Weekend Picture Overload: Wedding Shower, B-day Party, L's Dedication, and Misc. Fun

Our weekend started early when Matt took Friday off work, and it was good timing for us to have finished our Whole30 Challenge since we had so many events at which to eat cake celebrate.

Brittany had a bridal shower on Saturday morning! I love showers. I even got to put my list making awesomeness to work by keeping the gift log. Just doing my bridesmaidly duties, you know.

Brittany with the amazing hostesses (some of my favorite ladies!), Darla, Debbie, and Carolyn

Moms and Grandmas!

Nana, Aunt Cristi, and Mom

Gift logs are serious business.

Sweet friends! Avery was very glad to have her friend Anne to play with at the shower.

Landon's BFF, Tucker, had his first birthday party on Saturday, too! They're just a month apart and are so cute to watch together. They recognize each other and just play and play. They both have such sweet little personalities, and I hope they stay friends as they grow up!

Playing with the birthday boy!

Checking out Tucker's awesome gifts!

Tucker's mom, Karen, made the cutest Cookie Monster cake and cupcakes! She did such a great job with the party!

Matt's parents came in town and took us out to dinner on Saturday night. We tried a local Italian place called Tuscan Slice, and I cannot believe I hadn't been there before. It was fantastic. The pizza is delicious, and the tiramisu is to die for. If you live near Waxahachie, you have to try this place. I don't know how the Olive Garden down the road is still in business.

This boy was HUNGRY. We finally just gave him a whole piece of pizza.

Landon was dedicated on Sunday morning during the worship service at church. It was so special to stand next to our parents in front of our church family as we made a public commitment to raise Landon in a way that honors the Lord. And he slept through the whole thing. Good thing we got pictures.

We had a fun afternoon and evening just hanging out around the house. The kids went to bed early, so Matt and I had a little date out on our back deck, complete with a fudge sampler platter and coffee.

It was a perfect ending to a perfect weekend.

Whole30 Challenge: Final Thoughts

Well, we did it! Sort of. We started the Whole30 Challenge at the beginning of the month, but about two weeks in I told Matt that I would finish the whole month but the last week would probably be hell in our house because I could only handle one more week of it. He agreed to stop at 21 days.

He's a wise man.

And he's even wiser for agreeing to call it off a day earlier when we had no food to pack for lunch at the zoo, thus necessitating a stop at Chick-fil-a. Oh please, don't act surprised that that was my first un-Whole30 choice.

But I say "we did it" because, although we didn't go the whole thirty days, I would still consider this challenge a success.

You know why? Because it has changed the way we view food and how we fuel our bodies.

So here are some of my thoughts on the challenge and what lies ahead.

We'll start with the good:

• Weight loss. Matt started at 265 lbs (he says he was 275 over spring break; he started working out again before the challenge) and I started at 137. We each lost a significant amount of weight. Matt's down to 259 (6-16 lbs) and I'm down to 131 (6 lbs). I can't remember the last time I weighed 131. But it's not even about the number; both of us have noticed a drastic change in the way our clothes have been fitting us (read: getting baggier by the day).
• We feel better. Well, Matt especially says he feels like he has more energy. I don't really feel that different, but I like feeling skinnier!
• Our kids loved it. Avery's a pretty adventurous eater, so she loved eating different types of food. It was also easier to feed Landon table food because I knew exactly what we were eating (like no extra preservatives, sugar, etc.). I also feel like kids will eat what you serve them, so by making fruits and veggies the norm, that's what they'll get used to and enjoy eating.
• More time in the kitchen. Each meal became an ordeal because there's a lot more prep work involved when you can't use convenience foods. It was kinda fun though, and I really got used to spending the extra time cooking/preparing meals.
• Real food is good. We already love sweet potatoes, avocados, and eggs (staples of Whole30), so it wasn't like we were forcing ourselves to eat stuff we hated. We also learned that romaine lettuce makes a fantastic taco shell and hard boiled eggs are an awesome snack.
• It redefined "full." We didn't even realize how much we were overeating before this challenge. I also learned that I do not have to have dessert every night. Dessert should be a treat. I actually don't know when it became a norm for me, but I'm glad to know that I can change that norm!

And here are some of the negatives:

• More time in the kitchen. With a two year old and a ten month old, time is valuable. There were some days that I just wanted to scream, "WHY CAN'T I JUST MAKE MYSELF A FREAKING SANDWICH?!?!" But I got over it.
• Food obsession. When your menu choices are so limited and you have to know every ingredient in everything you put in your body, it's easy to get obsessive over your food. There's gotta be balance.
• It's hard to pack lunch when you don't have leftovers. (That one's for Matt.) We usually eat leftovers for lunches, but we pretty much ate everything we cooked for dinner at dinner. 
• It's expensive. Buying fresh produce and lots of meat is more expensive than buying processed food. It just is. And while I didn't think we ate that much processed food, the fact that our grocery bill doubled this month tells me otherwise. However, I am willing to spend more money now to ensure that we're eating better quality vs quantity.
• No flexibility. Yes, the challenge is only (supposed to be) thirty days long, but it's hard to eat at a restaurant and stay Whole30. Fortunately, we only had to do that once.
• The first week. It's a beating. It's basically a detox and your body responds as such. I woke up the first few mornings shaking because I felt so week. I was eating plenty of protein and fats, but I think my body was almost in shock. That's a little scary to think about.

So where do we go from here?

We've talked about doing a Paleo lifestyle or a modified version of it, but that didn't really seem feasible for our family. I was so excited to find 100 Days of Real Food. It's a blog about a family who took a 100 day challenge to just eat real food (not highly processed or refined). She posts some great stuff, and it's been really educational for me.

Eating "real food" seems very doable for us, and it fits with our goal to cut out the processed convenience foods from our diet.

Yes, that means I'll have to pay lots of attention to ingredients. Yes, that means cooking with coconut oil instead of vegetable or canola. Yes, it means I'll spend more time in the kitchen.

We're also switching back to organic milk (while cutting back on consumption of it). I'm cutting back on sugar. We don't have to eat so much bread.

Don't worry, this isn't about to become some crazy food lady blog or anything. I think we're pretty realistic in our understanding that there will be plenty of times that we won't be eating "real food," and that's okay.

We're also not throwing out everything from our pantry (i.e. white flour) on our road to eating real. It'll be an ongoing process to change our eating habits, but we're up for it.

As long as I can still eat a dang cookie every now and then.

Friday Five: Sewing, Rainy Day Zoo Trip, and CHICK FIL A

Happy Friday everybody! It's an especially happy Friday here because Matt took off work to hang out with us all day long!

1. Last night I went to a friend's house so we could have a little sewing party. Okay, maybe "party" is too strong a word when it comes to sewing, but we saw a tutorial on Pinterest that we thought we could tackle for our baby boys and thought it'd be helpful to work on them together because some tutorials are just confusing.

Here's the picture of the t-shirt rompers we were attempting:

And after we had no idea what the crap she wanted us to do for the legs, we decided to cut off the bottom part and just make baby t-shirts! They turned out pretty cute for being a project salvage, but I think I'll actually try the project again and just make more little shirts! Landon's getting a little too big to wear rompers anyway (I have a weird pet peeve about little boys wearing rompers when they can walk.).

2. I caught this blog post by one of my favorite musicians (Derek Webb) when a couple of friends posted it to Facebook recently. It's about the marketing of Jesus and the things we categorize as "Christian." It touches on a lot of the little annoyances/frustrations of modern Christianity, and I think it is worth the read. He speaks so much truth in the post, but one of the best paragraphs was this one:

i simply do not believe that god can only use and speak through things that we rubber stamp as “christian.” nor do i believe that jesus wants us to live in fear, especially fear impressed upon us by those in our culture claiming to do so in his name. nor do i believe in our subculture’s system of false security, that god wants us to put our faith and security in marketing terms rather than in jesus, whose spirit both gives and animates our powers of discernment. exercising our discernment liberates us to live in the world god has made and engage with his creation without fear or dependence on meaningless words.

Check out the whole post here. (As a sidenote: His mention of "safe" Christianity reminded me of Francis Chan's balance beam illustration, which you can watch here.)

3.  How about those Rangers?!? If you know me at all (or have followed this blog for any period of time), you know that everyone in our family (down to the little ones!) is a complete Texas Rangers fanatic. Yes, that means even before they were good. And honestly, I kinda miss the days that they sucked because ticket prices were cheaper and then the stadium was so empty you could just move to whatever seat you wanted after the 2nd inning. But now that they're AWESOME it's fun, too. At 11-2 we have the best winning percentage in baseball, and while I know the season is young, it's exciting nonetheless. AND David Murphy is on the All-Star ballot this year! I just adore him and am so glad he's finally getting some credit for his consistency. We already looking forward to going to the game next Friday with our church kids and families. Go Rangers!

4. Since Matt was home today we started off the morning with a family stroll. It was fun to be out in the neighborhood while we watched everybody heading off for school and work. We came home to blueberry banana smoothies before we headed off to the zoo. The rain ended our zoo trip a little early, so we had lunch at Chick-fil-a on our way home. Yes, Chick-fil-a. We stopped our Whole30 Challenge today (I'll post my final thoughts soon) and I have never enjoyed a chicken sandwich and banana pudding milkshake more. And tonight Matt and I are going on a date while Avery and Landon hang out with Grandma and Grandaddy!

5. My awesome in-laws are coming in town tomorrow, I'm going to Nick and Brittany's wedding shower in the morning, and Landon is being dedicated at church on Sunday. Yay for great weekends!

Hope you have a great one, too.

Quitting, Pinterest, Yard Work, and Other Boring Topics

It seems I've traded some blogging mojo for sewing mojo (and lord knows I only have time for one), so here's a little update.

• We're halfway through the Whole30 Challenge. Except when I say "halfway" I really mean 2/3 because we're ending it early. Yep, call me a quitter, but Friday is our last day. Matt would go the whole month, but he's quitting with his cranky wife so she doesn't feel like such a failure. Dangit, I just need a freaking cookie! In all honesty, this challenge will change the way we eat, but I need a little bit of flexibility. I'll post my thoughts on the whole process next week.
• I've rejoined Pinterest. I mean, I never cancelled my account or anything, but I stopped checking it after awhile. It just got overwhelming for me when I would see all of these fun projects and recipes that I didn't have the time or money to complete. I'm still not spending a ton of time on it now, but it's been fun to start thinking about crafty stuff again.
• Matt finished our fort! It's been sitting incomplete in the yard for about a year since we picked it up from a friend whose daughter had outgrown it. And now it's got an attached ladder and slide to go with the swing set. Avery is in heaven with how much she's been able to play outside lately. And since it sits right outside of our kitchen window, I can send the little kiddies outside while I cook with the windows open. Yes, even Landon because his doorway jumper works perfectly on the swing set, and he's more than content to just jump away while Avery swings and slides around him. It's a beautiful thing. 
• Speaking of the great outdoors, we're trying to get rid of the ridiculous weeds that have completely overtaken our yard. We've actually been trying to keep up with mowing and weed pulling on a regular basis so we're not that family in the cul-de-sac. However, the gas tank of our mower needs to be replaced since it's been leaking gas for forever (That can't be a good thing, right?), so we might not get to use it this week. Anyway, my point is that yard work season has officially commenced around here, and just in time for me to throw a little outdoor shower for my soon-to-be sister-in-law next month.
• I read the entire Sunday paper last night. After A and L went to bed we sat at the kitchen table (in our clean kitchen, no less!) while Matt played some weird baseball or fishing game on the computer and I educated myself on the world's goings-on. I even got to do the crossword. It's the little things.
• I'm really thankful that it's cool outside today. I've had the windows open all day since the high won't get past 70. I'm just prolonging the inevitability of calling an A/C guy before it gets too hot. I forgot that ours started going out at the end of last summer. Boo, heat. Boo, spending money.

Well this has been about the most boring post ever.  Eh, I guess it's fitting because things have been a little boring around here. Not that I'm complaining. This summer will be stressful enough, so I'm enjoying the downtime, as short-lived as it may be.

Just some random thoughts for Thursday

I could eat a whole can of black olives in one sitting. It's a good thing I'm learning self-control.

Phone conversations with old friends are refreshing.

I'm thinking about getting my own domain name and ditching Blogger.

I let Avery watch An American Tail for nap time today and now I have "There no cats in America..." stuck in my head. Now you do, too. You're welcome.

Our yard needs a trampoline. Too bad the guy who was selling one on Craigslist for $25 never emailed me back. Some things really are too good to be true.

My sewing mojo is back. Stay tuned for some Etsy previews!

And that's all I've got.

Whole30 Update: One Week In

You can catch my first post about the challenge here. I forgot to post this earlier, but our starting weights were 137 for me and 265 for Matt. Matt's goal is weight loss, but mine is to lose the hideous muffin top and flabby mom stomach. 

All of the Whole30 books and blogs say this lifestyle change isn't hard, but they're liars.

When your body is used to dairy and carbs, cutting it all cold turkey sure ain't easy! Sure, most of the difficulty is just that I want what I can't have. I admit it.

BUT my pants and shorts are falling off of me. I feel skinnier. I had no idea how bloated I felt all the time until I don't feel that way anymore. TMI? Sorry.

My energy level actually feels lower than normal, but I've been assured that it'll go back up soon. I hope so.

The hardest part so far has been being around other people who aren't eating Whole30. I had some friends over for lunch and they brought food from Chick-fil-a, Sonic, and Subway. I ate apples, carrots, blueberries, and turkey lunchmeat. When we went to Gloria's with friends, they all had beautiful dishes filled with cheese, tortillas, rice, and sour cream. We ate fajita meat with salad (no dressing), guacamole and plantains.

For the sake of full disclosure, we did "cheat" a little on Sunday because there was nothing Whole30 approved (besides fruit) at the Easter breakfast at church. We got a few little sausage/egg burritos and it was too hard to separate the tortillas from the insides, so we just ate them. If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't even worth it. If I was gonna cheat for real, I would've eaten the cinnamon rolls or cheese grits. Now THAT would've been worth it.

One of the questions I've been getting a lot is, "What CAN you eat?!?" Here's what we were eating last week:

• Sweet potatoes (diced and roasted, baked, or shredded for hash browns)
• Eggs (scrambled, fried, or hard boiled)
• Fruit (strawberries, bananas, blueberries, apples)
• Veggies (spinach, carrots, onions, tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers)
• Avocado!!
• Meat (bacon, chicken)
• Trail mix (y'all, the deluxe raw trail mix at Sprouts is amazing; walnuts, cashews, almonds, pistachios, red and white grapes, and we add unsweetened coconut flakes)

This week we're adding:

• Breakfast sausage
• Olives
• Coconut milk (to be frozen and mixed with cocoa powder)
• Coconut water (EW!!)
• Almond milk (also, ew.)
• Almond butter
• Celery
• Ground turkey
• Lettuce wraps

Another question we get a lot is, "Why are you even doing this?"

Simple answer: we want to eat better. The Whole30 is a 30 day detox designed to change the way you eat. It's basically a super strict version of Paleo. We won't stay on the strict Whole30 after this is over, but it's already changing the way we view food. I'm also learning, gasp, self control. I don't need to eat cereal every night after dinner. I don't need to have dessert every day. I don't need to eat cheese on everything. I do need to be able to pronounce the ingredients for the food we're eating. I do need to feed my family more whole foods and fewer processed substitutes.

What the future of our eating will actually look like is still up in the air. We still have 20 days to figure it out. Until then, I'm trying not to think about the fact that Blue Bell is on sale at Kroger right now.

Easter Celebrations

We had a great time celebrating Christ's resurrection this weekend!

After we got back from Opening Day, on Friday evening we went to our church's Good Friday service. It's always an appropriately somber service, and God really slapped me in the face with the ugliness of my sin. I so often take the brutality of the cross for granted (or worse, treat it as simply a piece of home decor), so it was an important reminder for me.

On Saturday morning we took a break from yard work to take the kids to our neighborhood Easter egg hunt. It was the first event ever put on by our HOA (hey, at least those dues are finally going to something), so attendance was pretty low. But that just meant that Avery got more candy (aka bribery for good naps)! We finished up the yard when we got home, and then I went up to church to work on some bulletin boards and prep for Sunday. That evening Avery and Landon got to spend some quality time with the grandparents while Matt and I went to Gloria's with some of my oldest friends.

Sunday brought sunshine! And then LOTS of rain. Avery woke up to an Easter basket full of goodies from NeNe and Pop Pop. They sent each kid adorable PJs, swimsuits, a puzzle, and eggs (jelly beans for Avery and Cheerios for Landon!). Matt and I didn't buy any Easter gifts for them this year; we will in the future, but it won't be anything outlandish.

Photos courtesy of Allison Jean Photo

We went to church in the morning, where we jealously watched our friends and family enjoy the vast array of breakfast casseroles brought to our annual Easter breakfast. I taught the 1st-3rd children's church class during the worship service, and I really enjoyed hearing their insight when we talked about doubt/belief and Jesus' resurrection. There's one little boy who always blows me away, not with his Bible knowledge, but with how much he genuinely loves Jesus and really thinks about the questions he's asked.

After church we had lunch at my parents'. Thankfully they're doing the Whole30 challenge right now, too. Avery was gonna hunt eggs outside, but we had to settle for an indoor search lest we be drenched. I don't know where all that rain came from, but it poured.

The kids took good naps while we planned our menu for the week, and we were even able to do a little grocery shopping after they woke up.

Matt and I ended the weekend playing Bohnanza (I won!) and crashing early.

I'm SO thankful that we serve a savior who is powerful over even death! What a great reason to celebrate!