Easter Tradition??

Easter.  It means many different things to many people.  It is a time to celebrate Jesus' sacrifice for us, a time to spend time with family, a time for springtime activities like egg coloring and...the Easter Basket.  As a child that was not raised in a Christian home till later in my kid years, the Easter Basket along with what the Easter Bunny brought was just as fun as waiting for what Santa brought in my stocking.  Now that I am a Christian Parent, I struggle with how much the secular traditions should creep into how we celebrate Easter and Christmas. 

See those baskets above?  Love them like a Christmas Stocking.  I love spring colored baskets, love watching my kids hunt for eggs, love the way the match with their Easter clothes, love the candy inside them...Need I go on?  But is it a focus of the day?  No.  Our kids get meager things in their baskets.  The usual plastic eggs with candy, sometimes a chocolate cross from our local candy store, and books from the Christian book store.  Yes, books.  Books about Easter, chapter books, devotionals, card games.  Thankfully, grandma and grandpa are on board with this too.  The longer I have become a parent, the more I focus on Jesus and less I focus on commercialism.  Is there a balance?  Of course!  My kids learn the most important reason for Easter (Jesus) which really should be celebrated all year long and they can run around later looking for eggs over, and over, and over again.

Last,  I want to share one of my favorite Easter books.  A board book titled, My Easter Basket and The True Story of Easter by Mary Manz Simon.  She uses glittery pictures of items found in the basket and tied them to Jesus' life, death and resurrection.  There is a similar one about Christmas Trees too.  Simple and to the point.  Love it.

PS Check out last week's post with our Easter craft!

Official Food, Inc. Movie Site - Hungry For Change?

Official Food, Inc. Movie Site - Hungry For Change?

(PS Those are from last year's garden)

This past week as my kids were down with fevers, some vomit, snot and coughing, I watched Food Inc. for the first time. Yes, I had time to watch a movie but over two nights holding miss fussy baby who likes to stay up till 2 a.m. I can't believe it took me so long to watch this film. My oldest son watched a few minutes with me (its school right), but once we got to the butchering segment, I had him leave the room. This movie can be a powerful teaching tool for the entire family (depending on the age of the kid).

Our family eats pretty healthy compared to mainstream America. We eat organic dairy, grains and most produce. When we eat fish, its wild salmon, not farmed. A couple years ago I only started buying grassfed beef. Yes, that can be expensive, but when you find items like this on sale, stock up. I do what I can to keep my family healthy and TEACH my children how God wants us to care for our bodies not only spiritually but nutritiously. We all know where scripture teaches us this but many gloss over it, even the church as they feed our children fish crackers laced with sodium. Sure once in a while we indulge in a burger from In and Out, but my kids know this is a treat and not something we should eat often. We have begun gardening the last couple summers and dabbled in a few winter veggies, but this is only the beginning of my plans. Before watching Food Inc., I was already getting "granola" in taking a sharp left turn down the path of eat what we grow, by local produce and meats, blah-blah-blah. My parents were teens in the 60's and although did not "live" the 60's my mother always, always, always, tried to feed us healthy when it wasn't trendy at the time and that was a 180 compared to how she was fed. In elementary school I used to get wierd looks from my peers when I packed my PBJ on whole grain bread, fruit and homemade cookie compared to their white bread sandwhich, chips and HO-HO...chased down by a Hi-C boxed drink.

For many homeschoolers, budget is always an important component in feeding a family. Many of my homeschooling friends and I are interested in feeding our children as healthy and organic as we can so gardening is becoming an important part of homeschooling. Ironically, as produce prices have increased at our local stores due to bad weather, destroying crops throughout the nation and world (yes we get our produce from around the world...sad but true), I have noticed the price of regular produce increase to the price of organic. Lately I have noticed more organic produce being sold at local farmer's markets. They are also selling meat, eggs and dairy for nearly the same cost as non-organic in stores and am thankful this supply and demand is moving in my favor. If you are trying to feed your family organic on a budget, please share how are you are doing so. Especially any online vendors that sell grains, etc. I am always curious.

Here will be a sample of my summer reading: The Maker's Diet and many of my gardening and nutrition links located on the bottom right of my blog. I pray that if you read my post, you'll watch Food Inc...its on instant play on Netflix if you subscribe. We are in a blessed position to homeschool and train up our children in faith, education, family values and nutrition. I'm ready to focus more on number 4, how about you?

I am done rambling for now...

Thrush, A Lesson In Yeast for All Ages

Looking back there were signs.  The IV antibiotics , the red baby bottom at birth, the fussy, gassy newborn who would cry all night and I was thinking it was the dairy issues that plagued her tummy.  All those signs were in the shadows of a jaundice baby under blue lights.  Even looking back to her one week photos, is a picture of her yawning with a white tounge (this one was taken at one month).  Looking at her tounge last week it dawned on me...YEAST!  I couldn't believe that my baby had yeast...Well actually I could.  The events of her labor and most likely my love of cookies and Pete's coffee set up this yeasty environment for my baby girl.  So now we are on a daily regimen of yougurt, probiotics and grapefruit seed extract in hopes to cure this bubbling nightmare before resorting to antifungal meds...just the thought of saying it grosses me out.

Now I am moving on to the next step in battling this growing problem...sugar.   We all love it and know its bad for us.  Back in the wagon days, sugar was a luxury and was reserved for holidays and company.  Today its in everything down to salad dressings, cereals...well everything.  This is coming from a mama who buys almost all organic dairy, meats, grains and produce.  Heck, my baking sugar is organic!  So friends, its going to be so long to sugar for a while.  My mochas will be replaced with green tea (which I love already) and night time treats will be replaced with yougurt or grapefruit. 

If I can survive without wheat, I can survive without sugar, right?  My family will be healthier without it  Keep reading to find out.

Is 5 Enough?

That's one of the latest questions we got...Don't get me wrong, I never anticipated having 5 kids myself.  I figured I'd get married, have 3 kids, put them in school and spend my days cleaning, working out at the gym and lunching with my girlfriends but God had other plans for our family.  We never felt quite done after our 3rd was born.  Sure we were tired with 3 kids 2 1/2 and under, but didn't feel ready to close that door 100%.  Flash forward six years...we are ready to have our 5th baby, 16 months after our 4th.  Is 5 Enough?  In our minds yes, but if God shows us otherwise, we'll let you know.

Large Family Logistics

Raising Olives has become a frequent stop in my blog reading.  Here I find encouragement and ideas as a mother homeschooling a growing family.  Raising Olives' recent post includes an excerpt from a book titled, Large Family Logistics.

"Motherhood is a life of sacrifice; it is a life poured out for our children. So what are we to do to get some space from it all? When we are honest with ourselves, we know that it is not “Me Time” we need or a “Girls’ Night Out.” Children are not a burden to escape or endure; they are a blessing that drives us to Christ because we are incapable of parenting well without Him. God is who we need. While there are helpful strategies we can employ in order to have a more peaceful day with our children, the number one thing we must do is to deny Self and cling to the cross."

 ~Kim Brenneman, Large Family Logistics

All I can say is, "Well said Kim."

No Baby Yet

Baby no-name is due in 5 days...Everyone, including my OB of over 10 years thought I would have delivered by now.  Why?  Baby girl was the 4th kid and 10 days late.  I am putting next week out of my head as a possible delivery week.  I have too much to do.  School and work are busy times this month.  If I refuse to "nest" does that mean the baby will hang out longer?

Joy-Joy's New Doo...Getting Her Own Crackers

Joy-Joy is sporting her new doo.  Too young for pigtails at 15 months, it makes her look like she's 3.

She is finding ways to get food for herself as needed.   She's a cracker girl so we need to hide them.

Hmmmm.  Here are the Joe's O's.  Where are the crackers? 

Almost maimed by a falling jar of Nutella.

Finally, someone fed me my cracker!

The Day and The Life of Having Kids...

So, yes I still have been baking up a storm.  Its what I do a lot of these days.  Hopefully I will be able to post some of my newer recipes like the quiche I am working on...chard and quiche.  Such a nice combo.  Tomorrow I hope to work on the smoked salmon and goat cheese.  

Anyhow, things are a little busier the last few days.  Big sister has not recovered from her nasty cold and is on over a week of her phlegmy cough.  Brother is recovering from a sickness of some sort...and baby girl, bless her busy little heart, was running and fell on her forehead Friday night.  The bump wasn't as big as I have seen, but she bit the dust on the tile floor.  Then daddy got up with her for a little snack around 3:30 am, fed her in the dark only to realize she had something all over her face...She threw up at some point before he got her out of her crib.  Before he could realize it, she was vomiting all over the place waking me from a dead sleep....Now Dr. Laura had a woman call in last week complaining that her husband didn't get up at night to help with the baby.  Dr. Laura replied with some long monologue about women being designed to wake up to their crying baby...NOT!!!  Once those babies of mine are weaned...I tend to not wake up as fast and many times my fabulous husband wakes up first.

Sooooo, baby girl vomits a lot, and I strip her and stick her in the bath while daddy gets cleaned up and mops the floor.  I realize as I am bathing her that she fell pretty hard on her head and think, "CONCUSSION!"  Ahhhh, so I look up the info on Dr. Sears' website...sure enough its a sign.  So then I call the doctor on call who happens to be our wonderful Dr. O...who says to take her to the Med Center.  Soooo, based on advice from a previous pediatrician years ago, I call for an ambulance and off we go to the Med Center at 4:30 am...Baby girl gets the first ambulance ride and CT out of her siblings.  The boys would have been jealous to see 5 firemen in our tiny living room and two trucks out front. Once she was admitted and examined, she was sedated, had the CT scan, it was clear of fracture and bleeding and we were discharged by 9am...after she vomited one more time.  Praise GOD!  You can fall on tile and not break anything (except chip a baby tooth).  We kept a close watch on her and into the night she starts getting sick again and by the time we turned in for the night, it was after 1 am.  There's nothing like being up for 20 + hours, pregnant with a sick kid now with diarrhea.  It makes you feel like an expert parent right?  So after a moderate amount of sleep, we awoke this morning to...more vomiting.   

So being a cautious parent, we know we did the right thing but after a night of runny diapers, changing sheets and no sleep one can wonder if she really had a mild concussion...or a touch of the flu.  I guess we'll wait a day or so to see if anyone else gets sick.