The Products We Use

I spent an evening entering the products in my house into the Think Dirty app on my phone.  Guys, it was terrifying.

I hate that we read stuff and are scared.  The flu is freaking me out right now.  But the flu shot also freaks me out.  And as parents, and just human beings, it's scary and confusing, and what is the right answer?

But the truth of the matter is, that we can only ignore the facts and what we are exposing our bodies to for so long.  When we know better, I feel like we have a responsibility to do better.  However, it's definitely a progress vs perfection situation.  I'm trying to rid my home of toxins, but it's definitely hard to do it all at once.  So it's a process.  I've eliminated a lot of chemicals that were used for cleaning.  But now I've looked at our personal care products, and although I know that I need to get rid of all of the things with fragrance, it's hard when couponer Kaileigh has stocked up on this stuff....

OK so basically I put a bunch of the products in my house into this app.  They rate products from 0-10, 0 being the healthiest.  The kid's Live Clean soap was pretty good, so that's a relief.  But that's where it stopped.  My body wash, terrible.  My shampoo, terrible.  Who knew.... Even my high quality hair products aren't great.  A lot of these products are known carcinogens or cause reproductive and developmental issues.  A ton of them have allergens, and although we aren't dealing with any major allergies, I do have skin issues that are likely caused by some sort of allergy that I've just never figured out.  Is this why so many people get cancer or have trouble getting pregnant?  Are we doing this to ourselves and just choosing to ignore the damage that we are doing?

Let's be honest, I'm never going to eliminate all of these products from our home. (Well maybe I will, but I'm not going to go throw everything out immediately.)  But I can reduce them.  I have plans to make my own soaps and lotions.  (Actually really easy if you buy the ingredients.  You can also obviously purchase better products, but if you know me you know I like to save money.  I got most of the products we have for next to nothing, so that's a lot of the reason why this is so hard for me.)  

I'm trying to be real and authentic and sharing my journey with wellness and essential oils.  Because I know there are a ton of people out there who say you can't be healthy and do this and this and if you do you are basically a bad person.  But the fact of the matter is, change is hard.  It's a process.  Not everybody is ready for it.  But you can take small steps and every little bit counts.  

I really love this lotion...

1st Ever Pong n Plop

Have you heard about the Plunger Plop?  Maybe you recall some old posts about it, like this one, or this one, or there is also this one.  Well this year the official Plunger Plop was cancelled.  Which was fairly devastating, until we decided to just hold our own!

What started as a beer pong tournament (that this rare drinker had basically zero interest in), turned into a plunger plop with a few games of beer pong.  It was a fantastic day, like Plunger Plop but better because everyone we were playing with were basically friends!

We shipped the kids off for the day and I was even able to have a few (like maybe 5...) beers.  The winners of the event were a couple of guys who play in the plop every year, which was really great.  This might just have to be something that we do again next year!

It's Olympic Time!

We had a bit more snow during the last Olympics

I love love love the Winter Olympics!  I seriously should of planned my babies better so that I was on mat leave while they were on.  That's how much I love them...that I think of this frequently. 

I remember the 2010 Olympics, I was still in University.  Right at the beginning of the Olympics, I think it was a Friday night, and my sister was visiting.  We turned on the TV and moguls was on.  I had never watched moguls before, but it was thrilling!  I had no idea that we had strong competitors in moguls.  To be honest, prior to that I think I had only paid attention to figure skating and hockey.  All of a sudden, Alexandre Bilodeau had won and his brother with cerebral palsy was celebrating with him and so excited.  It was just this great moment to be Canadian.  I think moguls are now my favourite thing to watch!

The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were monumental for Canadians.  Not only were they on home soil, but we did amazingly well.  We had the top gold medal count.  And it was just a great time to be Canadian and finally be able to celebrate that we actually do have amazing athletes.

And so basically I'm pumped for the Olympics.  We have so many medal hopefuls and I find the winter Olympics so interesting because there are so many neat sports!  I love watching speed skating, snowboard cross, and things like luge and skeleton! 

What are you most excited for?

January Book Review

Time to get back at it.  Reading has kind of fallen by the wayside in the past little bit.  I think partially because I was reading "Career of Evil" and having a bit of trouble getting into it in the beginning, so although I wasn't reading, I wasn't reading as much as I should of been.  But with my 2018 word "intentional" I'm hoping that reading becomes something that I do more often again.  I found I was wasting my lunches by surfing the internet, getting nothing accomplished over an hour.  So I'm back to reading on my lunch and using that time to really refresh and get lost in a book.

I have a goal to read 30 books this year.  At first I wanted to set my goal at 40 books.  I thought it was doable because that's still less than a book a week...but I also know that I sometimes have phases where I can't find a good book or can't get into a book.  I read 24 books last year, so it's still uping my goal! (I'm going to read some Harry Potter and Nancy Drew if it doesn't look like I'm meeting my goal, haha!)

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

For those of you who don't know, these books are actually written by JK Rowling.  They are about Cormoran Strike, a private detective, and Robin Ellacott, his assistant.  This is the third book in the series.  I honestly started reading this book about a year ago.  I think it was too big and I just couldn't get into it because I was overwhelmed by the size.  (It's not that big, just too big for me at the time.)  I didn't really give it a fair shot.  Once I started reading it though it was great.  I probably read the last half of it in one night and couldn't put it down.  Ryan wondered what I was doing and said I don't usually read all night long.  

I find Strike and Robin totally enthralling, I love their relationship and hope that Rowling understands that Robin is as vital to the success of these books as Strike it.  These books are so different from Harry Potter, but Rowling has really found a new niche.  Funny thing is while I was reading one day Parker said "is that a Pe-a Potter (Harry Potter) book?"  I have no idea why he would relate them as it looks nothing like a Harry Potter book!

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

I'm a big Liane Moriarty fan.  I was kind of worried about this book though because the reviews weren't great.  6 adults and 3 kids are at a BBQ.  Something terrible happens, but it takes quite a while for you to find out what happens.  I think what annoyed me about it was that I understood for suspense reasons why you didn't know what happened, but from a storyline perspective it didn't really make sense.  The story was so vague, where it shouldn't of been.  Conversations that seemed like they were missing parts of them, characters who were missing because you weren't supposed to know what happened to them.  

I spent the first half of the book kind of skipping ahead chapters because I couldn't stand the suspense.  The last half of the book I really enjoyed though.  I think you have to go in with low expectations.  The one review I read said that it's more about the characters than the story, which is an interesting way to look at it.  And the characters were interesting.  

So overall it's a decent read.  Not amazing, but not terrible.  I don't know.  Not sure what else to say about it.  Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman have optioned the film rights.  I can see how it could be a movie or mini-series similar to Big Little Lies as it's a very similar style to Big Little Lies.  There is a lot going on with the characters that you could dig into deeper.

The Best Man by Kristan Higgins

You may recall that I'm a Kristan Higgins fan.  Her books are easy to read chick-lit.  I'm slightly conflicted about this one though.  I enjoyed this book, I read it quickly, it was easy to read.  But I found that it had way less depth than the other books that I've read of hers.  I just found out that her books are "Harlequin" novels, and it makes a lot of sense.  Still an enjoyable read, but nothing mind blowing!

Faith was left at the alter by her boyfriend of 8 years because....he was gay.  She left town and three years later is back.  But she keeps running into Levi Cooper, her ex's best friend, and the guy that ruined her wedding.  

Definitely won't be my favourite book of the month of year, but there's a few more books in this series and I'm still going to be reading them!  

The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins

This is the second book in the Blue Heron series, The Best Man was the first.  I had the same feelings about this book.  I enjoy the fact that it's a series, because although the book is about a different person within the family, it has a lot of the same characters.  It's always nice to see characters that you've enjoyed in subsequent books.  This book is definitely a Hallmark movie though.  It's light and easy and fairly predictable.  Nothing mind blowing.  But I still enjoyed it and read it in about two days!