Color Run! 2014 in Memory of Daddy

It occurred to me yesterday that I never shared my pics from the Color Run here!  And considering I jogged it with my mom and 3 kids (3 GENERATIONS of family!!) and in memory of my Father, it is definitely an achievement I want to share.  So here are the album pages that share quite a bit of how I felt and how we looked on that special day.  Love, Eva

Progress!!!

It feels so good, to feel so good!!!!!  Can you tell?  This is make-up free me in the morning happily enjoying a new recipe!  Things are finally really clicking physically, and it's amazing.  I'm starting to feel like the "real" me again, the woman I was physically before I had kids as far as energy & confidence.  I've been trying to be as consistent as I can with simple, small changes, and it's making a difference.  Here's what I've been enjoying for breakfast lately...smoothies with a little milk or yogurt.  This was super yummy, but I would only do half a slice of lime next time.  It was pretty sour, until I added some more juice & strawberries.  Also, my food processor couldn't handle the strawberry leaves or peels like the Costco Vitamix juicer could, but I kind of liked the teeny pieces of rind- not of the strawberry leaves though!

 This was dinner...fried, bread crumbed, zucchini,

baked zucchini & onions with salt & pepper & olive oil, 

(So good and easy!!!  Just heat it up at 350 for about 15 minutes!)

salad with tomatoes & cucumber from our garden & some yummy fresh pineapple,

& some delicious pulled pork I made in the slow cooker!

And adding more fruits & vegetables to my diet, with some lean protein, along with SOME simple, daily exercise is changing me.  It's changing how I feel, how I look at myself, and how I am able to take care of my family, all for the better.  And not just on the scale, although that has been changing for the good too- I hit a new low!!!  I really would love to be in the 140's by my birthday next week.  We will see if it happens, but even if it doesn't I know I am making healthy, long-lasting progress & that is better than any quick drop on on the scale!  Good luck to you on your healthy choices!  Hope you make some progress too!

Love, Eva

Good News!

The party was awesome!!! We had so much fun and I didn't overeat at all.  I stuck to my one cupcake and hotdog and sandwich sized bag of chips.  I enjoyed myself without over doing it and using theholi day as an excuse to uncomfortably overeat.  And I ate some party food and allowed myself to without feeling super guilty.  It was a great accomplishment that a lot of people probably take for granted.

Now I just have to deal with avoiding the leftovers.  Didn't do so well at that today. LOL  But at least it was just one cupcake and bag of chips again, and a couple bites of cake.  Could of been worse!  And tomorrow's the Fourth of July!  But I will focus on getting up in the morning for my workout and getting enough veggies and fruit through out the day and hope it works out.

Good luck with your fitness efforts!

Love,
Eva

A Positive Self-Image Is Not Just For Girls

"You don't like any pictures you take of yourself," my little six year-old son said to me.  We were on the bumpy bus ride home after spending two hours running through fields, catching bugs, and pretending to be part of the local wildlife at the Ogden Nature Center.  After helping keep track of 30 curious 1st graders I thought the drive home would be the easy part of the trip.  I was wrong.  

After several attempts to take a portrait of the two of us, my heart sank at hearing my son's observation.  "You don't like any pictures you take of yourself."

 

"It's not you.  It's me," I said.  Cringe.  Did I really just say that?

"You look great in all the pictures," I continued.  But see, first I didn't know I had it zoomed in so close.  And then my hair looked messed up in this one."  While that might be true, it didn't account for the 15 others where the angle of my face (to me) made my cheeks look even bigger or my chin even more pointy, my jawline too angular...

I saw his little pout.  Ironically, I was ruining this trip by trying to capture a keep sake of how great it had been, which even in mind I recognized as "All Or Nothing Thinking" AGAIN...

Fast forward to a week later, when after trimming myself some bangs I attempted to taking another self-pic.  I guess I didn't realize how many clicks had gone by and photos I'd checked and deleted.

"You don't like any pictures you take of yourself."  Again, I felt my heart hitting the floor of my stomach.

"It's not that I don't like them," I white-lied, "It's that I just want to look my best, and that's not my best smile."  What stupid lesson was I teaching?  And why?  Just to try to "keep up with the Joneses" of women who have lost all the baby weight and still look like they are in high school?  I've been through this with myself already!

Looking at myself in that digital preview screen I saw a mother that was teaching her son to expect way too much of himself and to not settle for less than his own best version of perfect.  That was not what I wanted.

"I'll take your picture, Mommy."

"OK."

I handed him my camera and smiled, knowing the lighting from his angle wasn't very bright and that I wasn't even facing the right way.  But I smiled big and brightly for my little boy.

A hug and a thank you later he said  "Your welcome, Mom.  Now can we go play scooters?"

It isn't enough to just not have beauty magazines on display in your home or be careful with the media you let in.  It isn't enough to just tell your daughters they are beautiful regardless of their coloring or size.  Our boys need to hear it too.  It isn't enough to just not talk about how you feel fat or want to lose a couple pounds when you around the kids.  We need to be examples.  We need to feel happy and recognize our beauty. We need to watch our actions.  We need to smile big, laugh hard and enjoy and capture the moments for what they are, not because of how good we look in a picture.
Most of all we need to remember we are ALWAYS teaching something because our little ones are ALWAYS watching.

I love these unedited pictures and thanks, Michael, for that last one.

Love, Eva

So Many Kinds of Beautiful...What I Hope I Can Teach My Daughter (And Remember Myself)

My biggest fear of moving back to Utah is the vanity that's there and getting sucked back into that vain mentality.  Don't get me wrong.  I  love a lot of things about Utah.  The mountains.  The family and friends I have there.  But I've definitely not missed all the liposuction and breast enhancement billboards that saturate the valley (Boise doesn't have any of those.)  I don't look forward to explaining to my daughter that some people spend 1000's of dollars on trying to change the way they look, not because of a valid health concern or reconstructive surgery, but because they want to look better in a swimsuit.

Then I remembered a moment I had the other day in my garden.  I was looking at these little flowers and thought...

What if those little purple flowers, that I LOVE, wished they looked like a rose?  That would make me sad.  I love those little beautiful purple flowers.  They are beautiful just the way they are.  This rose is beautiful just the way it is too.  I didn't edit the colors at all because I wanted to keep its natural beauty.  Neither flower is better than the other.  They are both beautiful to me, just different. 

Sometimes different flowers have the same colors.  There are my little purple flowers and these...To me neither is better.  Both are beautiful.

Or sometimes the same flowers are portrayed slightly differently in art.  People might individually have preferences over landscape or portrait formatting, but they are both still beautiful.  A running joke my husband and I have is how my hair should look.  I regularly ask him his preference on length and color and he always says he doesn't care because it doesn't make a difference to him.  This has made me CRAZY, but now I get it.  To him long or short, darker or lighter, whatever!  It's still beautiful.

My son Michael came to watch me editing.  I liked some of these photos cropped off-center.

Or not showing their edges.

He liked them centered and uncropped.  Again, more kinds of beautiful.

Then he saw these editing tools and REALLY thought the flowers looked beautiful! LOL

I suppose you could say editing these photos is similar to the physical editing we do with plastic surgery.  But it's not.  This is free and changed with a click, maybe equal to dying ones hair.  Not equal to going into debt or taking on a part-time job to cover the 1000's of dollars of monthly payments of a tummy tuck or enhancement job.

 I realize some people do it for confidence, and it's not my place to judge.

I would have them consider though, there are so many kinds of beautiful...

Some people want to look like everyone else because they think looking like everyone else is better.  

But God already made you just the way he wanted.  He wanted us to all look different because we ARE different.  The difference is in the details of our character and soul and that's reflected through our eyes, smile and love.

Some of us are just starting to bloom.

Others are still waiting to.  Actually, I think parts of all of us still have yet to bloom.  That is beautiful too.

Some of us have personalities that like to be easily visible, high and right in people's line of vision.

Others would prefer to lay low, slightly hidden, but they are still beautiful too.

Some might say there's nothing spectacular about these planter boxes filled with tulips and pansies but I thought they were worth taking pictures and writing about.  I thought they were beautiful.

And they are obviously bringing a lot of joy to my daughter too.  And I hope I can teach her to never want to change this or enhance that, because that would mean that she is just her body.  And she is so much more than her body.  Her body is simply the vessel for her creativity, compassion, spontaneity, and crazy-happiness.  Why should she want to look like everyone else when she isn't everyone else?  She is beautiful just the way God and I made her.

As my favorite classic mormonad says "Be your own kind of beautiful."  This flower is unedited.  Yes, it is not perfect.  It is not as glamour-shopped as some photos of flowers are in calendars and framed art.  But it is still a lovely, stunning creation of God, and it is beautiful.  Just like you.

 'Till Tomorrow!  Luv, Eva