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.