Stacey A. Shannon is a freelance journalist and blogger who has been published internationally. She's also a Christian, a wife and a mom of two school-aged children. She started Families with Grace in 2019 to encourage Christian moms as they create homes filled with grace, love and faith.
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I first wrote this post about how God is good back in June of 2014 when my kiddos were toddler and preschool age. Remembering that God is good is always timely. Considering this post talks about them both being sick is even more timely for me right now since they are again both sick at the same time. Thankfully right now they are just dealing with head colds and don’t need nearly as much help at 9 and 12 as they did at 17 months and 4 years!
About two years ago my son came down with a virus. Considering the dude is 17 months old, I might be exaggerating. It was actually last Friday, but since my daughter has since come down with the same virus and it lasts about a week, time is passing a bit slowly for me right now.
The good news is that neither kid has been hit super hard with this virus, just enough to make them tired, a bit grumpy and clingy. It could be way worse. However, it’s also highly contagious. Somehow they shared their germs with my mom who hasn’t seen them in more than a week. Fortunately no one else has come down with it. We’re staying in and missing out on a good week of activities to keep our germs to ourselves. Maybe by this weekend we’ll be all clear of contagions. I can’t wait. Sick kids aren’t super fun, but being sick isn’t super fun, so I don’t blame them.
The exhausting everyday moments of parenthood
Last evening, though, my son was feeling better but still grumpy. He started getting back into things he hasn’t in weeks, like the dog’s water dish, over and over again. Then he was climbing on the table. He wanted to simultaneously be in my lap and on the floor. My daughter wanted to play. Her ideas were having me mimic her dance moves. I was tired. It had been a long day. It was the kind of day that lasted longer than my patience. I debated about loading everyone in the car in their pajamas just to go for a ride. I didn’t care where, I just needed to be out of the house and not have someone hanging off of me.
It was also raining. My husband had recently repaired a gutter and went outside to check on it. Lucky duck, I thought. At least he got to get out of the house. (My son might not have been the only grumpy one!) He came back in and said he had something neat to show our daughter. She slipped on shoes with her nightgown. I scooped up the baby and we went out, too. It was raining, but we have a covered patio. The “neat thing” my husband had to show off was an intricate spider web. My son couldn’t care less, I didn’t care much and my daughter thought it was pretty cool. However, we were out of the house! We sat on the patio, listening to the rain on the metal roof for a little while. It was the change of scenery that I think we all needed.
Finding joy in the simple things
Sometimes it’s the simple parts in life that make it so good. I wouldn’t say that this has been an overall great week. It hasn’t be horrible and could definitely have been worse, but it also could certainly have been better. My daughter is missing out on her first experience with Vacation Bible School thanks to being sick. She has literally been counting down the days for a month and was looking forward to having me be with her leading around the preschoolers. I was looking forward to her having fun and learning more about God. She is so very interested in God and Bible stories right now. She has a love for Him that makes my heart burst. I don’t want to quash that. I want to encourage and nurture that. And I thought VBS would be one way to do that.
However, God had different ideas. I’d be lying if I said I understood completely or knew what He was thinking. I don’t. In fact, I’ve cried about it this week a couple of times. I’ve prayed about it. As soon as my son got sick, I prayed that somehow my daughter and I wouldn’t so we could still go. I firmly believe God heard my prayer; He just said no. Sometimes “no” is a hard answer to hear. I think I’m more disappointed than my daughter is. But, I do know that always God has a plan. God is good and always in control. I can trust Him even when hardships — whether small or big — don’t make sense.
I’ve learned that lesson time and again, even when I doubt. I’ve learned that in living with a chronic illness when I’ve not understood reasons for suffering. And I’ve learned that when proverbial doors not only closed on me but slammed shut in my face and smashed some fingers in the process. God doesn’t always make sense.
In my humanity, I sometimes get mad about it. Sometimes my feelings get hurt. Sometimes I get so frustrated that in trying to do the right thing and making choices God has led me to make that I still can get punched in the face with a hardship. It’s not always fair. But, God never said life would be fair and therein lies the rub. Therein lies the difficulty.
God is good
However, I have learned that even when life doesn’t make sense, God does make sense. I have told my daughter time and again that she doesn’t always need to understand why my husband and I ask her to do something, she just needs to do it because we said so. (Trust me, the girl wants us to explain everything all the time and sometimes she just needs to trust us.) Just like I’d never lead my children astray, just like I have valid reasons for disciplining them when they do something wrong, so God does the same for me. At the end of the long, hard day — even through my hurt, frustration and tears — all I have left (all I really had to begin with) is to trust God and lean fully on Him.
I can look back now other major hardships in my life and see how God worked them for my good. I can look back at other hard times and still not understand them, but I trust that just like I look out for my children, He is looking out for me. My toddler and preschooler can’t understand as much as I do at age 35. I can’t understand as much as God does as the maker of the universe and creator of everything in it. I just have to trust in One Who loves me more than I can fathom.
And so even in small hardships like having temporarily sick kiddos who are missing out on things they were looking forward to, I can trust. I can know that God really does work all things to the good of those who love Him even when little things (and big things!) don’t make sense.
While I wouldn’t mind a bit of a break in the craziness of life this week, I am working to be thankful in all circumstances at all times. Because God is good all the time. He is ever faithful.
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first; meal planning on my own worked. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Meal planning on my own
I realized to truly be fair and give an accurate review and comparison that I needed to also include meal planning on my own. So, I wanted to include that as well. This is what intentional meal planning and looking for new recipes to try on a weekly basis on my own looks like.
The menu choices were virtually unlimited. I had the entire internet at my disposable, including Pinterest, the great mecca of recipes! The biggest challenge in meal planning on my own, in fact, was that I have so many different recipes available to me. I have a variety of meals saved on my personal Pinterest board and browsed through it. I got a couple of ideas that way, but it was hard to narrow them down.
I found that I did better by having an idea of what kind of dinner I was looking for; otherwise the options were just too many. So, for example, my daughter mentioned she’d love to have BLT pizza. My husband didn’t think that sounded as great. My daughter likes the crescent roll crust most, so I searched for recipes using a crescent roll crust and found a Mexican one that I could easily modify for our family of four.
Thanks to the meal kit services, I did better with planning entire meals rather than just a main dish. I did discover one of my favorite new recipes this way. I made this Ritz cracker chicken in the oven and added mashed potatoes and roasted green beans. My daughter, parents and I loved it!
Cost
One bonus to meal planning myself meant that I could also go with things I already had on hand. This helped keep the cost a bit lower as a result. For example, I knew I had a box of spaghetti noodles in the pantry, so looked for recipes using spaghetti noodles that were outside of a jar of sauce. I could also meal plan based on what was on sale at the local grocery store the same week. That I didn’t actually do this time around, but I have in the past.
Shipping
Shipping wasn’t an issue for meal planning on my own. I do utilize grocery pick-up service, so I did that. Easy peasy!
Ingredients
As mentioned with the cost, I could use ingredients that I had on hand. Otherwise, I went with recipes that had ingredients I knew my grocery store would have as well.
Cooking the meals
Meal planning on my own meant that I could pick recipes based on what we liked and how involved they were to make. So cooking the meals was as easy as I wanted it to be. I didn’t have any issues with any of the recipes I picked not turning out well or having complicated instructions.
Portion sizes
Again, this depended on the recipe I chose. The Ritz cracker chicken, for example, called for six chicken breasts to serve six people. Since I only needed enough for four, I used only four chicken breasts instead. Had it been just my daughter and me, I’d have used only two.
Overall rating
Overall, I would say meal planning on my own is about 4 out of 5 stars. I realized that having some help with recipe ideas for the week did make my life easier. I can also get stuck in a bit of a rut if I don’t have ideas of what I want to make or don’t have time to search out new recipes.
Honestly, that’s not the result I expected going into this whole thing!
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
EMeals
From the beginning of this journey, I was most intrigued by EMeals. It is much cheaper because you’re only paying for the meal plans and buying the groceries yourself. They partner will various grocery stores to help make shopping easier. I do like that. As a rather DIY person, I figured EMeals would be the best fit for us.
Signing up for EMeals was pretty painless. I signed up online but then had to download the app to do much else. You can see your account and payment information online, but finding recipes and creating shopping lists has to be done through the app. I’m not anti-apps by any means, but I often have my laptop and like having the option to use it as well. Plans that have both make me happiest!
Menu choices
Since EMeals doesn’t have to source the food for its recipes like other meal kits do, they have many more menu options. There are a few that are family friendly options, and I started with those. Of all the meal kits we have tried, this one definitely had the most options that worked for my entire family. Quite a few of the meals were similar to things in our regular rotation, but there were lots of new options as well. My concern was whether I’d push outside of our comfort zone as much as I have with other meal kits!
EMeals also goes with some premade items on many recipes to make cooking time quicker. That’s a nice bonus for this mama on busy weeknights!
I’d love to have a search feature in EMeals to look for meals that utilize specific ingredients. For example, the first week using EMeals, I bought a half gallon of buttermilk for a blueberry muffin recipe. That’s not something I usually use, so I wanted to find other recipes to make use of the buttermilk.
While you do select a specific plan you’d like to go with (like family friendly, low calorie or budget), you can easily access and pick from recipes in all of the plans. I really like that!
Cost
EMeals offers 14 days for free, but you have to put in your payment information for them to start charging at the end of 14 days. Instead of being a monthly or weekly charge, EMeals charges either every three months at $9.99 a month or once a year at $4.99 a month. I opted for the three-month option when signing up, because I didn’t know how much we’d like it. Honestly, I’d prefer a monthly option at least to start with.
For additional fees, you can also add on a breakfast plan and a lunch plan (each costs additional). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere to view these plans ahead of time and they aren’t included in the free trial, so I didn’t go for them.
Shipping
Shipping wasn’t relevant to EMeals for me. I order my groceries online and pick them up. EMeals partners with a variety of retailers to help you make your list. So, I worked with Walmart, which is my go-to for grocery pick-up anyway.
Once you pick however many recipes you want for the week, then you can click and see your ingredient list in the EMeals app. It will pull up every single ingredient needed to make everything you have saved for the week. One negative to me is that it often automatically adds alcohol to pair with meals to the shopping list. We don’t drink alcohol, so I removed it from the list, but it sort of irritated me I even had to do that. However, it wasn’t difficult to remove. Each item has a box next to it to check whether you need it. It starts out with everything checked. And the list also tells you how much of an ingredient you need and what recipe you need it for. (I like that!)
Before even connecting to Walmart, I was able to remove items from the list that I had on hand. Once that was finished, then I clicked a button and it took me ingredient by ingredient through the Walmart app to add whatever choices I wanted. It pulled up a selection of items and I picked from them. It was easy!
I also was able to add on additional items as well. The items I added to my Walmart cart through the EMeals app also were in my Walmart cart in the Walmart app. For the rest of my shopping, I just switched to the Walmart app itself because that’s what I’m most familiar with.
If you really love having the groceries delivered to your house, then opt for your grocery store’s delivery service.
Ingredients
Again, this is a bit different from the others in that the ingredients being fresh or not didn’t depend on EMeals. I liked the way I made selections of ingredients in the app. However, I also wondered how difficult it would be to find and purchase the ingredients needed for recipes. With previous meal kits, we used multiple ingredients that were a bit more specialty. I wasn’t confident my local Walmart would carry some of them.
However, EMeals recipes are more simplified and use some convenience foods as well, like refrigerated mashed potatoes or mac & cheese. I had no problem finding any of the ingredients I needed.
Cooking the meals
Of all the meal kit meals I’ve made, EMeals were the very easiest. The recipes are more like recipes I usually make for my family on a weeknight. While I love making things from scratch sometimes, a lot of weeknights, I just need to get food on the table and move on. I never felt out of my depth with anything I made from EMeals. They weren’t as challenging as the other meal kits, which is both a positive and a negative. Though they were easier to make, they didn’t push me out of my comfort zone.
I don’t like using my phone to read recipes, which I thought was going to be an issue with EMeal. The recipes are only on the app. But, I discovered that if I share the recipe via email to myself, then it takes me to the recipe on the website and has a print button right there for easy printing. I loved that!
The estimated cook times seemed accurate and sometimes it took me a little less time than estimated, which was great!
Portion sizes
The portion sizes vary on the recipes you make. All of them are clearly marked. Since you purchase your own ingredients, you can adjust the portion sizes as needed. For example, my family isn’t big on eating meat. The first week, I halved our ground beef purchase for the recipes. So we got fewer portions as a result. But feeding a family four with the family plan was super easy. Many of the recipes feed up to six people. The portion sizes seemed spot on for the recipes we tried.
Overall rating
I’d give EMeals a 5 out of 5 stars. It is certainly a different type of service, but for the price, I liked it. I debated back and forth about whether it was any easier than just doing meal planning on my own using recipes I find on the internet. (Check back next week for a post about meal planning without a service.) I definitely could, but having everything narrowed down in one place is helpful. So, EMeals is definitely one of my top picks.
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Every Plate
The next meal kit delivery service we used was Every Plate. It was like Home Chef and Dinnerly in offering three meals a week as the lowest option. While Every Plate focuses on its lower prices, those prices are in part because there are many premium offerings cost extra per serving. Other meal kits did this, too, but Every Plate seemed to do so even more.
Menu choices
The menu choices for Every Plate were a bit so-so to me. They don’t seem to have quite as much selection as some of the others — at least of food that my family will eat. I have a couple of picky eaters, but getting three meals a week minimum in four portions made it more noticeable to me this time around. With the other meal kit services, I was able to find two meals per week my entire family would like and then maybe have one other meal my daughter and I would eat alone. That was a challenge for us with Every Plate.
Cost
I selected the minimum amount of meals per week, which was three. I went with four portions. Unlike Home Chef, you couldn’t modify portion sizes. The cost for three basic meals for four servings was $59.88 plus $9.99 delivery. Each serving is $4.99. In order to get the premium selections, add $3.99 more per each serving for a total of $8.98 per serving. So if you get all premium recipes for four people for one week with three meals, which would bring the cost to $107.76 plus $9.99 delivery. Premium recipes included things like hamburgers, steak and salmon.
Shipping
My Every Plate boxes arrived via UPS in a large cardboard box lined with foam and with two big ice packs included. I like that the boxes arrived UPS because they get to me in the middle of the day. I didn’t especially like the ingredients were all thrown into the box and had to be sorted out by me. However, the large box also include a smaller open box with handles that my non-perishable ingredients fit nicely into once I pulled everything out. That box was easy to store on a shelf in my pantry.
Ingredients
The ingredients were fresh and not frozen. They were individually packaged. A couple were branded as Home Chef, which was interesting. It really does seem that most of these meal kits get their food from the same vendors because they are very alike.
Just like with Dinnerly, Every Plate needed a few extra ingredients from my kitchen to go with meals like ketchup, flour and butter that weren’t included in the box. The produce was mediocre on freshness, but I also live in the Midwest and it was March when I received Every Plate meals, so I’m not sure how much I can dock them for that.
One of the things we noticed is that the recipe cards for Every Plate did not include the nutrition information. All the other meal cards we tried previously did so.
Cooking the meals
The recipes were similar in writing style to Dinnerly and Hello Fresh. While they didn’t take lots of extra time like some of the others, this meal kit delivery service did take slightly longer for some recipes than the time estimated. But, overall, the estimated time was how long it took. It really depends on how much produce you’re using in the recipe and how long it takes you to prep it!
Portion sizes
The portion sizes were good on this one. They were good-sized portions without seeming way too much or too little. I guess like Goldilocks says, they were just right. We only tended to have leftovers when I made four portions but one or more of my family members either didn’t eat a portion or ate only a small portion.
Overall rating
I’d give Every Plate a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I don’t feel like their selection was as great. It just wasn’t a good fit selection-wise for my family. I also didn’t like that the smallest number of meals you could do a week was three. Two really does work best for my family. But, that’s certainly not the case for everyone! I also didn’t like that the nutrition information wasn’t included. While I didn’t pick a low-calorie meal option, I still like to have the nutrition information to keep track and make sure I plan accordingly for the calories needed for the meal.
10 Tips to make your family vacation more fun for everyone!
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Ah. The family vacation. We have dreams and ideas of how it should go. We plan for happy moments, all the time. But reality is often different. Each trip I’ve been on with my family has had at least one snafu. It started immediately with the very first trip my husband and I took together. We set out for our honeymoon and were so excited, we forget to get gas. So, we ran out. In the 22 years since then, we’ve had many other vacation adventures and added two kids into the mix as well. When it comes to family travel advice, I’ve got a decent amount to help make your next family vacation more fun for everyone.
1. Talk about destination choices ahead of time with everyone.
This is one of my best tips. If you want plan a family vacation everyone will enjoy, then get everyone’s input on the trip. You need to set some parameters ahead of time for this to be successful. When it comes to family travel, my husband and I have the final say-so for our family of four. During the years we had babies through preschoolers, we didn’t ask for any input from the kids on where we went. But we did always think about what would work best for them.
As they got older, our kids were able to be part of the decision-making process. My husband and I talk ahead of time and come up with two or three trip ideas for our family. We look up general things to do in those places. Then we give the kids a presentation. Well, that sounds way fancy. We sit in the living room, give them options and use the TV to show photos or videos we find. Then as a family, we discuss what we’d most like to do.
We don’t always agree, but we do agree that the majority rules. And, honestly, we’ve not had an issue in the past. Usually we can all work around to being on board with the same trip. Because what we really want is to go on a vacation and spend time together. That’s the best family travel advice you can get: remember a family vacation is about being together more than it is about where you’re going!
If you are traveling with extended family or friends, then talk among yourselves about ideas so that everyone is on board and excited for the trip. After all, no matter how frugal you are, traveling is going to cost money. Nobody wants to spend money on a trip they dread!
2. Make lists.
I am a HUGE fan of lists. I make lists for everyday life, so making lists for family travel just makes sense to me. Each member of my family has a packing list that comes in handy. I also make a list of things we want to do, places we want to eat and where we’re staying. Keeping track of confirmation information is a great idea in case you need it when you check in.
I usually put everything together in a file folder and take it along with us, whether we are flying or driving.
The more you organize ahead of time, the less you’ll have to worry about on the trip!
In fact, I am so into organizing for trips that I put together a 30-page family travel planner you can download and use yourself. It has everything you’ll need from brainstorming before you go to collecting memories when you return, including a daily planner, travel budget planner, flight information tracker, gift planner, travel log, packing lists and pages to organize what to do, see, eat and photograph. It’s an awesome planner to help keep you organized for your next family trip. Use the Coupon Code: FWGFAN to receive 10% off!
3. Plan downtime.
Another great piece of family travel advice is to plan for downtime. We learned pretty early on that our kids love to see and do things, but they also need a break. In fact, both of them talk about how much fun they have just hanging out in our hotel room together. Be intentional about finding downtime for breaks and rest, even if your kids are past napping age.
When our kids still took naps, we did our best to make sure they were able to have a chance to nap around their usual time because it just made for happier kiddos. Now, we plan for downtime as we go. Over spring break, for instance, we traveled to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. We planned for two days in Vegas, two days at the Grand Canyon and then two more days in Vegas. The days “off” at the Grand Canyon were more laidback and restful. We all need a break. Little legs get tired from walking a lot. Little minds get overwhelmed and overstimulated.
We also sometimes institute family nap time even now. On the same spring break trip, we went to a magic show one evening. It didn’t start until 9 p.m., which was late for us, especially considering the three-hour time difference. So we planned for less activities during the day and headed to our room in the afternoon for a couple of hours to all four rest and nap. It made the evening more enjoyable.
4. Allow for flexibility.
I love to plan, but anyone who has kids knows that life can be unpredictable at best. That remains true even on family vacations. Some things we just don’t know until we’re in the moment. On the same spring break trip, we planned to go to certain hotels to see sights on our first day. We opted to go to hotels closer by where we were staying and have an early night instead because we were all tired by the afternoon. Shifting your plans is sometimes necessary. Going into your vacation with general ideas of what you want to do each day is great. But being flexible to move things around is necessary. You want everyone to enjoy the trip. Sometimes that means changing plans last minute.
5. Keep your kids’ schedule close to usual.
Schedules and routines keep our kids happy. As a schedule-oriented person myself, I’ve had a basic schedule and routines for our kids from very early on. Vacation means those schedules and routines might be changed around a bit, but the younger the kids are, the more we try and keep routines the same no matter where we are.
If you always read a book before bed, bring some along. If your kids are usual in bed by 8 p.m., then don’t plan for too many late nights. For kids who are used to a daily nap, find a way to make that happen. My kids are 9 and 12 now. They are more flexible. But I remember the days that wasn’t as true. Sometimes it meant making a sacrifice on what my husband and I wanted to do, but the days of little ones really don’t last forever. Keeping kiddos on schedule and happy makes everything better.
Nowadays, we try to keep bedtime reasonable on trips. We make sure to have meals at pretty usual times or have snacks if needed to make it through. And if we are having a late night, we plan for it ahead of time by scheduling downtime during the afternoon of that day.
6. Take along grandparents or friends.
Sometimes the best family travel advice you can have is take along others on your trip. Grandparents, siblings, other relatives or friends can make a trip more fun in multiple ways. (And I say that as an introvert who values her alone time to recharge!) Obviously babysitting is a bonus in having others along. You can trade off babysitting kids so you can have a dinner out with just your spouse. You can also save money by sharing a bigger space and splitting the cost.
In March of 2019, we took our kids to Orlando for the first time. We went to Disney World and Universal Orlando. We invited grandparents to join us. My parents did so, and it worked out even better than expected. Halfway through the week, my daughter got sick with strep throat. We immediately took her to urgent care and got antibiotics for her. Since my parents were along, they stayed back with her and we took our son to a day at Universal Orlando alone. (We had three days planned at the park and this was the first of them.) Even now, a few years later, my daughter has fond memories of that down day with her grandparents. They got her ice cream and catered to whatever she wanted. My son had a blast being the only kid picking what we did for the day. It worked well for everyone. By the next day, my daughter was well enough to join in on the fun again.
7. Ask everyone for his or her priority activities.
Before we go on a trip, we talk about things to do on the trip (see tip number 1). Once we have decided on our destination, then we start talking about what we’re going to do. We ask our kids what their priority activities are. My husband and I think about that for ourselves. Since it’s pretty much impossible to do absolutely everything you want to do, knowing what is most important to everyone on your trip helps make everyone’s trip better. You are able to make sure you do the activities your family really wants to do!
I have been surprised by what my kids prioritized. I know my kids well and think I know what will most interest them, but they surprise me sometimes! During our spring break trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, my son really wanted to go up in the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel. It was one of his priorities for the trip that I didn’t really expect. It had been more at the bottom of my to-do list.
Another thing we do when we talk about everyone’s priorities is remind our kids that we are going to do fun things for everyone. We tell them we expect them to be patient and kind during all of our activities, even if it’s something they don’t necessarily want to do. Usually when that happens, though, we all end up having more fun. If one family member is beyond thrilled, then that excitement passes along to all of us.
It goes right along with one of our family’s mottos: What is good for one of us is good for all of us.
8. Have the gear you need.
You can’t offer family travel advice without talking about gear. When our kids were babies and toddlers, we had so much gear. Planning ahead really helps. Think about how your kids are going to sleep. Do you need to bring a pack-and-play and sheets? Sleeping bags? Does your kiddo need a highchair and one won’t be available (like on a camping trip)? Pack a travel highchair/booster seat.
Make sure you have enough of the supplies you’ll need to take care of little ones from diapers to burp cloths to feeding supplies. I’ve even taken along kids’ bowls and utensils before. Even now, my son takes a medicine every other day to help with reflux. He can’t swallow a pill, so I break it up into applesauce for him. Most trips, I pack some applesauce pouches (which we always have at home), disposable 2-ounce dip cups and plastic spoons so we are prepared no matter where we are.
Don’t forget to think about yourself. Aside from needing toiletries and other essentials, what do you need to make the trip more enjoyable? Sunglasses? Sunscreen? A hat? A sweatshirt? One of the best choices I made on our recent trip was buying a fanny pack. (My 1980s child self is pretty happy these have made a comeback. Though I did opt for a plain black one instead of neon pink.) We did a LOT of walking in Las Vegas, and I knew that even a lightweight purse would hurt my shoulder thanks to my fibromyalgia. The fanny pack worked great!
9. Keep a sense of humor.
Motherhood definitely requires a sense of humor, and that’s just as true on family vacations! Be sure to pack your sense of humor as well. Sometimes plans go awry or things fall apart and usually the best thing you can do about it is laugh.
During our same spring break trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, we ended up being at the West Rim of the Grand Canyon during one of the very few times a year that it snows. It snowed so much and so hard that we literally couldn’t see the Grand Canyon while we were standing beside it, shivering in our hoodies. We made the best of it and ate lunch at the restaurant. We bought a book and then hung out in our rented Jeep for a while with the heat on, reading while we waited for the weather to clear out. It wasn’t what we planned, but we kept a sense of humor. After all, how often do you get to see snow in the desert when you’re from the Midwest?!
10. Don’t put pressure on yourself to have a perfect vacation.
Even though we all know that perfect doesn’t exist, we sure do like to strive for it and put pressure on ourselves. But the best family travel advice is to just relax and remember why you’re on the trip to begin with. We travel to let our kids experience new things and to make memories together. They learn how to react gracefully when plans change and we go to plan B.
Over spring break, they saw us figure out transportation to the Grand Canyon after our first car rental fell through at the last minute. Make the best of every moment. Remember that often the best memories are made in the small moments. Let your kids experience small pleasures like sitting in bed, eating Froot Loops, watching cartoons in a hotel room. Snuggle in with them and embrace the moment. Forget the perfect vacation and settle instead for the best company you could ask for — those you love!
Planning a road trip? Don’t miss this helpful post!
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Home Chef
Next I chose Home Chef. Its ads kept showing up everywhere, so I figured it was a good one to try! One thing I noticed in the ads was some ready-to-heat meals. That piqued my interest for sure. The menu looked like it had enough options for my family, so I was in.
Menu choices
From the beginning of picking meals with Home Chef, I was pleased. Home Chef had a variety of options that worked even for my particular eaters. The Home Chef menu was different from the others in that you can customize the number of servings for each meal selected for the week. I picked a two-meal-a-week plan.
My plan was to pick one meal my whole family would like and then another that my daughter and I would eat without our particular eaters. I loved that Home Chef had the option for me to pick just two servings for those meals. It saved me money and made food prep easier as well. I also like picking serving sizes for times we have company so then I could opt for more servings.
And, as I mentioned, some menu choices were marked as oven-ready.
Cost
Home Chef listed the price per serving clearly on each of the menu choices. The majority are $8.99 per serving, but some were lower at $6.99 per serving. The highest price I saw was $14.99 per serving for some more gourmet dishes. As I selected meals and servings, Home Chef updated my overall price at the top of the page, which is great if you are trying to stick within a certain budget. It also doesn’t result in an unexpected higher price in the end.
The price without discounts for one 2-serving meal and one 4-serving meal a week was $53.94 plus $8.99 shipping for a total of $62.93. If I had done two 4-serving meals, the food cost would have been more around $71.92 for $8.99 meals, which is what I usually got.
Shipping
I received my Home Chef meals via FedEx, which worked really well. Just like UPS, FedEx usually delivers in my neighborhood around lunchtime.
Ingredients
Ingredients for each meal came packaged together in a large, resealable zip-top bag. I could easily pull out all the ingredients I’d need for prepping a meal. I liked the bag being clear so I could see what was inside. The only thing that shipped outside of the bag was meat. For oven-ready meals, the pan was even included in the bag for easy prep.
Just like with the others, the ingredients were all pre-portioned. I needed very few things from my own pantry with Home Chef meals, usually just olive oil, salt and pepper. For recipes that needed butter, Home Chef even included pats of butter. One thing I especially appreciated is that fresh veggies came prepped and ready. Green beans, for example, were already trimmed. I just rinsed them and got to cooking. For recipes that used garlic cloves, the cloves were packed in sealed bags and were already peeled. They were ready to go, which I greatly appreciated. It saved prep time!
One of the other things Home Chef did differently was include some plastic containers with some of the ingredients. One of the Mexican dishes, for example, had a plastic jar with a twist-on lid full of enchilada sauce. I saved the containers, because they work well for leftovers or other home projects. Plus there is less waste that way!
The only drawback for some people is that the meat arrived frozen. My husband isn’t usually a fan of frozen meat. But we couldn’t tell a flavor or texture difference, so I think it was frozen just before shipping. I liked that better, actually, because I felt like the meat was likely to not spoil as easily during shipping and it would stay fresh a day or two longer than non-frozen meat.
Cooking the meals
Hands-down cooking the Home Chef meals was the easiest of all the meal kit services I’d previously tried. While the meals from Dinnerly and Hello Fresh both took longer to make than the recipe said, Home Chef meals took either the same amount of estimated time or less!
Each box arrived with 8.5×11-inch glossy recipe cards. The recipe cards were hole-punched to easily store in a three-ring binder if desired. All of the recipes are also available in your account if you prefer to cook with the recipe digitally on your phone or tablet. I’m a fan of recipe cards myself!
The directions were easy to follow. Home Chef had some prep required for things. Even the oven-ready meals needed a bit of prep, but it wasn’t nearly as much as the other meal kits. For example, with Hello Fresh I made a pasta with tomato sauce and started with whole tomatoes I had to puree and cook. With Home Chef, a similar recipe came with tomato sauce that I added seasonings and tomato paste to for easier and quicker prep. As a result, we also used less pots and pans with Home Chef recipes, which made for easier clean-up.
My 12-year-old daughter could easily make the Home Chef meals on her own. I appreciate fresh ingredients and doing things completely from scratch, but for weeknight meals, I loved that much of the ingredient prep was done for me. It saved me time on cooking dinner, which is always a bonus.
The only drawback is that since some of the items were prepared for us (like a marinara sauce and pesto that one pasta recipe used), it could be difficult recreating those dishes with just the recipe card later. For us, that wasn’t such a drawback, but I can see where it might be for some people.
Portion sizes
The portion sizes were good. For the meals I got two servings of, my daughter and I usually ate them without leftovers. For the servings of four, we tended to have some leftovers. But that is in part because my son is hesitant about eating much of new recipes.
Overall rating
I’d give Home Chef 5 out of 5 stars. We got good home-cooked meals with less work that gave me more time to enjoy my family!
Raising boys and girls shouldn’t be totally different
I first wrote this post back in 2014 when my son was 1-1/2. Now he’s 9 and no longer plays with dolls. But as the youngest child with only a big sister, dolls were around when he was a toddler. And he played with them. I don’t regret it for a moment. Raising boys and girls shouldn’t always be different. It’s OK for boys to play with dolls. This post explains why.
My son has a new obsession that began last week: a baby doll nearly as big as he is dressed in a pink floral outfit sporting a tiny pacifier dangling from a white ribbon attached to her clothes. This is his first real toy obsession. He’s certainly played with, thrown around and chewed on plenty of toys in his short lifetime, but he’s not had one that he constantly wanted until this baby doll. She was a Christmas gift for his big sister last year. Fortunately, his big sister isn’t obsessed with this doll and doesn’t mind sharing.
As I’ve watched him cart that doll all through our house and into the car and weep for her when we take her away at bedtime or mealtime, I’ve smiled. I mean, he’s just so cute the way he hugs her and pats her. He’s learning to be gentle. He’s learning to take care of her. I see him mimicking some of the things my husband and I do to take care of him. And I’m not going to put a stop to it.
The teaching power of toys
I have no issue with my son playing with a doll and one that is so very feminine at that. I’m not a raging feminist myself. I see the differences between men and women, boys and girls. I appreciate those differences and try to celebrate them. My husband and I have different strengths and different ways of thinking. Together it works quite nicely for our family.
I tend to be more gentle with our children; he turns them upside down and tickle them. (He’s also gentle and loving with them as well.) We’re different and it works. The kids love both. I love both kissing their heads as we snuggle and hearing their laughter as they play with dad. I celebrate that my son already works differently than my daughter, both because of his personality and because of his gender. He is more physical; she is more verbal. Raising boys and girls is different in some ways, but not so much in others.
When it comes to toys, I don’t have much preference in what they want to play with. My daughter plays with superheroes, Ninja Turtles and cars. She also plays with princesses, baby dolls and Barbies. It’s up to her what she picks. I feel the same with my son. He loves helping his sister cook in the play kitchen (though he’s not super great at following her instructions, yet, much to her chagrin). And he loves playing with baby dolls. He carries them, he pats their backs and he is gentle with them like he isn’t with other toys. This one baby doll in particular has become his favorite. He also plays with cars, balls and blocks.
Toys are just toys, but they are also something more. They are what my children first use to develop and learn about the world around them. I make sure they have appropriate toys (as in their toys are safe), but otherwise, I’m hands off. I want them to be free to explore and to learn. For instance, I want my son to have a chance to explore his more gentle side in taking care of a baby doll as well as explore his more aggressive side in splashing the water in the bathtub as hard as he can.
Raising boys for the future
I very much want and plan to raise a strong, confident man. I also want to raise a man with a good heart who has compassion. He won’t learn that if I only let him play with “boy” toys. He can’t explore gentle play if I forbid him from playing with his sister’s dolls. Neither can my daughter learn to assert herself if I teach her only to be gentle. I want her to be gentle and caring, but I also want her to be confident in herself and be aggressive when she needs to in order to fulfill her life’s purpose. She can’t explore those aspects by only playing with dolls.
I’m not a fan of labeling toys as gender specific. I’ve long balked at that idea. I don’t think my son will be less of a man because he spent a few weeks as a toddler lugging around a pink baby doll. In fact, I think he’ll be a better man for having had the opportunity to do so. He’ll be a better father one of these days if he knows how to be gentle and loving.
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over a few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Hello Fresh
Of all the meal kit services, I had heard most about Hello Fresh. It seemed to pop up everywhere. When the new year started and it offered a variety of deals, I decided to give it a try. It was our second meal kit service. My daughter was excited for it the most, because she also had heard the most about it.
Menu choices
Hello Fresh had a good amount of menu choices that worked for our family. Our second box, for example, included a barbeque flatbread pizza recipe that I could easily customize portions of for my particular eaters. Hello Fresh had a decent selection for both meat eaters and non-meat eaters. And some recipes I could customize to use less meat. For example, one box was a ground beef flauta recipe. I used half the amount of ground beef the recipe called for to fit my family’s tastes. The meat came in two separate packages, so it was easy to pop the unused package in the freezer to use later.
One of my complaints for the Hello Fresh menu is that the gourmet meals are mixed in with all the other menu choices. Since the gourmet meals cost extra per serving (usually around $8.99 per serving per meal), I’d like them to be separated so I know they’re gourmet without having to be sure and check.
That said Hello Fresh has way more non-gourmet meals than gourmet. It isn’t a big issue and when you click or tap to confirm your selections, it is clear that you are paying more. You can go back and make changes if you don’t want to.
Cost
Hello Fresh isn’t inexpensive. I opted for two meals a week for four people. Other meal kit services have three meals as the lowest option, so I liked that I could do two with Hello Fresh. Two meals a week for four people is $75.92 plus $9.99 shipping. New sign-ups usually get discounts and such. I had some discounts for Hello Fresh that offset the cost.
Discounts are applied over multiple weeks, so you get a smaller amount off of a few orders rather than a larger amount of one order. Hello Fresh also has a rewards program you are automatically entered in to. Every four boxes you get a reward. In only doing four boxes for each service for this post, I got one reward of a free random dessert in my fourth box.
My only gripe about the free random dessert is that it was two individual cheesecakes. Since I was ordering with a four-person plan that didn’t make much sense to me. Unbeknownst to Hello Fresh, though, only two of my family members really love cheesecake. So it worked out anyway.
Shipping
Hello Fresh shipped to me through UPS, which was awesome. UPS delivers regularly to my house and neighborhood. Usually our deliveries come around lunchtime, so I received the meals early enough in the day that I could plan them for dinner that night if I wanted. I like that!
Ingredients
While the ingredients arrived pre-portioned, they also arrived brown-bagged based on which recipe they went with. So all the ingredients for one recipe were in one bag I could pull out of my fridge when I was ready to cook. Meat was separated but everything else was in the bag.
Everything was pre-portioned and even included things like packets of flour. The ingredients were all branded “Hello Fresh.” All of the ingredients were fresh. Veggies needed to be washed. I had to supplement my own ingredients much less. Usually olive oil, salt and pepper were all I needed from my own pantry. Once I needed butter.
We did encounter a couple of missing ingredients and once a missing add-on. The flauta recipe was supposed to come with Mexican seasoning, but it didn’t. I always have taco seasoning on hand, so it worked out OK. The third box, I had a reward of $10 for add-ons with referring a friend. I chose a combo of creamy tomato soup and garlic bread. My out-of-pocket cost ended up being around $3. The garlic bread arrived, but the soup didn’t. I used the automated chat for customer service and my account was credited for the missing item. However, I was only credited my $3, so I lost the $10 reward and chose not to try ordering the soup again.
Cooking the meals
Each box came with recipe cards for what the box held. They were printed on thick, glossy 8.5×11 pages. The recipe cards listed the ingredients, description of the recipe and detailed instructions. I did download the app for Hello Fresh, but since it sends recipe cards, I didn’t need to have the app.
The first meal I made, which was a corn chowder, took longer than the estimated 40 minutes on the recipe card. It took more like 60-70 minutes. Other meals were usually around the time listed on the card, but never quite as quick as the estimated times. I think again that the times are estimated by professional chefs. I found that overall, the meals did take longer to make than was estimated on the card, so I learned to plan for that.
The directions were pretty straightforward and easy. It included the directions for a 2-person plan and 4-person plan in one. I didn’t need any special kitchen gadgets for any of the recipes. I did use a grater on a couple.
Portion sizes
The portion sizes were large and good. There was easily enough for my family of four. We almost always had leftovers as well (due in part to my particular eaters). But, even meals that everyone ate, we still had at least enough leftovers for one person to have for lunch.
Overall rating
Overall, I’d go with 4 out of 5 stars. I’m only dinging Hello Fresh for price, being off on estimated cook times and missing ingredients.
8 tried-and-true strategies for being a calm parent
Nobody goes into parenthood thinking how irritated and grumpy they’ll be. We have visions of being a calm parent. But then the baby is born. You add up no sleep, a huge adjustment to taking complete care of another person and the pressure you feel on all sides and all calmness goes flying right out the window. And that’s just the early days! Parenthood is a hard gig. If anyone tells you it isn’t, they either aren’t a parent or they’re flat-out lying!
Being a calm parent is challenging, even for naturally calm folks. I think I’m a pretty naturally calm person. I don’t get angry easily. My husband is the same way. But parenthood definitely puts that to the test. We’ve failed and messed up. However, in the past 12-1/2 years of parenting, I’ve learned a few strategies that help me be a calmer parent.
1. Pray about it.
Everything starts with prayer, right? Well, at least it should. Sometimes we get off track and try to do things on our own first. It never works out so well. Even being a calm parent is something we can ask God to help us with. He blessed us with these children. He knows their hearts and our hearts. Our Father knows our challenges and struggles. He is just waiting to help us!
You can literally pray before you start the day for God to help you be a calm parent that day. I pray that God helps me to be the mom my children need each day. Calmness is included in there!
Praying in the moment is also important. I can’t say that I do this every time my irritation starts forming, but I try to pray in the moment as often as possible. Sometimes it’s just a short, “God help me to deal with this,” prayer. A bonus to that is in the time it takes me to pause for a few seconds to pray, it also breaks the momentum of my irritation.
2. Listen to the right music.
Music is powerful. I’ve shared a few times the difference that music makes in my life. The right music helps me to be a calm parent. That might sound a bit lame, but it’s true! My go-to music is contemporary Christian music. (If that’s your jam, too, check out the free Families with Grace playlist on Spotify.) Or maybe you enjoy hymns. Maybe country gospel music speaks to your heart. (I truly love all three types of music I’ve mentioned!) Whatever it is, listen to something that calms you and helps you focus on God.
In the car after school, I usually have Air1 Radio or The Message on Sirius XM playing. My kids can sing along to almost every song that comes on. When they were younger, I’d leave the kitchen radio turned on almost all the time to Christian radio. It’s really difficult to yell at or lose patience with your children when you are singing or humming along to Christian music.
Even now, I listen to it while I work most of the time. (For articles that require more concentration, I usually switch to classical.) Then even when I’m not listening to music, the songs are still running through my head. It helps me be a calmer parent.
3. Remind yourself how old your kids are.
Have your ever gotten mad at your child for acting their age? I sure have! We definitely have to teach our children how to grow and behave, but we also need to understand what they are truly capable of. For example, I’d love to tell my 9-year-old to go organize his room. But he still needs some guidance. He knows toys can’t be all over the floor and that dirty clothes go to the laundry room. However, he is 9. He also needs specific instructions for where to put some toys or reminders of the organization we helped him create for them.
My 12-year-old is mature for her age and always has been. Sometimes I have moments that I start to get irritated with her for doing something irresponsible and then I remember, she’s 12. It calms me down. I know that she is still learning. Expecting our children to act more responsible than they are able to be is only asking for trouble. We can remain a calm parent when we stop before we snap at them and remember their age.
Remembering their age helps me switch from anger and irritation to teaching mode. That’s what my kids need most anyway. Our kids need us to take time to teach them rather than just get upset with them for not doing something correctly.
4. Set reasonable expectations for your children.
I get frustrated by people who don’t do their jobs well. We’ve all had times when we had to do a task we shouldn’t have had to do because someone slacked off. When someone doesn’t do the job we expect them to do, it is incredibly frustrating.
The same is true with our kids. When we set expectations for what we’ve asked them to do, we get frustrated when they don’t follow through. Sometimes it is completely their fault, and they didn’t do what they are fully capable of doing. Those times, they need to have consequences. Other times, though, we expect them to do a better job than they are able to do. Before we start getting upset we need to be sure we have reasonable expectations for what our children can and should be able to do.
Over the weekend, my kids were working together to clean up after dinner like I had asked them to. My youngest didn’t complete his task completely. My daughter started to just sigh and do it for him. I stopped her and we showed him how to complete the task. It was a win-win, because now he knows how to do the task and we can expect he can do it in the future. And nobody got upset in the process.
5. Take a breather.
It’d be nice to say that if you use these strategies you will always be a calm parent. But that’s not true, because you’re human and so are your children. Some days are hard when you’re exhausted and your children seem to find every button you have and push it over and over and over and over. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is take a breather.
If your children are babies or toddlers, this may mean just putting them in their crib for 5 minutes while you go to another room and just pause. (Been there, done that!) If you have preschoolers, this may mean you sit them down with a 20-minute show and you don’t interact. For older kids, you can send them to their rooms or tell them you need time alone for a few minutes.
I’ve sometimes taken an extra couple of minutes switching out or hanging up laundry just for a breather. Taking a couple of minutes away from the moment can help you calm down. Add in some deep breathing and prayer time and it works even better.
6. Ask for help.
You weren’t made to parent alone. Asking for help is OK. I was fortunate when my children were small that both my parents and in-laws lived within a few minutes of us and loved having time with grandkids. I utilized that help. If you don’t have that, maybe you have a friend you could trade off babysitting with.
Don’t forget to ask your spouse for help as well. Nope. It shouldn’t be the case that one of you is “helping” the other when you’re both in this together. But at the same time, your spouse doesn’t know what you need without you asking. Sometimes my husband has noticed my need for time away before I have. He’ll encourage me to go to our room or leave the house or whatever I need to do to regroup. Other times, I ask him to take over so I can have a minute. The same has been true in reverse.
Sometimes to be a calm parent, you have to ask for help and get away from it all — even just for 20 minutes in the shower alone. Other times to be a calm parent, you need someone to take items off your to-do list and fold the two loads of laundry sitting by the dryer. Just ask!
7. Try to embrace an attitude of gratitude.
Nothing impedes our calmness like getting angry with our family. Sometimes we get angry because of all we have to do for them that they don’t seem to appreciate. I’ve struggled with this before and still do from time to time. Have you ever had a thought starting with “Why does nobody else around here ever….?” Then you know what I’m talking about.
Yes, our families need to pull their weight. We shouldn’t let chores go undone or do them all ourselves. However, shifting our perspective helps alleviate anger and, in turn, makes us a calmer parent. For example, as you’re conquering that ever-growing pile or laundry, take a moment to thank God for the family you have who wear those clothes. Start adding in other things, too, like thanking Him for the clothes themselves and the ability to wash them in a washing machine.
It may be cliché, but once we start counting our blessings, we calm down. Our attitude shifts and we are more at peace.
8. Apologize when you lose your cool.
Chances are really good that you aren’t going to be a calm parent all the time. I’m certainly not. Sometimes our children need us to not be calm to get a point across. Other times, they don’t deserve our wrath. And it’s those times that we need to go back to our children and apologize. It’s a learning moment for our kids and helps us remember the lesson we learned as well.
Our children learn nobody is perfect, how to apologize when we mess up and that love covers it all. We have a memorable moment in feeling bad about acting out of anger so we are more likely to stop ourselves before doing so again. Simply saying “I’m sorry for how I reacted” goes a long way.
Find more resources to help you be a calm parent in these posts as well:
A series of unsponsored meal kit reviews and comparisons
A few months ago, my daughter made a case for us to try meal kits. I wasn’t so sure at first. Whenever I had checked into them previously, they seemed expensive and didn’t have a lot of recipes we would actually like. I have two particular eaters in my household, and we’re pretty plain eating folks. But, I decided to check into it again and found there were many more options, so I decided we’d give meal kits a try. I started with one company, but I was anxious to do a meal kit comparison and see what we’d like most.
So after about five meal kit boxes from one provider, I paused my account and changed to another. I just wanted to see the difference. At the same time, there was a third one I was curious about as well. I figured all this trying would end up being a great meal kit comparison to share!
Before ordering, I tried looking at meal kit comparisons, but most of them seemed to include affiliate links or sponsorships with the companies. I am not affiliated with or sponsored by any of these meal kit companies. When I started writing this meal kit comparison, in fact, I had no idea which service I’d end up liking the most — if any of them. I didn’t even intend to make it a blog post!
Then, once I decided to make it a blog post, I thought it’d be just one post. Pretty quickly, I realized that I needed more than one post to include all the information to make a helpful comparison. Over the next few weeks, I’m posting our experiences with Dinnerly, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, Every Plate and EMeals.
Dinnerly
Dinnerly was the first meal kit we tried. It seemed like decent prices and had a variety of options we could make work. I signed my family of four up for the 4-person plan of three meals a week. Three meals a week was the smallest amount Dinnerly allows.
Menu choices
I was pretty impressed with the Dinnerly menu choices, because I could find a good amount of meals that would work for our family. My husband and son are not big on eating meat and can be a bit particular. Usually, I would go for two of the three meals to work for all four of us and have one that I’d make an easy alternative for the guys.
I also was able to modify some recipes to fit our preferences. For example, when I made pasta with meat sauce, I used half the amount of ground beef the recipe called for, because that’s what our family likes. I froze the remaining half easily since it came is 1/2-pound sealed packages. Another time I got chicken tostadas to make and used some of my own ground beef to give my guys an option, since they don’t like chicken.
Overall, the Dinnerly recipes had a decent selection whether you are big meat eaters or not. We only had two recipes we didn’t care for. One was for a breakfast casserole, which was a miss because of the scrambled eggs that much of my family doesn’t like (not Dinnerly’s fault). The other was a miss because I tried gnocchi for us. None of us had ever had it; none of us cared for it (probably not Dinnerly’s fault either).
There were a couple of weeks that not much looked good to me, so I skipped the week, which was easy to do. Dinnerly also has a feature to allow you to pause your service rather than cancel, which is what I did for this meal kit comparison.
The cost
Shipping for each box was $8.99. The meals were $22.36 each for four servings. I had some discounts for being a new subscriber to help offset the cost, but without them, the cost was $76.07 for three meals a week for four people. Discounts are applied over multiple weeks, so you get a smaller amount off of a few orders rather than a larger amount of one order.
Shipping
Starting off with the first shipment, things went a bit awry. Our box didn’t arrive on the day it was supposed to. I contacted customer support who assured me it should show up the following day and still be cold. I was dubious, to say the least. The box didn’t eventually show up and it was cold enough.
Every week, the box was delivered around 6 p.m., which is late for deliveries in my neighborhood. And because we eat dinner around 5 or 5:30 p.m. most weeknights, it meant that I couldn’t plan a Dinnerly meal for delivery day. I still don’t know the delivery service used, because it was very vague in the app. The one time I saw the truck deliver the box, it was an unmarked box truck.
Ingredients
The ingredients were fresh, though, and of good quality. We had one bunch of green onions one time out of the four kits we got that were pretty wilted, but it was also winter in the Midwest. So I didn’t hold that too much against them. Everything was pre-portioned. All items came in one big box that I then would divide up what I needed when cooking. Things like sour cream, for example, came in 2-ounce tubes that I would use a certain number of per recipe.
Cooking the meals
My biggest gripe with cooking from Dinnerly is that the estimated times were much less than actual. If a meal said it took 20 minutes to make, it usually took more like 30 or 40. I’m not sure if the times were from a professional chef or what. I’m not a complete novice in the kitchen, but I’m certainly no professional.
The recipes were available in the app or through my online account. I used the app because having my phone in the kitchen was easier. I still wasn’t crazy about having to use my technology where I was cooking, though. Later, I discovered that if I open the recipes on my computer then I could print out recipes cards, which I much preferred.
I also found that we needed some kitchen tools I didn’t have on hand and had to look up work arounds for. Using a handheld grater was the most common one. I did end up buying one of those. Another time, I needed a meat mallet tenderizer and didn’t have one (we really don’t eat much meat).
I like to look at recipes ahead of time to get an overview of the steps so I know what’s coming. The first time I cooked with Dinnerly, I didn’t do that, but I learned after that to swipe ahead and see all the steps before I started then I could go back. Sometimes the directions for the steps were a big vague. I’m a recipe-follower and like very specific instructions, though.
Portion sizes
We almost always had leftovers. Dinnerly has decent portion sizes for sure. In fact, we contemplated switching our plan to a two-person plan. But we found that most things froze well, and we ate the leftovers.
Overall rating
Overall, Dinnerly was a pretty good fit for our family. I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars. I don’t like that three meals a week were the smallest amount we could use. Of all the meal kits I compared, this one also had the worst shipping and tracking.
