Here is what my youngest son loves to do at restaurants. He chugs the half and half. (He also will eat a chunk of plain butter if he can sneak it!)

I usually spend 4th of July at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. There is a large arts and crafts station for the kids, and there is face painting. My oldest son wanted the flag with fireworks around it, and my youngest son has a bumblebee on his cheek. (I chose the bee because he's constantly moving and changing interests at this age-two and a half)

There is a commercial on television from Dove, the skincare company that makes soaps and facial  cleansers. It shows a young pre-teen girl looking sad on the couch and then it shows all of the "beauty idols" she's exposed to in a day through mass media. The message is "there is a lot of pressure on girls to look outwardly beautiful according to society's standards these days". Then it offers a solution, that the Dove company offers workshops to help young girls feel beautiful on the inside and build their self esteem.

Well, I say bring it home, everyone, and make it a grassroots campaign. If you know a preteen girl, make sure she understands that she IS beautiful on the inside and she doesn't have to compare herself to any of the media ads. AND make sure she knows she doesn't have to believe any of her self-loathing thoughts.

I was at a youth group meeting last night and saw a 11 year old girl looking forlorn. I've known her for five years because she is at my son's school. At first she wouldn't open up to me when I asked what was wrong. She crossed her arms and looked away.

I sent her light with my intention from a distance for fifteen minutes. Then I tried again. I asked her to tell me what was wrong. This time she opened up. A trigger event happened that made her upset on the outside, and brought to the surface the troubling things that were bubbling underneath.  A store was sold out of an inflatable dinosaur, and she had her hopes set on getting one. Seems insignificant, no? But I kept asking.

It turns out that she believes she's ugly, that no one likes her, that everyone makes fun of her, that she has bad luck, and so on. That inflatable dinosaur was going to bring her good luck, for once! But they sold out and she has no hope of getting another.

I advised her that good luck doesn't come from things outside ourselves, it comes from inside us, and our attitude. I told her the story of when I was a teenager.

"From the ages of 16 to 23 I had very bad acne. It was so bad that my face looked red polka-dotted. I felt horrible about my face, I didn't want to go out or talk to anybody. I felt ugly. But do you know the trick about how to change that? Every time you notice yourself thinking 'I'm ugly," you catch it and tell yourself, 'no. I'm beautiful and confident.'  It will feel like lying to yourself. But I did it. I said it to myself over and over; hundreds of times while I was riding the bus back and forth to work. I am beautiful and my skin is clear and pure. I am beautiful and my skin is clear and pure. I retrained my brain and it was only then that my skin cleared up. So that's what you've got to do. Tell yourself you are beautiful and it will come true."

I really hope she remembers what I told her. I have a feeling I'm the first to tell her such things. Please tell the girls you know that they can re-train their thoughts. It means the difference between having self esteem or none at all.

Last thursday I got the "blue screen of death" on my home computer. As you may know, my computer is my life and I work on it all day long. The blue screen of death usually means you've lost all data and have to start over. Luckily, I have a friend who salvaged the files I could remember to save....too bad about those I forgot in my bleary-eyed daze late into the night.

As a word to the wise, if you ever do anything on the computer, you need to think to yourself, "would I want to do this all over again?". If the answer is no, then run a backup and get it to disk, flash drive, zip drive, CD, DVD, or whatever other external device you have. Just because it's on your hard drive doesn't mean it's there permanently!

I spent half the day Saturday and all day today just trying to restore my computer back to the way it was, and unfortunately, I will be re-doing enough work to make it miserable. It's mostly Quickbooks, because I ignored the last friendly reminder it gave me to save a backup to disk.

So on Sunday, I chose recreation. I went to the local kidspree festival and let my two year old have a little fun (err-did I say two year old? Wasn't it me who took the stage when the breakdancers asked for volunteers? Wasn't it me who decided to busta' move solo-style while everyone else clapped and hollered? I can't remember, it was all a blur....)

Then I drove to Buffalo Bill's grave in Lookout Mountain, Colorado and toured the museum after hiking through the woods for several hours. What a blast!

Last week I went up to Lookout Mountain, CO. I happened to drive through Golden, CO and drove right by the main office for Love and Logic Institute. (My favorite parenting resource)

I ended up at a state park where the views were beautiful. Then I visited the Buffalo Bill's museum and grave site. His claim to fame was that he ran a Wild West touring show. It was the precursor to today's rodeo. He featured trained horse tricks, roping shows, sharpshooting shows (Annie Get Your Gun is a movie about Annie Oakley, who travelled with Buffalo Bill and could shoot those shells you throw in the air while standing on her head...or some such trick)


Click on my photos tab to see the three other images I've uploaded from that day. There is one other moutain landscape, a butterfly close up, and a view of Denver from Buffalo Bill's grave.