My Heart Challenge June 8th to June 29th #myheartchallenge

 Camping, Family, My Heart Challenge  No Responses »
Jun 302016
 

Hello everyone!  As you can see, it has been a busy month and we have not gotten a blog up for a while.  But, fear not!  We will have a great recap!

Like I said, this has been a crazy month.  Let’s go back to June 9th.  After finding out that we were not going to move, we decided to remake our entire house.  We moved everything, cleaned all of the carpets, and rearranged all of the furniture to make everything seem new.  That has been a ton of work, and we still are not quite finished with everything.  Sometimes I think it would be easier to move.  But, through all of it, we have been moving and active as well as lifting all of the stuff in the house.  We have slacked on the formal “exercise” time, but we are still moving!  Our increased activity is really showing up, not only in our waistlines, but in our endurance as well.

On Saturday the 11th, we started out at the Riverton Hospital health fair.  It is fun to go around those events and learn some more healthy things, but we were really there to get new bike helmets for everyone.  We are going to get our bikes out and fixed up after we get home from vacation, and we all needed new helmets.  We learned a bunch more about being healthy.  And then we raided the fruit box.  It was great that they had fruit available for snacking.

2016 Riverton Health Fair Photo ED0611104921

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My Heart Challenge June 1st to June 7th #myheartchallenge

 Geocaching!  No Responses »
Jun 072016
 

Hello again!  Well we had another wild week getting out and getting active for the Heart challenge.  That isn’t quite right.  We had another wild week getting out and getting active for us, BECAUSE of the Heart Challenge.   This week  all of the kids were home from school.  That was hard to keep them limited to their 1 hour of screen time….They didn’t do as well this week as some of the others.  But we are still not watching the TV or the computer even a third as much as they did last summer.  It is a dramatic improvement.  We are also getting out more of our board games, legos and even books!  Leatha has always read like her life depended on it, but the others are really making it a point now.

Saturday was Cameron’s Birthday!  He finally turned 13 and was a little bit crazy about it.  We did a bunch of outdoor activities in between opening presents and doing our regular household chores.  We started out in the morning, at the giant kick off party held by Salt Lake count libraries.  They were kicking off the summer reading program.  We do the program every year, one, because we like to read, and two, we get free passes to the Natural History Museum if we complete the program.  It is a bunch of fun.  So was the kick off party.  IMG_5237 IMG_5232 IMG_5227

The kids got to sit in fire trucks again and learn some fun things about DNA, as well as play in some bounce houses.

 

 

 

 

 

Cameron thought it would be fun to sit in the back of the police truck, and then close the door.  Continue reading »

My Heart Challenge May 15-24 Part 2 #myheartchallenge

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May 262016
 

This is part 2 of a very long post!  If you haven’t, please read part 1 here

This week Brenda was doing the stairs at work and said she was able to do 5 flights before she had to stop for a minute, and that is up from 3 flights just a couple of weeks ago.  She then did the other 9 flights.  If you didn’t know, she works on the 14th floor at Intermountain Medical Center, and walking up the stairs is a good way for her to get some cardio in while she is at work.  And these are not the standard flights of stairs, they are wider, a bit taller and about 3 stairs longer than a standard stair case.

We also had another nutrition class this past week, talking about planning out meals and making sure we are getting healthy ingredients to fill each meal with.  The kids got to come to this class, or at least a parallel class that was taught by one of the dieticians from Primary Children’s hospital.  They learned about the My Plate method of making sure you are getting the right portions of food at each meal, and then we all got together and planned out a week of meals.

And finally, Tuesday Brenda and I got to take a tour of Harmon’s Grocery store as part of the challenge.  It was interesting to note that Harmon’s has 6 full time dieticians that rotate around their stores and are available to answer questions.  You can even set up appointments for them to take you on your own grocery store tour and help you choose healthy options.  Another great thing about Harmon’s (no they are not paying me to talk about them, but I would gladly accept donations if they did) is that on the shelves, they have green labels that say “Dietician’s Choice” under a bunch of products.  These have been determined by the dieticians to be lower in sugars, sodium and high in protein or fiber, so they are good choices to grab if you are in a hurry.

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My Heart Challenge May 15-24 Part 1 #myheartchallenge

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May 242016
 

Hello everyone.  This is the latest post about our journey through the My Heart Challenge!  We are just over 1/3 of the way through now, and doing better than ever.

Last week we went to the park 4 times, doing something different each time.  One time we went and played baseball, one time playing basketball, one time just general around the park, and one time some of us played tennis while the others played on the playground and did strength training on the jungle gyms.

We have found fun ways to get our steps in as well.  We were in the tennis court at the park, and Amelia kept throwing the balls to the far sides of the court…I told her to throw them to me, but she said that I needed my steps and she was helping!  It is fun to get all of the kids involved in being outside and moving and playing hard.  It is really a bummer when it rains or is cold, we REALLY want to be outside! Continue reading »

My Heart Challenge May 8-14 #myheartchallenge

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May 202016
 

Hello everyone.  This post is not a recap of the first part of the challenge but it is about the last week!  It all started on Mothers Day this week.  While we didn’t do much on Mothers Day as far as exercise, but we were ready to hit it hard on Monday.  You know, there is a debate over when the week starts and ends, in our family we tend to use Sunday as the end of the week.  But the calendar says the week starts on Sunday.

Monday we got started with exercise again.  We are still eating pretty well, even if we slacked on our vegetable and fruit consumption.  We have had to figure out a different budget that lets us have more money available to keep fresh fruits and veggies around.  Monday and Tuesday we were a little short on fresh stuff, but we were able to stock up again on Wednesday.  As I sit here writing this on Monday morning, we are almost out of fresh stuff again!  We have eaten a bag of apples, a bag of pears, a bunch of bananas and most of a case of oranges.  Not to mention the broccoli, and spinach.  We try to keep some good veggies in the freezer as well, but we like the fresh stuff. Continue reading »