Day 30!!!!!!! We made it!!! So proud of everyone that achieved this amazing goal!!! So proud of everyone that fed their family better than they ever have and have made some wonderful and amazing strides towards wellness!!!

Our “Whole Family” ate extremely well for 30 days and we feel great. What do we do now? Are we being thrown off the wagon? No. Now, we live our Whole9 life, with the exception of the times that it is really worth it to eat something off the paleo wagon. And then we get right back on it.

We are all pretty aware of what grains and dairy do to our bellies so we are not running for the mac and cheese or the donuts. But we are REAL. We do like an occasional dessert, an occasional drink, an occasional dinner of fondue. Like I said, we’re REAL! And I like it that way.

So what did we do on our last day? On our Day 30? We shopped.

Let’s start from the beginning.

For breakfast I made an egg casserole of leftover salmon, brussel sprouts, plantains, and eggs. Go figure that everyone loved it!

It looks really pretty too!

We don’t use forks much. Haha.

Everyone was feeling good this morning after their baths.

Even Levi was feeling a little funny. I finally got a real smile out of him…even if his mouth as full of eggs.

He was very proud of his full belly.

After breakfast and some clean-up time we headed out for a day of shopping at the outlet mall!

For lunch we stopped by a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had a wide assortment of grilled fish for great prices.

The funny thing about being at the beach in January is that no one else our age is at the beach in January.

At the beach, as at this restaurant, we are surrounded by “snow birds”, “elderly”, “white-haired-beauties”. It’s ben a great time letting them love on my kids. So sweet.

Jeremiah used his photography skills once again and caught my blackened catfish and the kid’s grilled talapia almondine with green beans.

It was all delicious, filling, and inexpensive. Just the way I like it!

Jeremiah asked if I can make our talapia at home with slivered almonds. He loved it.

Levi loved it too…although you wouldn’t know it by his face!

The next exciting part of our day? The xlerator!!! Oh dear…can you tell it was a big hit?!

We finally made it to the outlet mall so I could use my gap gift card from Christmas. Shopping is such great therapy. Sigh…

For the kids doing so great while I shopped (see Gap in the background?) we all rode the carousel! Jeremiah and Shiloh loved it….Levi on the other hand was a tad bit nervous.

Like the sand he just kept saying, “Ow! Ow!” The attendant kept asking me if I wanted her to stop the carousel, as I was cracking up, and I continually assured her that he really was okay.

Don’t you just love the faces??? The funniest part was that afterwards I asked him if he had fun and he said, “gen!” (again) Haha!!!

We also stopped by the mall’s playground to burn off some energy…so I could shop some more.

This might seem like a normal picture of Levi but I assure you, it was not. In this picture Levi is at the top of a slide with a little boy behind him waiting for him to go down so that he can as well. Well….. Levi does NOT like to be rushed. He, yet again, started a “silent protest” and would not move. To make it worse he started blinking. What is this ‘blinking’ I speak of? ‘Blinking’ is when Levi takes his “silent protest” a step further and directs his anger at someone. Instead of yelling or hitting or doing something aggressive…he ‘blinks’. He keeps a very straight face, like this one, and blinks…hard.

Absolutely hilarious and absolutely a forewarning of things to come…. Haha!

Thankfully, levi’s big brother and sister helped him out, broke him out of his blinking trance, and went down the slide with him.

Fun times!!!

Shiloh has become accustomed to her mom, aka paparazzi, and is now asking me to take pictures of her. Cute!

Slide repeat!!!

Love these cute kids!

After another go around of shopping Jeremiah used his hard-earned 75 cents to give his sibling a ride in an ice cream truck.

They took it very seriously. Throwing out orders, honking at the dogs in the road, and having a great time.

We got home just in time to talk with Daddy.

Levi was pretty darn happy to be talking to his Daddy.

Dinner was a wonderful plate of salmon strips with zucchini and squash.

The kids loved their dinner and a movie!

And yes, those are clips and hairbands in Levi’s hair. Shiloh got some new hair accessories at the mall and wanted to share with his brother. So sweet, isn’t she? Haha.

I thought about it as I was taking a picture of our dinner that I have been taking pictures of the kid’s meals, not mine. So tonight….my meal:

Told you I eat. Let me say that again. I EAT! I am not a dainty eater, I eat like a man. Like a hungry, weight-lifting man. Who knows how many calories this meal was, I certainly don’t. What I do know is that it was good. It was full of vitamins, omega 3 fatty acids, good fat and yummy veggies. It was a wonderful dinner.

I thought I would take another family picture to end off the day. Everyone but Levi was feeling it.

Levi thought he would make a joke of our family picture.

What am I going to do with this kid?!

By this point we were all cracking up and figured it wasn’t going to get any better. Levi know what he was doing a quickly crawled away, even though he doesn’t crawl, cracking up! My funny, funny kid.

We had a good night, up until Jeremiah’s insulin pump errored. For those of you that don’t know us personally, my son Jeremiah, who is 8, has type 1 diabetes. He has had diabetes now for almost 5 years and last year got on an insulin pump. Every once in a while it messes up and this is never a good thing. I had to reset all his settings and while still hoping I did it right, sent him to bed. As you might have guessed I have been up a lot this night checking his sugar to make sure I haven’t bottomed him out. He is fine, thank God, and sleeping like a baby.

That’s the thing. Even when we are doing everything right, when we are eating well, being active, watching the numbers, things still go wrong. And that is life. It is REAL. What a great reminder on this day 30 of the REALness of life, the fact that we are not in control, that we can work hard and still not always succeed. But God… 

I work hard to feed my family well, to keep us active, to be in control of Jeremiah’s diabetes, and then… I give it to God. I keep in mind that I am not at the driver’s seat of my life or my family’s life, but that God is. What better way to end our Whole30. Wouldn’t you agree?

From our “Whole Family” to yours……