2014 Year in Review

Sharing personal information is still a little uncomfortable for me, but I feel like I need to record this year for posterity. It has probably been the craziest year of my life (just sliding past the year I graduated college, officially left home, got married, changed my name and started my first job).

We've had good times and bad. Triumphs and emotional breakdowns. Every member of the family has had new experiences, and, although things weren't always easy, I feel like we have grown so much.

The Summary
My husband walked out on his job and started a contract job 3,000 miles away. My oldest started kindergarten and my youngest started preschool. I began seeking out new freelance writing clients and have begun building a sustainable writing business.

As most of you know, in the middle of the year my dad passed away. That has been extremely difficult, and I still miss him every day as I try to include some of the silly things he used to do with me with my kids.

The good, bad, unbelievable, and exciting

• My youngest walked solo
  
• Daughter built first snow fort
• Husband quit his job
• First time being unemployed since he was 15 years old
• Preschool graduation
• Said goodbye to Buddy, our cat of 13 years
• First kayak ride for the kids
• First carousel ride for my oldest (5 might be a little late for this, but she's cautious)
• Husband took his first contract job
• Our first time living 3,000 miles apart
• Put our first house on the market (I guess selling will have to wait til 2015)
• Son started speaking in sentences
• Daughter started kindergarten
• Son started preschool
• Oldest turned 6
• First and second pet fishes for the kids and me
• First Ferris Wheel ride for the kids
• First time on an airplane for both kids
• First time for kids seeing and dipping feet in the Pacific Ocean
• First trip to LA
• Daughter got her ears pierced
• Son turned 2 and had a birthday party for the first time
• Record for most illnesses in one season
• Husband finally got that 1/2 sleeve tattoo 

Thank you to everyone who has helped us out so much this year. It has meant a lot, and we love you all.

Here's to 2014 and all the uncertainties ahead in 2015.

Should You Give Your Kids Vitamins?

The answer to that question is not a clear yes or no. It all depends on your kids' needs, lifestyle and willingness to eat certain foods. My answer is yes, occasionally.

I've always debated whether my kids need vitamins, and I often feel like we fall short with food. But the general consensus seems to be that for normal, healthy kids with no dietary restrictions, multivitamins are not necessary. If your child follows a restricted diet (i.e., vegan, vegetarian, no dairy), you may want to talk to their doctor about what nutrients could be missing and take individual supplements.

When to give vitamins 
Most research shows that young kids particularly get what they need from diet alone. In one study, children were not getting adequate calcium and vitamin D regardless of supplement use. And some kids taking supplements were getting too much iron, vitamin A, zinc and folate.  

Sometimes our kids may be especially active or we've just had a busy week and haven't been making great food choices. Those times and during cold and flu season are when I tend to give my kids vitamins. I usually do half the dose to avoid overdosing them on certain vitamins such as Vitamin A, zinc and niacin.

Types of vitamins

To get the best vitamins, sometimes you may feel like you have to go out and spend a lot of money, but it's likely not worth it. Our body's absorption of vitamins and minerals is complex, and nobody really knows how much of a multivitamin gets absorbed. Naturally derived vitamins are likely to work with your body better than synthetic vitamins, so they are probably worth a little extra money.



For more reading, here's what webMD has to say about kids and vitamins.

Do you give your kids vitamins or other supplements? What do you use?

Tips to Hide the Healthy from Your Kids

Before going too far into this post, let me just say that it's best to continue to introduce your kids to fruits and vegetables with the hope that one day they will like at least some of them. But sometimes you just get tired fighting, and you need them to get the nutrients.

Mac & cheese with carrots, celery,
onion, nutritional yeast hidden
;

Smoothies are probably the easiest way to hide vegetables and extra fruits, but you have many more options.

Cooking at home is the best way to ensure your kids get a balanced diet, and it's much easier to hide healthy foods inside home-cooked meals rather than packaged meals. Everything listed here is quick and easy to make. Things like macaroni and cheese, applesauce, chili, even burgers and meatloaf, you can make in large batches and freeze for later. All you really need is a blender or small food processor.

Tips to Hide Veggies 

Meal/Food	Veggies	Tips
Ground beef meals (meatloaf, burgers, chili, sloppy joes, meatballs)	Carrots, celery, squash, mushrooms, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, your favorites	Saute and dice or puree the veggies. Mix them in before you pat out the loaf or patties
Mac and cheese	Carrots, onions, celery Spinach (if your kids don’t care about color)	Stick to sweet vegetables with little color or add a dash of paprika and turmeric to turn everything a cheesy looking orange. Saute, puree, and add to homemade cheese sauce.
Spaghetti	Spinach, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, olives, and more	Saute and puree to hide the best and mix in with homemade or premade sauce
Brownies	Avocado, pumpkin, sweet potato	Replace egg and oil with 2/3 cup pureed avocado and 1/3 cup water.
Scrambled eggs	Cauliflower Carrots, spinach, mushrooms	Puree the cauliflower and blend in to hide. Add other cooked, chopped veggies if your child doesn’t mind.
Grilled cheese & quesadillas	Carrots, squash, sweet potato, pumpkin	Puree and add to grated cheese, then melt.
Baked goods	Zucchini, carrots, avocado	Mash, chop or puree and add to batter.
Applesauce	Carrots, berries	Cook and puree

 

Want more ideas? Check out these chefs:

The Sneaky Chef
Deceptively Delicious

What else can you add to this list?  

Facing Obstacles

I was originally going to give this post a title about organizing my thoughts or something, but I've started listening to some motivational content at night, and tonight's was about overcoming obstacles. That's when I realized that that's what I really should be focused on.

A quote from tonight was "look at your obstacle and give it the appropriate value, enough to make you productive." That may not make sense without context, but it basically means not letting your obstacles overwhelm you and stop you.

To be honest, I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed lately, which makes it hard for me to get focused on any one thing. I'm also very introverted, and I pull back inside my shell when I feel like this. So, in facing up to the feeling of being overwhelmed, I am blogging about it so as not to hide from the world.

My Plate Is Full
I wrote previously about all the changes happening. I've now got to handle all the housework and maintenance inside and out, which is a lot. I also have two freelance businesses -- one as a writer and one as a Beachbody coach -- that I have to figure out how to manage my time between. I'm also anxious (nervous? sad? excited?) about sending my first child to kindergarten and my youngest to preschool in the coming weeks. I hope to increase my freelance writing business, and I even have a phone interview for a job tomorrow, and I'm incredibly nervous.

The kids are not helping, either. Although individually they are sweet, loving, playful, funny little people, together they are loud, screaming, fighting little monsters. They are also confused and anxious about all the changes going on. My daughter has said repeatedly that she doesn't want to sell the house, and I have to reassure her again and again that all our stuff will go with us, that it doesn't matter where we live or what we have as long as we're all together.

After tonight's audio about overcoming obstacles, I realize that none of the things going on is a bad thing. I'm lucky to have the family I've got. I love them all dearly on their wonderful days and in the midst of their dysfunction. Yes, there's a lot going on, and it's overwhelming. It's also a good time for me to get scheduled and organized. With a daily routine and building up better, more productive habits, I can more easily see where and when I need to ask for help.

What do you do to get centered and maintain a positive focus when life gets overwhelming?

Starting a Family Budget - Tracking

Now that my husband is working again, we are looking for ways to save money. It's tough for everybody to find that extra little bit every month to put into different accounts. With both of us being 1099 employees, my husband and I have to also manage our own healthcare savings and retirement savings as well as emergency savings and college funds for the kids. Contract work varies, so you have to have a long view of income. One month may be great, and the next may be nothing, so saving becomes extremely important to cover the months off.

I read articles all the time about ways to save money, and most of them we already do. Starbucks is a problem for us, but we're working on it. Other than that, we don't buy a lot of extras when we go out. We eat probably 90% of our meals at home. So where do you find money to save when you're already following the financial gurus' advice?

Goals
I would love to answer that here, and I hope to be able to offer some advice in the coming months. For now, I'm setting goals for how we want to live and where we want to put our money. We've talked a lot about traveling and exposing the kids to different cultures. But I don't want to get into the trap of constantly chasing more money to be able to do that. Instead, I realize that we have more stuff than we need, and we don't need all these cheap, disposable things that are advertised to us. It's just a matter of limiting those impulse buys and conveniences that add to every grocery store or Target bill (or, this week, Ikea. Oops. The kids department is so hard to resist!).

To begin our journey to better household budgeting, I've set goals for where we want to dedicate any extra we can create:


1. Replenish our savings from the time out of work.
2. Start saving in an HSA.
3. Make regular contributions to retirement accounts.

Creating a budget
In the past, I've added up what we've spent at the end of every month to see where all our money is going. I've reduced every bill I possibly can over the past few years, so there's not much more we can do with fixed expenses.

With my husband just having started his job and having a lot of new expenses, I've got a few preliminary steps to do before I feel like I can set a true budget.

1. Track all expenses from August to determine our current spending.
2. Keep all receipts and add up impulse buys, unnecessary purchases, and one-time expenses (i.e., school supplies).
3. Develop realistic numbers to fill in spreadsheet.  

Because we're not together and, in essence, supporting two households during this contract period, we're sharing a spreadsheet that we both update. It is very detailed because the highly variable and semi-variable costs are the primary places we need to look to find extra money. That's also where most people don't realize how much they spend (according to advice I've read online).

Yes, this is detailed. My husband is an engineer and a whiz with Excel. We have many spreadsheets like this.

I'm hoping to be able to get a positive number in that bottom row that can then be applied toward my goals.

What do you do to budget? Where do you find the best ways to cut costs?

Major Life Changes

My husband left his job back in the first week of March with no other job lined up. The situation and travel had gotten unbearable, and it was best for everyone that he leave. We had been talking for a while about how to make a less stressful life, how we could find more balance. We had a lot of idealism and didn't expect his unemployment to go on for 5 months. Some of that idealism did start to fade, but not the push to change up our lifestyle and priorities.

Blanket fort!

He has a job now. It's a 6-month contract, and we are trying something new just like we said. We have many new challenges ahead of us. He's has left the permanent employment world for contracting (at least for 6 months), we're spending a lot of time apart, our house is up for sale, and my daughter starts kindergarten in 3 weeks. Sometimes it's pretty overwhelming to think about these things.

My favorite upgrade: this sink

Our house going up for sale is one of the bigger changes. We have no idea where we'll go next. It's a large house with plenty of space for everything we could ever need, but in an effort to change our lifestyle, we're looking to downsize by two bedrooms and at least 1,000 square feet.

It's a little sad to think of letting go of our home. It's where my husband and I really built our life together and started our family. We've put a lot of work into the home itself and created so many memories with the kids. I know my daughter's nervous about leaving the house, too.

We are hoping for the chance to find some balance and ways to put more of our money into doing things rather than having things. At least we have some stability for the next 6 months, and we are open to what life has in store for us next. 

Rethinking Saturated Fat

Poll 10 people and the majority of them will likely tell you that eating a lot of fat is bad for you. However, most research has proven that fat, specifically saturated fat, has no significant correlation to heart disease. Yet, people with high cholesterol continue to be told to consume a low-fat diet and get on medication.

Fat is not the enemy it's been made out to be -- as long as you're not consuming trans fats, which mostly come from hydrogenated oils. And it's effect on cholesterol is not what you think.

What does cholesterol do for you?
Despite guidelines that keep lowering the recommended cholesterol level, currently at 100 mg/dL, cholesterol is necessary to our bodies. That's why our bodies make more cholesterol than what we take in from food.

Cholesterol helps make the outer coating of cells, makes up the bile acids that digest food, and allows the body to make vitamin D and hormones. Some research has suggested that higher levels of cholesterol in the blood can promote muscle building as well.

Types of cholesterol
Typically when you get your cholesterol checked, you're told your HDL, LDL and triglycerides. LDL carries the cholesterol through your bloodstream to the areas of the body that need it. But, when you have too much, it deposits those proteins in the arteries, leading to plaque build up, which is why it is generally called bad cholesterol. HDL, or good cholesterol, picks up the excess cholesterol and takes it back to the liver. Triglycerides are a type of fat and are needed for energy, but too much can cause harm.

Fat and cholesterol
You've probably heard that saturated fat raises your cholesterol. This is true, but it's not an automatic reason to give up bacon forever. Keep in mind that saturated fat raises your HDL along with your LDL.

We'll focus on the "bad" cholesterol for a minute. Within your LDL, there are two types of particles: large, fluffy particles and small, dense particles. Large, fluffy particles weigh more and, therefore, tend to raise your cholesterol numbers. However, those particles are generally harmless. Those small particles are more likely to stick to your arteries. Guess what type of particles saturated fat increases? Yep, the big, harmless particles.

Refined carbohydrates and sugars increase the small, dense particles, but may not cause a large increase in your overall LDL because those particles weigh less. Carbs and sugar will also raise your triglycerides, creating more risk for heart disease. Unfortunately, when told to go on a low-fat diet, many people replace fats with carbs, thereby worsening their risk profile.

What to eat
As with anything else relating to your health, balance and moderation is key. Research still seems to point to eating foods high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats such as nuts, seeds, oils and fish. Keeping these foods, along with fresh fruits and vegetables, central to your diet is likely your best bet for keeping your heart healthy. You can still enjoy the bacon, steak and eggs, but limit the cookies for dessert.

Sources

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/06/28/cereal-killers-movie.aspx

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Understanding_Cholesterol.htm