Eating Healthier and Holiday Schedules

We have talked for a loooong time about changing the way we eat. Buying local, and buying organic. Growing what we can. Staying away from the nasty chemicals and preservatives and such. Finally, we made the jump a few weeks ago, and started doing rather than talking about it more.

I'm here to say...you can see a difference, and see it sooner than you thought you would!

Are we losing weight or seeing a change in our physical appearance necessarily? Not yet, but I'm sure we will. What we are seeing are health benefits. Speaking for myself, I can tell that I ultimately feel better. I feel less hungry in between meals, and when I am snacking, I make better choices. I feel like I'm no longer having sugar crashes througout the day, or carb withdrawels in the evenings, and while I'm not out training for a marathon, I do think I have more energy.

The biggest changes we made, cold turkey, were NO artificial sweeteners of any kind and no junk food. No cheetos. No cookies. No gummy candy. We replaced cheetos with pistachios. We replaced cookies with cocoa almonds. We replaced candy with dark chocolate covered blueberries and pomegrante seeds.

Are those choices inherently healthy? Maybe not. But they are definitely better than what they replaced! We also stopped buying juices, for the most part. We stopped buying sodas a long time ago, but we replaced that with juice. Fruit punch, apple juice, etc. Those things aren't bad occasionally, but they are still FULL of sugars. So, we are all drinking water now. The boys made have juice or milk with dinner, but the rest of the day is water. Oh, and the hubs and I still have our coffee in the morning. Not giving that up. BUT...I did replace my flavored creamers with organic cane sugar and organic, lactose free half and half. That's something at least. :)

We are doing local produce when we can, and I'm getting organic, free range eggs from a friend. We are also buying organic in stores. Everything organic, when we can. When we can't, we are reading labels and making sure we can pronouce everything, lol.

Does all of this mean that we are hardcore health nuts? Nope. We know we will have times when we are eating with friends, or eating out, where we won't make choices as healthy as we would at home. But, we are taking baby steps and sticking with it. And we're honestly happier for it.

Okey doke. On to other things.

School is still slow. Our official holiday schedule is we are breaking from Thanksgiving to New Year. They have both logged onto T4L on their own though, and I think that's awesome, but there is no pressure to complete a specific number of lessons/assignments. We learned a little about Hanukkah last week, and this week we are talking about the Winter Solstice and how different countries celebrate Christmas.

The boys will also have some vocabulary word study, thanks to Facebook. Yep, Facebook. The oldest does have a FB account, even though he rarely remembers to post on it, lol. He was scrolling through this week and discovered that there are TONS of grammatical errors. He's not the grammar police, like his dad is, but he was astounded that so many adults and older teens had so much trouble. Punctuation, spelling and a distinct problem with homophones (to, too, two, there, their, etc.) were what he noticed the most. So, vocabulary study thanks to FB. Whatever works, right?

I'm going to log off, with a request and a share. The request? Prayers, happy thoughts and/or good juju for my dad. He went in for back surgery last week and it didn't go as planned. He was supposed to have a decompression and a fusion, but when they went in, they discovered a serious spinal infection. I don't know how this wasn't discovered before, but it wasn't. So, the surgery was not completed (he did get the decompression, but not the fusion) and he now has to undergo a long, long treatment of IV antibiotics and possibly more surgery. He is in a smaller, local hospital right this second, but as soon as a bed opens up at Emory, he's headed there to get specialist care. I'm praying and hoping that he gets the treatment he needs and will feel some pain relief soon. I appreciate you keeping him in your thoughts...

The share? I enjoyed my throwback holiday photo last week. Let's do another, shall we?! ;)

2008. Bailey was 9 and Braeden was 4. Holy cow, how they've grown! That was also the first Christmas that Teagan spent with us. We had just rescued her in October of that year. They loved her (and still do!) so much! 

Until next time...



This week I'm linking up with the Let's Homeschool Highschool Blog Hop!