Same Place, Different View

Our field trip today was to our local county’s landfill.  It was a very good field trip.  There were about 40 kids who attended.  We learned about trash and about how to reduce the amount of trash.  We learned about how the Landfill works.  In connection with the local children’s museum, the kids did experiments such as testing water and dissecting owl pellets.  The latter is not what one might first think of when hearing the term “owl pellets”.  Birds of prey cannot digest all that they eat so they will spit it back up much like a cat does a hairball.  Inside the owl pellets, which are held together by dried up hair/fur,  are the remains of what they ate.  The one that I helped with was thought to be a large rodent, such as a squirrel or large chipmunk.  We found the skull, jawbone, teeth, ribs, vertebrae, leg bones, etc.  See below for some pictures.    I reminded the kids why we don’t let the guinea pigs play outside unattended.  They could become lunch. 

The Irony of the Beauty

We had a field trip today.  Joining a local homeschool group was a good idea.  The best part is going to be the field trips. 

We were all pleasantly surprised at how much fun this field trip was. 

First, I would ask if you can guess by a couple of these pictures, where the field trip was?  I will post more pictures later that will reveal where this is but just found the beauty a bit ironic. 

The Changes

It amazes me how much different Sean looks now than he did just two years ago.  And look at how his shirt has changed. 

Friends come and they go

Sierra will miss her friends who are moving.  She does not have many girls to play with so this will be a noticeable loss. 

The oldest girl is only a year younger than Sierra but she’s tiny.  Her sister is three and has the brightest hair. 

 

Eating Healthier or Eating Wiser?

Eating healthier does not always mean dieting to lose weight or eating salads and low fat.  What about the artificial stuff?  What about the petroleum?

How many of us have stopped and thought about that beautiful birthday cake we just ate with all those colors and realized that we just ingested or gave our kids petroleum?  Those food dyes are petroleum based. 

It is a pretty common belief that many kids get hyper when they have had a lot of sugar.  Is it really the sugar?  Could it be the petroleum?  Could it be the high fructose corn syrup? 

What about those preservatives that are often times not labeled on packages.  Or sometimes you see “BHT added to preserve freshness”  or “TBHQ added as a preservative” and this all seems good at first sight because we want our foods to be “fresh” and those labels make it sound like they did us a favor. 

I asked my husband how long it has been since he had a Mountain Dew (yellow dye).  He said it has been quite a while.  I reminded him that it’s been quite a while since he needed his inhaler too.  Coincidence?

Do you avoid the artificial sweetener aspartame for your kids such as is found in diet sodas?   Do you ever give your kids Wrigley gum?   Read the label next time. 

My teen daughter is allergic to aspartame.  It gives her headaches.  She noticed she kept getting headaches after chewing some Doublemint gum so she read the label and brought it too me to show me it had aspartame.  It’s not even sugar free gum.  I was beside myself.  We carefully avoid any diet drinks or foods because of the aspartame problem.  She had a diet drink for the first time a few years ago and passed out with a migraine.  In amounts as small as a stick of gum, she gets headaches. 

She cannot remember everything she is allergic to and sometimes will cheat to have some dairy, but she does not forget or cheat with aspartame, red #40 and Blue dyes.  These affect her so much worse than her dairy, egg, and many other allergies.  A few months ago she was complaining of shortness of breath for everything.  An inhaler didn’t help, tests were negative… she stopped drinking the blue drinks and all her breathing problems went away.  

Red #40 seriously makes her act intoxicated.  Even a small prescription capsule tinted to look barely pink will do this to her.  We thought the pills were white until she reacted. 

Of all the ingredients we are avoiding, corn is the hardest by far.   Take a peek at the corn ingredient list at http://www.livecornfree.com/2010/04/ingredients-derived-from-corn-what-to.html.  I do not think we are as sensitive as some folks are, but more than just anything with the word corn. 

In the past few months I have done things I never thought I’d do.  I bake most of our bread now and hope to get to the point of baking all of it.  Bread, hot dog and hamburger buns.  All I can say is yummy.  I made pizza from scratch.  Another yummy.  I have made gummy worms and marshmallows.  Gummies are gummies but whoa.. those marshmallows were wonderful.  The first batch tasted just like peeps.  No one complained.  The second batch I used organic powder sugar (regular powder sugar has corn starch).   Next time you see a bag of marshmallows, read the ingredients.  Many of them are made with blue dye not to mention corn syrup.   I must have missed it in art class that blue helps to make white.  I have never cooked 4 lbs. of meatballs at one time but did this recently so I could freeze a meal.  Did you know you can make meatloaf or meatballs without egg or milk and still have them turnout delicious? 

The second hardest part is not having the convenience of eating out or making something from a box.  Meals must be planned and prepared.  This takes time.  I only have one bread machine so it takes planning ahead to have bread or buns.  I bake it all in the oven but the bread machine makes a wonderful dough.   The hardest is the events that are planned around a meal.  Cookouts with others, snacks for kids’ activities, etc.  It not only can be challenging to anticipate when they will occur, but also to come up with alternatives or do without.  It is a big lifestyle change.  But it has all been worth it. 

More Summer Fun

We love our state fair more and more each year.  So much that we are going to have to start going a couple of days to see all we want to see and do what we enjoy.  We do not go to the Midway and we take our own food and eat in the van.  We choose $2 day so we all get in for $10.  I didn’t take my best camera and photo opportunities were not always available but here are a few. 

Feeding goats is fun. 

We always enjoy the DNR building. 

 

Visiting Sankt Nikolaus at the Wilkommen to Germany exhibit.  Considering the kids are 4th generation Americans, this was kind of cool. 

Not only is our last name German, but all of my husband’s great grandparents except one migrated from Germany.  The other one was a 1st generation American to German parents.  So German runs strong here. 

These piglets were out of a litter of 14.  No wonder their mommy looked tired. 

9 piglets only 9 days old.  Sweet. 

After a brief storm, we saw a cool rainbow that later turned into a double rainbow. 

Music and Drama Camp

The church we are attending sponsors a music and drama camp each summer and this year Sean went.  In addition to many other things, they learned a musical in five days.    Sean had a brief part in a duet which I taped below.   The whole group did a wonderful job.   They had approximately 85 campers. 

Sean singing in a duet.

Summer Fun on a Hot Day

Owen and Seth are Sean’s and Sierra’s best friends.  They live to play with them.  They are lost when they are not home or cannot play.  This weekend they enjoyed some fun on the Slip-N-Slide.  Can you tell my kids haven’t been out in the sun much? 

 

Photo Time– My Hobby

The Low Down on Food Allergies

This pretty much sums it up.  Great presentation if you have 18 minutes to listen.  Make time to get informed. 

ER Visit Already?

Yesterday was June 8 and we have already made  a trip to the ER.   I think we have our quota in for the summer. 

I think half the people in Columbus needed the ER last night.  We were there 3 1/2 hours. 

This picture is from last year, but you can see how much fun the slide can be with some water on it.  

Problem would be if you come to the top too quickly and slip, flying off the side and landing on your back.  That is what Sierra did yesterday. 

They checked her urine for blood since she landed on her kidneys and did x-rays and everything was okay but they said she would be sore like she’d been in a wreck.  

This picture was earlier in the day when they were climbing on the slide. 

Everyone be safe this summer.  Hidden dangers and not so hidden ones await us when we spend so much more time outside. 

 

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Putting Up the For Sale Sign

I wonder if sticking a for sale sign in the yard down the street would subliminally result in the family wanting to move.   It probably would be a bit too obvious.  

 

The father who lives there got upset with me because my child told him that I didn’t want their son playing with them.  This is true but I didn’t expect the boy to show up in our backyard, uninvited, refusing to leave.  He wouldn’t leave when asked by my kids and before I could go outside to supervise their play, my child had already solicited the help of the father who was less than happy about the whole situation.  He felt very angry that we were excluding his son.  My children are almost 9 and 7 and two of the other kids playing are almost 9.  His son is four and acts like he’s two. 

He smarts off to adults, throws tantrums to get his way and cusses regularly.  He tries coming in the house, drives his power wheel in everyone’s yard between here and their house over half a block away, tried to run over my kids in our driveway and ran his power wheel into our gate repeatedly the other day.   I explained to the dad that we have a problem with his language and how he smarts off to us if we ask him to stop doing something.  His best comeback was to ask if I thought my kids behaved at his house.  They have played in their driveway a few times with other kids.  My first thought was yes, I think they behave, but instead, I told him if they did not, to please send them home and let me know.  He didn’t have a response to that.  I hope he thinks about what I said and tries to deal with it.  I have a feeling the boy will be back down here again soon and we won’t be over this situation.  I have no problem laying down some ground rules for him to play here, but I do not expect it to work since he smarts off to us when he hears us talking to our own kids about something, as if he thinks we are talking to him.