So I think we may start trying to blog about things besides food. Is that totally weird? Would you like reading about life with Hayley and Bill beyond what recipes we might be cooking up in the kitchen? I dunno…we are pretty boring. This might be a bad idea… Let us know what you think in the comments below. What would you like to hear more about?

Our good friend Juli (PaleOMG) was just here for a week to finish the photos for her new cookbook. If you don’t follow us on Instagram, you may have missed that info, but she has been here for 3 other visits so we could do the photos for her book.

Okay, stop for a second. You have to understand how amazing all of these recipes were to EAT. This book NEEDS to be part of your future recipe collection. Do the Amazon pre-order thing to get their lowest price guarantee on Juli Bauer’s Paleo Cookbook.

It has been a really fun project to work on, and we are so sad that this last week was her last trip. I actually cried the whole drive home from dropping her off at the airport. No joke. I’ve been a little emotional lately… (and it’s about an hour long drive from our house! -Bill)

I wasn’t sure how I would do for this trip since I’ve been in the middle of tackling some health challenges (which are getting better!) and I didn’t know how much energy I would have, or what my emotional state would be like. Having Juli around really helped me feel better, which was a huge relief. She’s just so energetic, and happy, and it was nice to have some girl time.

She just got engaged so we chatted a lot about weddings and wedding dresses…and oh my gawd if I only looked as smokin’ as she does when I went wedding dress shopping. Seriously the bod on that chick… have I mentioned I can’t wait to be able to start working out again?! Anyway, it was a really great trip, and really nice having her around, and I pretty much wish she were still here.

We have made some really amazing friends through this community, and every time we are with one of those friends, I get sad that we don’t all live closer to one another.

Chicken Drama

The day Juli arrived our sweet Lola started crowing. A few people on my Instagram told us Lola was a boy weeks ago, but we wouldn’t believe it. Then it happened. Bill’s dad was walking into our garage because he’s been renovating our master bathroom, and he yelled up to us… “Hey guys…uh I have some bad news…” We walked into the garage and heard some of the first teenage voice changing crows from Lola. That’s what we get for naming him after The Kinks song. Ugh. Figures.

Thankfully our friend Erik said he would take Lola and keep him since he only has one other rooster. Erik manages the farm where we get our soy-free, non-GMO feed for our chickens, and he’s a good friend, so we were so happy when he said he would take him. Hopefully he will send us some pictures of Lola when he’s full grown. He’s going to be a handsome rooster!

So now it’s back to life as usual here for us. Well, sort of. I’m still healing, and just waiting on a few more test results. I’ve gotten lots of answers, which I will share soon. I’ve been trying to be quiet about things after my big announcement about why we had to postpone our book tour, because I don’t want to make illness my identity. I’ve hit a rough patch in my life with my health, but I will come out on the other side healthier, and I hope I can help others by sharing about it, but I have to put my oxygen mask on first, so to speak. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about their illnesses (constantly) on social media, and hash tagging them. I’m totally guilty of doing things like that too, and realizing that is what really made me make this change. I feel that there needs to be some balance between helping and inspiring others, and also not making illness your identity. I’ve never felt like a sick person. A few people online have called me a sick person after seeing things I posted on Instagram, or the blog, and that’s not who I want to be, or how I want to be known. You can have a hard time in life without making it who you are, and getting stuck there.

I’m a lot of really great things, but sick is not one of them.

What you think about, and talk about most becomes your reality, so for me I have to heal myself first before I can share about it. Of course I will share things here and there that are working for me, as I keep getting better, but there are a lot of things I’m going to be quiet about for now.  When I struggled with my weight, it was all I thought about, and talked about, and the more I tried to do to change it, the harder it was. From age 11 to 25, I was someone who struggled with weight, and I really obsessed about it. Who I was as a person was someone chasing a body type I wished I had. When I started loving myself as I was, I stopped struggling, and now I’m someone who doesn’t have to work hard to look the way I want to. I barely remember what it’s like to be that other person. It’s a balance, and different for everyone, but it’s good to be aware and mindful of these things. None of us are truly stuck in a certain mindset; it can take a lot of work to change your thinking, but it can happen.

Since I’m ending this post on the mindfulness note, I’ll share with you one of the things I’m doing to help retrain my thinking. I’m going to write down 10 things I’m grateful for every day for 21 days. These have to be different things each day, and they can be big or small things. Once you have your 10 things you are grateful for, pick one of those things to journal about in more detail. See how you feel after 21 days. It should shift your brain into searching and scanning for positive things, rather than negative things. Negative thinking promotes the production of stress hormones, and positive thinking promotes more healing. Try it with me!

xoxo,

Hayley