I wear plaid. I'm a blogger.

We completed the Whole Life Challenge!! Hallelujah! It was tough. It was fun. It was worth it? Tough It took a lot of extra time (roughly an hour) each day to make sure that we were able to complete all the tasks at hand. The hardest thing was definitely the food piece (it's amazing to see that 80% of what we eat on a regular basis has some kind of additive sugar!), but it is also difficult to carve out the time to exercise, stretch, and meditate each day. Fun The only way it was fun was through comradery. We had about 20 people from our church join the same team and we would all post daily about what we were learning/going through. Much of the fun was commiserating together and laughing about how deprived we were making ourselves (borderline masochistic if you think about it). It definitely made the nutrition part easier when your co-workers and family were participating in the same dietary restrictions you have. Worth it? Overall I gained 2 lbs through the challenge. N...

"The worst that could happen is wet shoes and a broken ankle." Those were the encouraging words Katie offered as we walked around the backside of the pond a second time. On the front side of the pond was a little island, about 7 feet away from the shoreline. It appeared to be the home for the geese and ducks who flocked about the water that warm winter day. From a distance it looked like an easy jump to make it from the bank to the island, but the closer I got to the edge of the pond, the further the jump appeared to be. I definitely knew I wouldn't be able to make the distance from a standing jump but I felt fairly confident I could make the jump with a running start. If it was just a matter of jumping from point A to point B, I would have attempted the jump with no hesitation, but there was some risk involved. Wet shoes, a broken ankle, and wounded pride were all fairly low risks overall, but still, it was enough to make me second-guess my parkour abiliti...