^ she's been obsessed with cherry tomatoes lately ^

^ coloring is pretty much her favorite thing right now ^

^ I don't even know... ^

After months of feeling stressed, out of control and defeated and taking the last few weeks to dust ourselves off we decided to take control back - of our emotions, our daily routine, our diet and our life. I think it's often easy for the lines between relying on God and making every day count to get blurred. Does it mean sitting still and praying and hoping for the best or is it ok to take things into your control and trust that what you are doing is the right thing because you have asked for His help on this journey? We're trying to remind ourselves that God works through us and that means going forward and making decisions and making our "happy" instead of waiting for it to be delivered on our doorstep. And it feels SO good. 

Last night we were cleaning up after dinner and papa bear said to me "I've learned through all of this that life goes up and down, it's good and bad, easy and hard but if you don't claim the good every day and make the best of it, it just passes you by." I couldn't have agreed more. There's no end goal here, some day when we will become perpetually happy and will "arrive," instead it's kind of a grab bag and it's up to us to find the good, cherish it and be grateful for every day - even the hard ones. And I'm not saying it's easy, but often the hard times are simply much needed reminders of how much work our faith still needs. 

For me, I got organized at work this week and headed back to the gym - gosh did I need that. But perhaps the biggest thing we decided to do for our family was start Whole30. I've been following along with a few people doing it on instagram and we decided that this was just what we needed. Our diet has been atrocious lately and it's left us feeling groggy and gross. Not to mention how we look... We've found that often radical changes are what we need to better understand our relationship with food and to start fresh. We did something similar when we got married years ago and so many of the good changes we made then have stuck even five years later. I'm excited to see what this does for our health and what we glean from this whole experience. I can't wait to share more with you about our journey!

It has felt so good to be intentional with our time this week. We've paid so much more attention to all those "time wasters" like useless internet browsing and mindless tv watching. I've felt so much more productive and energized and just generally excited about things. Sometimes we just need a reset button and this week was a good reminder that it doesn't always have to happen on january one, sometimes you need to start fresh in march, april or whenever. Here's to taking control!!