The Obligatory New Years Post of Resolve!

I accept myself, unconditionally, right now.

This is the way I resolve to begin and end each day this week, month, year, as often as I remember. With this affirmation as the backdrop for every new idea I try to incorporate into my lifestyle, I accept that there are ups and downs, good ideas and hair brained ideas, starts and stops, sometimes even complete changes in direction. This is normal and a part of my beautiful experience. As I purpose to walk each step and live each moment with positivity and gratitude, I accept myself, unconditionally, as I am, right now.

Light and love to you in this new year!
Lisa

When your dreams and reality butt heads...

In my quest for adopting a whole, healthy, lifestyle, I have been given quite a challenge. I am on a mission to find the healthy foods and snacks that will actually excite my almost 10 year old daughter. My 6 year old son is easy. He'll eat pretty much anything I put in front of him and with the amount of energy he is constantly exerting, he eats A LOT of it! The girl, on the other hand, can be a little hard to impress and she loves her food to be salty, sweet, creamy, cheesy, or bready! She is a young woman! Of course those things are delicious! Being a Taurus and a pre-teen, she is naturally resistant to change and not inclined to give up on her position just because mom bounces around like a weirdo talking about how fun it is to be active and healthy! This child is amazingly bright and she has reasoning skills beyond her years. I just have to remain aware that my dream of her getting excited about my interests may never happen. Understanding that there are many benefits to healthy living doesn't change the fact that she wants fruit by the foot in her lunch box like her friends get. To a 10 year old that matters. I want to turn her on to healthy food in a positive way that feels like an improvement rather than a restriction. But I don't want to be cooking separate meals for each family member based on their level of healthy habits. I cringe when I hear her say to my son, “Mom is going to say no because it’s not healthy.” in her best pre-teen voice. This isn’t supposed to feel like punishment!

For an after dinner treat one evening, I made a banana and avocado milkshake! (recipe) I put it in cups that you can't see through with a lid and straw (tricky, tricky) The kids drank it without even knowing what was in it and they loved it! Eventually Sophia asked me, “Is this the banana and milk and ice shake I asked you to make?” I said, “Well, kind of. It does have one other thing in it... an avocado.” She’s said, “Avocado??” Then she paused, took another drink, smiled her sly smile and said, “Well… It’s delicious! Maybe I do like avocados but only when you put it in with other things.” I beamed. I can handle that. Maybe she’s going to get into this healthy eating thing yet! She even had a second helping of Brussels sprouts that night!

Hi, I'm Lisa...

So, here we go! I’ve started blogs before with good intentions of many things. I’ve wanted to use them as weight loss journals, I’ve wanted to use them to share my experiences of getting through school and then eventually about teaching preschool, I had a home school blog at one time to share the adventures I had being a housewife and keeping my oldest child home for her Kindergarten year. But none of them really kept even my own interest enough to last very long. My past weight loss efforts were fleeting, I spend more time borrowing other preschool teachers’ idea than having enough original ones of my own to share, and most dramatically, the life I am living now is so vastly different than that of my housewife/homeschooling days that when I look back, that life is nearly unrecognizable. 

So, why have I started another blog and why do I expect my interest in it to last any longer this time? This is what I asked myself the day I decided to launch this blog. See, I spent several weeks contemplating this venture. I started by writing every day to get myself into the habit of finding something about my days that I thought might be worthy of sharing with other people. I spent time daydreaming that one day I might actually have readers who are strangers and were interested in what I had to say for the content and not just because they love me and are already a part of my personal support network. So, when I decided I was ready to finally get it started and my self-doubt (that ugly, bastard) started to creep in, I just gave it a figurative dirty look (ok I really made a dirty look) and thought, “Whatever! I’m gonna do this because I want to and will continue for as long as I still want to…. So there!” Just like that, the doubt was gone and I am once again excited to get this thing going!

My plan is to be posting about my adventures in the healthy, active lifestyle I’ve been transitioning into. I’ll write about the fun activities I find to do; the whole, healthy foods I’m having so much fun preparing and eating; struggles and breakthroughs getting my kids on board with this change in lifestyle; updates on my weight loss progress; reports from my 5k runs; favorite recipes; things that inspire me; things I find useful; and basically whatever strikes me as noteworthy. I hope that I can provide content, with plenty of pictures and videos that will be at least mildly entertaining, and just maybe, sometimes, it will inspire or motivate other people to create the life that they feel most fulfilled living.

I appreciate those who have been very encouraging to me as I have been brainstorming this project and would love it if you would share this blog or my facebook page with anyone you think might be interested or with your whole friends list just because you love me! You can also follow me on twitter.

Stay Tuned...

Lisa