The start to this year has been a tough one for my family. We lost our seemingly healthy nine-year-old dog to cancer.  Then my great-uncle and my grandma passed away, the last members of that generation of our family. Now things seem “settled,” and  I find myself grieving.

I’m sitting down to write this after a not-so-restful night because I kept making mental lists about everything I need to do before the end of this week.  Some of those things are work-related, but many are things I need to do to make my family’s holiday “right.”

We all know that obesity is a major problem in our country, and most people understand that this leads to chronic health problems.  None of us want this for our kids, but it is sometimes very hard to know how to encourage our kids to adopt healthy habits. Many of us are parents who don’t have time to take their kids on long hikes every day because they have a mountain of laundry to climb, bills to tackle, a house to clean as well as jobs, school schedules, etc.