A new blog, a new way of eating...

This blog is a new one for me. I'm used to blogging about silly stuff my children do, about homeschooling, about having babies. These are the things i'm an expert at :).

Food and nutrition - not so much.

But i'm married to a man who has made fitness and nutrition a hobby for our family, and who makes it fun, and i decided to take the time to document our latest odyssey - going Paleo.

To introduce us, we are a traditional family - a dad, a mom, high school sweethearts, married for 15 years. And we've got a family - a nice BIG family. On our first anniversary, i was 8 months pregnant, and we've had a baby every other year since. So now we've got, as of this writing, an almost 14 year old boy, 11 yo girl, 9 yo boy, 7 yo boy, 5 yo girl, 3 yo boy, and 1 yo baby girl (actually, she's 18 months now).

We are Christians (but not Mormons or Catholics, which are the two things people ask us all the time) who believe that children are a blessing and we love our big family.

We are pretty active and take our children out to hike in the Rocky mountains, where we live, almost every weekend. We love cross country skiing, the children love biking and swimming, and my husband has set up a home gym in our basement with all the equipment we'll need for a long time, and helps the children (and mama) set fitness goals.

After having my sixth child, i had gained 3 lbs with every baby, and although 18 lbs is not a tremendous amount of weight, it was too much for me and my smaller frame, at 5'2. I asked my husband to help me lose the weight, and this he did with a vengeance. We went on the Zone together, and started working out using www.crossfit.com - T could do all the exercises, having previously played college football, rugby, wrestling, hockey, and basically being ultra fit and athletic. I, on the other hand, have never been very coordinated, athletic or interested. He adjusted the exercises to my ability level, and started me running for the first time in my life.

And all the weight came off. I was thrilled!

Then we found we were pregnant again, and we were going to be so healthy for that pregnancy, but we ended up losing that little one. And getting pregnant again right away. So all told, i was pregnant for a whole year, and a little paranoid of "being healthy" (the babies conceived on Mcdonalds and homemade cinnamon buns had been fine!)...

So here we are, with an 18 month old, a house full of energy, and a plan to go a little harder and get back in shape, again. I'm not as heavy as i was after #6, but i'm ready to lose a little weight, and we're eager to see if we can get good/better results eating Paleo than we did Zone!