Goals

So I am really into goals lately. We have completed the first 2 which were the thirty day raw food, and the five k. My boys (6&8) have the goal of getting six packs, which they are very very close! Our next family goal as I mentioned is doing splits in all three directions. We are making good progress. My present personal goal is completing an at home medical transcriptions program that I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be able to do, thanks to my fabulous aunt. Terrina has given the idea for our next goal after the splits are done which is to do cartwheels:) I told her she should pick the next goal because so far she has not been excited with our choices.

My purpose with the goals is not to be able to do the things we are aspiring to do but to be doing, trying, striving, accomplishing, something. Pushing through even when it is hard or may hurt a little. To give my kids the desire to be all God has made them to be, stretching out of their comfort zones which may be used in unimaginable ways.


I like comfort, I have many fears, I don't like change. These things hinder our lives leaving us just existing but not thriving with purpose. Leaving our worldly security, puts us out in the open which is scary and will be targeted more by those who may not understand us, or may give our Godly sisters opportunity to correct us (which is painful), But I would rather be humiliatingly wrong, while trying my best, than quietly, timidly, ineffectively right.

I don't know if this makes sense tying our little fun goals and adventures in with these thoughts, but I believe God has inspired me to lead my Chickie's in this way and in turn I feel so alive. Like I did when I was six and ready to serve God with all my heart, and soul, and mind, one little note or smile at a time. I believe I let life, fear of man, and comfort thwart my zeal for the life and purpose God has given me to live out. How grateful I am He does not leave us floundering, or sitting still.

Oh, we are SUPER excited about a goal we have set which is planned to happen in eight years. Yes eight years, so I will not share it with you yet. But eight years from now when I am writing about a fabulous adventure, I will remind you that this is the day the desire for this goal was born:-)

We make our plans but God works out His perfect plan.

I would LOVE to hear of your ideas for family goals.

fit mommy Friday

Now that my 30 day raw food challenge is over I want to make sure I stay on track.
This blogging thing really worked for keeping me accountable, so I am thinking it will be great to check in with other mothers every Friday and post how I have done that week. I am using the same blog I used for the challenge so if anyone is interested in the 30 day adventure my kids and I undertook feel free to look around. I love before and after pictures so there are some of those on their own special page. Also my Aunt put an acrostic for the word RAW in the "messages" section on all 30 days, so you may have fun looking at those too.

. This will be my first week and I am terrible at the comp. So I will attempt to figure it out.

It has been a couple weeks that I have been off of raw food, and so far so good. The first week I gained back 5 of the 15 lbs I had lost, but I was not surprised because the very day I was able to eat cooked food my hubby decided to go on vacation, which meant lots of restaurants:-)

My son and I also a couple of weeks ago participated in our first 5k race. We came in last as suspected but it was our goal just to finish which we did!

O.k. so this week My 5 kids and I decided it was time for another challenge. So we decided that by Kages 9Th birthday which is October 30Th, we want to be able to do the splits! We have been stretching every night as a family (minus dad) before bed.

As far as my physical life this week. I rode the exercise bike while watching movies at night 2x. this week. That is about it!

I really want to continue with the jogging so this next week I would like to add that back into the week, Kage and I were exercising every morning together and that has lately stopped, so this would be a good time to start that back up again too.

My food intake has been really good however. It is SO nice to be free to eat what ever and I appreciate that freedom so much more now, so I have been making much better choices to insure I will not, (for medical reasons as some friends and family have,) be forced onto some kind of diet in the future. It has been a lot more enjoyable to eat lately because I have not had the guilt of over indulging or the jealousy from not being "aloud" certain foods.

I realy want to add the Fit Mommy Friday button, but I can not figure it out. Could you help?

final pic

139lbs

Day 30!

Today's lunch: "tuna fish sandwich" Soo good!

Tomorrows Lunch: My favorite cookies and carbonation... mmm can't wait!

It is over! Actually I have been having a lot of fun. And I will continue eating much of the things I have tried. I will definitely be getting a dehydrator of my own. But I must say it will be so nice not to HAVE to eat raw. Terrina will be taking my final picture in the morning, but I will right my summary tonight. So on day one the things I was wondering about were energy, skin, and weight. Honestly I can not say that I have noticed a change in either my energy or my skin. As far as weight goes I definitely feel like I took off my chubby suit and I feel human again. I still have a way to go but this jump started me in the right direction. Some may role their eyes at me but that is OK, I think I might do a 2 week raw food diet once a year. I am thinking every year after my birthday which is right after new Year, which is right after Christmas, which is right after Rina's birthday, Thanks Giving, and every other child's birthday before that. I do not want to be a fuddy duddy and be "dieting" around fun times so I think this is a good plan to get me back into balance after... every thing. We will see how life goes. Everyone keeps asking, what is the first thing I will eat tomorrow. I had know idea until I stopped at the store for snacks for my cubbies tonight. I grabbed a bag of chips and some carbonated water which I plan to eat for lunch tomorrow with my left overs from tonight. Tonight for my last meal I made "Living Lasagna" again. I just had to. I wondered if it was really as good as I remembered or maybe I had just built it up in my head talking about how good it was. Nope it is just a good! Sooo good. Kage did not agree. So I had extra makings for the lasagna but my pan was full so I mixed the extras all up together and will eat it as a chip dip. Yes I will have real chips but I do have some onion bread that would be really good with it too so, no I am not going to go crazy on the chips, but it is nice like I said to be free. Today for lunch we had "tuna fish sandwiches" we used the left over non tuna and put it on the onion bread. It was wonderful. Again Kage did not agree. I think he is way done with this, but he did do good. He would have stuck with it all 30 days if I had not given them and easy out earlier on. Bryce had multiple pieces of onion bread. Tim told Kage when we were done he would take us out to a restaurant so that is a possibility. But what I know for sure is I have some cookies in my freezer made for me by one of my cubbies that I will definitely be having tomorrow:-)





One thing I really got to thinking about was making sure food does not become our god. It is so tricky because it can happen in so many different ways. We can over indulge or obsess on not over indulging. Of course you remember my "milk god". Also I think we can turn our convictions which are not wrong in themselves into gods if we put them before the priority we have to show love to others before ourselves. I did not get a chance to put this into practice in this 30 days but I was invited over to a friends house for dinner. (kids got sick so we could not go) however the invitation its self made me check my heart again. Was eating only raw to uphold my commitment of only raw for 30 days worth my rejecting food that was made out of love by my friend. No way. On the out side some may make jokes about it being a "good excuse"(to not eat raw) but truly if I reject something from a friend, a human, another person, I have no excuse. It is saying your food is not good enough for me today call me in 20 days. Yuck! And yet I think many of us do that very thing by putting our own thoughts, desires, feelings, opinions, sometimes convictions, as more important than people. Which we are commanded the opposite. I may have made that very mistake during this 30 days, and I am grateful to have such merciful friends. So many of my friends are very aware of how things affect others this is something I am seeing I need to become much more sensitive to.





I must say the thing I will miss the most is checking every day to see what acrostic Angie comes up with next. Wasn't yesterdays just amazingly perfect with the "worm"fitting together with the slimy onion rings. She is awesome.
I will probably not be on Amie Sue's web site http://nouveauraw.com/ up to 8 times a day any more either, but I will be checking it because she is always adding more amazing things. For anyone who is thinking of going raw I highly recommend sticking with Amie. My reason is because I have heard many freaky thought processes of people who claim to be Christians and yet are very confused of what God has to say about food. Amie is very knowledgeable and experienced in this type of food world but from what I can see she keeps it in its place.





Wow, remember on day one I did not have any of the tools to make most of these recipes, and now because of my friends I had more than I could have imagined to make this a great adventure. Thank you everybody.

Day 29

I can now check off "green drink" from my list of things I must have before I'm done. This is made from kale, strawberries, and banana. I always feel like I am cheating by adding banana but I did try a bit without the banana. With out the banana I could have drank it shot style but with the banana I was able to enjoy it all morning.

Terrina is my kitchen girl. And raw food is the perfect place for her to get started because I don't have to worry about the oven. She loves to cook but doesn't like to eat much so I always tell her that is perfect, you cook it and I will eat it, because I love to eat but am not to hip on cooking:) Here she is making onion rings. Yesterday I said sweet and sour, but I meant to say sweet and spicy.

The spices got a little doey after the agave getting mixed into it so no more was sticking
to the onions, so we pureed the rest adding 2 more onions and made onion bread, bar things.

Using the oven first method as we did for the crackers. (Doesn't this look like a concerned face?)

Mine and Kage's are on the left the fams is on the right. I was not jealous at all. I do not like regular onion rings because I don't like soft slimy onions which is what regular ones are like to me. Mine however were dehydrated to no slime. Yum Yum Yum. Bryce and I are the only ones who absolutely loved them, which was a o k for me:-)

day 28

We had "not tuna (but close)". Un believable. I did not believe it at all. Even as I was making it I thought "this will just be another nutty veggie dip" It is amazing, maybe it is because it has been a while since I have actually had tuna but this really does taste like tuna! The only bummer is we did not have enough crackers to match the "tuna" but we will eat it up with some veggies. Kage and I are getting kinda stingy with the things we like. I was not willing to share more than a sliver of the crackers just to let them take a taste, they were like gold. I used the "Abundant Veggie Flax Crackers" ish recipe.I actually took Amie Sue's advice and just put in what ever I had in the fridge. We had lots of tuna though so I gave each chickie a regular saltine cracker with "tuna" on it. Kage was not OK with this. (Kage)" um why are you giving them OUR tuna?" (me)"because we have a lot and I don't mind is they share that with us, just not the crackers"(Kage) "Well I do!" This was not said in a snotty way but a hey now that's good stuff way. Seth had about 5 crackers of "tuna" upon request, he loved it. You can see in the picture how Airionna liked it:)She had to spit it out or I would have had a mess of more than "tuna" to clean up. Terrina liked it OK. And Bryce devoured it.

These are pics Cora took yesterday at the 5K.

Does it feel like it has been almost 30 days? Well it has been up and down. Now that the end is here and I have not done everything I would like to try it does feel like it went by fast. Unfortunately for some things it takes me a while to mentally prepare to actually do it. Such is the case with the kabucha Tea. The start is still on my counter untouched and it takes a week to make so unfortunately you will not get to witness me trying it. Today I will be trying to make sweet and sour onion rings.

The cocoa puffs are good. They are one of the things I was unable to complete because they would fall through the holes on the dehydrator so I started it out on wax paper until I realized that was not working. So I put the cocoa puff stuff in a container in the fridge. We still eat it but it is not dehydrated. It is good but I think it would be great if it had the texture and crunch from being dehydrated.

I am thinking of seeing if anyone would be interested in coming over for a bunko party, around March, and I will serve my favorite raw foods. I wanted to have people over to try some of the food but food alone did not seem fun. Then I remembered how Angie has bunko party's of which they have a theme. So I thought we could have a raw food themed bunco party! I will have to talk to Angie first to figure out how it works. As far as how many people are needed, but the thought is out there and maybe you could let me know if you are interested.

Day 27

We did it! We did it! We did it, Hurray! (from Dora in case you don't have a 3 yr old girl at home) What did you do you ask? Kage and I ran the 5k today. Thanks to a wonderful friend who surprised us by showing up and giving us just the encouragement we needed to keep going. Thanks again Cora. Kage is certain his six pack is just a week away do to our 3.--- jog today. Actually I think he is right. Guess what else.... The crackers worked! I know I am using a lot of exclamation points today but my it is nice when things work out. So I left the cracker doe in the oven as I shared yesterday until midnight. The top of the doe firmed up a bit so I was able to cut them into squares and flip them over so the firm side was down and the doe was up and put them in the dehydrator. Oh my goodness. SOO good. I spread the wonderful spinach dip on them and it is way to good to be healthy. I have my almonds soaking tonight so we will have non tuna fish and crackers tomorrow.

This morning Kage surprised me by making a special breakfast for me. I found out later the reason the two boys kept sneaking down stairs last night was because they were hoping I would fall asleep and they could make my breakfast that night set it by me while I slept so I could awaken to my breakfast in the morning:-) Aren't they sweet. So even though I botched their plans by staying up until midnight and Bryce waking at 5:30am, Kage did not let it get him down. He took and apple, banana, "Cocoa Puffs", Cinnamon, and the secret ingredient, peanut butter chunk ice cream. Oh yes we topped it with raisins. It was really very good.

day 26

Thank you for your comments. As long as you are not rolling your eyes as you read thinking I am a twitterer then I am good with it"-) Kage and I feel fine now. Oh yes Kage also woke up sick. Since we share the same food intake it must have had to do with the cauliflower? We are on for tomorrow though. (5k)It is snowy and cold which is how the weather was when we first started training so it will not slow us down any. I bought several things today that I do not know what are! Yippee! Bok choy, collard greens, and kale. I figured now is the time to try these things that under any other situation I would NOT. I also got kelp powder for the tuna recipe. Well kind of I got the pill so I can just open them and dump, right Amie? So I may fail again but I just had to try to make the veggie crackers again. I spread the doe out on a tin sheet and put it in the oven on the lowest temp with the door open. Will this work? Tim says no. With my track record the mathematical equation for probability says he is most likely right. But probability is not forsurly, which we just learned in Terrina's math lesson, so I am attempting it any way.

We had spinache dip tonight which Bryce loved. He kept dipping his french fries in it and licking off the dip not eating the fry at all.

day 25

I have a major upset stomach today. Please pray it goes away fast because Kage and I have the 5k to jog tomorrow.
Per Kages request we had porridge for breakfast, and cauliflower popcorn for dinner. Well we had a strawberry spinach salad with some popcorn on top as if they were croutons. We are doing fine with this diet now, in fact Kage says he wishes it was longer, weirdo. However the blogging part I think I am done with. I just don't have much to share. I feel silly because I am not able to do anything new so I don't think this is serving any purpose any more. Oh well 5 days left, I'll see ya tomorrow.

day 24

My pictures were not working yesterday so this pic is of Kage's first day back on RAW with me. Terrina said he looks way too happy. So I am not able to get the correct trays for the dehydrator, so it seems. I will call FredMyers today and check but I do not have time and even if I did I do not buy things on line much, and this blog is about changing the way I eat not my computer habbits:-) So unless Freddys has somthing I am sorry to say you will not be seeing much new food for the last days. Not verry entertaining I know.

Day 23

Kage is back!
Terrina bet him, and teased him, most of all challenged him to get back on. Only the stipulation is that he does ALL meals with me, and can not get off again, he is locked in. I am more confident now that the food we are eating is sufficient, especialy for him. Terrina and Seth would just starve themselves when they don't like it but Kage was made for war:-)

I was so excited with the things I was making yesterday, banana crepes, "cocoa puffs" with the sprouted Quinoa grain, and I was most excited about the veggie crackers!

I do not have the plastic pieces to put on the dehydrator trays but a friend told me I could use wax paper. Not a good Idea. The paper does not allow the air to move through and makes the bottom too hot. The bananas were on the bottom so they got dry but the wax paper completely stuck to the banana. So all of that food is gone! Ugh.... Guess what I am looking for at Wall-Mart for today, the correct pieces to lay on the dehydrator trays. You would think I would learn wouldn't you?

Kage and I had "spaghetti" for dinner. Actually it is called Cherry Tomato Marinara Sauce, from the Nouveauraw web site. It was pretty good but after having the lasagna it just gave me the craving to have that again:)

Dayle brought me the kombucha tea starter. EWW! But now is the time to try anything. You actually float this large slimy looking fungus in your bowl of tea as it eats sugar and grows more layers. It takes several days to make a batch so I need to get started right away.

Day 22

I started the sprouting process! Kage says he now wishes he did not stop the RAW food. Yah right for this second maybe:-) He is so fickle. Terrina is already forgetting to appreciate cooked food. "it is just too dry today". I offered her to eat mine instead of her left over enchiladas. She ate the enchiladas up pretty quick:-) I'm going to try the veggie flax crackers and the non tuna next. Dayle is bringing me a Kombusha tea starter today. Which is really tomorrow because I am righting this post the morning after the 22 day but it all works out

Day 21

I'm pretty bummed tonight. I weighed in this morning as 146. That is up 3lbs from last week. I guess that is the down side to finding food I actually like. It must be the almond milk:-) Oh well. Still better than when I started three weeks ago. This is where I get to check if I am eating to glorify God or myself. If it is for God I will be content with where I am still striving forward. If it is for me, I will be sad, discouraged, feel defeated... Well as I shared I am bummed but I do not think it is overtaking me. And I am ready to keep moving forward. In the past I had decided that if I drank non fat milk along with other things that would be the key to my healthy living. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that decision. However when I got to Wall-Mart and saw they had no non fat milk, I totally freaked out inside myself. I was agree and asking the Wall-Mart people in my head "how in the world am I supposed to stay healthy now, this is ridiculous!" Well before I got to the next isle I realized who was the ridiculous one. It reveled to me that I had taken a good thing like non fat milk and made it my god. So with that history it is important to me that things happen that allow me to check my heart and attitude.


I had forgotten I actually had plans today in the morning and after noon, so I did not get anything accomplished as far as food goes. I just ate fruit and left overs all day so not much fun stuff.

Day 20

Only 10 more days left and still so much to try!
So I found out today I have totally cheated with the Almond milk. I am sorry. For some reason I get in my head I don't want to do something for no particular reason and this time it was I did not want to make almond milk. I did not think they would roast almonds before turning it into milk but any way I will move on from here and go ahead and make my own.
I also still have to sprout stuff. Which just sounds so foreign to me so I have not yet done it, even though a friend has brought me the seeds to use. So I will start on that tomorrow. The other thing I need to try is green juice. Along with so many other recipes I want to try like the crackers, and non tuna. As far as the ice creams go there is no rush, because I will continue to make those forever.

We went out to lunch again today. It was not half as torturous as last time because we went with some friends after church. I was able to talk a lot more since I ate so much less than usual. In fact I may have talked too much:-)

Day 19

I finished off the left overs of the "living Lasagna" for lunch today:-( I went and got more tomatoes today so I can make it again. Those that know me well know I could eat the same thing every day every meal and be perfectly happy. This has its pros and cons. A con for this challenge is I would not find out what else I like from Amie's web site and you would get even more bored. So I will not rush off and make the lasagna right away but I do have every thing I need just in case I really need to be sure I will like something that day. I also made 3 heads of cauliflower tonight, so some will be stored away for the next movie night. I remade Amie Sue's "humus" recipe with out the sun dried tomatoes. ( oh yes, I also left them out of the lasagna recipe) For dinner I had half an avocado with some humus and corn from the cob, which I retried when two friends assured me it should be good. It really was good, the corn that is, I know I am talking in circles tonight. Any way It was really good. I thought salt might be good to add but I did not want to go in the kitchen and get it. The kids were eating rice with soy sauce, so I added that (soy sauce) to my dinner I know I am strange but it was really good.

Day 18

RAW Chocolate ice cream with peanut butter dough. Yum! It was too good. But less of it satisfied me than a whole carton of Ben and Jerry's. It was very simple to make and Delicious.
I really have not much more exciting news for today, so I will check in again tomorrow.

Day 17

I am the lucky one tonight! I took a picture of the fams food and mine because tonight mine looks better:-) The picture does not do it justice, it was beautiful. And Delicious. I know many saw this on the web site and thought "it sure looks good, but can it actually taste good?" Well wonder know more you definitely must make this. I thought making the cheese would be a head ache and as I was peeling every almond I thought there is no way I am doing this again it takes to much time. That was before I new what it would taste like. From then on it was a piece of cake to make the cheese, soo easy. Before I put it together I tasted each layer and on their own they were good. Together, wonderful. This is the first time since I started that from the first bite to the last I enjoyed what I was eating. Are you getting the point yet:-) Just in case you are still not convinced I made a mini lasagna for my friend who has been on a RAW diet for health reasons for five months. She called and left a message saying "It was unbelievably wonderful. I am going to make it myself." I will finish the topic with WOW!

We also have more "popcorn" making. A couple of friends are excited to try this too. I will let you know what they think.

Day 16

There are new pics on the before and after page. They do look identical except for the odd way the pictures keep getting darker as we add a new one, not sure what that is about. So I started at 154 and am now at 143. I can't complain about that.

OK so I did not have to wait until day 30 for something to go perfectly! The cauliflower "popcorn" from Amie Sue's site is FABULOUS! It is so full of flavor and we ate it right of the dehydrator so it was Warm. I would totally choose this over popcorn. ALL the kids loved it. Airionna and Bryce were like little birds asking for more.

I also tried the humus from the web site. The texture was perfect and I am huge on texture. But next time I will not add the sun dried tomatoes. I knew I didn't like them alone but I thought ground up and mixed in they would add flavor, which they did but I still did not like them. I will try this again with out the tomatoes.

Well my "cheese" is fermenting so I will see in the morning if that worked, and if so Lasagna tomorrow!

day 15

So I got confused on my math, I was supposed to do the pics this yesterday. "oi vay" I am getting myself confused. Oh well. I am a day farther than I thought. And the pictures I don't suspect will look much different, but I will do them any way cause I said I would:-)

OK so things again did not go as planned but life still goes on. My plan was to make "Living Lasagna" from the Nouveau Raw web site. It all looked doable until I got to the almond cheese which takes up to 12 hours to make. So I will try to make the cheese tomorrow and the lasagna the next day.

This put I wrinkle in all of dinner because I was going to serve cooked lasagna to the fam on the same night. So I had to change thought. The fam had enchiladas, and I had soup.

No it was not a recipe again but it turned out pretty good. I have not found the coconuts I need to make the corn soup in the web site but I wanted some soup. Sooo I took and avocado, and mixed it with the juice from a red bell pepper, garlic, pepper, nutritional yeast, onion powder, and mixed. Then I added some corn from the cob. The soup part was really good. But the corn ummm not the best. The first crunch of the corn was really good and sweet but the skin was pretty thick. I ended up straining the corn back out and just eating the soupy part. I had each child take a bite. Airionna immediately gave a horrid face, Terrina said hmm I'm not sure, Seth said "nope not good", Kage said "needs pepper, and I'm not even a pepper guy". We added more pepper and each said mmm good. However Kage was the only one who asked for a couple more bites.

To initiate the dehydrator my lovely friend is letting me borrow I am making Cauliflower Popcorn from the web site which is what we attempted to do in our home made dehydrator that just turned into worm food. But, the little tiny pieces that I took a bite of before that point were m m good. So I am very eager to have them done correctly.

Maybe by day 30 I will get something perfect:-)

Day 14

More of the same with food today. Do to some concerns Terrina and Kage have been let off the hook:-) They celebrated with some popcorn for movie night. "The Count of Monte Cristo" We will finish it tonight.
The concerns were that they may not be getting a good enough variety of foods. Don't worry all is well and they have not lost any weight on this venture. They did not have any to loose. (Or God is just protecting them from my insanity) I would assume they will be willing to taste my new foods though and I can still share with you which ones they like or dislike. I am adding my vitamins back in to my diet also. Just to be sure. I have no desire in researching what food has what compared to what my body needs so I will just do my best and use a vitamin to hopefully fill in where I need more.
So yahoo the 8Th is here and I can go shopping. Back to the fun part of trying out the recipes from Amie Sue's web site. Oh, and guess what. A friend of mine who had started reading the blog at the beginning but has not been on again was asking how the dehydrator worked. I told her it was very good at rotting food. She offered to let me use hers for the rest of the time I think 16days. What a great mid way blessing. So now I can try all those other recipes and maybe eat something WARM:-) This is just the boost I needed!
I will weigh in and add pictures to the before and after tomorrow morning, that way I will have had a full fourteen days before I check in again.

Thank you so much to everyone, even though I might sound fussy at times I am enjoying this adventure.

day 13

So It has got to be getting boring hearing what we eat every day. But it is working for me so I will keep telling you :-)

Breakfast we had fresh orange juice mixed with purreed banana, some honey and some vanila.

For lunch I had nuts and dried fruit
The kids helped get rid of some of the cooked left overs that are building up.

Dinner I had an orange and some almonds.

We go grocery shopping on the 8th as I said so we are getting thin on options. Cooked food we have plenty of though so I think Terrina and Kage are going to have to sacrifice themselves for three lunches as well as dinners. We could probably find enough RAW for us all but we have so much left overs and I can not throw away perfectly good food when I have plenty of stomaches willing to dispose of it.

Day 12

Kage made his own porridge today. He did not share either:-) So Terrina and I had bananas.
Lunch was nuts and dried fruit.
Kage and I went jogging for the first time in forever since we have been sick. We have a lot of work to do to be able to complete the 5k. We jogged about 2 miles but then we chased each other up and down the football field playing foot ball with a water bottle. It was very fun but I was wiped out. 5k is a little over 3 miles. We have not ever ran that yet. I still have a cold so I am hoping when that goes away we will have enough energy to make it. The race is on the 20Th.
I know that has nothing to do with our 30 days of RAW, but I am running out of things to say since we have not tried any new recipes.

Tim took us out to Sizzlers for dinner last night. TORTURE! I had a spinach salad and an orange. I watched everyone else have my favorite toast in the world, french fries, and the best cookies and cream moose ever. Oh well, I did not have to make dinner or do dishes. YIPPEE!

I am loving Angie's acrostics! I can not wait to see what she comes up with every day.

Day 11

I am feeling much better now. Thankfully the headache did not last.
Poor Terrina has it the worst now and she was supposed to go to a party Saturday:-( She was especially eager to get away from RAW for the day. We are still hoping she will waken much better and get to go.

Kage and I had chia porridge again today. Yum! Cinnamon is great in it and I hear having Cinnamon everyday guards against diabetes, I think is what it was. Terrina had a banana.

For lunch we had some water melon. Do to not feeling well we were not to hungry. Kage does not like water melon so he had an apple.

I had the last of my spinach dip for dinner. Again on top of spinach. I think this could replace ranch for me. Dip my pizza, chicken strips, hamburgers... oh I can not tell a lie I do still dream of cooked food. However this diet is showing me how little we actually need to eat. So I do believe my portion sizes will go down drastically. I had a dream the other night I popped a cracker in my mouth without thinking about it and I woke wondering if it were true. Thankfully not.

My biggest struggle now is being content. I want to see a smaller number on the scale every day. Which the first week I got but of course that can not last all 30 days. It really causes me to check my heart motives. I do not want food or body weight to become my idle. It seems it is like a tight rope for me my whole life I either over indulge or obsess on not over indulging. I think the issue is contentment. It is a struggle to keep my focus on God and doing everything for His glory and not my own.

day10

Short and sweet today for we are sick.

Orange infused bars and milk for breakfast

carrots and pb for lunch

best spinach dip in the world on top of spinach for dinner.

day 9

So I abided by a recipe for the juice this morning, and I am still the only one who drank it. We had apple and carrot juice, then I also made orange juice. Terrina and Kage both said it was fabulous the first drink and then neither finished it. I am pretty sure it is the texture that is bothering them. The juice is thicker than usual. I suppose I could try adding water but that seems like it would ruin perfection. It is hard to tell with Kage because he is still sick. He has not eaten much of anything cooked or not since Saturday.

For lunch the kids had carrots and peanut butter. I finished every ones juice and had some nuts.
We had awana tonight so just heated up some burritos for everyone else and I had a banana and some wall nuts with dried cranberries. Wednesdays I don't have much time to sit down ant eat, so fruit and nuts is a great alternative to chips and whatever else I usually grab at which right now I can not think of.

Terrina is begging me to make some more of the orange infused bars we put in the freezer. I think I will try another sweet thing tomorrow.

Today is the most relaxed towards the food that I have felt so far. I did not worry about what was were having next, we just did. It was nice. I don't enjoy putting so much focus on food but I think like everything else it will soon just be normal.

Day 8

Another success! We tried the mango banana pudding from the web site and everyone loved it. Bryce finished off mine and Terrinas. However he would not even try it until I had him lick the white spoon first.

Remember on the first day I told you I love before and after pictures and so I would have them on here for you? Well I am not patient enough to wait until all the way after so If you like to look at gross things, with much warning you can see some pictures on the before and after page which is on the left hand side of the blog. I will post a new picture every 7 days. With my new weight listed under the picture.

Lunch was also great we had the spinach dip with carrots. Yum. Kage and I loved it, Seth ate it with us, Terrina thought it was too spicy. But oh my this was good. All the dips have soaked cashews as a base. The other ones I think the other flavors take over too much but this one was flavorful without being overwhelming.

For dinner I put the left over red bell pepper dip on some spinach along with some pine nuts.

I made Turkey dinner for the fam. I didn't mind missing out on turkey, it is not my favorite anyway and although I love mashed potatoes that was not so bad either, but what I really yearned for was the stuffing. My mischievous daughter was trying to tempt me to eat just one bite. She was willing to take the blame and have me tell you all she forced it down me, it was not my fault. lol what a Turkey, I believe her motive may be that if I don't follow through she will have more grounds to end early. Just a suspicion:-)

Oh, how could I forget, my friend brought raw milk over for us so for the first time in a week I was able to glug some wonderful smooth milk! I did not have too much just a glug before my meal and a glug after, oh it was nice.

Well so far the recipes we would recommend are:
chia porridge
Orange infused cookies
banana Mango pudding
Touchdown spicy cheese dip
spinach dip

Day 7

I was making juice for this first time today with my friends very fancy wonderful juicer. Airionna runs out of the room yelling "we have to take a picture of this mother!" I wonder how long she will think it is normal to take pictures of every thing we do in the kitchen:-) So this picture was taken from her with a little aim help. I might be concerned about her thinking food is our god, with the way we have been giving it so much attention lately. But I have to share a story from today with you that has nothing to do with this 30 days, but lets me know my above concerns are not to be worried on. I was having a moment or two this morning where nothing was going right, or even going at all. I felt like I was on a treadmill of life putting forth a lot of effort but not really doing anything. Hopefully my comment at this time of helplessness does not offend anyone. But I looked at Kage and said in my dramatic way, "I am so ready for Jesus to come!" Kage shared my statement with the others and Airionna comes up to me and says in a sweet motherly tone " oh, mother Jesus did come and he is here with you right now." God used my precious out of control 3 year old to bring my heart and mind under control real quick. So I really liked the juice. I did not follow a recipe of course, I just started throwing stuff in.Everyone thought the red bell pepper was a mistake but I loved it. Tomorrow I will be good and follow a recipe. At lunch the kids had apples in honey and sunflower seeds and a freezer bar from yesterday. I had a bar from yesterday. I am not really good at planning ahead which God has brought to my attention several times and where I thought I had improved enough in this area with the last lesson, I guess I still have work to do. Dinner was broccoli dipped in a red bell pepper sauce I kinda used a recipe from the web site but not exactly. It was definitely eatable. I am going grocery shopping again on the 8Th so I will pic up the ingredients I am missing to make them exact and I am sure their flavor will improve greatly. However things are going as planned as far as how much I am liking the food. Before this all began I was thinking if only I did not love the way food tasted I would have know problem eating to live instead of living to eat. But I did not have the motivation at that time to purposely eat food I did not like. Well now I do! It is not that the food I'm eating is not good it is just I am not a veggie person. Growing up I only ate mashed potatoes and corn, literally. My first salad was after Terrina was born. Since then I have had great friends who have had fun introducing me to many foods I have never had before but I am pretty sure it all included cooked food along with the healthy food. So even though I am not loving the total RAW diet, I am still convinced that I will be adding these new raw foods to my cooked food diet and honestly love it them.

Seth asked me "so mom, has it been about 20 days now?" I said "no, just 7" He had a bewildered look and told me it seemed much longer. Terrina and I energetically agreed. and then Kage piped in saying " it seems shorter to me... it must be because I am actually enjoying it". LOL I love my children!

Day 6

It has been a nutty day.

Kage has been sick today so we did not do porridge but went with "Gods pop tarts", bananas for breakfast.

For lunch I gave Terrina a rest from raw and let her have the left over french fries from last night. I had some pecans,almonds, and dried cranberries, along with a glass of green tea with lemon and agave. We munched and watched a fabulous movie called "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry". Wow this was an unexpectedly wonderful movie. I was worried at first because it starts with boys liking a girl and I did not know where it was going, but it turns out wonderful. It is a true story and very inspiring It is definitely christian all they way. I recommend this very highly especially for those of us with boys.

So I was pretty bummed about the dehydrator not working and figured now we can't have any of the cookies or cakes which was what first enticed my people into joining me on this venture. Then I got to thinking... When I make regular cookies we usually just eat the doe soo why not just eat this healthy doe right? Well most of my other great ideas have not panned out, so I was not real confident in this one. Plus my food processor did not grind up the nuts or oats completely so it is much crunchier that it ought to be. So I slowly took a tiny bite and OOLALA we did it! So yummy. We all enjoyed the doe and then rolled them into bars and put them into the freezer. Airionnas melted a little before she finished it but everyone else ate theirs with no mess. I definitely suggest doing this. We will make these even back in the real world. We used the recipe from Amie Sue's site for "Orange infused Cookie with Creamy Orange Sherbet Frosting"

Only I had no desire to continue and I figured I would stop while I was ahead so I did not make the frosting. Another time we will try making a sandwich with the frozen bars and the frosting. They would also be good with dried fruit added.

So the kids had chicken noodle soup for dinner and the bars for snack, I just had some more of the doe. I know I know. I do not need lectures on the reasons not to do this often (I did not eat one veggie today), but I figured it was more healthy than the 5lb. pizzas we usually have on Sundays.

Day 5

Well the tiredness I talked about us all having on Wednesday was a false alarm. It turns out we were just tired! K.G. came down with a fever tonight too. So I don't think it was the food change that made us tired it was just a bunch of things working at the same time.

So I just got an e-mail today from my aunt asking if I was reading her comments, and I had no idea I was able to get comments yet. So I went back and from day 1 on I think She has been making comments so if you have to push a button like I did in order to see them I would. She has decided to make daily acrostics for RAW. At least so far, I know she is good but I think by day 20 she may have to use a different word. Also there are comments from Amie Sue who is the one who has the web site that inspired this whole thing. If you want to make a comment also, Angie has explained how on her comment on Day 2.

For breakfast today we again had chia porridge. I am not one who needs a lot of variety. However in Terrinas I left out the seeds, so she just had the pureed fruit with some cashews on top. She loved it.

At lunch the kids had the cheese sauce and broccoli which they were fine with until Seth and Airionna got pb sandwiches. Then Terrina was coming up with her logical reasoning's for why they should not do this a whole 30 days but maybe just 20:-) I was not hungry yet from breakfast but later had some walnuts.

Tonight was the most difficult yet not to have dinner with the others. It was not terrible but still it is the first time since we started that I wished I could have just one bite. We had company and so I served pulled pork sandwiches and homemade french fries. MMMM. Oh well no pain no gain. I am one of those who if it is too easy it doesn't seem worth it so it is a blessing for me to have a night harder than the others. I had zucchini noodles with the rest of the cheese sauce on it. It really was good. So the retry on "Touchdown Spicy Cheese Dip" was a success! woohoo. I needed one of those.

Our home made dehydrator? Not such a success. Good at getting the food nice a rotten for Kages worms though!

day 4

This is Kage. I woke up wanting some eggs for breakfast, but I had banana and fresh Orange juice shake. It was awesome!

We went to the store and got a very big box that we turned into a dehydrator by covering the inside with tin foil and we got sticks to set the pans that we bought onto. Mom thought that we should use four sticks, two sticks per pan. But I figured out a way that we only needed two! I took two sticks and I put them in an "X". Like in the picture. We actually have made something like a dehydrator before except for it did not have a door. And it had a whole in the back (bigger than the whole in this one which is for the light bulb). We used it for a green house.

At lunch time some of our friends came and mom forgot to soak the nuts so we didn't have time to make the cheese dip for lunch like we planned to. So we just had nuts and a banana for lunch.

And we had apples while we went to our other friends house.

For dinner we had the cheese dip and broccoli. Mom did not put enough salt in it this time. But we just got our own salt and we put a little bit on the cheese dip. Then it was a little bit better. Not as good as when she put Table spoons in. The kids also had chicken strips, corn and french fries. (not mom)

THE END

day 3

Hi this is Terrina,

for breakfast we had porridge again, I like the banana/strawberry taste but its to seedy for me.

At lunch we had to open a coconut to get the coconut water! It's really sweet, I think we have to add the flesh (the white stuff) to the water to make it coconut milk. It was a strong coconut,it was hilarious to see Mom banging on it with our knives, she even broke one of them! So she had to get a hammer, as she was banging it coconut hair was flying all over! I wondered how gorillas do it so easily! We used it in a soup but it was soooooo spicy that NONE of us could eat it,so we ate honey-do, sunflower seeds, blueberries and nuts for lunch.

For dinner me and Kage can have cooked food so we had stake,and baked potato's and I made Mom a spinach salad with tomatoes, sunflower seeds, garlic, pepper,pine nuts and olive oil. We all had a little salad but I don't like it at all so I can't say anything exiting about it.

Day 2

Poor poor Terrina! This is how she looked most of the day. So sad and gloomy wishing she could have "normal food". It is unlike her to keep up the funk this long I started getting worried. Then, after lunch I became really tired. Around 1:30 I told Kage we should go jogging and he for the first time said "well I just really don't feel like exercising today." "What!?" I have never heard him say that. Ever. So with all three of us seeming unusually tired I began to think maybe it was a withdrawal of the foods we normally have or something. I went on line and sure enough others have had the same experience. It seemed to have started later for them though and lasted up to 2 weeks. Well since we started right away maybe it will leave just as quickly for us.(please pray this will be true) As I was looking on line about others talking about the raw food diet I also realized we may not be eating enough. They all talked about having to get used to eating soo much. One said he ate 8.5 lbs of food and woke in the morning 2 lbs lighter. Well I don't think we will be weighing our food before we eat it but we did go to grocery outlet and stock up on some more fruit for in between meals.

I tried to surprise Terrina this morning with some oat meal which she loves.(When cooked) A friend of mine who has been eating raw for a while, which I did not realize, told me oat meal soaked over night worked great. So I put oat meal in her bowl first and covered it was a small layer of porridge. I eagerly watched and held my camera up to her expecting to see a sign of delight as she tasted the oatmeal, but it never came. I told her it was in there and my sweet girl realizing I had tried to help her out, perked up with a "oh yes I do taste it, I guess this is a little better than yesterday!" Kage still loved his chia porridge and I enjoyed mine even more than yesterday. Seth and Airionna had their single bites and then appreciated their own cereal. Seth loving his bandannas and strawberries again. Looks like one good habit has already been adopted. Bryce scarfed down 1/4 of my porridge and then had some of Terrinas left overs.

Lunch is what you see up above. It is on the Nouveau Raw web site under side dishes called "Mexican Style Seasoned". We all three agreed that this was very tasty. We would like to try this dish again putting it in one of the corn wraps and eating it like a taco or scooping it up with a chip. Those who enjoy eating salad will love this recipe just the way we ate it. Airionna and Seth were not to eager to try this one but when given the choice of one bite of moms food or a whole pile of plain peas, they chose moms food. Airionna had to quickly follow it with a crunchy fish cracker.

For dinner we had left overs. I finished up the zucchini noodle dinner from last night and the kids finished up the pizza from... Monday I think? Any way I was not really looking forward to the cold sour sauce. Now here is were my friend with the web site may shake her head in disgust but here goes. Well as a mom when my babes were babies and I could not get them to eat something, what did I do? Add banana! As I was wondering what to add to my pesto to take the sour away I walked by the last banana sitting on the counter and wondered Hmmm. So I tried it. I popped the banana and pesto into the food processor and mixed it all up hoping the process might make it a little warmer also. (I did end up putting my finished dish on top of the oven while the cooked food was making and this helped worm up my dish a tad). The sour was gone! I totally get babies and the whole banana thing! How did it taste? you ask? Well, I do not recommend adding this to your recipe on purpose but if you ever put to much of anything in something you may want to try it. Even Terrina perked up as she had it and said "it is perfect!" Bryce agreed and ate it with me for dinner.

I forgot to tell you we ate dinner at 3:30. We had to run some errands before going to Awana in the evening and I did not want to have to rush home to eat so we had dinner at snack time and then after awana had a wonderfully tasty banana before bed.

The kids seemed to get untired enough to have a great time during the awana game times. Kage was so excited to tell me that he had done better at dodge ball than he had ever done before. In the recent past he had attributed his gradual increase in speed during game times to our 5k training. This is what I thought he was going to do this time. However he excitedly said "It must be the raw food!" I love how excited he is, it definitely rubs off and keeps the rest of us going.

I was still pretty sleepy and scatter brained when we got home so after the kids were down for the night I hopped in bed for some sleep. I thought about doing the blog first but all the things on sleep I had been seeing kept flashing through my mind. "if you are tired sleep" "if your body wants to sleep it needs sleep!" All yelling at me as duh! Also I just listened to a sermon on sleep by C.J. Mahaney. Reminding us that sleep is a humbling gift from God. So for all these reasons I went to sleep. Now I feel great!

I wanted to thank everyone for there encouragement and comments on our adventure. It really makes it fun and holds me way accountable to sticking to it. I am not sure how to make the blog allow comments but when I figure it out I will let you know.

1st day Breakfast

Good Moorning!
I am writing tonight backwards from dinner to breakfast so that is appears in order on the blog (I think) So if I seem out of order, I probably am.
I wanted to share with you an acrostic my Aunt made after reading about Terrinas statement yesterday. R-really
A- awkward/awesome?
W-way of eating I love that. She is so clever.
This morning Kage ran down eager to see what we would be having and Terrina made some little whining noises as she looked at the "chia porridge". I actually found a bag at Thunderbird that has chia, hemp seed (I have to find out why this is not a drug), and buckwheat. It only takes 5 min. to soak but it says RAW right on the bag. It looked like bird seed. I took the soaked porridge and fallowed the recipe from http://Nouveauraw.com mixing in an apple,banana and cinnamon. In fact unless I mention other wise just assume all recipes are from her web site "K". I did add honey on Terrina's and Kages because they love it, and pureed strawberry's on all of ours.

So we were all pretty nervous to take our first bite. So we pretended we were horses and we had to eat grass. So then after the first bite we would compare our food with grass and decide if it was better or worse. I had to keep reminding Terrina to compare it to grass, but Kage said "I don't even have to compare it to grass. This is great, I want it every day even after the 30 days is over!"
Seth and Airionna took their one bite each and were content to stay with their ricecrispies. However as Kage and I were raving about the healthiness of our dish Seth wondered how healthy his dish was. I told him "not too healthy". He was eager to find a way to make it healthy. So we added sliced bananas and pureed strawberries to his ricecrispies. This alone is a success in my book.
I thought it was rather tasty. With the banana it had a creamy texture and with the seeds it just seemed like super seedy strawberry. I could definitely eat this for breakfast often.

Day 1 Lunch

OK for lunch we chose to have "Touchdown Spicy Cheese Dip" with broccoli. I was interested to see how this Nutritional yeast tasted. This is one of the items I could not find at the store without help last night. The kids were not apprehensive about this dish because one of my favorite healthy lunches is broccoli in cheese dip stuff. So they were not worried. I kind of was still because I did not see how it could taste like cheese... Now to the verdict: It was AWFUL! and yet I suspect this will be our favorite dish ever that I will totally use instead of my "cheese stuff". Confused? I will explain I put way to much salt in. I think I was supposed to use tea spoons instead of Table spoons but next time I will leave it out and just salt to taste at the end. But I could taste around the horridity and pick out the red bell pepper and garlic and onion, and oh my, I know that done correctly this will be me favorite dish!

We still ate it because this is all we had. Again an opportunity to appreciate the other dishes so much more right? Terrina and I chased each bite with a grape, Airionna looked shocked at why I would have offered her something like this but she swallowed with no fuss. Kage and Seth, Loved It. I think is has to do with what I mentioned yesterday about "boys like yucky things", Because especially Seth who had some left over bread sticks from last night chose to continue eating it! I told Terrina I would dump out this batch and make a new one later and Kage cried out no! I love it.

Day 1 Dinner

So now for dinner. The kids were very excited they got to eat cooked food! Terrina came in as I was cooking beans to make burritos for Tim and she says "What smells sooo good" I looked at her and slowly said "beans" she started laughing and said "I never thought I would get that excited at the smell of beans". So it looked like I was on my own for dinner. I was "cooking" from the website under "main courses", "Basil Pesto and Zucchini Noodles" only I did not use basil. But she said I could substitute with spinach, so I did. This time I used too much lemon but it was pretty good. I don't think we can judge the taste of the foods today. We will wait until the next time I make these dishes to really get into how they taste when I hopefully don't put to much of anything. I can tell you though I was very pleasantly surprised at how good the zucchini noodles were. I have only ever really liked zucchini fried with egg, crackers, and butter. So I was not to sure about it, but it was very good! Also I had never had pine nuts which were yummy too. I had to keep the bag from the kids or they would have eaten them all. Oh yes I am not a perfectionist as you will soon see so I usually try to find an easy way to do things. In this case I did not want to figure out how to "spiralize the zucchini noodles" so I just put the zucchini in my cheese grater and pushed the button. I could not twist my fork in them but it sure was fast and yummy.

I was using a plastic spoon to get all of the Pesto out of the food processor. Airionna loves licking this spoon (usually with pistachio cake made by Terrina on it). Well she saw the spoon and asked for it. I figured one lick and she would be done. I was wrong. She made that nasty shivery sour look kids get when they suck on a lemon and then she asked to lick the whole spoon! She also shared with Bryce who kept coming back to her for more. She did not stop there though she had me re dip the spoon 3 times. I was shocked! But very pleased. Those are magical spoons:-)

Terrina and Kage shared some with me along with their cooked burritos. Neither complained once, or asked for any more.

Well at the end of the day, Kage and I are just as excited about this venture, Terrina is wishing she had not signed on, Seth is joining in more than expected, and Airionna has shocked me the most with her willing and sometimes eager bites.

1st shopping trip

I got to go shopping with only Bryce tonight which was a life saver because as it is I was gone for over 2 hours. It is tricky shopping for things that you do not know what are. Thunder Bird is awesome though. I expected to have to go to several different stores to find everything but they had most all of it. The only things I did not find were Kelp and Quionoa grains. Maybe Fredmeyers? Any way at one point 3 people were helping me find things on my list, a little curious why I was buying stuff I did not know what was. One of them knew exactly what and where it all was so that was great. Did I mention they were all nice and eager to help? I did explain I was going off of some raw food recipes so when we met again in the check out she came across the steak she looked at me saying " don't tell me your eating this raw" lol No, that was for Tim my husband who is very clear that he will not be joining us on this journey, but will watch us with much joking I am sure.:-)

So we are all stocked up and ready for tomorrow! Terrina was all for it as I was telling her about it but then when she saw all the "GREEN" stuff she started to change her mind. Kage on the other hand is still very excited. Seth just might surprise us. I am reminded of the time at the Sader dinner that he dipped his parsley in the salt water and when we all took a nibble he scarfed it all down proudly saying "boys like gross stuff". Not that I am expecting our food to be gross but looking at all the fungus and green stuff I am just saying... you know, from the kids perspective:-)

I am so excited! Remember how I said part of the journey was going to be getting a dehydrator and juicer? Well I thought it would take time if it ever happened. O.K. really I figured I would not be able to do the recipes that called for these things at all, which would have been a bummer. But I just got a message from a friend who offered to loan me her juicer during our 30 day adventure! Wow, I need a new word other that great and excited, but it is and I am!

Also, we are going to make our own dehydrator. We will line a box with tin foil and put a light bulb in the side. I looked it up on line and it seems to work for others really well. I will put a thermometer in the box because the point of raw food according to Dr. Oz is that the food needs to stay under 116 F so that the natural enzymes in the food are not destroyed. We'll see.

1 Corinthians 10:31

I want to stress that my desire is not to become an extremest in the way we eat. I believe all food is a blessing from God. We want to have some extreme fun here though and I believe God will bless us as we do so. We were discussing over lunch today as the kids had their last batch a Mac and Cheese for 30 days. Terrina said "this is either going to be a great 30 days or a horrid 30 days!" We concluded that if we love our experience we will have learned new ways to be healthy that will last the rest of our lives. If we can't stand it and we torture our taste buds for 30 days then we will much more appreciate the cooked food we return to. So either way it is win win for us. I am guessing we will land in the middle.

There fore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthian 10:31

As we see the changes that occur to our energy or skin, or body shape I pray we do not give credit to the food, but to God who made it for us.

The Idea

So, The idea started on January 23, 2011 at about 8:00pm as I was upstairs putting my 5 chickadees to bed. I started telling them about this web site that my friend has about raw food. http://nouveauraw.com My kids and I ,especially the older two, love healthy fun stuff. I told them I wanted to try the recipes from this site and eat nothing else for 30 days. This reminded my son about the McDonald's experiment, a documentary titled "Super Size Me". The man in this film performed an experiment were if McDonald's did not sale it, he did not ingest it. So we decided to do the same only opposite because we will be filling our selves with healthy food! This idea of following the recipes of my friend also reminded me of the movie of which a lady blogs about her experience as she ventures to try and make every recipe from the book in a year, I can not remember the name of the movie but this is where the idea to blog our experience came in.

The Rules:

I will not eat anything that is not raw for 30 days.

I will attempt to follow the recipes on my friends web site to the best of my ability.

My older two children will only eat raw food for 30 days except at dinner they will share the meal I make for their Dad along with what I am having. (I do not want to take meat out of their growing bodies)

My younger three will have at least one bite of every thing I make.

What Should I expect to see on this blog?

Well, we will share the food we ate that day, and I will let you know how we each liked it.

I will introduce my children to you to see which ages accepted which foods.

I will also keep you updated on how we, feel and how our bodies are affected by this way of eating.

To get a good picture of the changes that occur I will tell you a little about our current situation so you can enjoy the changes with us.

I can not promise that we will stick to the subject since in my typical female mind "everything is related to every thing" as is humorously explained in a clip on UTube called " a tale with two brains" which I highly recommend you watch if you are in the mood to laugh. Any way If I go on a long trail away from the topic at hand I will change the font. That way if you are only interested in the 30 day raw food experience you can easily see the info you want and don't want.

About us now:

I just turned 30 this month! my goal was to be the best I could be (physically) by the time I was 30. Well I way did not make that. But instead of getting discouraged God placed hope and encouragement in my life. So here we are.

I am 5'1 154 lbs. I am a sucker for before and after pictures so I will do that myself for you.

Also, many of the foods I will be eating this month are great for skin so I will let you know how that goes also. I have never gotten over the adolescent stage of my skin. ( much hope!) I am so excited to see the after:-)

I am on again off again when it comes to exercise. as of now it has been on again because my 8 year old son and I have been training to do our first 5k race on Feb 20. Also my son and I try to do our morning work outs together. The workout is from a poster that came with his jump rope he got in his stocking.

So, as we change the way we eat we will continue in the same physical exercises we normally would.

My kids:

My oldest is ten years old. Her nick name is Turny. She is naturally slender, but is not much into exercise. She has the ability to be served a hot fudge Sunday and leave over half of it if she gets full! This is something that amazes me and makes me grateful to God for her sake.

My oldest boy is K.G. He is 8. He is the only one of my kids that is thicker in nature. He is definitely my son because he is the one that will lick the plate clean and finish everyone elses plate for them. (we don't want to waist) I had some concern for this at first but we together have been learning about self control where food is concerned. He is also my huge exerciser so I soon realized at least for now I do not need to have concern for this issue. His mane goal is to get a six pack.

We now have Sethy. He is six and enjoys the benefit of being the middle child. He can be considered an older child at times and a younger child at other times so he gets the best of both worlds. Again this is an answered prayer from all the dooms day stories I here from other middle children. He is exercising this right of middledome in this experience:-) He is skin and bone but eats and eats and eats.

Airionna (princess) and Bryce are last.

She is 3 and follows the old poem to a T. When she is good she is very very good and when she is bad she is HORRID! how much joy she brings us though for even when she is horrid she is adorable. She does not like any food. Bryce is 1.5 years and learning to potty train. He is what we think about when we try to get out of our personal funks because just thinking of him makes you smile. He will eat every thing in sight one day and then eat nothing for 3 days.

Well that is us in a nut shell. I hope you have fun and maybe you could even join us on a similar journey of your own.

Today we will be going to the store and stocking up on all the foods we will need. On the web site she talks about things I have never heard of before. She mentioned that some foods are not found in regular stores. Do to our specific situation at the moment I am limited to regular stores, Wall-Mart, Fredmeyers, Thunderbird etc. so we may have to find substitutions. But we will keep it raw.

We also do not yet have a dehydrator or juicer which she mentions often so acquiring this things will be part of the journey.

Well we are off see you soon!