Kevin's in 4th Grade!

Here's Kevin leaving for his first day of 4th grade.  How did he get to be so old already?  He's still my little boy!  Sometimes I hate year round school, because it feels like we should be busy having some summer fun still.  This summer ran away from me, and I didn't even do a fraction of the fun things with the kids that I wanted to.

I know this picture isn't great, but he was already on his way when I thought about it, and it was bright and sunshiney outside.

Here's Kevin's after school treat.  It's pretty yummy, and was easy to make at the last minute when I realized I wanted to have a treat for him after his first day.

Recipe:
1/2 cup honey
1 cup nut butter (whatever you've got on hand)
4 TBS cocoa powder
2 cups oats

Heat up the honey, add nut butter and cocoa powder, stir, add oats.  Stir some more.  Make balls.  Eat 'em.

Getting Healthy

I wanted to share a little bit about what I've been doing lately to be more healthy.  The biggest thing that anyone needs to do, whether you want to lose weight or just feel better is to eat right.  You can't fuel your body with junk and expect it to function well. 

So I've changed what I eat.  I'm eating real food, and trying to cut out all the processed stuff.  This means (for me) grass-fed, pasture raised meat, fish, lots of vegetables, some fruits, nuts, good fats (like olive oil, coconut oil, olives, nut butter) a little bit of dairy and sometimes beans.  I've tried to limit my grains, and if I do eat them, just whole grains.  And it has made a difference.  Eating like this, and adding in BodyRock workouts (which I'll talk about in a minute), changed my body this much in just 25 days:

Normally I wouldn't share a picture of myself like this, and yeah, in the before picture I was carrying a little holiday weight (Friends reference), but I'm really excited about the changes I made, and I want to share with people who are wanting to get healthier.

I'm experimenting with a lot of new recipes, and I'll try to share them on my blog as we find ones we love.  I checked out Everyday Paleo from the library, and I love it so much that I'll probably buy it.  Here's one of my favorite recipes that I've tried so far:

I was about to type up the whole recipe, when I realized it's probably on the Everyday Paleo website, and sure enough it is: Shrimp Flying Saucers

The whole family loved this one, although Ethan picked out the shrimp and eggs, mostly.  It was delicious, easy to make, and not very expensive.  I'll share more recipes later since I don't want this post to get too long.

The second part of what I've been doing is BodyRock.  The workouts are pretty short, but super intense.  The workouts are usually under 20 minutes, and people wonder if you can get results working out that short of a time.  If you combine the workouts with good eating, you for sure can (see above picture).  I love these workouts, I never get bored, the time flies by, and I actually look forward to working out every day.

If you find that going to the gym is a chore, you're sick of the same old routine, you don't want to spend hours working out, you want a great community to support what you're doing, please look into BodyRock.  I absolutely love it.  Here's the website again: http://www.bodyrock.tv/