Merry Christmas!

This year Christmas was different. We actually stayed home! And it was great! Well, we didn't stay home the whole time. We were home for Christmas Eve though. Alex played piano at Christmas Eve Mass, which was really nice. And when we got home from Mass, we were surpirsed to see that Santa had come early! The kids had fun opening way too many gifts. The highlights? An electric guitar and an ITouch.

On Christmas morning we woke up and headed to the airport to fly to Chicago. Flying on Christmas is fun - everyone is in a good mood! We got in too late to join the Swenton Family Christmas party, so that was a little disappointing. But we still were able to spend a week with Grandma and see the Skafish relatives.

AND, the highlight for Rachel? Wicked!

For most kids it's a dream come true. A free box of candy bars sent directly from a major candy company. Not so for our very own activist.


Since April, Rachel has been learning about fair trade products, especially chocolate. When discovering that she would need to do a public presentation in order to be able to show her rabbits at the county fair, she deliberated for quite awhile on what to choose for a topic. After watching another presentation on palm oil, she decided to focus on fair trade chocolate. She had helped me host a fair trade sale for the past two years at church and found the topic fascinating. So, she decided to combine her love of chocolate and her love for human justice, and educate 4Hers about fair trade chocolate. Her club presentation was amazing. She won an award at the County fair and earned a Special Merit Badge - the highest possible honor - at the State Fair. Upon learning that friends of ours were going to be hosting a fair trade sale at their church this year, she mentioned that she had done a fair trade report for 4H, and even showed our friend while she was at our house. One thing led to another, and Rachel ended up doing her presentation as part of a "Living Simply" seminar at the local Lutheran church. Events really rolled from there. Rachel and her friend were subsequently interviewed for an article in Yes! Magazine as well as the Snoqualmie Valley Record.

And then today, the UPS guy walked up our driveway and handed a box to Alex. Rachel looked at the label and wondered if the box was safe. No, really. This thing has gotten bigger then anyone ever imagined. And when you're playing with the big guys, you're playing with fire.



We opened it up to find a case of milk chocolate bars. And well, safe is really relative isn't it? I mean if you consider high fructose corn syrup, soy lecitin and PGPR safe, then we're good - at least on that end. Rachel's friend received a box too. They think it's a bribe to shut-up. I consider it a reminder to learn both sides. Sounds like a year long homeschool project to me.

Time to Purge???

I'm coming to the realization that some of the books in this house just have to go. It's so hard, because I LOVE books. But, I'm running out of shelves. I think I need to institute the policy I used to have with buying other stuff - for every new thing purchased, two old things need to go. I have no problem getting rid of old clothes, knick-knacky things, unused kitchen appliances... So why not books? It fascinates me that books each hold some sort of knowledge between their covers. If I read a really good one from the library, I will sometimes even go buy a copy just to have for myself. I think I am trying to preserve that knowledge, or at least remind myself that I now have it. I generally try to get novels from the library, and have no problem not keeping a copy myself. But classics, non-fiction, and now of course, homeschool texts and history books are accumulating like mad around here. How do I choose which ones go and which ones stay? What should I do? Help!!!!!

Happy Birthday I-Baby!

Nourishing Traditions

I just read "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats". This was a really interesting book - another one talking about the benefits of a diet of real food - not packaged, processed, sugared, etc. Given all the books I have read over the years on this topic, it was not super insightful to me, although I never knew about preparing food traditionally in order to enhance enzyme production and digestion. I'm excited to try a few recipes. There is one main reason I am blogging about this book - the best sentence I have ever read in an eat-healthy book... "use as much good quality butter as you like, with the happy assurance that it is a wholesome - indeed, an essential - food for you and your family." Yippeeee!!!!!! I love butter. Especially the grass-fed, pasture butter that I am now buying. And it is healthy! For somone whose philosophy with butter is the more the better, this is revolutionary! And, the fact that the book also touts popcorn as being a healthy snack really has made my day. I can eat my favorite snack, with TONS of butter and not feel guilty! Who says real food has to be bad???

Books Read as of September 30, 2010

As of September 30, 2010 I've read 68 books. Lots of kid lit. It's fun and quick!

49. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
50. Love in a Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter's Uncommon Year by Laura Brodie
51. The Story of the World – Ancients by Susan Wise Bauer
52. The Story of the World – Middle Ages by Susan Wise Bauer
53. The Great and Terrible Quest by Margaret Lovett
54. The Omnivore’s Dilemna (Young Edition) by Michael Pollan
55. Life in a Medieval Monastery by Victoria Sherrow
56. The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli
57. The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly
58. Beowulf: A New Telling by Robert Nye
59. Marley and Me by John Grogan
60. Letters to God by Patrick Doughtie and John Perry
61. Isabel and the Miracle Baby by Emily Smith Pearce
62. Just One Wish by Janette Rallison
63. Six Months to Live by Lurene McDaniel
64. Beowulf – translation by Seamus Heaney
65. The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
66. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
67. The Promise by Eva Schloss
68. Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

A Driver's Manifesto

Dear Seattle Drivers:

You win the award for being the most incompetent drivers in the world. And this is saying a lot, considering I have been a driver or passenger in some of the worst trafficked cities in the world - Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., London, Paris, Rome. You even rival the drivers on the Circle of Death in Lima, Peru. Actually, maybe not. Those drivers are pretty good, considering the traffic.

I especially love you Seattlites who see another car merging into your lane, either from a highway ramp or due to a construction lane closure, and speed up just enough to cause that car's driver to either gun the engine to get in front of you or slow way down in order to keep from hitting you. Like yesterday on I90. What you didn't realize is the dark shadow on the back of my van is not a glare from a rare sunbreak. It's a dent. It's one of the reasons I continue to nurse along my geriatric, 10 year old, 162,305 mile van. So that when amazing drivers like you decide to speed up just enough so that I either have to choose to hit the orange cones indicating the lane closure in front of me, or merge into and maybe hit you, I will choose the possibility of hitting you every time. Especially if you have a BMW, or an Acura or Lexus. That's half the fun of having an old car. And when you honk and finally move into the wide open lane next to you and drive past staring at me, like I'm the idiot who didn't pull off the road so you didn't have to speed up to tailgate me, I really wish I had a sign indicating the award I have just given you. Maybe I should make one. One that's okay for kids to see...