Sunday, July 27, 2014

It's been a little while...

You know. Life and stuff. It happens. 

I am going to try and get back into a weekly post, but it can be SO hard sometimes. I kinda thought my summer would have more down time than it has, but it's been packed with things going on!

Mostly fun things. Lots of activities with the boys, that has been great. We went to Six Flags with friends not too long ago. We've kept active with the homeschool group. Play dates (for both the boys and for Mama, lol). We've been experimenting with making more stuff at home. Okay, using the word "we" might be a stretch. The hubs and the eldest have been experimenting with making more stuff at home. Heh. 

Homemade butter that Bailey made tonight.
Buttermilk, strained from the butter making. 
Different flavors of pickles that the hubs is currently fermenting.
Dilly beans. Green beans, garlic and dill, fermented in a brine. SO. GOOD. 

Unfortunately there have been some not so fun things. :/ My dad has been in the hospital for the last three weeks, and has had three surgeries in that time. With a fourth surgery scheduled for tomorrow. Neck and back surgery. Hopefully the one tomorrow will be the last one for a while, and he can finally start his rehabilitation and get better. 

I say it all the time, about how time flies, but I really can't believe we are approaching the end of July. The boys' birthday party will be in just a few weeks, followed by Dragon Con. There is a butt-ton of excitement around those two activities (I will have a 10 year old and a 15 year old! Whaaaaat???), but excitement can sometimes equal high strung and tense for this anxious gal. 

Oh! Also, I attended my very first homeschool convention yesterday. Crazy, that I've been homeschooling for this long, and I've never been to one! It was fun, even if a little overwhelming. I knew going in that our core curriculum was set. As are most of our online supplemental resources. But I was really looking forward to checking out some things like science kits and other "extras." I didn't buy much, but I got a ton of catalogs and brochures. I will have to spend some time this week looking through all of those, but I'm super grateful I wasn't one of the people who were buying their entire seventh grade homeschool curriculum (as an example) yesterday, lol. 

The fitness thing is still going well! I hit the twenty pound mark this week! It may seem like a slow loss (20 lbs since May), but I'm honestly really pleased about that. My goal is to lose the weight at a steady pace, and keep it off. I think losing it more slowly, with lifestyle changes rather than with dieting, is what is going to help me keep it off.  

One of my neighbors that I say hello to, every day on my walks. :)
Today was my first 15,000 step day in over a week! Felt great!

Okey dokey. That's all I've got tonight. We have something planned for every single day this week, so for now, I'm going to put away some laundry, have a glass of wine and hopefully get some sleep. :) 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! 

Sunday, July 6, 2014

You Are What You Eat

I know I've mentioned repeatedly about how we have been changing our eating and exercise habits around here. It's really nuts, the additives/hormones/chemical crap that's in our foods these days. But it's also nuts how big farms and companies are basically killing the little guy. The local farmers.

When we first started buying healthy, and avoided all of the pre-packaged and frozen stuff, we went all (or as much as feasibly possible) organic. We loved it. We ate better, we felt better and didn't feel like we were missing anything that we had given up. We had a lot of discussion about food chains, and why it was important to us to eat grass fed beef, rather than feed fed beef. Same for chickens and eggs...what they ate, we ate. And it's not so much that they only eat a certain thing. It was more that they ate what they are supposed to eat, you know?

Anyway. After a while, and a few more documentaries (seriously with the Netflix!) later, we began to realize that while eating organic was good, we had local farmers near us who were struggling. Our neighbors. People in our community. So we started getting what we could from those around us, little by little. We get the most delicious eggs from a friend, we get produce from a local produce farm (they do have some produce that they don't grow, just so they have some of everything to offer, but we try to only get what they grow there), we get milk from a Ga creamery (it's awesome, non-homogenized and only minimally pasteurized), etc. We have a watermelon farmer about a mile from us (can't get any more local than that, if we aren't growing it!), and he has THE best yellow meat watermelons we have ever eaten.

And the organic thing? MANY small farms actually are organic, but they can't afford to/have no desire to get labeled as organic from the FDA. Lots of money and lots of paperwork, that kinda thing.

We are growing our own food too, what we can. But if we can't get it in our own garden, we want it to come from someone near us when it's possible.

All of this is in my mind because this week we went blueberry picking with friends. We went to a local blueberry farm, and met the incredibly sweet blueberry farmers. My boys and I got to experience getting our own food (I know, it wasn't like we killed a cow or anything, but still...), and we had a really good time doing so!

We also got to do our own comparison. When we got home, we had some organic blueberries I had picked up at the store, and we had the berries we had just picked. We noticed differences in how they looked. The store bought blueberries were a little bigger than the fresh ones, and they were all the same size. It wasn't something than any of us noticed or paid attention to, until we saw the fresh ones, which were all different sizes. It made me feel like the store bought blueberries came off of a factory line, lol. The biggest difference was in the taste test though. All of the store bought blueberries tasted good, but they tasted the same. When we started picking out berries from our own haul, we noticed that some were sweeter and some were more tart. But they were all really, really good.

The local ones won over the organic store bought ones. :D

Bluuuuuuueberry bushes! :)

Yummeh.

The eldest. 

The wee one. 

Why is there a picture of my blue fingers? Those that know and love me, know that I *never* get my hands dirty. This is proof that I did some pickin' of my own. :D


Ok, I'm getting off my soapbox now. I hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day weekend with your loved ones. We did! :)