Cultivating Childhood

I thought I'd document my New Year's Resolutions this year.  I don't usually make resolutions, but I like the idea, and I want to make them something that will be beneficial to my life but also doable (which is why I'm not resolving to blog more ;-) ). They are... 1. Complete a 90 Day Paleo Challenge - I've been looking at Paleo now for a couple of months.  It looks really interesting, but I don't know if I could make the complete lifestyle change especially since my family wouldn't be doing it with me.  (Hubby likes his bread!)  Starting the new year, I want to eat only primal for 90 days except for when I'm at other people's homes.  If I start on January 1st, I'll be done on Easter! 2. Finish losing the weight that I started losing last year - I lost a lot of weight last year just counting calories and working out, but I gained a fair bit back over the holidays.  This time around, I'm going to try eating Paleo (for a while) and more s...

Our December started out BIG.  Trips to California to visit family are always an event, but this one felt bigger in a number of ways.  First, we went to my parents house.  But then, we left our kids there for FIVE days!  This was the longest stretch by far that we have ever been away from our kiddos.  Thankfully, they had some good time with their grandparents and lots of new adventures. The other big thing was that we left the kids so that we could go to a close friend's wedding.  We road-tripped from San Diego to San Jose giving Phil and I some time to ourselves that has been a rarity especially in light of all the business trips he had in November.  Phil was also a groomsman so there was lots to do to get ready for the wedding including setting up for the reception, going to the rehearsal dinner, posing for photos, etc.  We were able to hang out with some close friends from college that we hadn't seen in a while and reminisce on...

November was a difficult month with lots of travel.  The beginning of the month my husband was gone with two business trips of about 5 days each, then we had Thanksgiving with some family about an hour away from home, then we left for California at the end of the month!  Definitely crazy, and I wouldn't want to do it again, but at least some fun memories were had. The Fall was surely apparent this month!  We had a lot of fun being outdoors and enjoying the radiant colors of the leaves changing.  We've joined a meet-up group that meets weekly for nature walks around the Seattle area, and we've enjoyed trying new parks even if it is getting pretty cold this time of year.  Here are some pictures of our time at Discovery Park: We've also enjoyed hanging around our closer parks.  We love Twin Ponds park with its arboretum, community garden, playground, and of course its twin ponds! Another park we tried with our meet-up group wa...