What a Great Quote!

"To me, unschooling does not necessarily mean there is no plan, it just means that God is the architect of that plan, not me. I trust in Him to guide their steps. The children are the builders and the inhabitants of what they construct, and I just supply the tools and the equipment." –Laura

And I forgot to write down her full name and her blog link! Ugh! I did some searching but can't seem to locate them. But I just had to share it!

Vaccines Cause Autism or Do they...

As many of you know we are a non-vaxing family. We did a lot of research on this and had a number of reasons for making that choice. One of the main reason was the demonstrated lack of safety of the vaccines vrs the probability of our children contracting one of the illnesses protected by vaccination. This past week a number of articles have come out making me feel a little better about the choices I made. Check them out.

The first article titled U.S. Government Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism available at Newsmax.com. Here is a quote from this article:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recently conceded the first vaccine-autism case.

This concession shows the dishonesty of the continual media spin coming from ublic health officials and others who maintain there is no evidence that Thimerosal, or any other part of any vaccine, has ever caused autism or, for that matter, has armed anyone in any way.

The facts are that the Vaccine Compensation Act has already compensated over 2,000 individuals who proved that they were harmed by vaccines, resulting in ettlements of nearly two billion dollars.

Additionally, hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific/medical articles from some the orld’s best universities have long implicated Thimerosal in vaccines as a causal actor in neurodevelopmental disorders including autism.

Furthermore, in 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Government Reform ommittee, after a 3.5-year investigation, concluded that Thimerosal caused the autism epidemic and that the FDA and health authorities were guilty of “institutional malfeasance” in covering it up.

Here is another spin on this same situation. This one from the CNN website. Titled Case renews debate on vaccine-autism link this article is a little more reserved about the findings in the case. Here is a quote from this article:

Government health officials have conceded that childhood vaccines worsened a rare, underlying disorder that ultimately led to autism-like symptoms in a Georgia girl, and that she should be paid from a federal vaccine-injury fund.

Thousands of families are seeking compensation for disabilities they attribute to vaccines and a preservative.

Medical and legal experts say the narrow wording and circumstances probably ake the case an exception -- not a precedent for thousands of other pending claims.

I guess we will have to wait and see what kind of outcome this brings to vaccine safety research.

Menu Planning Monday

Well...I'm going to be a little easier on myself this week. I had planned to try a few new recipes & barely stuck to my menu at all (honestly I think only 2 maybe 3 of the days...ugh!). For this week I think a few tried and true recipes are going to be best for us. We are having lots of visitors this week and I have a meeting Thursday night so we will probably do Pizza night again on Thursday. I also didn't get a chance to try the baked oatmeal (but will probably do that on one of Erik's days off as he LOVES oatmeal) or the crackers.


So, for this week I plan to also start a plan for breakfast. Just certain days for certain foods and will repeat the same every week. I am also going to try to do more of my baking monthly. I've been doing a lot of reading about the monthly baking plan at Passionate Homemaking. I also like her ideas about soaking grains. I am going to try to get a copy of Nourishing Traditions, which she mentioned a few times. I'm going to try to read a little more on that and maybe try it out. Might pick up some Kefir when shopping tomorrow just to see how it works.

I also like the idea of planning a consistent breakfast because we are trying to establish more rhythm at home and this will give the kids a way to distinguish the days. I am thinking I will even make up a little chart to designate the days and what is for breakfast...although my drawing abilities are not the greatest!

Without further ado, here is the plan for breakfast:

Monday - Egg meal (eggs & toast, egg sandwich, scrambled eggs, etc.)
Tuesday - Pancakes
Wednesday - Oatmeal
Thursday- Smoothie, Muffin
Friday - Special breakfast (french toast, quiche, waffles, etc.)
Saturday - Yogurt & Granola
Sunday - Egg meal

I am also thinking about a plan for lunch although we really have a lot less options as my kids will only eat so much. My thoughts for lunch:

Monday - Yogurt & Granola, Fruit
Tuesday - PB&J (homemade bread and sunflower seed butter)
Wednesday - Grilled Cheese, Fruit
Thursday - Plate of stuff
Friday- PB&J, Fruit
Saturday - Grilled Cheese, Fruit
Sunday - Plate of Stuff

And lastly here is the dinner plan:

Tuesday - Sloppy Joes
Wednesday - Going to retry doing the Shepards Pie that definitely isn't being done tonight!
Thursday - Homemade pizza
Friday - Beef Ribs in the slow cooker, mashed potatoes & corn
Saturday - Rice Jumble (rice with peppers & onions, a little sausage & some pasta sauce)
Sunday - Leftovers
Monday - Quesadillas

Last week I did make the pot roast and it was excellent! I even had seconds. I'm thinking about subscribing to Pioneer Women's blog to keep up with recipes! Also a hit were the meatballs. We substituted cottage cheese for Ricotta and they were still Fab!

Have a great week and make sure to check out more menus at Org Junkie's blog!

Unschooling

Unschooling is the method of homeschooling that I plan to use with our kids...well...really it is what we use right now. Life learning. No curricula, no workbooks, no tests, etc. And it is also a way of life that we strive to achieve as well.

There is an awesome blog carival going on at An Unschooling Life called Unschooling Voices where different blogs post a question about Unschooling and others answer the question on their blogs and post a link on the host blog. I found this really amazing blog Learning Though Living that really has some amazing posts on it. Needless to say I've subscribed and can't wait to read more. She has a great quote from John Holt that I also wanted to share.

“It is as true now as it was then that no matter what tests show, very little of what is taught in school is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered, and very little of what is remembered is used. The things we learn, remember, and use are the things we seek out or meet in the daily, serious, nonschool parts of our lives.”~John Holt~ How Children Fail

I think if we as parents concern ourselves with living our lives as role models for our children and include them in our activities when they want to be included we would serve them a lot better than by having rules and enforcing with punishments, especially when we are not following the rules ourselves.

Something to think about...

The Man Song

This is just too funny! Even Erik laughed! Had to share.