It All Started With Yoga

Starting this past summer, I've really been trying to adapt into a healthier way of life.  I have stayed away from fad diets, have been working on portion control, adding more fruits and veggies into my daily meals and tried my best to keep away from overly processed foods...with the exception of an occasional shameburger (AKA McDonald's $1 cheeseburger).

However, the most important change to me has been putting a workout routine into place.  In the past I have exercised sporadically, due to wanting to drop a few pounds or because I knew I should.  But I always felt the effort was kind of half-assed and barely lasted a month or so because I got so bored with a treadmill.  This time has been different and I'm pretty happy about it!  The big difference is that I discovered yoga.  I never thought I could really do well at yoga and these past 5 months have completely proved me wrong.  Now, I might look slightly ridiculous doing some of the poses (thanks boobs), but I do them nonetheless!

I eased myself into doing yoga just 3 times a week for 20 minutes a day (something most working at home moms can manage!).  After just a month, I really found myself loving it.  I dropped weight (always a plus), felt calmer, noticed my posture improving and even felt more in control of my eating habits.  I started adding on more days and soon I began practicing yoga 5 or even 6 days a week.

It felt great, but I knew I needed to challenge myself more now that I was more used to having a dedicated time to work out every day.  For the past 3 weeks I've added a higher intensity cross-fit-style workout routine 3 days a week and do yoga on the alternating days.  I'm actually enjoying the challenge and find myself speeding up, adding reps and challenging myself without dreading my workouts...something I never would have thought possible back in the beginning of the summer.  My next step, starting in December, will be to add some weight-lifting to my yoga days.

Have I dropped all the weight I want?  Not yet, but I've made a great start and am also now losing inches too, which feels great.  For the first time in my life I feel like I'm in control of my health (to some degree) and am actually making the changes I need to get the results I want.

I've also boosted my own confidence in knowing I can choose a habit and stick with it, so I'm seeing positive results in other areas of my life.  I've decided to set aside 30 minutes a day to work on my second novel, a book that has been sitting with hardly any progress made since before my daughter was born (16 months ago).  This week alone that discipline has resulted in 5 new pages!

I guess what my mom used to tell me was right, that if I could just focus my strong will and stubbornness in the right direction I could accomplish great things.  Thanks mom, once again, you were right!

A Disingenuous Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Ok, not really, since Halloween isn't until Thursday...and I don't really feel genuine wishing anyone a happy Halloween because it is my least favorite holiday, but I have a daughter now, so I have to fake my excitement over the holiday!

At least she's still young enough not to be into the creepy/gross/scary/potentially slutty parts of the "holiday", right?  16 months is a little young for me to be worried about these costumes, right?  I think we have a few more years of Disney princess and fairy costumes before we morph into the horrors of those!

One of the parental perks (as I'm sure all you parents of toddlers know) comes at Halloween, where we get to eat our kid's trick-or-treating candy!  Call me crazy but I'm not letting our 16 month old chow down on a bag full of almond joys, sweetarts and bubblegum.  Now, just so you don't think we're horrible people, I'll let you know that we took our supercute kangaroo out for ice cream after trick-or-treating so she wasn't totally robbed of a sugar buzz.

Our local zoo does some cool Halloween events and the one we took Baby Knives to was their "non-scary" Halloween trick-or-treating afternoon.  We got to walk all through the zoo and get candy from different stations set up throughout the park, there were free games and ones you could play using purchased tickets, it was pretty cute!  I think she'll enjoy it a little more next year, since she's a little young for most of the games now, but it was nice to get her out in her little costume and who doesn't love free candy?


And with that, I begrudgingly wish you a happy Halloween!

Patiently waiting for her promised post-trick-or-treating ice cream

Cutest kangaroo EVER!

Happy 30th PA-Style

Well, it's happened...I turned 30 this weekend and the world kept on turning.  Honestly, I wasn't freaking out too much over the whole turning 30 thing, due largely to the fact that half the time I feel like I'm still playing at being an adult.  Also, we planned a long weekend trip up to Lancaster, PA in celebration of my birthday!

For those of you who don't know, I would say about 70% of our friends and a decent chunk of our family lives in the Lancaster area.  It is our home away from home and we hope to make it our actual full-time home within the next few years.  We hadn't been able to make a trip since I was just barely pregnant with Baby Knives (who is now 15 months old), so we were missing a lot of fantastic people.

We were able to shift some work scheduling around and spend Fri-Mon with friends and family.  It was an amazing trip.  Honestly, the perfect blend of relaxation and scheduled stuff to do.  My husband got to play a gig with his brother's band (The Pig Merchants, check them out!), we had a laid back lunchtime celebration with a bunch of our friends and everyone's kids on Saturday and got to spend Sunday evening with one of my favorite families on the planet, my former youth pastor and his family, who are basically an extension of my own family.  It was a great balance of time spent with friends and our family.

Baby Knives got to spend a lot of time with 3 of her cousins (ages 4 1/2, 3 and 15 months) and had a blast running around, chewing on everything and trying to learn how to climb up the stairs.  She was a champ traveling, did really well in the car and even took a snooze on the way there (this is unheard of for her!).  Buying that travel DVD player for the car was by far the best purchase we've ever made!  She napped pretty well and slept all night in a pack n' play, so most of my travel concerns with her were proved to be moot.  Love that :).

It was so hard saying goodbye and heading home yesterday.  Hopefully we can make another similar trip in the spring!