Everyday Teachers...Day 32

Woo, it feels like I have not been on here for such a long time!!! I have been really busy and have not even kept up with my journal, so I am not going to try to catch up for the time lost. So there will be three days missing from my journal. I am starting at Day 32. Here is the latest...

January 29
B – Oatmeal
S – Spoon of peanut butter
L – Whole wheat pasta/sauce
S – Popcorn – tuna (not right at the same time)
S – Chicken pot pie YUM!!!
No workout

This morning when I went to do my workout (Day 33) my kids could not wait to do it with me! I did the Miracle Mile workout with Leslie Sansone, which is pretty fast paced, and we got to about three minutes into it and my 7 year old said "I'm tired, my legs are tired!" So he stopped and did other things. He came back for the push-up part. For some reason he thought that was big fun. I think the best part for him was probably laughing at my pain, as push-ups are about my LEAST FAVORITE thing to do!!! Anyway, my little girl hung in there with me and really had a good time, I think she thought it was like dance class or something. She said, "they're all wearing white shoes", so she had to run and get her white and pink tennis shoes out for her workout! When I took off my shoes because the mat work was coming up, she got a really sad look on her face and said, "oh, I really wanna take these shoes off!" It is fun to get your kids involved in your fitness goals. And it is so important that they see your example of healthy living every day. We cannot go around saying "I am so fat!" or talking about other people, "she is so skinny", because our children are learning from us. They are little sponges soaking up everything that we say. I used to talk that way and still have to watch it now, but my kids were picking up on it. I don't want my little girl to be ten years old asking me if she looks fat in her outfit. That would break my heart. I don't think my kids even have an ounce of fat on them. It amazes me how fit, how lean and muscular they are! And it is not from doing exercise videos, it is just from being active. We have got to be more active. Instead of me asking my son to please get the milk out of the fridge for me, I need to go get it myself. Instead of saying, "do you want to check the mail", I need to walk out there and get it. All of that activity really adds up at the end of the day.

You know we teach our kids so many important things. The most important thing that we teach our kids is about Jesus - teaching them to love God and serve God, teaching them that He loves them more than anything - teaching them to walk in love daily and live for God with everything that we have in us. But, we teach them many other things from day to day, we teach them how to treat people by how we treat people. We teach them how to talk to others by how we talk to them. We teach them how to be generous by letting them see us give to others. We teach them to take care of themselves, of their bodies, by how we take care of ours. We may not have a degree in teaching, but we are teachers nevertheless, and it's high-time we take that responsibility seriously!

Even if you miss your workout, maybe you don't have time for your video or time for the gym, take some extra time to be active with your kids. Go out and run around with them playing tag. Yesterday my kids and I played hide-and-seek, and it was so FUN! Just do something to get active. If you have to go to the store, park far away. Just because you miss your "exercise time" does not mean you have to sit down and veg-out. Get up and get moving. The important thing is to stay active!