Robyn and I have written our first book to help children of divorce. The campaign is now live on Kickstarter. Please watch the video and click on the link below to support us on Kickstarter.

Today's Menu Eat It Or Go Hungry

In our house we strive to create a healthy environment. One large part of that healthy environment centres around food and nutrition. Our blog title and first picture displays our motto around food in our house, "Eat it or go hungry"! We make healthy food and expect that our girls eat it. This has allowed us to move away from the idea of "I don't like that" to an expectation that you eat what is prepared for you. With this idea as you have witnessed in may of our posts we like to prepare food together. This helps our girls want to eat the food that is prepared because they have helped make it.



Today we are making mini banana loaves. Twice the stirring equals twice the fun!!!

We used a great recipe (Click Here For It) that was very yummy. Our only alteration to the recipe was that we added Hershey's milk chocolate chips!!! They make everything better in our opinion.

We like to spray our pans with non stick spray instead of using liners. This way the kids aren't struggling to pull off the liners when they eat the loaves.

Rainbow Breakfast

Our Blended Family was really busy over Easter. We got behind on sharing our posts so get ready for a few of our Easter activities. 

One of our first things we did was make colorful rainbow pancakes. This was really quite simple and fun to do. 

 

We made one of our favorite pancake recipes and divided the batter into 4 bowls. We then added food colouring into each bowl to create our rainbow of colours. Adding in a scoop of batter from each colour made our colours come together in each pancake.  

Once in the pan simply cook as normal. TIP The lower the heat the less browning your colours will have as they cook.  

Having extra help while cooking is always fun.  

Sometimes the help stops and says hey take a picture of me and my juice box!!!

We topped our pancakes with raspberries, blackberries and syrup. They were gobbled up by all of us. 

What kind of Easter activities do you do as a family?

Do Your Best and Learn From the Rest

 

We have a motto for our blended family, "Do your best and learn from the rest". As a family we always strive to do what is best for us as individuals, a family and others. However we are human and therefore not perfect. Imperfection is Ok, it's what makes us human. Life is complicated and everyone's perspectives and needs are unique. As a family we try to support each other in all that we do. This manifests itself in all kinds of ways such as eating meals at the table together without our devices, going for walks or bike rides together as a family, watching sports activities that any of us participate in, camping as a family and even activities such as doing homework. 

All of these activities are healthy supporting things which help strengthen our family dynamic. As parents we want our kids to know that we are there for them and that we love them. When a family blends there are new people in the equation, new immediate and extended family members. This can add new traditions, experiences and expectations for our family or individuals and that's Ok. One of the guarantees in life is that there will always be change and the need to constantly grow. 

We strive to constantly build an environment where we can grow as a family and support each other as individuals. When we fail to achieve this we try to identify how and why this happened. Each day as a family we hope to do our best and learn from the rest. 

Spring Into Activity

Spring is the seasons where our snow melts away we love to find activities to do as a family outdoors. We are very lucky that our neighbourhood has many nice paths to walk, run and bike on. Today was our first family bike ride for the season.

Being active is something that we want to instill in our children. There is no substitute for doing things outside. In a reality where screen time is always increasing we love to hear the statement, "I'm bored". We believe that it is Ok to be bored and it is not our job to make our children not bored. Our answer or suggestion to being bored is to always do something active outside, draw a picture, write a story or read a book. In a world where our time can be filled with an inanimate object inches from our face, we feel it is important for our girls to play as we did, full of activity, imagination and fresh air. 

What's your favourite spring activity that you do as a family? Leave your answer in a comment below. 

Our Blended Story

Our Blended Story is not unique, it is a shared experience that many people today have gone through. We want to share our blended story so that you can see how we have gotten where we are today.

Restructuring To have a blended story first you have experienced a breakup, a divorce, a death or a family restructuring of some kind. This can happen in many ways, for us it was after the end of previous marriages. Sometimes when a major relationship ends, we can pull back from friends and social media, worried about what others are thinking. We may spend time scouring to see what people are saying and feel like all eyes are on us. The act of changing ones status from married to single or divorced on Facebook can be a very hard thing to do. As adults we have all different kinds of ways to cope with divorce. Anyone who has experienced the restructuring of a family knows that this is a similar process to grieving the death of your previous relationship.

The restructuring of a family is public endeavour, there is always a larger audience that witnesses it and has opinions. Sometimes you loose friends, change friends, and keep friends. During this time of transition, it is important to focus on yourself. You need to understand what is essential for you. You must focus on your children if you have any, they need you, your love, and most of all to know that you are still their for them. Your pets also need attention, they will internalize emotion and feelings much like your children will.

As in all hardships in life we have two choices. We can either be overwhelmed or we can figure out how to move forward and create a positive future. Over the last couple years we have been trying to live out our personal motto: DO YOUR BEST AND LEARN FROM THE REST!


The Kids

Robyn has a fur baby Bentley, who is a nine year old Wheaton Terrier.

 
Jason has three daughters who are 12, 9, and 5. 

Every adult, child, or pet goes through a transition after a family restructures. There are many emotions, experiences and changes to adapt to. We have found that consistency, and love go a long way to help them adjust.

Dating

 
When you haven't dated in a long time dating can be weird, exciting, and a whole new experience. With our experience dating as adults was very rewarding, we knew who we were as individuals and we found out that we work really well together as a couple.

Introducing The Kids

 
When you start dating and you only have your children 50% of the time there is a freedom to see each other as a couple. This is most likely a new scenario for you. After a while we wanted to do things with the girls. We started doing fun activities, like taking Bentley for a walk, baking, having a picnic or watching a movie with popcorn and snacks.

As with any relationship with 2 adults and 3 children things are not always smooth or as they appear in a Hollywood movie. However we have been fortunate to have a very positive time together as a family. Our struggles have helped us learn and grow. Trying to keep healthy communication open has been difficult at times. This has lead us to develop an interactive journal for children of divorce, which we will be launching in a Kickstarter campaign very soon!

Blending

Last summer we got engaged and we are getting married this summer. We are very excited to be formally moving forward with our blended family. Right now we live two and a half hours apart from each other and we have been juggling the joys of a long distance relationship.

Last month we were fortunate enough to be able to go on a trip as just Jason and Robyn. This was our first major holiday. We went to Nuevo Vallarta with friends and had a wonderful week. We feel very strongly that it is important for us to constantly work on our relationship. Being that we have a long distance relationship right now we often spend late nights staying up just talking on Fridays when we see each other. We have identified it is important to do things as a couple and we are fine with just doing things as the two of us. Even though we may go away together we still keep in contact with the girls. We want to share our experience with them.

This brief look at our story is part of what has lead us to create Our Blended Story and be on the verge of publishing our first book to help other children through a difficult transition in life. We have witnessed the positive effects that our efforts have had with our children. We look forward to sharing more about Our Blended Story and hearing more from you.

Simple Kid Friendly Shell Pasta

 

This amazing meal has only a few ingredients. 

 

Ingredients 

60 Meatballs

1 PackageSmall Shell Pasta

1/4 cup Parmasean cheese

Asparagus Diced

Marinara Sauce 

Salt

Pepper

Parsley

Sriracha 

Cook the pasta according to package directions. 

 

Heat the meatballs. 

 

Heat the asparagus in a large pot

 

Add the meatballs

 

Drain the pasta. Add the pasta, marinara sauce and parmasean cheese. Heat thouroughly. 

 

Add parsley, salt and pepper. Serve and top with extra parmasean cheese. Add sriracha if you like a little spicier sauce. 

Going Bananas for Muffins

Building and keeping a strong family is our main goal for us. We try to build a focus on activities that we can do as a family. Baking is an example of a fun activity that we do with our kids. We do it often and include them whenever they want to.
 

This banana muffin recipe was very delicious. The muffins were gobbled up very quickly by all five of us. 

We used this recipe for moist banana muffins from Pinterest. 

 

 

Robyn's helper today mixed all the ingredients and helped scoop the batter I to the muffin tins. 

 

Once in the oven they were watched closely. We were given updates on how they rose and were baking. 

Next time we will definitely make a double batch!!

We hope you enjoy making muffins as much as we do. Leave us a comment or share a photo of your muffin adventures. 

Jason and Robyn

Meet Jason and Robyn

Jason and Robyn are both educators. Robyn teaches in primary school and Jason teaches in high school. They were married on July 20th, 2017 and now they are very excited to be officially a Blended Family.

This is Jason and Robyn's first co-published blog.

Jason and Robyn have published their first book Through My Eyes: An Interactive Journal For Children With Divorced Parents. Their book is available on iTunes. They also have plans to publish other books related to blended families.


As educators they have shared and presented their work around the world, so it has been a very natural process for them to share their blended story.