Well hello there! I fell off of the blogging wagon. The end of the school year got me for sure! I'm back, at least for today! A couple of summers ago, we started the "sweet drink" rule so that my kids wouldn't be drinking lots of sugary, devoid of nutritional value, liquids all summer long. They each get one sweet drink a day of their choosing. The rest of the day, they drink water or milk. They are not huge milk drinkers, so I don't have to worry about them getting too much of that. They did great with it, and it has carried on throughout the year. This summer, I'm trying snack packs. They tend to want to snack All. Day. Long. So to solve that problem, they make snack packs. At night, they make their snack pack and that is their snacks for the next day. Once they are gone, they are gone. If they choose to eat them all within an hour of waking, too bad. (They are not doing this.) I made a list of the snacks we have available including serving sizes and calorie counts. I looked up how many calories they should be eating and decided to go with 300 calories a day for snacks for now. Caroline is getting the same as Addie because she tends to be more physically active. We'll see how that goes. I'm keeping them active with swimming and walking, so I think this amount is ok. I also adjust it if they are really active on any given day. For example, Addie has 2 and half hours of dance on Tuesdays, so she takes an extra snack with her. So far this is working great! They have fun making the snack packs and they have to use a little math to get it figured out. They are learning that they can have more snacks if they choose healthier foods and that they don't have to eat an entire serving size if they want to use some points (calories) for something else. And believe it or not, Caroline actually had a day when she had snacks left!
