OK I spent the week trying as hard as i could to do everything and to it's best. It is narrowing down to the end of the week and I have to say i am exhausted. I think the majority of the problem is that I havent felt as if i had any time for myself as my husband has been out of town the last few days for work which is very common. So tonight I am hoping to wind down, get some "me" time in and prepare myself for the tasks of tomorrow.
I have been reading so much about homeschooling and I am feeling so completely overwhelmed with the curriculm/schedule etc. however this is something that i truely want to do and i know that once i get started and get into it I will be awsome. Mateo is only 4 so i decided to go ahead and start him this year since he is so incredibly eager to learn and i need the practice and routine down before it actually counts! I dont want to waste a valuable year of education if it isnt something i can fully accomplish but with God's help I can do it!
I started this week trying to get Mateo into speaking and learning more spanish. My husband is from Venezuela and it is so important to me that we keep his culture in our home. Since i have taken studying the language seriously, mateo has taken a great interest in it. I saw the commercials for Muzzy on tv and was tempted to make the purchase but checked my library first and voila! there is was! after two days i see a great improvement! I dont really know how it works but he picked up a lot! We have conversations of a lot of made up words with spanish mixed in but hey, he is trying and i must say i am extremely impressed. I study my Spanish online at a website called www.livemocha.com and i absolutely love it. The best part of all is it is totally free! You cant beat that! It is set up like rosetta stone but in my opinion better to understand b/c i did that before too. And you can chat with other users on there from Spanish speaking countries! I have several site friends on there from venezuela, columbia, chile, etc. and it helps out to actually use and practice it. I know what youre thinking and yes, my husband SHOULD be the one teaching me but our conversations are valuable b/c i get phone calls here and there and a few sentences in between the kids verbalizations and so for me to spend minutes on a few second sentence is hardly encouraged :) My husbands Abuela is coming next month so i look forward to no english conversations with her.
I will now spend the rest of my night recouping from the day and hopefully my tank will be filled again by morning. only one more day and then i will be getting help so... i can do it!
Running low of fuel, and patience.
Weight Loss and poison
The past 9 months have been dedicated to improving my weight. I gained a lot of weight having my son 4 years ago and was holding on to a lot of it. I have totally changed my eating habits and working on exercising more and I feel so incredible! My focus for eating has been to eat as many raw fruits and Vegies as possible. so even though I have had months of not doing so well with it, I am again eating 80% raw foods. After I had my son I was roughly around 220lbs. Through the years I had dropped some of the weight and managed well through my second pregnancy, but since August of 2009 I have gone from 187-148. I still have weight to lose and a lot of toning too but I am so relieved to be finding the super thin girl that was hiding under the layers of fat.
my body after I had my son: 
And here I am now: 
that is the only decent full body shot I have as of now. But wow what a difference!
My eating isnt the only thing that changed. I have read so much about the benefits and negetives of certain foods and I have been trying to improve my children's eating habits as well. Some things I discovered that were shocking to me were:
(red dye) Red AC was originally manufactured from coal tar but is now mostly made from petroleum. a study found that increased levels of hyperactivity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and lower IQs were observed in children consuming these dyes!
Mercury was found in nearly 50 percent of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS. Consumption by teenagers and other high consumers can be up to 80 percent above average levels.
In all of the debate about weather or not HFCS was good or not I wanted to check into it myself. I was sickened by these two discoveries as most of my childrens things contained one or the other. Even his vitamins! So I have now made the effort to cut those things out of our diet in hopes to keep my kids healthy forever. Another dye (i believe yellow) was given to rats that ended up getting cancer. My thought was take a bowl of cereal, I offer it to your kids who begin to eat it and then I say... by the way, I added some petroleum and mercury to the cereal, but only a little is that OK? How many of you would freak out! I know I would and did which is why poison is no longer in our menu. Hope you too make a change!
I will update you more on how the weightloss is going, I want to lose close to another 15 lbs. before my vacation in May, think I can do it?? I really hope to get into a cute bathing suit this year! :) God bless
A new creation
Welcome to my first and only blog post ever! I am extremely excited to be posting about my life and the work I am doing for myself and my family. In Christ I am a new creation and I know that he wants me to be the best person I can be. I know that a super mom is inside of me unsure of how to come out. I really want to be committed to a personal transformation and I feel that blogging will help me to be more accountabale and responsible to it. The areas I want to improve in are as follows: my relationship with Christ, organization in the home, wise spending, homeschooling my children, involvement in church, losing weight and being fit, learning Spanish, building talents in myself such as sewing, baking, cake decoration, knitting, crocheting, etc.
When I decided on my transformation I was at a point that I thought, who exactly am I? Am I just a wife, just a mother? I didn't want my life to be defined on only what role I played, I wanted to be defined by my ability to be those things as well. There are so many things that I have to do as a wife and mother and I want to do those things well. I was finding myself getting lost in my responsibilities, never doing things for myself and keeping my focus on others. Becoming the person I want to be will not only make me feel awsome, but it will make my job easier, peaceful, and exciting. Nothing should hold me back from growing into the women I am capapable of being. So with God's help and the advice of you, I know I can do this! Thank you for taking interest in me and I look forward to moving forward in this journey with you!
