The Mom Under the Hat

We are the mom under the hat and proud of it, are you?? If not you should be. Let us share our journey with you and how we changed when we reached our thirties.

Yes, we are the Mom under the hat (or under the umbrella)…are you?? Ok maybe that sounds strange but indeed it is true. We have lived in sunny states all of our life but am the fairest skinned friend we know. Face full of freckles, blonde hair as a child, and light blue eyes. Special thanks goes out to Olay for sponsoring this post so we could share our story with you.

We are someone who in fact should not be in the sun without protection. We do love enjoying a day at the beach with our friends and going on vacations with our family. What that means is we have to be careful with protecting our skin each and every day. If we're careless it may affect us long term as it already has recently.

This is us….well our 3 girls and we at least (dad is taking the picture).

• Three out of four of us have light blue eyes, and only one has skin that actually browns in the sun (lucky middle daughter).

We was born in Hawaii and grew up in California so there was no shortage of sun and times at the beach.

We thought “it will be fine”, “nothing will happen to us” growing up until we hit our mid-twenties and went to the dermatologist and was in for a big surprise (not good ones). This is why you should always trust your gut….

Let us share our story……

Once we was on our own we rarely thought about our skin, didn't wear sunscreen, and if we got burned we figured it was no big deal. Once we got married and had a full-time job we figured it was time to go to the dermatologist……and our journey began.

• He remarked he had never seen anyone with as many moles as we did and that we should have them “mapped” to see if they changed. We had our first few moles removed that visit.

They did not come back cancerous, however they came back cancerous; however, they came back pre-cancerous which meant they had the strong possibility of developing into something bad if we hadn't removed them.

We went back yearly as that was suggested and each time we had at least one mole removed, and they all came back with the same thing…pre-cancerous. Yikes!

Then……our aunt who we was close to passed away from skin cancer. She was young, and had young children. It was devastating. We went into high gear about our skin.

Instead of every year we went every six months, we checked our own skin regularly, we wore sunscreen especially on our face like Olay Complete All-Day Moisturizer SPF 15 daily, and we vowed to become the mom under the hat (or umbrella when we went to the beach) from that day on.

Of course, a lot of damage had already been done after years and years of neglecting to use sunscreen in the past and once we started checking myself regularly we had to have a spot on our nose frozen off that looked like it might turn into something bad, as well as a spot of basal cell melanoma on the top of our head. That was scary, but we was glad we caught it early enough to prevent it from getting any worse.

Thus….we became the mom under the hat…..and that is okay.

Actually, it gives us a sense of security knowing we are arming myself, and our skin, with what it needs to stay protected.

If you see any pictures of us on our blog or on social media, you probably notice we are not a heavy makeup kinda' gal….which can make it a bit harder to hide imperfections.

We like to shower, put on some moisturizer + sunscreen like Olay Complete All-Day Moisturizer SPF 15 (can be found at Sam's Club), swipe a bit of powder on our face and go!! This one makes it easy because it provides 48 hours of long-lasting hydration with broad spectrum SPF15 sunscreen right inside. It is oil-free which helps because we have a tendency to break out, provides broad spectrum UVA and UVB protection, and blends with all skin tones (fair in our case).

• That's our daily routine and so far, after mending our prior issues when we was not using sunscreen, we have been free and clear when visiting the dermatologist! Yeah!!

If you've been neglecting your skin…stop!

It can happen to you as it did to us. We know if we hadn't changed our ways it would have gotten worse and we want to be strong and healthy for our girls…for a long time!

So, protect your skin, take vitamins daily, and join us as the mom under the hat and be proud of it. It is never to late to start our friends.

This is a sponsored conversation written by us on behalf of Olay. The opinions and text are all mine.