybe I’ll bust them out and take them to the park with the boys, after I buy knee, elbow and any other pad I can find along with a helmet. Getting hurt sucks but the healing process is worse now that I’m older.
My boys, mostly Damien at the moment is obsessed with riding his scooter at the skate park. So much so that he is now on his third and most expensive one. This summer we decided that we would try out as many different parks as we could and while we only ended up making it to 6 new ones, I think they had a lot of fun exploring the new places. Google didn’t give us a lot of new places. I think only two popped up in our search and one wasn’t even a skate park lol. This is what made me decide to write about our local parks. I know there’s got to be other Moms and Dads who want to take their kids to the parks but want to make sure they are 1) safe and 2) have a bathroom, or maybe that they are big enough their kids won’t get bored in 5 minutes.
Here’s what I found. Hope it helps someone out. Plus I enjoy sharing pictures and videos of my handsome dudes 😉
Address: 1000 E 4th Street, La Center, WA 98629
Bathroom: Yes
Water Fountain: Yes
Other Amenities: Yes, playground, picnic tables, splash pad (seasonal), baseball fields, paved walking path.
Our home park, I may be a little partial to this one because it’s so close. All in all it’s got a table top, steps, grinding rails, a gap and a 1/4 pipe. This park isn’t really big, it’s actually more of a strip, sometimes it gets a little crowded. But if you have smaller kids there are other activities to keep the little ones busy with. Since my boys are older I like to take advantage of the walking path and either running or taking my pups on a walk.
Address: 912 E. Main Street, Battle Ground, WA 98604
Bathroom: Yes
Water Fountain: Yes
This park is my boy’s favorite! If there’s one they ask to go to it’s this. This park has many ramps, rails, bowls, a dome? looks like a bowl on it’s side (like I said, I’m not the cool kid who knows all the tech stuff,) boxes, stair sets. It’s a good sized park. We’ve only been a few times and it hasn’t been overly crowded. Lots of seating. One thing I’d like to point out is that there isn’t any shade. Which I consider to be a good thing because it’s an open space. Seems like the shaded parks are “shady” and I’m not keen on going to those ones.
Sadly I can’t find the pictures or video I took here. I’ll work on getting some again. Until then, this is a picture that I found on Google maps taken by Nick Williams.
Address: Rolling Freedom Skatepark, Lakeshore Dr, Woodland, WA 98674, located on the corner of Park Rd and Lakeshore Dr.
Bathroom: Port-potty
Water Fountain: Not by skate park but near playground.
Other Amenities: Park is located right next to Horseshoe lake, paved walking path, playground within walking distance, covered picnic areas, plumed toilets at park.
This would be my boy’s second favorite park. Could be because it’s only a 6 minute drive from our house. I see us spending more time here next summer. This park has a large bowl, multiple boxes, a step set, rails and a few ramps. They even have a few benches to sit on instead of sitting in your car, although, you could sit in you car and watch from there because the parking is right next to it, which will be good for colder dry days.
Address: 108 N 3rd Ave, Ridgefield, Wa 98642
Bathroom: No
Water Fountain: No
Other Amenities: Basketball hoop, gazebo, picnic table and benches.
This is a small park. It’s a fairly blank slate with only a small grinding box, one set of stairs and a few small ramps. There is lots of room for kids to scooter around on the pavement though. Probably not for kids looking to bust out big tricks. One thing I forgot until I watched this video, it’s very loud! Lol.
We visited a few different parks in Vancouver. I figured there would be a park closer to down town Vancouver but I still haven’t found one. Seems like a logical place for one but I guess not.
Address: Swift Skate Park, 2361 E 4th Plain Blvd, Vancouver, WA 98663
Bathroom: Possibly but we didn’t need one.
Water Fountain: No
Other Amenities: Paved walking paths, picnic tables.
Typical skate park, lots of graffiti and the people were hanging out smoking cigarettes. Wasn’t very clean. Thankfully the day we went there were only a few people there. My boys were the only ones using the park. Has a few stair sets, 2 bowls, table tops and lots of ramps. There was one short rail my son could use, I believe there is a hand rail to use too, but I can’t remember for sure.
Address: Park at Endeavor Elementary School, 2701 NE Four Seasons Ln, Vancouver, WA 98684
Bathroom: No
Water Fountain: Yes, but it wasn’t working when we were there.
Other Amenities: Small playground, soccer field, paved walking path, picnic tables.
This park was SUPER small! It was nice pit stop before we went to get groceries. There was a small rail, and two boxes with a small ramp to table top in between. Definitely nothing to write home about.
Address: Pacific Community Park, 1501 Ne 164th Ave, Vancouver, WA 98684
Bathroom: Yes
Water Fountain: Not sure
Other Amenities: Playground, soccer field, basketball court, covered picnic area, dog park across the parking lot.
The boys really liked this park, they had some really big drop ins but I didn’t like all the language and the kids smoking cigarettes next to me. One little boy, between the boys ages was swearing while talking to me, who does that? We went there during a peak time I think but all in all the park was really neat. Big bowl and a small course with steps, rails and ramps. James jumped his first stair set here. I think next time we come here it will be during school hours, one of the many benefits of homeschooling.
If you live in the Vancouver area and know of a park that we haven’t been to yet, get in touch with me here or on Facebook. I’d love for you to share. If you see that there is some equipment I forgot to mention at any of the places I shared, let me know, like I said I’m not a pro. Just a mom excited to see her kiddos conquer new things!
No Latte??? I’ve recently decided to cut coffee out of my life, again… I can honestly say I hadn’t missed it until all of the pumpkin spice latte talk recently! Why have I decided to quit coffee again? There are a couple reasons, the biggest …
I LOVE STUFF! I LOVE BARGAINS! I HATE PASSING UP A GOOD DEAL! I HATE A MESSY HOUSE! I’ve learned that all of those things don’t coexist well together. My youngest son is 10 years old and he’s the ultimate example of clutter and disorganized …
I apologize in advance, I get a little heated and emotional in this posting. I’m not meaning to call anyone out and say anything bad about anyone, just being frank. I truly want to help everyone and I sort of have a thing for tough love sometimes. It’s the Coach in me, what can I say. Thinking about people I care about who have passed away too young because they smoked or just didn’t take care of themselves hurts. I don’t wish that hurt on anyone…
Last week I had the pleasure of handing out books for my church at the fair. I got to talk to all different kinds of people all while spending time with my husband and son.
While I was there I noticed something that really upset me, it seemed like maybe 1 in 10 people weren’t overweight. Carl Daikeler had mentioned something about this when I was in Nashville last month and it didn’t really hit me until I was in public. Apparently I’m such a home body that I’m not very observant when I go to the grocery store, I’m always on a mission to get in and get out.
I know the picture isn’t very good but it says that in the United States alone, 70+% of adults over the age of 29 are overweight or obese. That correlates to 220 million people in the US.
I can’t help but feel angry when I hear about miracle weight loss cures or skinny wraps or the get skinny quick diets. (I have tried many of those options by the way.) The one thing I LOVE about this company is that they aren’t selling a quick fix. It’s all about eating right and exercise. Those to me are the bottom line of health. It’s hard work but in the end it’s worth it. Sure those quick fixes might yield results but they won’t last. When you go from eating crap food and lounging on the couch to a skinny pill and then back to the same crap diet and the same activity, what do you expect? Sorry tough love Darci came out right there. I just get so upset because I see so many people suffering with diabetes, suffering with immobility, suffering with anxiety, suffering with depression and SO MANY other sicknesses, most of those things can be managed if not made better by eating healthy and exercise. It’s easy to take a pill to fix those things, but what’s the cost on your body? Did you know that your guts have good bacteria that aid digestion and taking one round of antibiotics can throw that whole ecosystem off? I know it’s hard but it’s got to be a lifestyle change.
Before I get a bunch of hate mail hear me out. I’m not body shaming, I’m not saying you shouldn’t love the skin you’re in. What I am trying to say is that HEALTH is important. For the record, skinny doesn’t mean healthy. Health to me is being able to play with my kids. Health is FEELING good, not having an upset stomach 24/7, not having to go to the hospital because you think you’re appendix is going to burst when you’re really just plugged up (yeah that happened to me.) Health is treating your body like a temple because that’s how it should be treated.
I’m not saying that you have to workout every day, I’m not saying you only get to eat lettuce. I’m saying get active, go for walks or hikes. Play tag with your kids. Dance it off. Start small and work your way up. Do something active that you enjoy and eat clean. Stay away from the processed stuff, and treat your self on occasion. Treats are meant to be just that, it’s not meant to be a daily part of our diet. PS when I say diet, I don’t mean starve yourself, I mean eating food because that is a diet.
What am I really getting at here? ACCOUNTABILITY! I know how hard it is to commit to exercising. How hard it is to eat healthy when everyone you’re surrounded by is stuffing down bacon cheeseburgers and french fries, and gooey cheese covered nachos. That’s why these groups are such a success. They are FREE to join, yes I said free, and you get to socialize with people who are working towards a goal of getting healthier themselves. You get to share you struggles, share your wins and we have nothing but support for you. This month I will be hosting multiple groups to help get you on track.
Beachbody is even willing to pay you to workout and drink your superfoods starting September 5th!(Beachbody Health Bet) I’m so stoked for that. If that isn’t good enough, they are also giving away $1000 a day to one lucky person that posts a minute long video of themselves with someone else/family doing Country Heat (now thru August 31st.) If there’s a program to get you started, I’m telling you Country Heat is a blast! I am excited to help more people get on track and feeling good about themselves, feeling good as themselves, you know what I mean?
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, if you need help, sign up, join the bet! Get in touch with me on here or Facebook and I’ll get you added to whatever group will support you the best.
We all know added sugar isn’t our friend. Ditch the instant packets of oatmeal and make your own oats loaded with good stuff, the kind that’s actually good for you!