30 Days Of *Mostly* Vegan.

I say mostly, because We have family coming next week, and I'm not going to make them embark on my experiment. And today I made myself a pina colada smoothie for breakfast to finish off the Greek yogurt I'm completely obsessed with.

I recently watched Forks Over Knives, and was intrigued. If you haven't heard of it, it is on Netflix! It's about how a plant based diet can solve medical problems, and the benefits of establishing a plant based diet in general. I was curious and have thought about it for a while. I've decided to do an experiment and take on the plant based diet for 30 days. I'm hoping it will not only help with getting in shape, but will also give me more energy, help with the post partum depression, and help me sleep better.


The problem: when I think about plant based diets, I think of salad. Salad, salad, and more salad. While salad is delicious, I don't want to eat salad for every meal over the next month. Yesterday I got a vegan cookbook from the library. I want to put a couple more on hold, too. I was shocked at all the recipes, especially the dessert ones. My first challenge is to find vegan chocolate chips. I just got done calling just about every grocery store in this great state of Utah with no success. However, after a little research, it turns out Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate chips ARE vegan!

I'm curious to see how this goes! I'm excited and hope I can stick with it, and hopefully see results after the 30 days! Not even in school, and doing an experiment.

-Ross is NOT going vegan. He will NOT be taking part in this experiment.

Here We Go!!

Last night for Family Home Evening we took Claire to Target to pick out her own potty and big girl underpants. We spent a really, I mean REALLY, long time in the potty aisle letting Claire look and play with the different potties. Her favorite turned out to be a pink princess one. Needless to say, I was thrilled. Then we ventured over to the toddler underwear. We held out seven different packages of panties to her and she loved looking at all of them. Finally she decided on the Disney Princess panties. (YAY!)

When we got home, we set up her potty and let her explore. When it was bedtime and we took the potty away she hard a mini freak out and kept yelling, "MORE!". I'm glad she likes it. We're leaving it set up for a few days so she gets used to it, though the actual potty training adventure won't begin until Friday.


I did some reading yesterday and decided to go with the 3 day naked weekend approach. This could be the longest weekend of my life, so Thursday I will be stocking my fridge with some Diet coke to keep the calm when accidents happen. Unfortunately our whole apartment is carpeted, so I'm counting on renting a carpet cleaner come Monday. (Carpets could use it anyway, I'm sure.)

Wish us luck!! It'd be nice to have only one kid in diapers!

First order of business: Teaching her to NOT do this AFTER we go potty.

Claire's Favorite Songs.

A Little Bit Of Everything.

A little over a week ago my mother in law, (let's face it, she's really MOM) texted me -she's fabulously young and even more tech savvy than me- anyway, she asked if I'd run a marathon with her next June.

Ummmm YEAH!!

So we chatted about different training programs and half marathons around in the fall. So I signed up for this one. And I'm really excited about it. I've written out my training program for each day on my monthly calendar. I like that I not only know exactly what I'm doing that day without having to look it up, but that I can see how it progresses and I know that I'll improve and and do better each day. (Except for my rest days. But it's nice to see those, too and know a break is on its way!)

So I've been running in the evenings, about 8:00. At first I thought it'd be hard. I thought I'd be completely drained and wiped out from the day, but it's turned out to be quite the contrary. I LOVE it. I look forward to it. And I get excited about it. It's become my me-time. I love and adore my little girls, but I get to be a real person outside of just a mom for a few minutes. And it is wonderful.

Plus all that weight I packed on last month is disappearing again, despite my sneaking and indulging on Ross' Father's Day candy. Thank goodness.

Obviously I dropped P90X. Which I'm ok with. I had a great 1st week running last week. This week I'm planning on adding a rotation of the Ab program from P90X and a 20 min yoga disk that I love. If this week goes well, next week I'd like to add in weight training on my run rest days. Just adds in more me time away from the kiddos, right?

I guess I can and should provide a family update since this is our FAMILY blog.

Aoife has been sleeping consistently from between 9 and 10 until 5:00, sometimes not eating until 7. When she wakes , some time's we'll give her a binki instead of a bottle and she'll sleep a couple more hours. Maybe she'll be ready to move into her room soon!

Miss Claire had pink eye in both eyes all last week. I think it's clearing up so she'll be good to go for the 4th of July. It's interesting, whenever she goes to the bathroom now she grabs at her diaper and says, "Ewww." and wishes to be changer IMMEDIATELY. I'll be spending the day learning about potty training, but any advice, tips, or information from you experienced moms would be appreciated! It feels a little daunting to me, but then I think, well I'm potty trained and a whole lot of other people are so it CAN be done!

Ross finished his internship at RPM last month. Unfortunately they aren't able to offer positions as this time, so he is currently working on campus for the summer and starting to apply for jobs. He'll be walking next month, though graduating in December. The end is in sight!! His goals right now are to apply to three places a day, eat around 3500 calories a day, and this week he's starting a program he likes to call, "Batman Abs".

I kind of feel like I'm writing a holiday card, so we'll leave it at that. Things are well with the Lovelands and we're looking forward to 4th of July festivities in Utah county!


-Oh, and let's just talk about pinterest for a minute. I've had an account for the longest time, but never pinned anything. It was just fun to look at. And then Aoife was born. And now I can't stop!!!! Is there a Pinterest Addicts Anon group somewhere?