Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog!

Houston, Texas

Shangri-La

Well, we are home again after a lovely visit to Houston, Texas.

I have to say I enjoyed Houston a lot more than I expected to, although I do believe what I was exposed to was very selectively chosen by my tour guide David. What I experienced was a city full of trees and stately old neighborhoods with children playing in the streets, bird sanctuaries, Bayous and tropical weather right into December. David's hair became twice as curly in the moist, tropical air!

It was wonderful to get to know my mother and father in-law better, and we were all sad to see our time together come to an end.

Trip highlights included:

~Not getting constipated on either flight. Hooray! In the past I have quite quickly become constipated if I sit in travel all day, but not this time. I don't think I did anything differently, my digestive system is just getting better and better the longer I eat RAW!

~Watching intense cooked food cravings come up (while eating out with the parents at an amazing smelling, cheezy, bready, old-Katrina favorite kinds of foods restaurant) and then watching them pass. I realized again the importance of protecting your senses while transitioning into raw, because that stuff is seductive! Both David and I had a beautiful spinach salad and enjoyed it fully.

~Seeing the house where David grew up, and visiting the elementary school that he attended, walking down halls that have laid eyes on his five year old self.

~Going on warm, damp walks through the neighborhood with the parents and Zoe the Dalmatian.

~Visiting with John Rose, the man who introduced David to Juice Feasting and told David he must stop cooking his food in order to get well. Thank you John!

~Decorating the Christmas Tree and seeing the family history as told by years of collected tree ornaments, from places travelled to, and years past.

~Going out for seaweed salad for David's birthday.

~Dressing up and driving down town to the Ally Theatre for a stellar performance of A Christmas Carol. It even drew some tears from my eyes! I find I am so quick to tear up with emotion since cleaning up my diet, all emotions are right there at the surface coming through strong! The wonderful part of this is that happiness is the most prominent. I even teared up in the airport watching a man eating his lunch alone. This is something that has always made my heart ache, watching people eating alone, but I don't remember ever actually tearing up over it!

~Making a giant Christmas salad to have with the parents on Sunday night.

~Togetherness.

We went a whole week without green smoothies, bee pollen, vitamineral green, spirulina, a high speed blender, or MSM and I can report that we are just fine. Although that green smoothie piled high with spirulina tasted and felt like heaven this morning!

We watched a movie called Lost Horizon while in Houston and the story it tells is very important to all of us seeking a better way. In the movie, a group of people end up in a place called Shangri-La, a heaven on earth, where people eat well and live to be hundreds of years old, no one works for money but for the good of the community, children play freely in the gardens and parks, food grows in the fields, and there is no crime because there are no haves and have nots. What do you think happened? Most of the people who had come to this place did not like it! They could not see it for what it was because they were looking to get out and go back to the world they had come from. They didn't have the vision to recognise where they were. I think this happens to many of us here on planet earth. When we have lived a life that was less than the best for ourselves, it can be very difficult to change our vision and see the Shangri-La that we inhabit, for of course we all have the option of choosing Shangri-La. I have found that raw plant foods, straight from the gardens of the earth, have a huge role in shifting visions to be more Shangri-Laish and lovely. Try it for yourself!

Try making a Shangri-La Green Smoothie, or a Shangri-La Green Juice for yourself at least once a day for a week and see how Shangri-La you feel!

Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia—a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world. The word also evokes the imagery of exoticism of the Orient. The story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. - Wikipedia.com

With Love and Shangri-La-La-Ly kisses,

Katrina.

ps. I promise I will post elopement photos SOON. Thank you.