Happy Anniversary and Whole30

At our Oregon vacation, Justin's brother and his wife James and Bonnie were talking about their multiple rounds of Whole30 and their success with it. I have been super skeptical of this fad because among restricting refined sugars, any and all processed foods, and dairy, it also restricts beans and whole grains - like, what's the point of that?? So I refused to consider it further on the merits that we LIVE off beans and rice.

Well I flirted with the idea for way too long that I finally decided I might as well just do it and stop thinking about it. And who knew? Maybe it would help Justin lose a few stubborn pounds or help with Emmett's skin? So August 20th I rid our entire house of all the restricted food items (or had Justin hide them somewhere in the house for future use - hello, not going to throw away tubs of flour and sugar) and we jumped on the bandwagon - August 21st was Day 1!

So far, what have I noticed? Today is Day 13: Emmett's skin doesn't seem to have changed much. However, I also know that the skin is the last organ to manifest changes in diet so I'm giving him three weeks until I start to draw conclusions. He definitely has been sleeping more and going down for bed easier. Behaviorally I'd love to say that eliminating all these inflammatory foods has made him a perfectly behaved two year-old but alas - he is still our tempermental mini-Hulk. I have definitely lost some weight. I have no idea how much because one of the rules of Whole30 is you can't weigh yourself inbetween - only before and after. Justin's face looks slimmer.

The thing about doing this is the cooking! Thanks to Rachel who got me on board with Walmart grocery pickup - hello game changer! - I didn't feel overwhelmed about hunting items down in the grocery store. I can just order them and pick them up! It's my new favorite thing. I'm also not wandering the ailes while tempting and strictly off-limits food favorites are staring me in the face. I've been cooking a lot more and I'm finding that I kind of like it and am actually kind of good at it. We've been eating a much larger variety of food and budget-wise have stayed within our regular grocery allowance because eliminating Ben and Jerry's from your bill leaves lots more room for zucchini.

Yesterday was our 6 year anniversary - wow! Pretty soon it will be 10 years and we'll have more kids added to the spread. We took a day trip to Seattle to celebrate. It was the busiest I've ever seen it! With Labor Day weekend and a Sounders game there were people everywhere. It would have been a beautiful day for a ferry ride but we didn't like the size of the crowds there so we just hit the market. We found a hole-in-the-wall homemade sausage place to eat that was compliant with our strict diet and bought fruit and flowers - my favorite!

Little Logan boy is growing like a weed. He's able to worm-crawl his way where he wants to go which is usually wherever Emmett is. It's fun to watch him follow his brother around. He'll be crawling in no time to keep up with him I'm sure. He's wearing all 9 month clothes now - I had to officially retire his 6 month wardrobe. He is wearing the same clothes Emmett wore when I first got pregnant with Logan.

Someone found mommy's makeup! Purple gel eyeliner smeared alllll over...

Metric Clothing Company is doing well-ish. They've had to pretty much fire all their sales reps except for one. Aaron is trying to network with some distributors to get more sales going so we'll see what happens there. Mary Kay is going well - I'll be working to double my unit size this fall so wish me luck in that endeavor. Life is good.