Growing Healthy Kids.

Annie’s MRI appointment last week went SO very well that I left with a profound feeling of exhilaration and hope.

And also…a renewed sense of inspiration to take better care of the bodies God gave us. When Annie was first diagnosed, I was ON A MISSION to feed my children ONLY the most nutrient-packed, God-made food that would boost their little immune systems and keep my little darlings healthy, happy, and well-adjusted…

…believing that the healthiest possible foods are the ones as close to the way God made them as possible: organic, hormone- and preservative-free, and unprocessed.

Clean.

Honestly, in the past couple of years, due to the weight of overwhelming stressful events, I’ve let my attention to their diet slide ever-so-slightly. OK, I’ll be honest: we’ve totally, completely backslidden into the wasteland of trans fats, red dye #40, and … junk food (gasp).

I kept them alive, dadgummit, and sometimes, at the end of the day, that’s the best you can hope to accomplish.

But two years ago, I was on fire. I started (and didn’t finish) a blog series about our quest for better health:
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Step One: Nourishing Traditions. Before you read any further you’ll want to click on the link and read that post… its important to start here, because Nourishing Traditions is the foundation.

Go ahead… I’ll wait.
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Step Two: Juicing. Also critically important for good health. Go ahead… you’ll need to read that blog post too. Its important.

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Seeing as how we’ve survived the last two years on a diet of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, change in the right direction won’t be easy.

But I made a run to the health food store last night, made a menu plan, and tossed out the junkiest of the junk out of our pantry.

Today, I made a sticker chart where I plan to reward my children with one sticker for every healthy thing they eat. When they accumulate enough stickers (to be determined), we’ll go for a not-so-healthy treat like Andy’s.

They already have two stickers… for trying sauerkraut. Can you believe that? Sauerkraut!! I sort of offered it to them just for fun to see what they’d be willing to do for a sticker…and they liked it! Enough to eat two servings of it! It made me feel less guilty about heating up a nasty-white-flour-fake-cheese-and-trans-fat-frozen-pizza, since sauerkraut might possibly be the Next Chicken Soup. But the junky pizza was in the freezer already, and like I said… we’re easing back in gradually.

There are tons of health benefits to fermented foods like sauerkraut, but that’s a subject for the next blog post.