Took a Walk in the Wild Zone.

Finally the stars aligned that I was able to join one of the Wild Zone afternoons.

If you've ever worried about your kids hanging on the couch and cultivating bad attitudes and posture, it refreshes the soul to see them making tree forts, playing in the mud, and forming teams, alliances and running around like banshees. (and yes, using any available stick to engage in Jedi swordplay....)

I was quite pleasantly surprised to meet both of the founders of the group, and they have quite a good system in place. They have a series of "play rangers" college students, mostly, who set up sticks, flowers, mud pits in a way to encourage cooperative (but messy) play. A big log over a mild dip becomes a bridge, and countless wigwams and tree forts were constructed and decorated.

My kids never once missed their video games the whole time we were there, and they ate and slept with nary a complaint that night. We'll be back! (They have them every 2nd Saturday in our area, and I'll be including them in the calendar of events for my Family Fitness and Fun meetup.)

Let the Wild Rumpus continue!

Random Acts of Nutrition

You know, this new Plate works for me.

As many of you may know, my kids are veggie intolerant (and salad-lergic... is that a word?)

I was ready to print this out and tape it to the dinner table, when the boys were saved from my mania by a dinner guest. (I'm trying not to be embarrassing crazy mom until I need to be.)

But that being said - it shall guide me in my meal prep and hold me steadfast in my continuing mission to force good health upon my offspring.

Two other potent weapons have fallen into my arsenal this week...

1. Jamie's Food Revolution - the Book. So I enjoy the reality show, in all its cheese reality dramatic structure, but the book is just 100% awesomeness. Gets you excited to cook healthy food and he has an absolutely BRILLIANT section called the "evolution salads" starting from dead simple (head of butter lettuce with lemon olive oild dressing) that evolves better than a pokemon... yes, bacon features in many of the evolutions.

2. Kids Cook 1-2-3. Picked randomly from the shelves at Los Gatos Library Junior section. Really creative good recipes that honestly have only 3 ingredients. Tonights Pesto Parmesean Chicken Legs, as managed by Matthew, were a delicious delight. And tomorrows banana chocolate muffins (so self rising flour is a staple in the baking section :-) look to be a winner.

Stay tuned to see if we can fill the fruit and veggie side of the plate...

the Bootcamp lives!

Get busy living, or get busy dying...

As many of you know, I frequently quote Andy Dufresne to myself to get myself motivated to do those things that take me to the edge of my comfort zone.

Well, I finally got all the stars aligned, and have launched my first "Wellness Bootcamp" melding my Wellness Coaching mojo with my passion (yes, you can say it.... obsession) with exercising with friends.

I had a coaching session myself with the wonderful Jessica Wolfson, who helped me "get busy..." by asking me about my self-imposed barriers, and my passion (ok... obsession) with regularly scheduled endorphin sessions.

Surprise.... it now seems so obvious I have been using the barrier of the time spent with the exercise sessions to keep me from facing the risk that no one will sign up for my boot camps.

Shades of my 16th birthday party... I keep thinking I'd gotten over that ;-)

The nice thing is, that now I can stop dodging the calls and emails from the other potential clients asking for the bootcamp write up... can you say copy/paste/edit location and time?

Time to get busy living (if you can call word processing on the rest of this beautiful Wednesday living ;-)

PS - flyers for the bootcamp are oh-so-available upon request :-)

Las Palmas Park, a few new wrinkles

As I "Julie/Julia" my way through the best local parks, I constantly wonder at how different things pop at different ages. And the creativity of kids.

Visiting Las Palmas in Sunnyvale last Saturday, we brought with us a school pal from Mountain View to see it through fresh eyes. Also, a best practice ;-) from a Mountain View park. Namely, we brought the cardboard snowboard practice - perfected at Rengsdorf park... again proving the ancient wisdom that the box is frequently more fun that the toy that came in it!

So, while a trip to Las Palmas on a sunny Saturday didn't jazz my kids, the chance to bring their shiny cardboard "snowboards" to surf down the Dragon's Back stone slide did. After this euphoria wore off (an hour, with few virtually no cuts or bruises, hooray!) they reveled in the pools of water left in the not quite drained lake area of the park. My eldest, initially convinced he could walk on water, if he just ran fast enough, eventually conceded he might need bigger feet. And a ski boat. And a lake.

The youngest, and his school pal, then became fascinated with the "post trail" - a feature unique to this park, and oddly compelling (I quite like the undulating walk from one post to another...)

Note for those that like getting the kids off the couch... I'm starting a meet up group to continue this Julie/Julia project... go check out on Meetup.com. Its free and I'd love to see you as we continue to explore our great outdoors, with our ungrateful offspring ;-)