Painting and Imagining

My little artists are hard at work. Sophi got his paint by number for Christmas from Corey's parents and showed me her completed work yesterday. 

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Today I got out a paint by number that I got for Christmas 2019 for the kids that I never gave anyone. Daniel and I got to work on it. It was a painting of a little puppy.

Some of those kits don't work very well. Daniel paints very carefully and precisely, just like he draws (fourth picture). Only it's a little harder to control paint... and paintbrushes with paint on them... and the black kept going slightly outside of the designated number 10 area...

Eventually his frustration got to him and we put away the kit and he did some freestyle painting.

He is a good little boy. Painting and creating art is one of the things I want to make as part of my regular life. One thing that Laura Dixon shares in almost every podcast how she likes to imagine a world where women don't worry about their weight anymore, where we are happy with our bodies and how they look, where we are naturally thin and healthy and our brains are not preoccupied with dieting and exercising! Imagine if we all actually spent our time each day doing all the amazing things that we dream of doing. One of those things for me would be creating art. I studied and majored in art when I went to Snow College way back in the day, you know. I want to draw and paint again. I love thinking of that too - not worrying about weight or exercise, and I do the things I want to do! My goal is to figure it out this year and have this year be the last year that I'm working on getting to my ideal weight. (Physical Hunger vs. Emotional Hunger) And so every year after this, a naturally thin person is just who I am, it's just part of me. Wouldn't that be nice? The first step is believing it's possible, and I do have that hope now. Slowly but surely I can gain evidence that it really IS true, and give it some time and I will be there. 

Here are a few cute pictures from yesterday of Peter and Wesley playing a shooting game with guns they made from the marble run toy. 

The shoot each other wit a "pyew-pyew!", then they die, then they come back to life with a kiss. 

Peter is a cutie pie. We love his little face. 

Here's his cute little face after having nutella and bread for breakfast. 

I do think it's a bit absurd for Nutella to be able to pass itself off as a breakfast food. That is one contributor to the obesity problem we've got on our hands. Corey likes to get the 5lb tubs at Costco. Thankfully we don't over eat it, so it has lasted us a long time, but we are all carrying extra weight around here and I think it would be good to end our relationship with Nutella. We're on the 2nd 5lb tub right now. I'm glad that I'm not tempted by it. There are other foods I need to work on getting over, but Nutella isn't one of them for me. It will be for the kids. Maybe I can talk Corey into not buying it again, although he does like to have it around for when he makes crepes. Nutella did help me cope back in Costa Rica, before I knew that I really needed to process my emotions - but if you read that post, like I'm talking about what I eat and then talking about trying to exercise it off. (Here's what Laura teaches about exercise in episode #49) It's like the obesity and medication cycle we have going on too. One of the Vegan doctors talked about how on television, you see all these ads for processed foods, and then right after them are ads for different medications to help with all our problems. Let food be thy medicine. I'm not so strict about being vegan (I usually have shrimp or salmon on date night) but I'm really glad that I rarely eat meat and that our meat consumption as a family is much reduced as well. I also totally agree with this Dr. Fuhrman's quote from pg. 61 of his book Eat to Live (emphasis mine):

"The diseases of poverty are mostly infections diseases and are found in areas of the world with compromised nutrition. Heart attacks and the most common cancers (breast, colon, prostate) are found in rich societies where nutritional extravagance is the rule. Nowhere in the world today can we find a society that combines economic wealth with a high intake and variety of unrefined plant foods. CAN YOU IMAGINE the HEALTH POTENTIAL of a society that would be able to enjoy excellent sanitation, emergency medical care, refrigeration, clean water, flush toilets, and availability of fresh produce year round and yet avoid nutritional ignorance and nutritional extravagance? WE HAVE THIS OPPORTUNITY TODAY! An unprecedented opportunity in human history the opportunity to live a long and healthy life without fear of disease. This opportunity can be yours!"

That's another fun thing to imagine! It's time to just put an end to the insanity. Go listen to Laura Dixon. Here's a good one that was a good shoulder shake - #15 The Pandemic Excuse. Ok, there's my rant/tangent. That's all for tonight.