The Ability To Stay Calm

I'll admit it. I didn't always possess this ability. Things like I have pictured here would have, at one point in my life, made me pretty angry. Now, it made me laugh.

A recent order of children's art supplies arrived at my home. I wasn't able to open it until late in the evening. A smaller box was inside the larger one and I lifted it out and placed it on my cream colored carpet. THIS is what I saw below it. Yes, it was on the box I put on the floor. Yes, it was now on my carpet. Yes, I laughed out loud.

I am happy that I have been able to teach my children that we can't always control the situation we find ourselves in, but we CAN control our reaction. Getting angry wasn't going to do any good. It wouldn't lift the red stain from my floor or repair the damaged product in the box. It would only make things worse for me and set a bad example for my kids.

I am grateful that I have the proper perspective in most situations now. This Gratituesday, I hope that you are able to laugh, no matter what life brings you.

-Julie

Grateful For Good Health

As we are now in the midst of cold and flu season, I am reminded that we need to be grateful for our good health. It isn't something we often think about until we are sick.

I am also grateful that we have good health care workers to take care of us when we do fall ill. This time of year especially, they should be in our thoughts and prayers as they expose themselves and their families to every illness in the area to keep us well.

On this Gratituesday, I am grateful for the healthy days and those who work to keep us well.

-Julie

Being Prepared For The Flu

So far, we have avoided the dreaded flu. My kids have contracted other minor viruses, but nothing too severe. I have formed a plan of action that will hopefully hold it at bay. The law of averages in my life have shown that, if I am prepared for the worst, it usually doesn't happen. It is when I'm not ready that disaster seems to strike.

I am making an effort to keep the elements of the BRAT (Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast) diet on hand now in case we pick up a bug this season. I am prepared to make toast to tame upset tummies, have apple juice for reluctant drinkers who need to stay hydrated, natural applesauce and bananas for easy snacks.

I am hoping that we can stay healthy, but I am glad to know that these items, along with keeping the medications we will need on hand, will make it easier if we do become ill. During the start of this busy season, not having to run to the store for supplies with a sick child Works For Me.

-Julie

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The month of October is Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Awareness month. This year, breast cancer has hit close to home for me. My aunt was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. I am grateful to say, she has come through treatments and is in remission.

I am so thankful for the Susan G. Komen Foundation and all of the work that is put in to help prevent and cure breast cancer. I have been giving donations for the last couple of years and am always treated with return address labels and cards, which I use, to continue to spread the word about breast cancer awareness. This month, I hope you will be encouraged to give a donation or participate in an event.

Also, don’t forget to do your monthly self exam and have your mammogram!

-Robin

Time For Myself

Most of my activities revolve around my kids, but I know that I need to take time for myself now and then. I like to be nearby when the kids play, but I often give them the freedom to play on their own. I love to take a book or magazine and soak up some sun and take in the fresh air while they play outside. I can read a blog or two on the laptop while they are battling on a video game. I can work a crossword while helping them with homework.

Do you have ways you relieve the stress of the day and reconnect with what you love? I believe its important and we all win when I take that time.

-Julie

Carbon Monoxide Detectors

My husband and I are big on safety in the house. The start of fall always reminds me that lots of families will soon be using gas for heating in their homes. We are strong believers in carbon monoxide detectors and have them in each bedroom and in the hallway. They are all plugged in to the wall with batteries as back up. There is no gas connected to our house, but our garage is connected to the house.

I hope you will consider a carbon monoxide detector to protect your family. You may want to consider taking them on your winter vacations just in case they aren’t provided in your cabin.

-Robin

Car Window Punch

A few years ago for Christmas, I bought every driver in my family a car window punch. I had been meaning to buy one for myself for years, but had never put the effort into purchasing it. I figured that everyone should have a window punch, but like me, no one ever gets around to buying one.
Car window punches are used to break car windows in case of an emergency. One thing that scares me is getting into an unexpected amount of water and not being able to get out of the car. I am also afraid of having an accident and possibly going into a river or lake. We live around a lot of water, so these are possibilities even though people rarely think of them. I have two toddlers and it is awful to think that I could be trapped in a car and not be able to get them out.
I keep my car punch in the consol of my car. I am also planning to purchase one for my key ring. The car punch could also be used if a child is accidently locked in a car on a hot summer day. A car heats up very fast. I would not even blink before breaking the glass to get one of my girls out of the car.

I think that a car window punch is a great way to tell someone how much you care about them.

Hundreds of people die in their car each year from accidents or floods when they could have gotten out safely with preparation and a plan.

-Robin

Healthy Eating Habits

As our kids have grown, they have become more responsible for their food choices. They often eat at friends' homes and have snack choices at school. We have worked hard to teach them healthy eating habits and they usually make wise choices.

One of the funniest examples came from our daughter. We use natural peanut butter at our home. She was at a friend's home and was offered a sandwich at lunchtime. They served her a peanut butter that contained sugar and she didn't like it! They were so surprised! It is true that tastes can change and they learn to like what you serve on a regular basis.

It definitely Works For Me, and I would love to hear how you have taught your kids healthy eating habits.

-Julie

A Balanced Diet

The 2005 Food Pyramid recommendation looks more like a teleportation beam coming down from a spaceship than the food pyramid that I was taught in school. But, it is our guide until the 2010 revision. Understanding a few facts about each of these food groups helps us plan our meals.

Grains: When refined flours or rice are “enriched,” they return some of the B vitamins that were removed with processing. If you eat the recommended whole grains, you not only get the originally present vitamins but the fiber too.

Vegetables: Don’t be afraid! Try them all. Variety (favoring the dark green and orange veggies along with the dried beans and peas over the starchy vegetables like the potato) will assure a multitude of nutrients that your whole family needs.

Fruit: Fresh or frozen, canned or dried, even pureed fruit is still recommended to be part of a well balanced diet. Four servings a day squeezed into a typical diet can often even pass as a dessert for the end of a meal.

Oils: Unsaturated fats like canola and olive oil should be favored whenever the flavor of the dish will allow. Coconut oil and the solid fats (like butter) are high in saturated fats. Additionally, the beneficial health effects on inflammatory disorders and cardiovascular disease of the polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids have led us to try to incorporate fish oils into our diet on a weekly basis.

Milk: Yogurt, cheese, and milk can provide calcium for our bones. Alternate calcium rich sources should be substituted in the lactose intolerant. Remember, without this food group, there is no Milk Chocolate, Ice Cream, or even pudding.

Meat & Beans: Choose lean meats. Bake, broil, or send your husband out into the wilderness of the porch with flesh and fire to return only after he has grilled your meat selection. Nuts and seeds can also be thrown in a salad and provide essential fatty acids as well as a crunch.

Healthy well-balanced meals Works-For-Me and my family. I hope this helps you when selecting foods for your family meals.

-Robin

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UV Safety Month

According the American Cancer Society, July is Ultraviolet Safety Month. We often think of UV safety in these hot summer months when we are lathering up with sunscreen before we go outside. Today, I would like to remind us of UV safety of our eyes.
We often put on our sunglasses to look cool, but sunglasses are an important part of keeping our eyes healthy. The American Academy of Ophthalmology offers these guidelines to buying and wearing sunglasses.

· Don’t focus on color or darkness of sunglass lenses: Select sunglasses that block UV rays. Don’t be deceived by color or cost. The ability to block UV light is not dependent on the price tag or how dark the sunglass lenses are.
· Check for 100 percent UV protection: Make sure your sunglasses block 100 percent of UV-A rays and UV-B rays.
· Choose wrap-around styles: Ideally, your sunglasses should wrap all the way around to your temples, so the sun’s rays can’t enter from the side.
· Wear a hat: In addition to your sunglasses, wear a broad-brimmed hat to protect your eyes.
· Don’t rely on contact lenses: Even if you wear contact lenses with UV protection, remember your sunglasses.
· Don’t be fooled by clouds: The sun’s rays can pass through haze and thin clouds. Sun damage to eyes can occur anytime during the year, not just in the summertime.
· Protect your eyes during peak sun times: Sunglasses should be worn whenever outside, and it’s especially important to wear sunglasses in the early afternoon and at higher altitudes, where UV light is more intense.
· Never look directly at the sun. Looking directly at the sun at any time, including during an eclipse, can lead to solar retinopathy, damage to the eye’s retina from solar radiation.
· Don’t forget the kids: Everyone is at risk, including children. Protect their eyes with hats and sunglasses. In addition, try to keep children out of the sun between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., when the sun’s UV rays are the strongest.

Our sunglasses can look cool and protect our eyes too!

-Robin

Please join us later this week for our new feature: Thrifty Thursday! Link up your blog posts sharing your favorite money saving ideas!

First Aid Kit For Your Vehicle

With active, accident-prone children, we've learned the importance of a "mobile" first aid kit. I always have a few bandages in my purse, but we also have a more extensive kit in our vehicle.

We began with this little kit from our local drugstore. There were multiple sizes of bandages and miscellaneous supplies. We have since tailored it more for our family.

Our kit contains:
- various sizes of bandages
- a small bottle of sanitizer
- a small tube of antibiotic ointment
- plastic gloves
- larger sterile pads and tape
- a roll of gauze
- tweezers
- a sling
- an instant ice pack

We believe its important to be prepared and there have been countless times at sporting events and at the park where we've been able to come to the aid of another family's child. It definitely Works For Me.

-Julie

We hope you will join us later this week for our new feature: Thrifty Thursday! Link up your blog posts sharing your best thrifty ideas!

Home-Grown Organic Tomatoes

My family loves tomatoes. A few years ago, I picked up a tomato plant at Costco and tested to see if I had a green thumb. My husband doubted that I would get my money back in tomatoes, but I was hopeful to prove him wrong. I had my own doubts about my green thumb, but soon my tomato plant started growing. It kept growing and growing until I had to get a bigger pot and tie it up to our fence. Soon, we had many tomatoes, so many that I began giving them away to neighbors and trading them for other vegetables. At the time, we didn’t know our neighbors very well, so this was a great way to get to know everyone.

I love home-grown tomatoes. There is nothing like picking a warm tomato off the vine and eating it. When I was a little girl, my mom used to have a garden, and we had many tomato plants. She used to can tomatoes to make soup and tomato dumplings the next winter. Growing tomatoes is easy. Just keep the plant watered, trim the branches that do not have a bloom, and tie the tomato plant up when it gets so big it starts to fall over.

The best thing about growing your own tomatoes is that you know the tomatoes really are organic. Organic tomatoes are expensive in the store but easy to grow. We definitely got our money back and saved a lot of money too. We moved this year, so we were not able to have a tomato plant. But, I am looking forward to trying my green thumb out again next year.

-Robin

National Safety Month

I can not let the month of June pass us by without calling our attention to National Safety Month. National Safety Month is sponsored by the National Safety Council which educates and influences people to prevent accidental injury and death.

One of the things that the National Safety Council (NSC) calls attention to is that traffic safety starts at home. They want to make us aware that it only takes a few seconds to look behind the car before backing up and that we get our kids out of the car every time we get out of the car.

According to the NSC, over 100 children die and thousands are injured from being backed over each year. Let’s all be sure that we look behind our cars before we get in the driver’s seat and then take a few seconds to look again before we put our cars in reverse.

Many children die every year from heat stroke because they were left in the car. Some of these cases are due to over-stressed parents forgetting to drop their children off at daycare. Some of the deaths are a result of parents leaving their children in the car while they get out to run an errand for a short time. Let’s make it a habit to check our backseats every time we get out of the car, it may save our child’s life on those over-stressed days.

Accidents can happen at any time. I hope this post is a reminder of what can happen. The more that we keep these things fresh in our mind, hopefully, the more accidents we can prevent.

-Robin

My Child Won't Sleep

If an adult does not sleep well, we act tired. If one of our children does not sleep well: they may act tired; act out with behavioral problems; do poorly in school; have concentration problems; or even act hyper. In fact when a child is diagnosed with (ADHD) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, astute doctors and allied health care providers (such as physician assistants) will often look for a sleep disorder in the child before starting medications. Here are some things you might consider as you Talk About concerns with your health care provider.

Somewhere between six weeks to six months of age your child should begin to sleep more at night and less during the day.

An infant may need 18 hours of sleep, a 2 year-old may need 12, a 10 year-old may need 10, a teenager needs 8-9 (which is still more than an adult’s average 7-8).

Human sleep cycles through stages every 90-120 minutes (light sleep, deep sleep, and dream (REM) sleep), and it is quite normal for your child to wake up with each of these cycles. The key is to make your child a self-soother and not a signaler.

By placing your child into bed before they are asleep, you allow them to learn to fall asleep in the environment of the bed (soothing their own self). If you rock them to sleep and then place them in bed, each time they wake up they will signal you (probably by screaming and crying) to recreate the rocking environment in which you have taught them to fall asleep.

Bright light signals the clock in the human brain (our circadian rhythm) to wake up and get ready for morning. A sleep environment should be dark (a dim nightlight is okay), quiet, and a good temperature. TV and video games are horrible for sleep and should be limited or kept off entirely as bedtime approaches.

We believe sleep is as important as wakefulness in our house, and we make each an equal priority. In addition to talking with your kid’s health care provider you might also look through http://www.sleepforkids.org/. If you have other suggestions, for future health/wellness articles please email, tweet, or leave a comment.

-Robin

Geocaching

It has been a few years now since my family was introduced to geocaching. I believe it was an article in the newspaper that first alerted me to this wonderful family hobby. We like to call it "treasure hunting" and it is one of our favorite activities to do together.

For WFMW, I thought I would share this great hobby with you so that you might add it to your summer arsenal of "things to do."

The official website for the hobby can be found at http://www.geocaching.com/ and their explanation is as follows: Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

Our explantion: it is good, healthy family fun! Here are some hints as to how to get started:

- You will need a GPS receiver. This is the model we use. You will want one that works well under heavy tree cover. We began with one that turned out to not be strong enough. I would recommend reading reviews of models you are considering to see if other geocachers have had success with it. You can often find these used on Ebay or other sources. Our model is just over $100 new, but it is a one time investment for many hours of fun. We gave this to ourselves as a family holiday gift one year.

- You will need to register at the website. Then, you can enter your zip code and find the caches available in your area. We have been shocked to see how many are near us. Many were in our favorite parks, right under our noses! They can be hidden in containers as small as a film canister, so you never know where they are lurking! Also, consider printing out some logs for hunts you can do along the route of a family vacation. We are planning to do this on our next long drive. It will provide some much needed time to get out and stretch our legs a bit and will break up a long trip.

- Print your coordinates and hints and head out for some fun! The website will give you a map to get you close to your destination. After that, you need to head out on foot with the coordinates logged into your GPS receiver. Once you get close, you need to search around for the hidden treasure!

- Many caches have logbooks for you to record your name and the date of your discovery. We try to let the kids find as many as possible. Sometimes they are in an area that isn't safe for them, so be sure to look at the difficulty level from the site.

- We also have a small bag we carry for our treasure hunting adventures. In it we have hand wipes, a small flashlight, a pen, sunscreen, bug spray, little treasures (i.e. bouncy balls, plastic beads, etc. that they kids can exchange in the larger caches), a notebook, a small plastic bag and a camera. I have kept a scrapbook of our finds and it is such a fun reminder of the adventures we've had!

- Realize that you may not find every cache on your first try. We have had to go back to the website and ask for hints from other users. There is no shame in that because some of these are super tricky!

- Be cautious while you are hunting. The goal is to not alert others in the area to your mission. The reason is that someone who doesn't realize that others will be coming looking at these coordinates might move the cache. As a side benefit, the kids feel like super secret spies! We have had some great laughs trying to remain quiet in a very public space!

- Another benefit of this hobby is that geocachers have been asked to pick up litter that they might find when performing a hunt. We use the small plastic bag we carry to gather up anything we might find and perform a favor for the environment.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments. I love to share this hobby with others and hope that you consider it for some good, quality family time. You are outside, soaking up some sunshine, getting some exercise and having adventures with the ones you love. I can't think of anything better . . .

-Julie

Healthy, Waste-Free Lunches

I have chosen to pack my children's lunches because I find it to be healthier than what the school offers.One of my major goals last year was to eliminate waste in their lunchbox. Now, we do not purchase any individually packaged snacks and I do not use plastic bags when packing for their day.

I found the answer to my search here:
Laptop Lunches

I am not connected to this company at all, but I would highly recommend their system. We purchased two complete systems and one extra set each of the interior containers. Now, I can have one set in the dishwasher and the second in the box. I hand wash the box as necessary.

Pictured in the lunch above is a natural peanut butter sandwich, baby carrots, grapes and strawberries, and baked cheese crackers. As you can see, my kids can eat their lunch and then they have no waste to toss as they leave the cafeteria. I also pack a washcloth in their bag to wipe up any messes. And, they carry a safe, plastic water bottle that we refill each morning.

Green, healthy and frugal. The best of everything I'm aiming for.

Have you found a healthy, eco-friendly way to handle your lunches?

Beauty Marks

I have lots of “beauty marks” that I do not feel are beautiful at all. It has been a couple of years now since I have had a formal skin cancer screening, but I have been thinking about it this month. May is Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Awareness Month.

With the many beauty marks that I have, it is necessary for me to keep a close eye on my skin. A few years ago, I had some dysplastic nevi or precancerous moles removed. I normally do a regular check of my skin every few months. This is what I check my “beauty marks” for:

A- Asymmetry
B- Border- irregular and scalloped
C- Color- mottled, haphazard display of brown, black, pink
D- Diameter- large- greater than a pencil eraser
E- Enlargement or growth in size and elevated


Of these, a change in size or appearance is the most important.


This is the mnemonic that I use for my Melanoma self screening approximately every month. Since you can not see all of your own skin, you should have someone look in areas that you can not see. If you would like more information, go to http://www.aad.org/. Some dermatologists offer free screenings in May!


Don't forget sunscreen for the entire family this summer!


Have you or a loved one been affected by Melanoma?

-Robin