A Healthier Choice

As each year passes we come up with new concerns as to how to live healthier and happier lives. 
Things change with our families, the kids grow up and go out on their own. Our parents, aunts, and uncles enter into their golden years.
But we all have the same concerns, our health. I have witnessed and personally experienced health issues and this has caused me to take a hard look at how I live.
I am not referring only to being active, but my choice of vitamins, and cleaning supplies. 
I know that was a huge leap from what I take to what I inhale but this is all relevant. The chemicals in processed foods are not that far from some chemicals in the cleaning supplies that we use.
The more I learn about this the more I know I want to search it out. 
Where am I going with this you are asking, well when we chose to become full-time RV'ers our space became small, again. Granted not as small as the cab of a semi-truck but much small than the 1788 square feet we had. This means that when you clean the fumes are more noticeable, and this is not referring to the bathroom... there is a fan for that.
Bleach or aerosols to mask bad bathroom odours (that just linger or follow) these are not healthy. As much as we were raised to know that certain smells mean that mum just cleaned the house, they are not healthy to inhale. 
No don't get me wrong, I use bleach to clean my kitchen surfaces and wipe down our home after a sickness has been introduced to our environment, but I am still searching for that GO Green alternative.
I have found a company that has two options available, one you can be a customer and bring good quality products to your home, or two you can be a customer and an advocate. I have chosen the second option as I believe in not only trying to better my life but to also help others in improving theirs.
I see all the time of people struggling with not having the little more money at the end of the month, I want to help you. We all need good products in our home. these are delivered to your door. Made fresh at the time of ordering not pre-made and sitting in a warehouse waiting to be shipped to the store for future purchase. 
Being a part of transportation for as many years as I was, I saw the warehouses that were overstocked with dry freight. Even though there is no expiration date on a package, that does not mean it will last a lifetime. Twinkies just scare me to death!!

 If anything that you have read interests you, please check out this link and contact me for more information.
I want to help educate people about a healthier choice and to fill homes with alternatives to chemicals.

Meals Our Way

The biggest issue we have is finding recipes that include the seasonings we like and are made of the portion size that works for us.
As many of you know we have changed the way we eat in order to better our health. Yea, we still fall back on some of the meals from the past but as you change your eating style your body tends to fight you when you try and eat foods from the past.
With not working these days I am fighting the snacking issue. Idle hands and all, tend to be the fight I have within. So I am taking it one day at a time and when I have the urge to find something in the kitchen to snack on, I go to my water glass. Mio flavours have helped a lot as I find it is flavours that I am seeking, not actually food. 
Some of the other flavours I find I am craving have been leading me to new recipe searches and then to the grocery store to stock up on some. I have also decided that I am going to document the recipes so as to keep a journal of them, as we tend to make changes with the recipes as we go along.
As we are full-time RV'er our cooking is geared around what we use in our kitchen, and as many of you know there is only so much you can carry in an RV so sometimes you have to improvise on items used.
Some of the main things we use is our air fryer, one of the best purchases we have made as we use it all the time to cook or bake. I have made Red Lobster biscuits in it and we were very surprised as they came out brown and cooked. now again we cut down the portion size made so I have to alter the mix and the size of the biscuits I make which allows us more success I think with the results. If you are cooking for more than 2 people and making full-size biscuits you will need to play with the cook time and the temperature to make things work. 
As we move forward my goal is to document with pictures along with my posts to assist in giving you the full picture of our process. 
Engaging in my chapter has caused me to take a step back and look at things in a different way as we move into the New Year. 
Staying on task and moving on.

2/28/2016

There is so much to write about that I really do not know where to start... Between my personal life and my professional life, I am torn as I do not like to share too much about either but with what has been happening in both.. I feel I have lots to share with others that might be very beneficial.

So today I have been monitoring my work email, as I am waiting to hear back from a friend about something I am looking in to (I know very vague of me), when I came upon an email chain that I feel I thought was already handled...

Though I know there are very few people that may even understand what I am about to ramble about but by the end, you may get the gist of it.

When a load crosses the border (and for this example, I am referring to loads crossing into Canada), the CBSA (Canadian Border Service Agency) has the right to look at any part of the load. This means anything from a simple paper inspection to a full 'DESTUFF' notice (where it has to go to a third party bonded inspection facility this is CBSA approved). 
When it is a meat-specific load then CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) has to give their 'OK' for the load to enter without an inspection. 
Either way, these are both very easy things to learn, at least I thought these were easy things to prove. 

This past week though I have had the opportunity to have been proven wrong as the mode of transportation that was used to bring this load into Canada was the rail. And although I sent them the proof that the CFIA did not want to inspect this load, I have been unsuccessful at getting this container released for delivery.

As this is usually someone else's responsibility I waited until the last possible day to approach this with the rail, as this is usually a fairly simple process... but this past week I was proven wrong, this is not a simple process. On Thursday I had received an email from the rail group that said this load had been cleared and we could deliver. So Friday, I checked their site and saw that it was still not showing the load as cleared. So I replied with that same email, that I needed the rail to release the load otherwise there was going to be an issue with their guard and my carrier. The response I received from the rail group (the same rail group that told me the load was released the previous day), this load was on a CBSA HOLD...

Needless to say I spent the rest of the day going back and forth with not only the rail group but also the customer and the account rep and many other people at corporate that I thought it necessary to inform of the battle that should never have gone on for as long as it had.. and it is still going on today.

So first thing Monday morning, I will be reaching out to some of the people I know at the rail to help me get this unit released and how to prevent this from happening in with future loads...

One of the many things I deal with as I know what needs to be done even though it is someone else's responsibility to do... Time for change...

3/5/2016

I have come to the conclusion that there are two places where I have the most thoughts... the shower and while driving. As writing while in the shower really does not work, talking to my phone while driving will.
Anyone who knows me, know I am not very good at sharing my personal life. However when it comes to my experiences and knowledge I am happy to share with others.
Well here is where you will be getting a mixed bag of both as I spend most Saturday's driving back and forth to Canada have a lot of time on my hands to think and talk. Otherwise I tend to sing along with the music, which on its own is not always a good thing.
We have come to a crossroad in life and are working on options which will allow us to do more of the things we want to do; and do them when we want to.
For me, I am looking I to more regular blogging and my topics will be about things I know or am working on learning g.
This should be fun!!!

2016-05-04 Wednesday

This week has proven very interesting as I am traveling for work in Alberta and I have left Chris to start getting everything ready for sale, including the showing of the house to two potential buyers.

One of the buyers has been asking us for the past 3-years when are we going to sell her, her home. She has been a wonderful neighbor until she moved out earlier in the year.

Marylu has been living up the street from us until recently and when she came to look at the house we learned a little more about her and her business.

She is a real estate agent and helps Mexican families get into homes that they would not normally be able to get into.

She holds the contracts on the homes and they pay her back with a contractual agreement.

About a week before we made our decision to sell, a home on the street before us went up in flames, turns out this was one of her homes. What we learned was the tenants had only been there about 7-months and about 3-months ago they cancelled their homeowners insurance... major reason we did not want to hold a contract on our home... As the homeowner, Marylu is responsible for the clean up and the removal of the home, the buyers got away scott free... bad scenario but this also caused Marylu to redo her contacts and make all tenants use one specific insurance company for her protection.

As we are traveling to Calgary, I am enjoying the trip as it will be a while before I will be back, the new job takes me away from what I have been doing for the past two years and I work at learning more new things in transportation, and traveling will be different.

I am very excited and of course there is some concerns as this is a drastic change for both of us. 

We will try and document not only our trip but what we are doing up there as are looking very forward to getting back to Alaska.

2016-05-01 Sunday

We have come to a cross road in our life... the decision to make such a drastic change in our lives did not come easy to either of us. 

So as you may or may not already know we are currently downsizing our living arrangements by selling everything that we don't want; packing what little things we do and moving out.
We've been living in our home for the past 14 years and as we look back over those years the decision comes much easier for us. 

We had a Five-Year Plan which turned into 14 years and throughout those 14 years we have done a lot.
Chris and I have been married almost 17 years and although we have had our ups and downs our ups have far surpass our downs.
The past few months we have done some major changes in our lives and here we start May with some more major changes. 

We've decided to leave Washington State and move to Alaska. I've been given an incredible opportunity and have struggled over the past week as I do enjoy very much where I currently work and more so the people I work with. 

Over the past two years we have built a working relationship and wonderful friendships, unfortunately though this is not enough as it does not pay the bills. Working for a Fortune 500 company has it draw backs as not everyone there wants appreciates that experience is often learned through life's lessons and not in a classroom.

Lucky for me though, there are still companies out there that appreciate what a person brings to the table in regards to real life and not book work alone.

2015-10-16

Good evening everyone,
I know I have dropped the ball with blogging to everyone but tonight we had fun.
My boss decided that we all needed a get together so we went to a Thunderbird game at the Showare Center in Kent.
They played against the Kamloops Blazer and literally kicked their ass. Final score was Thunder's 7 - Blazer's 2.
But the funniest part is majority of the Seattle Thunderbird's team are Canadian.

Not more at this time though, so till next time.