Five Weeks After My Cleanse

You guys have had SO many great questions for me over the past couple of weeks regarding my blog post about The Juice From the Raw cleanse that I completed. While I answered everyone privately, I just wanted to take a moment to share with you here - just in case you were thinking it but never asked!  

A lot of you have asked me. . . 

Question #1: How do they taste? 
Good!! I actually loved them! I would have purchased more of them just to have one a day BUT you people have bought out Covington Kroger! lol I have attempted to purchase them several times now! Up until about two weeks ago they were STILL sold out! I was sad and happy about this! Sad there are no more for me BUT SO HAPPY you guys are trying something new and taking the time to learn more about how your body functions! That’s so awesome and kinda makes up for ME not getting my juice fix for three weeks! lol

Question #2: Did you lose any weight? 
I intentionally didn’t bring this up in the last blog post because that isn’t why I did the cleanse. My goal wasn’t to lose weight it was to do something kinda extreme to totally break up my normal (bad habits) routine! And that is exactly what it did for me! And yes, I actually did lose a couple pounds. FIVE!!! Whoa! And that was just in the first week! Since then I have lost an additional five pounds for a total of ten pounds down!

Question #3: How did you NOT eat for THREE days?!
I think because I was drinking the juice every two hours it kept me feeling full. There was one time on day one of the cleanse, I woke up in the middle of the night with my stomach growling! I forced myself to go back to sleep! Eek! When I woke up in the morning I didn’t feel hungry. Also, I have noticed since completing the cleanse that I don’t eat as much! Sweet!

Question #4: How did you hear about this cleanse?
I did a good ol’ Google search for “juice cleanse” and bam! The Juice From the Raw and Good Cleansing both caught my eye. I used some of the info of each site to determine the way I chose to do my cleanse.

I also wanted to add that the protein coffee that I chose to drink, wasn’t a part of the Juice From the Raw cleanse. I didn’t want to get a headache and be completely miserable for three days so I found the 1915 plant based, gluten/dairy free organic coffee and just went with it! The cleanse, as I read online, is six of their juices a day. Ah, well. . .just do what works best for YOU but I do recommend keeping it clean - dairy free, gluten free and organic!

By doing a cleanse (if done correctly) you are essentially taking ALL THE CRAP out of your diet! Once I started putting things back in like dairy, I found out that my belly HATES it! Ugh, that was a hard lesson to learn! If you remember in my last blog post, I mentioned the first thing I had the day after completing the cleanse was a protein shake and it bloated out my belly so bad and made it gurgle. It hurt so bad. After reading the label on my protein shake I realized it has milk in it! By day two after the cleanse I had a slice of cheese in my dinner and my belly bloated out again! That’s when I realized that I might not be handling dairy properly. Before doing the cleanse I would have a cup of coffee with a milk based liquid creamer. It was SOOOO good! But it was making me feel bad and I never put two and two together! It was just how I started my day! After my cup of coffee I noticed my fingers would swell, I had indigestion, my nasal passage would always feel swollen and my face just always looked inflamed, especially around my eyes. That totally sounds like I have an allergy, right???  

“I’m so thankful that God lead me to this discovery and paved the path for me to do this cleanse. Otherwise, I would still be so miserable in my body. ”

I'm still investigating all this but I have been mostly dairy and gluten FREE for almost a month now and I feel so incredible! My skin looks so clear and hydrated, my belly doesn’t look or feel bloated any more, my eyes don’t look near as puffy! However, this pollen isn’t helping at the moment!!! I am totally thrilled with the results and what it has taught me about my body! About two weeks after the cleanse, Trey and I decided to clean out our pantry and fridge! We cleared it of all gluten and dairy products!!! That was a really big deal! Trey has been suffering from a gluten intolerance for some time now. But even though we took the gluten out of his diet he was still not feeling 100%. When I decided to take the dairy and gluten out of my diet, he and I both had a light bulb moment! He probably has a dairy intolerance too! We are still investigating this.   

I sure hope this motivates at least one of you to take a step towards living a healthier life! I am by NO means a doctor or know everything about gluten and dairy intolerances BUT I am learning and making small changes here and there that I KNOW are going to make my quality of life so much better. Which in turn will make my husband and children’s lives better!!!! And that ain’t a joke! 

I am always open to questions so please don’t hesitate to ask me anything! OH! And good luck to all of you that have shared (tagged in your juice photos on IG! I love it!) with me that you are starting the cleanse!!! I’m so excited for you! I hope it reveals to you something you may not have ever known about your body! Even if it’s just that you completed something SO challenging as not eating for three whole days!!! 

The Robbins take Gulf Shores!!!

Happy Monday and back to reality day!!! Last Monday we paaaaacked out the car and headed to Orange Beach Alabama for Gulf Shores! It was our first time visiting this beach and we will most certainly be going back! This year we also brought along a friend for the first time! RyAnne’s bff Airyanna joined us! It was so wonderful having her as a part of our family for the week!

The last time we went to the beach, in October of 2017 for Fall break, my PPD (postpartum depression) kicked into high gear. It was one of the worst trips to the beach I’ve ever experienced. As you can imagine just coming out of my PPD and being away from everything “normal” and all of my routines, I was a nervous wreck that it would hit me again. I prayed SO much about it leading up to this trip. I prayed that God would just prepare me in every way possible for this vacation that there would be NO way I could be depressed!

And guess what?! I felt SO prepared and ready and thankfully, even with the challenge of an infant on the beach, I had an amazing time with my family!

Our first day of our trip was spent at the beach ALLLL day long! I didn't take any photographs that day. I just sat on my beach chair and took it all in! It was glorious! The water was the perfect shade of emerald and the sand was so pretty and white! While it was a tad bit chilly it didn't stop of from having a blast! The next day we headed to the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo. We saw lions and tigers and bears!!! They didn't make any photos BUT I did find some pretty birds! lol The peacock and swan made the cut!

Right about here is where things got interesting! And funny! I laughed SO hard. The girls are having a blast in the water and jumping waves and then they got really still. I could tell they were trying to focus on something in the water. . .

They RAN out of the water screaming "SHARRRRRRK!" OMG! I calmed them down quickly before any of the beach goers got too nervous!!! It was a sting ray! A bunch of them! They were happily ridding the waves with the girls! 

Rocco did really good this trip! While it was challenging keeping him from eating the sand that he wanted to grab at, we took turns holding him and keeping occupied!

You might have to look hard on this next set of photographs but you will see in the distance a dolphin jumping straight out of the water!!! Olivia was completely oblivious!! We saw dolphins every single day!

We visited the Gulf Shores State Pier on one of the prettiest days! We also visited the Gulf Shores State Pier. While walking out we saw a dark mass swimming around a fisherman's line that was in the water. I asked him what that was. . .He said, "It's a shark trying the eat the fish I'm catching!" Gulp! We saw several! 

And just in case you ever wondered how close a shark will get to the shore. . .with people in the water. . .That dark mass, yep! That's a shark!!!

In the photo above, Rocco was so tired but was fighting his sleep! There was too much to keep up with for him to sleep! Although that boy did take some awesome beach naps in his daddy's arms!

On our last day, I was looking out the window and all the sudden I see a FLOCK of birds show up and they are squawking so loud! Then I started to see them going after something in the air! Our neighbor below us had a bag a Tostito's and was launching then in the air for the birds to catch! lol Naturally Trey had to get a part of this action too!!!

I'm so thankful that my family and I got to take this trip and have some "down" time! I'm also thankful to be back in my daily grind!! I think when you get to take a break every now and then, you appreciate your daily routine so much more and you're given the opportunity to reflect on how you can make it even better!

Rocco's First Easter + PPD Update!

I hope everyone is had a wonderful Easter with their friends and family! This year is Rocco's very first Easter celebration! Look at how adorable he looks in his little bow tie!!!! Trey didn't want him to wear that cute little bow tie. . .Deanna and I snuck it on him for photos though!!! Oh my goodness!! I'm so in love!

This year we went super non-traditional with our menu and served Tacos! My mother-in-law picked up some of El Charro's famous cheese dip and it was OH-so-good!!! And of course my sister-in-law, who is also an amazing baker, made some yummy desserts! We ate so good and then I had everyone go outside for photos! haha, Maybe that was bad timing! Eating MEXICAN and then photographs! Suck it in folks!

I know this is on the more serious side. . .but now that I’m getting back out there, lots of you have been asking me how I’ve been and I really appreciate you guys thinking of me! When Rocco was four months old, in (October 2017) I was hit really hard with postpartum depression. We were actually on vacation with our brand new family of five when it all started. I cried the entire trip - all SIX days! I felt SO guilty for crying every day and that guilt made it all feel so much worse!!! I felt like such a burden to my family, steeling their joy at one of our FAVE places - the beach! I was a mess and I pretty much stayed that way until the end of February 2018. 

That’s when I started focusing more on work and that really helped me! I also stopped nursing as much (we are down to only once a day now). This made me sad and happy all at the same time. Rocco never nursed very well. Heck, he hardly drinks a bottle well! He just seems so unhappy and frustrated with drinking anything. It’s taken a lot of pressure off of me but put pressure on me as well! I nursed both my girls until they were over a year old. I wanted to nurse Rocco that long and I've felt guilty for not nursing him as much. I just wanted to experience the same closeness I did when I nursed my girls but with Rocco too. I started feeling like a failure AND a burden. . .I wanted to end my life. I thought about it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY! I just felt like if I wasn’t around then my family would be happier.

During that time a lot of changes were happening. My gym of over four years stopped offering childcare. That meant I couldn’t workout because I didn't have anyone there to watch Olivia and Rocco. I lost my “gym family” and my routine! Although, I hadn’t been going super regular due to Rocco waking about three times in the middle of the night ( I was too exhausted) in my mind it was the routine I would return to when he did start sleeping! The thought of losing ALL the things that seemed normal totally rocked my world!

I started praying that God would bless me with a NEW normal AND QUICKLY!!! Shortly after praying for this, I decided to do The Juice in the Raw Cleanse. I wanted to do something totally for myself! I felt amazing after the cleanse! The very next week my sweet neighbor Brittany invited me to workout with her in a new group that had just formed! And then two weekends after that my girlfriends and I went on a girls trip to Helen, Ga.! God was so good to me!! I needed ALL of those events to happen! I seriously feel like a HUGE weight has been lifted off of me!!! I feel like me again!

This has been one of the hardest PPD journey's for me! I have been so incredibly frustrated with myself! Although I've experienced PPD before and I knew this wouldn't last forever, I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel! I doubted everything about myself and my confidence dropped off the face of the Earth! It wasn't until I started praying for healing AND was open to it, that my life started to have light again!

I just wanted to thank everyone for their continued prayers, support and love they have shown me over these really difficult months! You guys are SO incredible and I love every single one of you!

Olivia Turns FOUR!

There isn’t anything like seeing your child having the best day of their life!!! Yesterday, we celebrated our beautiful Olivia with our dear friends and family! Olivia requested a Fairy party this year AND as always balloons too! Originally she asked for a Fairy, Troll, Supergirl party! Eek! We settled on FAIRY! We all went to Hobby Lobby about a month ago, and she picked out the Pixie Dust colors (glitter), Fairy houses for our craft project, and all the paint colors. She was very specific in getting her favorite color, purple, AND her sister’s fave color, blue! She would say, “Oh, I want purple!!! And let’s get blue for WyAnne!” Isn’t that the sweetest thing! I love how thoughtful she is!!!

A couple of days before her party, she asked us, “So, when is my party and when is my birfday?” We explained to her that when she wakes up, not that day but the next day will be your birthday party and then the very next day will be your birthday! The very next day when she woke up, she came downstairs and reiterated what we told her. She doesn’t miss ANYTHING! And I love how she really seems to have an understanding of things like time. Don’t you remember when you were little and everything seemed like it was FOREVER away?! 

As I’m looking through these photographs, my heart is bursting with so much joy seeing how happy she is! And RyAnne too! She was so excited for her sister's party! When Olivia was opening her gifts, RyAnne made sure to read all her birthday cards to her! Seriously, HEART. BURSTING!!!! I’m so thankful for everyone that made her day so special! Also, thank y'all for holding my sweet boy and keeping him entertained so I could be with Olivia and photograph her big day! We love you guys!

Cake: Baby Cakes Bakery, Porterdale, Ga.
Party Supplies: Hobby Lobby (don't forget that 40% coupon code while you're standing in line!!!)
Olivia + RyAnne's Fairy attire: Amazon