Arizona Life: Month 1

We have been in Arizona for about 2.5 weeks.

I thought I would like it down here since I had visited many times over the summers on vacation. But I had no idea just how much I would LOVE it, and the kids would love it!

The weather is nice this time of year, and I already know what to expect during the summer: swimming and getting tan! Besides the weather I just love the lifestyle. Tim and I want to make healthier choices for ourselves and our family. While trying to live a healthy lifestyle in central Illinois is for sure possible, it was hard to do for me and it is just so second nature here! Every block has a different organic produce market, or natural food store. The weather of course makes you want to go out and be active. There are some AWESOME parks here and places to take the kids outdoors. It's just plain awesome.

Tim and I have been wanting to make some healthy changes for our family and this move to Arizona was the kick in the butt we needed! Right before coming here I began to realize that Kade may have an issue with dairy in my diet. So I cut back on it drastically and saw an improvement. So now I am completely dairy free. I thought it would be very hard to give up dairy completely since I love it, but honestly it has been pretty easy! Now that dairy has been removed from my diet, if I even slip slightly and have a very small amount, Kade pays for it! What better motivation to stay away from it than seeing it hurt my child? 

Another change Tim and I have decided to implement is to eliminate (or try to the best we can) all foods that contain GMO. I didn't realize the role that eating food containing GMOs played in harming myself, and my kids. This documentary along with some other research helped open our eyes. Although it may be near impossible to avoid GMO entirely, we are choosing not to bring them into our home with the foods we eat. 

This brings me to my next point, eating out. Eating out is next to impossible when you want avoid dairy, even if you "cheated" and had foods containing GMO. I am sure there are some places we could go but I don't think we will be eating at very often. We both enjoy cooking so much, the markets here are simply awesome, and The Fresh 20 had made meal planning SO easy that it just seems like a better choice to eat at home when possible. 

We started doing The Fresh 20 a few weeks ago and we just love it! Some people don't like to have their meals planned out so strictly but the planner in me just adores it! I love having 5 meals already planned for each week, using only fresh, never packaged ingredients. It is awesome that it plans the meals most cost effectively to use up all of the ingredients for the various meals that week so the produce that would usually get tossed, we use for a few different meals! I also love that it pushes me to try new things. If you know anything about me, you know I am a picky eater and I HATE trying new foods, but this meal plan has pushed me to try new things and actually like them. SHOCKER, I don't think I'll ever like mushrooms though. 

We are very excited about the changes we are making as a family, and these are just a few of them. We hope to continue to learn and teach our children how to live a healthy lifestyle. Since starting to make changes in my diet right before I got pregnant with Kade, I have lost 24.5 pounds, even with a pregnancy in there, and I hope that is just the beginning! It was an eye opener to look back on pictures of me two years ago. And my health is SO much better than it was two years ago! I feel much, much better!

Although its a small update on our family, it's all I got for now. I am hoping to do a post soon on our new house, once it gets put together, which may never happen with 2 kids.