Would you let your kids skip school for this?

I let my kids skip school yesterday afternoon. No one was sick. No one had an appointment. And no one was more excited to get out of school at 1pm then my 3 kids!

It’s been a crappy Spring around here . . . sunshine only out for small windows of time and then clouds roll in and we have rain for days and days. Everything is soggy all the time. We've given up hoping for Spring and hike in the rain, bike in the clouds and just cross our fingers that Summer sunshine will be here one day.

That day came yesterday . . . it was HOT! Topping out near 40 degrees with the humidex! The sun brought along a clear blue sky and no wind. We were NOT letting this day go by uncelebrated! The days following were going to be sunny but not nearly as HOT! So I wrote notes to the teachers and picked up my kids at their lunch break and took them home . . . . to swim.

Yup. Swim.

We had our first in ground pool put in last Fall, the pool opened on Halloween weekend. We swam on Halloween in the cold and then closed it for winter. We were first in line to open our pool in May. And we have swam again in the cold, in the clouds, the wind and even in the rain. I hadn’t gone in yet . . despite us heating the pool, the air is always cold and shivering is not my idea of fun in a pool.

So when the weather promised sunshine and high humidity, the pool party planning began.

My kids have each missed maybe 1 day of school for illness all year, their grades are awesome, they had no special activity or test that afternoon and for all their hard work all school year long they expect nor do they usually receive, and treats. This day was a treat. This day is what we’ve been waiting for since last September and this day was going to be enjoyed.

Yesterday we slowed down and we lived that day to its fullest. My kids will always remember the fun they had swimming with Mom & Dad on a school afternoon and how wonderful that sun felt and how warm that water was and how good those popsicles tasted.

I’m hoping I have taught my kids to embrace the good opportunities in life, that it's OK to take time out for something special, to have fun and to live in the moment. Life is too short, and yesterday was just too perfect.

Would you let your kids skip school for this?

Brownies for Breakfast!

I know, a blog on raising healthy kids and here I am on my 2nd post talking about Brownies for Breakfast!!

Having 3 daughters, I am careful to avoid instilling those negative body image issues you hear so much about in today’s young women and I think brownies for breakfast can help me with that! Now bear in mind, I am not a certified anything and this is just my own personal experiment that I have been conducting for the past couple of years . . . for the real scientific results you will have to check back when my kids are in their 20’s and see how well adjusted they are! For now, I am going on gut instinct!

Here is what I am doing so far:
Lead by example – Check
I run, I eat granola and drink shakes for breakfast, salad for lunch, serve balanced dinner every day. Kids have health conscious parents to model.

Healthy Food First – Check
Few rules here – you must have breakfast, you have to eat all your lunch at school and not just the treat, you don’t finish dinner, you don't get dessert or vitmains. Simple and always enforced. They know the 4 food groups and know healthy food first. Always.

Family Meals – Check
We eat dinner together every single night as a family. Dad too. At the table. No TV. And we talk. Having said that, my kids are 4,6,8 and haven’t developed full on lives of their own yet so I can have Family Meals !

I also do something else important, I make eating FUN!! Broccoli is never fun when you are 6, but you have to eat it. To offset that, we have "play food" nights. Pudding for dessert, served on a tray and eaten with . . . your HANDS! They love it . . mix up a couple flavours and they are happy little kids! Jello on a tray works too . .add in the whip cream for super YUMMY Fun!

The brownies for breakfast happened by accident one day, but it’s the same idea – its Fun. My kids birthday is always a special day for them and one year we had birthday cake left over so I jokingly said, “who wants cake for breakfast” and of course they all said “ME” . . and I thought, why not? So now when it's anyones birthday, the whole family gets to have cake or brownies for breakfast.

It’s not going to hurt them, not going to decay their teeth, not going to turn them into sugar monsters. It is however, going to make that a super fun day (it started with cake!!), make them the envy of all their friends (they had cake for breakfast!) and make some amazing lifelong family memories (no one forgets cake for breakfast!) and it makes me one super cool mom (I LET them have cake, FOR BREAKFAST!).

And the best part? Since a DQ Ice Cream cake is what I order every year on my special day, I get to have ice cream for breakfast on my birthday!!

Do you let your kids get messy with food sometimes or have dessert first? How do you make food fun? Leave me a comment so I can try it out on my kids ! We love having fun!