Since I’m keeping the kids from the TV most of the day, I said I would stay off the computer just as much. So, my posts on here are lacking because of it. And I don’t mind because we have had a lot of fun outside. It’s been a lot quieter and less stressful, when I stay offline.

I am also not working off of a menu plan this week. With less stress of posts and my Facebook addiction (I hear it’s a real thing now), I have been planning as I go. So far, so good. We’ve enjoyed Cheeseburger Mac Casserole and Taco Night. This evening, we are having my version of Chicken Cacciatore.

OH, and we have a fence now! So, that’s another plus to our week. The kids can roam around while I am in the kitchen…and I can see all of them. And the dog LOVES it! no more leash out there for him.

My husband also built me 2 garden beds and surprised me with a tumbling composter! We’re experimenting with the garden and the composting. I’ve been reading up on both and I am praying we have a successful garden. I feel like I WANT to have a green thumb, but that maybe I don’t really have one! I guess we’ll find out!

Happy Spring…finally!

This week, I decided it was time to pull it back out!

Yesterday, I made pineapple chips. With just one pineapple I got probably 25 chips. I made them pretty thin, so we could get more out of it. I figured just a couple of the kids and I would like them, but SURPRISINGLY my husband likes them. He doesn’t eat pineapple, but he loved the chips! Even asked me for some in his lunch today. Yay!

Today, I am working on apple chips. I used just 4 apples, but it covered 3 1/2 trays, so hopefully that’ll be a decent amount. I was going to sprinkle them with cinnamon but decided to do this first batch plain, so we’d know who really liked the taste.

I LOVE dried fruit. So easy to do and pretty healthy too!

BREAKFAST

Cereal x 3

Muffins

Coffee Cake

Egg and Bacon Cups

Cinnamon Rolls x 2

LUNCH

Corn Dogs (don’t judge me!), veggies, fruit

PB & Honey/Jelly, fruit chips, veggie sticks

Leftovers x 4

Mac & Cheese, fruit chips

DINNER

Chicken Sandwiches, Raw Veggies, Strawberries

Ham & Bean Soup, Cornbread

Pasta and Meat Casserole, Salad, Breadsticks

Chicken Veggie Bake, fruit

Fiesta Rice, Refried Beans

Hamburgers, Corn, Fruit

Pizza for Addy’s Birthday!

BBQ Chili over Rice, Carrots, fruit

Today’s thought has to do with something I ramble about on here:

Fitness isn’t just about exercise; it’s about EATING RIGHT too!

Just like we can’t expect our cars to run without gas, we can’t expect our bodies to run without fuel either!

We are bombarded with food options these days, but the way to find the BEST options for fueling our bodies are to follow these 3 steps:

1. LOOK AT THE LABEL. Honestly, if it even has a box and label you could probably find a healthier alternative. BUT, going with foods that have labels, we can look at the ingredient list. If there are items on there that you cannot picture in their natural state…it’s probably not your best option for fuel. Sure, it’ll have calories and you need calories to  help your body move; however, if the ingredient list has more artificial or chemical ingredients…they are most likely empty calories! Your body is going to consume them and the chemicals are going to tell your body you are still hungry, and you may overeat on those empty calories. Even if you don’t overeat these items, you still aren’t filling your body with anything that is going to help your organs and systems work at their best.

2. KEEP A FOOD JOURNAL. I know, this one sounds like we’re talking about a diet. I recently recorded everything I ate over a period of 3 days and was surprised at the things I wasn’t consuming. Sure, I wasn’t eating a bunch of processed or chemical-laden foods, but I noticed I also wasn’t taking in a lot of water or as many veggies in the first part of the day as I had thought. Keeping track of every single bite you take might seem obsessive, but it really will give you a good idea of what your are eating…and NOT eating.

3.GET CREATIVE WITH ALTERNATIVES. So, you’re not going to take in a bunch of empty calories or the processed foods? What are you going to take in? You need to find a replacement for all your go-to foods. Are you a big snack person? Cutting out the chips and cookies is great, but unless you find a healthy alternative you will be prone to go back to the unhealthy snacks. Try cutting fruits and veggies ahead of time and keeping them in the fridge, so you can just grab and go (like you would with the bag of chips or a handful of cookies!). Dedicate a day to baking each week and keep homemade granola bars or even homemade cookies in your pantry, so you can SEE the alternative right there next to the unhealthy choice!

If it’s not snacks, think of healthy alternatives to the unhealthy things you regularly consume. Hamburger Helper? It’s so nice and convenient but read the ingredient list! It’s overwhelmed with unnatural ingredients. Instead of reaching for the box, make your own! Using chicken broth to make a roux, you can mix it with some egg noodles and meat and seasonings to get the same meal….without the fake stuff! It might take some getting used to, but that’s because the chemicals in the Helper tell your body you need more and more and that you need to take in more salt and crap! If you can get your body used to eating REAL things, you will notice you don’t actually need all that salt or the Helper at all.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but if we can commit to cutting out the crap one food at a time we can get back to feeding our bodies the things it NEEDS.

Yes, it will take a little more thought and a little more time to eat real foods, but it’s so worth it. Once you’re taking in fewer chemicals or artificial ingredients, your body can focus more on using the vitamins and minerals to fuel it instead of constantly starving for more because of empty calories! It can work to strengthen your body’s systems and detox itself a lot faster and more efficiently.

I do have to admit, I am still working on these three bits of advice myself. I struggle, usually on the busy days, with just grabbing a box of something processed at the store instead of taking the time to plan out our meals and use real ingredients. BUT, I do know when I set aside the time to focus on putting real foods on my grocery list, making a menu plan that includes these real foods, and following through with the time to cook or prepare them….we all feel so much better! My husband notices he runs better and has a shorter recovery time. I notice I’m not as tired because I’ve not bogged down my body with a bunch of toxins. The kids’ behavior is even A LOT less difficult because their systems are going haywire with artificial colors and ingredients.

SO, my challenge today is to keep a food journal for 3 days.

What items are you seeing that you consume the most? Are they REAL foods? If not, would you commit to finding a REAL FOOD alternative for it?

If you already eat real foods regularly, is there a tip you can share for the alternatives you’ve found to help keep you from going back to the unhealthy stuff?

Next week I will have a post on the things we have found as alternatives to the processed things we used to eat…. a lot of. Hopefully you will find it helpful and commit to changing your meals one food at a time as well!

Monday was our grocery shopping day. Iris and Lily took notepads and pens into the stores to write what we bought (to practice spelling) and write new words they read (to practice phonics). It went pretty well, but it did slow down our trip immensely! We had to break up the shopping into 2 trips – one in the morning and another after naps. All in all, it was pretty educational!

Tuesday we started potty training with Buddy. The morning was a disaster, but he did well after naps and stayed dry all afternoon and into the evening.

Wednesday, we continued with potty training. The first few hours of the morning went well. About 10 o’clock or so, while I was teaching Iris and Lily, Buddy came out of Addy’s room with an odd look on his face.( I had just sat him on the potty chair because it seemed like he needed to go. He didn’t go, so I sent him on his way.) He was telling me “bug” and bringing me something. I immediately noticed he had wet his training pants and started to talk to him about that, when I noticed the “bug” he was bringing me wasn’t a bug at all. He had apparently gone #2, it fell out the side of his training pants and he was delivering it to me. Eek! I started laughing, then noticed a trail of his “bugs” that went back into Addy’s room. It was a chaotic few moments, but I was laughing most of the time.

Yesterday, the crazy storms started coming through in the afternoon and they continued all night. Our yard flooded, and we worried about the basement but thankfully it was fine. We skipped class today to just enjoy a stuck inside day, watching the waters rise and recede. Then we built a big fort this afternoon to enjoy. It’s actually getting dark again, but no big storm is supposed to happen again. Just more rain.

I am STILL working on relaxing more during school time. I am so stuck on getting a certain number of things done each day, that I still miss out on some key learning opportunities. And I continue to get flustered with Iris when she needs me to teach her in a way that it opposite of how I’m wired to explain things. So, a continual learning experience for us all.

Addy FINALLY decided she wanted to learn to write letters correctly, and (without me pushing her to focus!) she wrote an “A” on her own over the weekend! I’m very proud of her.

There is always something to be learned….for everyone. If we stop learning, we stop growing. I try to explain that to my girls, but it is something I need to remember as well!

Because we are pretty confined to the house this week, I found some new recipes for baking.

Today, we made these Apple Brownies. I just pulled them out of the oven, so they will be dessert after dinner. They smell SOOOOO good. I can’t wait to eat them.

I am also working on these Oatmeal Breakfast Bars. I don’t know that we’ll eat them for breakfast, but they look like a good mid-morning snack bar. Just something different to change things up. They are in the oven now and I can really smell the maple syrup (be sure to use the REAL maple syrup and not maple-like syrup!). Yum!

The last item today is a quick one. It’s this homemade “Nesquik”. We enjoyed our homemade hot cocoa mix last winter, so I figured this was a pretty good one to try. It’s very similar to the cocoa mix. Yes, it has quite a bit of sugar, but in comparing the NUMBER of ingredients in this homemade mix and the ones in actual Nesquik…I’m much more satisfied with serving my kids the homemade kind. Why does something so simple as chocolate milk mix need SO many ingredients?! (That’s a topic for a whole different post, though…) 

I’ll be making more things this week, probably, since we’ll be inside a lot, so there will be another post on baking in a few days.

What are you making/baking this week? Please share!

Eggs, bacon, fruit

Coffee Cake x 2, fruit

Cinnamon Rolls x 2

Banana Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal

Fried Eggs, Fried Apples

LUNCH

Leftovers x 3

PB & honey/jelly x 2

Mac and cheese

Cheese and Crackers

DINNER

Chinese Pepper Steak, Rice, Carrots, Green Beans

Creamy Veggie Bake, salad

Fiesta Rice, Refried Beans, Tortilla Chips

Scalloped Potatoes, Salad

Beef Stroganoff, Corn, Biscuits

Build a Salad (greens, egg, avocado, ham, carrots, peppers, cucumber)

Chicken Pasta Bake, Peas, Carrots

I THOUGHT this week was going to be a regular week of school and running errands. I was mistaken.

My mom and youngest sister came yesterday to visit for the day, since my sister is on Spring Break. The kids and I were very excited to have them over.

The excitement began when I heard all three girls running up the stairs, calling for me.

“Mom! There’s a bunny in the window well!”

We all went downstairs and found….a rabbit in the window well. A pretty fat little rabbit was sitting at the bottom of the roughly 5 foot deep window well. No clue how long he’d been there, but we did notice he had apparently tried to burrow out the bottom because the one corner of gravel had been dug into.

My sister and I decided to help the little guy out of there. We donned fashionable work gloves and grabbed a box with a lid to scoop him up. Little did we know that as soon as I started climbing down into he would go psycho on us and start jumping almost the full 5 feet to try and escape. I was yelling and the bunny was jumping.

We finally were able to just pick him up while he was worn out, and we set him in the grass. He took off immediately, without even a thank you for us.

It was quite an exciting day, really. Our dog had already lost his lunch from both ends of his little body…on our carpet. Disgusting. I have never dealt with dog diarrhea inside before. My husband called while I was cleaning it up; Iris quickly explained I couldn’t talk because the dog “has the diarrhea.”

I thought it’d be awesome to live on a farm some day, but after yesterday I’m just not sure I’m cut out for it.

Sure, it’s still organic, but that doesn’t make it the best choice.

I have gotten away from having raw fruit with my breakfast. I always make sure the kids get a piece of fruit, but I skip mine.

Lunch has consisted of leftovers and a soft drink. Even if it’s an “all natural” soft drink, it still has a TON more sugar than I am needing!

Dinner has been alright, but I’m forgetting again to put fruit on my plate.

My veggie choices have been mostly cooked veggies, which leaves out the vitamins and minerals that are packed in the raw version.

So, I decided recently that today I would start anew. I am leaving out all processed (meaning items with preservatives and additives, even if they’re labeled ‘organic’) except for one item each day. Today, I am choosing a half of a Hershey’s bar because I’m craving a piece of chocolate so bad!

Breakfast today was a fried egg, a banana, 1/2 an orange, a cup of coffee and 6 ounces of a banana/apple/strawberry smoothie.

Lunch was a romaine and spinach salad with raw carrots and cucumbers, shredded cheddar cheese and ranch dressing (ok, so I’m having TWO processed items today. oops!). I drank water.

Snack was an echinacea raspberry tea (i’m stuffy today) and about a cup of organic dried cranberries.

Dinner will be homemade creamy potato soup, another salad and maybe a homemade roll. I’m debating the roll because I’m not in the mood to feel bloated from the bread. I’ll drink water or milk with it.

My Hershey’s bar will be enjoyed after the kids are in bed because I don’t want to share!!

I am looking forward to feeling cleansed and energetic. Oh, and I started a Pilates dvd yesterday to help me with the energy as well.

With Spring weather around the corner, I want to be able to enjoy the fresh air and not be crabby and sluggish.

Happy Spring!

I have been enjoying the NEW Dry Idea AdvancedDry Fresh! The problem I have with deodorants lately is that come 4:00PM I smell!

With five kids that are not too independent, I am constantly moving around the house to get them food, clothes, help, bathes, etc. It has been quite a challenge to find a deodorant that can keep me NOT smelling like body odor by the end of the day. I don’t think my husband really appreciates that I smell like B.O. when he gets home in the evening.

The NEW Dry Idea AdvancedDry Fresh has met my challenge!

“With superior odor protection that lasts for 72 hours and Pulse Activated Wetness Protection, NEW Dry Idea AdvancedDry® Fresh brand antiperspirant and deodorant keeps you feeling clean and confident all day long. It is also formulated with Vitamin E for silky smooth application.”

IT REALLY DOES!

I was a little skeptical on the whole “pulse activated wetness protection”, mostly because it sounded a little too scientific for me, BUT as much as I was running around and sweating and wearing off my shower scent…AdvancedDry Fresh was keeping up with me and I didn’t smell myself once!

I have continued to use it since beginning the review of it. I seriously won’t be switching back to any of my old deodorants any time soon!

Dry Idea AdvancedDry Fresh also has a very faint scent, so that helps with my bitterness toward some deodorants that are so strong in scent that it competes with my body wash and any perfume I decide to wear. I don’t like SMELLING like I’m wearing deodorant, and I am happy that AdvancedDry Fresh does not smell like a deodorant. It simply keeps me fresh feeling and smelling, without overpowering everyone’s nose with some strong powder or roses scent.