Healthy Habits Challenge

Last year, my friend, Suzanne, held a Healthy Habits Challenge. It was a twelve week program where you were challenged to keep ten healthy habits per day. You got a point for each habit you kept per day and reported your points at the end of the twelve weeks. This was the motivation I needed to kick some of my bad habits and work on some of the things I should be doing. So, to save Suzanne a little stress, I told her I would be in charge of the challenge this year. I decided since I have already broken my new year's resolution for healthy eating, it is time to start

The 2010 Healthy Habits Challenge!

It starts on Monday, Feb 1!
Here are the rules:

The Habits

1. 7 hours of sleep: naps count
2. 30 minutes of exercise: doesn't have to be all at once, taking a walk counts
3. No sweets/unhealthy snacks: you know what "sweets" are to you.
4. 64 oz. of water
5. 3 servings of veggies, 2 servings of fruit: or whatever combination of 5-a-day you get!
6. No soda: the aim is to avoid sugar, artificial sweeteners and caffeine
7. No eating after 8:00 PM: unless you are pregnant or nursing, in which case you can eat healthy food after 8:00 if you have or have had and extra serving of veg/fruit.
8. 15 minutes of inspirational reading (preferably scriptures, but any reading that uplifts you counts)
9. One journal entry in the journal type of your choice: blogging, letters, gratitude journal, whatever else you do to keep a record of your life counts.
10. Choose you own habit: this is something that you will work to do daily. Another 30 min of exercise? Service? Eat breakfast? Flossing? Whatever you want to work on personally!

How it Works

-Keep track of you points daily and at the end of each week (Sunday) you may either email me (melissahoyal@gmail.com) or comment on the healthy habits blog (more info to come) with your total points for that week.
-You can earn up to 10 points per day.
-Sundays are days off- you get to take a break with no points earned or lost.
-When we are all done I will take out everyone's "worst week" total and toss it out. So if you have a bad week, go on vacation, need a break, etc. you have a little bit of room.
-At the end the winner is the one with the most points.

Thanks to the beloved internet, anyone can participate, no matter where you live! If you are interested, email me, or leave a comment, and I will send you a spreadsheet that you can use to keep track of your points. The Challenge starts next week, February 1, so let me know before then! I am looking forward to the Challenge this year and hope I will have some fierce competition to keep me on track!

Blame it on the Rain

This has been a gloomy week for lots of reasons. But instead of focusing on the gloom, I thought I would add some sunshine to my life by posting some pictures from recent school events...

Hunter is learning his letters! We have been doing a preschool class co-op with the little ones in our school group. It is fun to hear him pointing out letters he knows whenever he sees them. H and T are his favorites!


We have been doing so much science associated with Journey to the Center of the Earth! Here are a few of the science classes we have done...

Rocks
Suzanne did this class at her house and Tanner had a great time. I took the boys up in the hills behind our house for a "rock hunt" afterwards. It was such a beautiful day to hike through the hills!

Fossils
I taught a fossil class where we got to make our own fossils. They actually turned out really good!

Layers of the Earth
Tanner got to make these models to help him remember the layers of the Earth at Julie's house.

With a new semster, we started a new class: Art at Studio Claremont. Tanner loves this class! So far, they have done painting and clay sculptures.

Here is a sideways view of Tanner's Valentines sculpture. I love that he chose to do a picture of his house for something he loves!

After art, right next door, is cooking! We love his teacher, Chef Leslie, and I love that Tanner is always willing to try new things because of cooking class!

We started a PE co-op class this semester-we are doing gymnastics this month! I think Tanner has a new passion! He has been doing cartwheels and handstands constantly since he started this class! It doesn't really bother me because I can remember wanting to walk on my hands rather than my feet when I was little.

All right, I feel a little less gloomy now after looking at these cute pictures of these cute boys...

Hunterisms

Hunter has been cracking us up lately with some of the things he says. I wanted to post them so we wouldn't forget...

This morning at 5:55am:
"Hunter why did you wake up so early? The sun isn't even awake yet!"
"Well... I just wanted to play with Legos."

The other day I asked "Whose my baby?" The response:
"No one. You don't have any babies. Just 2 big boys. Me and Tanner are your big boys."

Another question I asked, "Are you my sweet boy?"
Response: "No, I am your cute boy. And Santa, no Jesus, Yea, Jesus made me cute."

Adventureland!!

Christmas break is over and we are back in the swing of things around here! I needed that break from school, but I am so happy to be back into our regular school routine. My favorite part of the day is when we are learning and developing our abilities together. I miss school when we take a break.

Our next land to be studied along our Magical Kingdom of Books journey...

ADVENTURELAND!

We had to take a trip to Adventureland and have a day filled with Disney Adventure. Our whole plan was to take the raft over to the big island and let the kids create their own adventures by running through the caves and treehouse on the island, but of course all of the "Rivers of America" were closed the day we went. But we still had plenty of Adventures by going on the other Adventureland attractions...

and visiting the Brother Bear play area in Disney's California Adventure...


We are planning to read Journey to the Center of the Earth (abridged version, Tanner is only in first grade!), Swiss Family Robinson (also abridged) , and Nim's Island during this unit. I am excited to read these classics with my kids! We already had a "Volcano Science Class" to start off Journey to the Center of the Earth and all the kids rushed to the volcano section the next time our crew went to the library. It is rewarding to see them get so excited about what they are learning and then motivated to learn more on their own! Of course, what 6-9 year old boys wouldn't be excitied about Volcanoes!

Give a day, Get a day...

Disneyland has another great way to get in free this year! Give a day of service, get a free day at Disneyland!

Click here to find out more.

If you go to the website, it will ask for your zip code and give you opportunities to serve near your area. But, if you type in this area code 84738, it will give you a list of service projects you can do at home-which works best for our family with young children!

Even though we have D-land passes, we decided to make blankets for Project Linus. This way we can get a ticket to share with someone who doesn't have a pass! I am looking forward to making these blankets with my boys and hopefully teaching them a little about caring for those in need.