Mom-of-four Jessica Sara Morris of White Picket Farmhouse on how she makes sure her kids are always fuelled—even while constantly on the go.
As a mom of four who is working full-time, life is always a little bit crazy. Between sports and travelling for work and appointments, I feel like we’re always on the go. I often struggle with juggling everything: being a mom, a working woman and a wife, but making simples changes in our everyday routine helps a ton. I find having a schedule everyday helps keep us on track, and once we keep at something for 14 days, it becomes part of our regular routine.
This summer, we’ve travelled to Tofino twice, to Vancouver twice and to our favourite family homestead at Port Neville. With constant travelling comes mealtimes on the go and less-than-ideal eating, so having healthy snacks and drinks in our cooler or fridge at home is key.
We’ve also chosen to put our kids back in school in September. As much as we have enjoyed the past two years with them at home, it will be amazing for our kids to have the stability of going to school and building friendships again. While going back to school will be awesome for the kids, I’ve already started to think about how our routine will look like in September. Keeping their lunches healthy with foods that will fuel their brains is important, and things we’ve learned over the summer will definitely make things easier come school time.
To make things a little more complicated, our youngest has a very sensitive tummy, so we try and limit the number of sugary foods and drinks we have in the house. Even something as seemingly small as juice with a high sugar content can set his tummy off. That’s why we’ve been really proactive in ensuring we have a ton of healthy snacks and drinks easily accessible, like lots of foods with fibre, fruits, veggies, as well as SunRype juice beverages.
Our favourite choice from SunRype has 60% less sugar than regular 100% juice and has a great taste that our kids really love. There are no artificial sweeteners, colours, flavours or sugar added. Each one has only 40 calories per serving, and there are three delicious flavours to choose from. Our kids personally love the “Fruity Punch”—and consider each juice beverage box as a special treat—but luckily, I can still feel good about the drink choices they’re making.
Other ways we’ve been sure to incorporate healthy snacks into our kids’ routines is to keep cut-up veggies in the fridge for an easy, on-the-go snack, make up a fruit salad—one of my kids’ favourites—so it’s always available for in between mealtimes, have granola and yogurt on hand so the kids can have a healthy breakfast every day, and make sure we’re buying sugar-free cereals, because cereal is a quick go-to that everyone loves in a bind.
For more information on SunRype 60% Less Sugar, as well as the other products they offer, visit their website.