I am Alive!

Wow! I can't believe it has been so long since I blogged.  I have not given up!  There is still so much I want to share.  So, sorry for the months of quiet from me but I am back and ready to jump back in.

Since it has been so long I am going to update on life and then get back into preschool crafts later.

Since I last blogged both of my sons have been in and out of the doctor with colds, ear infections and snot galor.  I think this is one of the reasons I felt so busy!  The good news is it's finally spring and I am hoping it will start calming down in that department.  When you are in any kind of childcare environment it makes the cold and flu season that much harder because there are so many people (big and small) carrying around their germs, fun!
 All I have to say is those germs are tough because I have been a Clorox wipe carrying Lysol spraying fool for a while.
In January I started my "official" preschool and the months leading up to were full of tons of work making a handbook, taking classes, creating an official curriculum, making a schedule, working things out with existent parents and so on.  But I added a Mother's Day Out program for those moms who don't need full time childcare and I found out that I love it!  There was a few weeks of balancing life with my full time kids and my own family life but God knew exactly what I could handle and worked it out for me.  As of right now I am down to my original friends that have been with us a year or less and one MDO child and it works.  Next year I will be starting my oldest in kindergarten through homeschooling so I have now made the decision to only take on MDO in the fall.  And right now our official last day of this year is May 27, then summer break yay!  Everything has worked out for all those involved and everybody here at Busy Bee Mama Z Preschool seems to be thriving.  The kids took some time to get used to the structure of the daily life but seem to enjoy it now.  We read bout 25 books a week and are learning tons of fun things on top of letters and numbers.  I never realized how fun it is to learn from hands on experience and reading books.

As for me personally (not as a mom or a preschool teacher), I realized that I have 3 main struggles in life. 1. Clutter 2. procrastination and 3. my weight going up and down
I was daydreaming of what it would be like to just get all of these issues wiped away, thinking if hynosis would really work.  As much as I would love this all to just dissapear right away it's not!  It's like being a Christian and being born anew.  You are not going to completely change overnight, it's a gradual difference as you walk with Christ.  So I decided to stop beating myself up for my faults and try and do something about them.   The only way to get any better at the clutter is to clean up and stay clean!  I am by nature a lazy person and tend to let things pile up.  I am working hard on putting things away in their place immediatley and not letting them pile up.  That and I have decided to take on a couple rooms at a time over the weekends and fully clean them out throwing away stuff and giving way things that other people could use, fun!  As for number 2, well I'm not sure how to change that.  The one thing I do try is to get things prepared the night before for school or fieldtrips. Do you have any tips?

  Number 3 is my main battle.  I grew up as a pretty slim kid and VERY active!  I was heavily involved in basketball for most of my life, yes I know I'm short, but I was that awesome point guard with a wicked 3 point shot :)  Then when puberty hit I realized that weight starting adding up on me, not to where I was overweight but things definitely changed, thank you hormones.  Then once I was a junior in high school and not as active in the sports but more in working and Student Council, I saw that my bad eating habits were making me thick.  I remember my mom starting the Adkin's diet back then and I gave it a shot.  I probably lost 5 pounds or so, I really didn't have much to lose back then, but I felt good about it!  But before I knew it I was back to my horrible eating habits of being a junk food junkie.  After high school I met my wonderful husband and we literally put on I think about 35 pounds our first year together because we were so in love!  Those were the days, we would work come home sleep, play, sleep some more and eat .  That was is.  And not to mention I tried to keep up with his eating habits.  Listen up young girls who might happen to read this...never ever try to keep up with a young in shape dude that has an amazing metabolism.  The only thing that will happen is Weight!  My mom always said "weight happens" but I never really understood until then!  While my amazing soon to be husband regularly told me that I was beautiful any size I knew I wasn't healthy.  So I researched and guess what? You guessed it I started a new diet this time the South Beach Diet.  Now if you have never heard of this diet I totally recommend it because it gives it to you in phases and wants to you ultimately live with the new lifestyle and not diet.  I went and did the diet to a T and began running again and in no time at all I was shrinking and this time I got smaller then I had been in high school and it felt GREAT!!!  For the first time in my life I wore a 2 piece bathing suit to our honeymoon and I loved it!  I bet you know what happened next, like most great stories I found out I was pregnant.  While that's a whole other story in my actual feelings at first, as you can imagine I heard all of the good old wives tales; don't worry you are eating for 2 now, if the baby is hungry then eat it, blah blah blah!  I slowly went from a skinny chick to a mooing cow with the gain of 50 pounds! Yup you heard it right, I put on 50 pounds with my first pregnancy. I can remember I gave into every single craving (curly fries and nachos) and my doctor even encouraged me to eat ice cream to get my calcium.  So when I had baby #1 I had a massive amount of weight hanging on and a big uphill battle to get skinny again.  Fortunately I nursed and had the right mind and new I wanted to lose it so I was walking right away and the weight started falling again, yippee!!!  Then just when I thought it was great, I started eating whatever I wanted because of the constant nursing and just as soon as he stopped nursing the weight slowly crept back up, joy!  Of course I kicked it into gear and started walking hard, even running by this point and I tried cleanses and all the fun stuff.  It wasn't until I realized something wasn't right because with all that work I couldn't seem to lose a pound.  What was I doing wrong?  I noticed my temper was a little short and my boobs were hurting...mystery solved I was pregnant again!  If you have ever heard of those women who can get pregnant just by thinking about it, yeah that's me.  So this time I still had an extra 20 pounds that I hadn't lost from the first pregnancy and I was determined to not gain 50 again.  I watched what I ate and successfully gained about 28 pounds!  Ok do the math and after I had #2 I still had about 45-50 pounds to lose, whoo!  Just when it seemed like I couldn't lose it, my great friend Crystal introduced me to a new diet, this one I'm sure you know, Weight Watchers.  While it did help me drop a total of 63 pounds there are things that I don't agree with in the diet.  I did great and kept it off for a total of I don't know, 1 year?  Then guess what happened?  The reason most diets don't work, I started going back to my bad habits of eating tons of sweets, salty Mexican food and I had stashes of chocolate all over the house! While this only lead me to gain about 15 pounds the point is I saw a trend.  My weight fluctuates so much and I can't take it anymore.  Which brings me to today.  About 3 weeks ago I thought I would give South Beach another stab because it seems healthy and like I could lose the weight.  So that's what I did and in the first week I lost 6 pounds, yay!  Then Spring Break happened and along came Aunt Flow who makes all intabitions while on a diet go out the window.  In just 4 days I gained back 3 pounds mostly in water weight that makes me bloat but still.  Over that window my wonderful 2nd dad or father in law G started doing some research on the way we eat.  This is so what he does, and he is in the same boat as me in wanting to lose weight and keep it off.  He started talking about this way of eating that takes out all processed sugars and grains.  Then he starts saying how animal fat is really good for you and we shouldn't deprive ourselves from it. I said, wow that sounds like Paleo a friend of mine was telling me about it a few months ago.  So we do more digging and find out all about it and last Tuesday I decided I was done with the crappy food and the constant sluggishness that I was feeling so I went for it! I am proud to say that today is day 8 and I am changing inside and out.  I have lost 8 pounds and 1to 2 inches all over and am feeling great!  Now if you do your research on Paleo you find out fast that there's not much to it, basically if you can hunt and kill it, or pick it then you can eat it.  Simple enough and it seems pretty self explanatory to me.  Going back to the last 12 years of my life every time I start to gain weight it's because of the influx of complex crap I am eating and the lack of fruits and veggies.    To me it seems simple, if God made it then it's good to eat.  So if you are reading and happen to wonder about what this means basically it's ok to eat: meat, fish, poultry of any kind fruits, vegetables and nuts.  It's not ok to eat: corn prodcuts, dairy products, man made sugar products, breads, starches and all the likes.  If you go shopping at the grocery store you should be shopping on the outer ring of the store and stay away from the shelves in the middle, all of that stuff is packaged sugar in some way shape of form.  So the reason I am choosing to blog about this is because I want to have some accountability this time.  I want to know that it's really not ok to slip back into my bad habits.  If you are reading this and think that I am crazy for doing something so extreme, that's fine.  But I challenge you to look at your life and how much sugar you are eating and what that sugar is doing to your body. And sugar is just one of the evil culprits.  Or better yet your children's lives!  If not anything else I am so doing this for my children that way they have a mom who actually practices what she preaches and eats all the foods that she is trying to give them.  Call me old fashion but I think that kids should grow up eating tons of fruits and veggies, watching minimal amounts of television, absolutely no video games and have good old fashion fun playing outside or with their imaginations. And if there is a child that is young and obese I believe it's very much the parents fault. 
So if you are reading this, thank you for taking the time to hear my story. I am lucky to have friends and family in my life who always support me.  This time I am going to make a change for the better and I will  update weekly on my progress with this new lifestyle.  If you are interested in anything I have said please feel free to comment:)

Tonight I will pick up my post in the preschool world again!