My 2 year old woke up at 12:30am screaming on Monday morning because his head and ear hurt. He was coughing and his eyes were red and clearly he had a cold. People question me all the time as to why my kids get sick despite how “healthy” we feed them. I actually had this same question and asked my doctor about it. His response was…because they’re kids. We live in a society where we are indoors much more than outdoors. The a/c is always circulating and germs circulate as well. These kids are always touching everything and then putting everything in their mouths and combining that with not getting enough sun and being outdoors enough is a bad combination. So our kids get sick just like all other 2 and 4 year olds. But from the moment I know the cold is coming, I attack with all my remedies. And to be honest, my kids usually bounce back pretty quickly and (knock on wood) I have not had to give either of my children antibiotics in over a year.

Anyway, Monday morning I made a boost your immune system smoothie and it was delicious. I just had to share it.

• 2 chopped carrots
• romaine lettuce
• 1 apple
• frozen pineapple
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 inch of fresh ginger root
• almond milk (unsweetened) I fill to the MAX line on the nutribullet

This is where I really got creative. I have a bottle of vitamin c with bioflavanoids capsules. I opened up two of the capsules and poured in the vitamin c powder in the mixture. I also put in vitamin D drops.

It continues to fascinate me how I can do whatever I want with my food at home. This concept is one I simply did not have before. My mind was totally limited. I would have never thought that I could boost my kids’ smoothie with vitamin c because all I saw was a pill that they are too young to swallow. The old me would have thought, I have to go to whole foods and buy vitamin c drops. Crushing a pill or taking its contents out of the capsule would have never dawned on me. But it does now. My paradigm has shifted and I see possibilities I never saw before. This makes me so happy. This is the creativity my husband has always had that makes him cook such delicious food. It is finally rubbing off!!! YAY!!!!!!

A note on the almond milk: I was quite hesitant to make this smoothie with almond milk because I didn’t think the combination would taste too good. And I usually juice my carrots because I really don’t like the texture of the carrots blended in smoothies. But I always make a carrot/ginger/orange  juice and I didn’t have oranges on Monday only apples and pineapple. So I looked up some recipes and all the carrot/pineapple recipes called for almond milk. I decided to give it a chance and was pleasantly surprised. The almond milk helped a lot with the consistency of the carrots. This is great because I prefer smoothies to juicing in order to preserve the fiber from the vegetables and fruits.

The boys and I loved the smoothie and along with all our other home remedies, everyone is  feeling better. Keeping our fingers crossed that the 2 week old doesn’t get sick!!!!!