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.

Menu Planning Monday

Time for another Menu Planning Monday! I am really enjoying doing this and it really keeps me on track during the week.

So, I am going to be working at changing our diets a little. For those of you who do not know Bennett had eczema when he was just a little thing (4-5 months old). He was still solely nursing so we decided to keep him nursing for a few more months and try to take things in & out of my diet to see what might be causing it. After a few weeks of trying 1-2 things and having his eczema get worse & worse I decided to just go cold turkey on everything that might be affecting him. So...instead of telling you what I couldn't eat...how bought what I could. Rice, Fruits (except citrus), Vegi's, Turkey & Chicken. Yeah...it was a fun 2-3 months let me tell you.

Now...the plus side of this was I did lose ALL (plus some) of the weight gained during my pregnancy.

Long story short, the eczema cleared up, I added everything back and nothing seems to be bothering Bennett now. Weird! But since adding everything back I have also added back about 10 lbs! My naturopath also mentioned that if I wanted to stay on that diet permanently (adding back Eggs) that would be fine with her. While I do not plan to go back on the diet completely I do thing we would all be much healthier if we tried to cut out as much diary & wheat products as we can.

With that said for snacks I am going to make sure to have lots of fresh fruits and vegi's on hand. I also plan to start picking up rice crackers again (excellent with a little sunflower butter). We will stop getting pretzels and try to cut out loaves of bread (we've been going through at least 2 loaves a week plus all the bagels & english muffins, etc...it is crazy how much bread we eat). We have also been drinking WAY too much juice instead of water. No more juice for us!

I pulled out two cookbooks this morning that I plan on trying to pull our recipes from.

I've also been scanning the blogs of others that have already posted their menu's looking for more healthy recipes. Wish us luck!

Tuesday - Pasta & Meatballs

Wednesday - Pioneer Women's Pot Roast (hat tip to Sarah at Sarah's Musings for this recipe...LOVE IT!!)

Thursday - Pizza night (WW Pizza crust with lots of vegi's)

Friday - Flank Steak Sandwichs and Tomato Soup (Thanks to Simple Mom for the Soup idea!)

Saturday - Breakfast for Dinner (I'm thinking a Quiche - This one from Broad Horizons sounds yummy, and it's crustless!!)

Sunday - Baked Potato Soup (Thanks to Margaret's Musings for the recipe idea)

Monday - Shepard's Pie (Thanks to Passionate Homemaking for the recipe)

And I definitely want to try this Baked Oatmeal dish (hat tip to A Day in The Life for the recipe)for breakfast one of the mornings this week. It sounds fab!

I am also going to try out these crackers posted at The Nourishing Gourmet. They sound great and I have to agree...store bought crackers are so expensive but my kids love them! She also recommends a book, Nourishing Traditions that I think I will try to get a copy from at the library to check out. Might be worth getting.

For all of our recipes I do lots of substitutions. I usually substitute any milk called for with Rice Milk. I also substitute vegi broth for a meat broth. I also substitute sweetners and use honey or maple syrup for sugar and I usually 1/2 the sweetner called for. A friend of mine also suggested substituting tofu for cheese in baked recipes like Quiche. I think I might try it.

I WON, I WON (I forgot to post)!

It was just brought to my attention that I totally forgot to post the blog I wrote about the giveaways that I won during the carnival that Rocks in My Dryer put on back during the last week of January/1st week of February.

Wow!!! What a great carnival! I can't wait for the next one. I had over 100 entries myself and I didn't put up my giveaway until midweek! Pretty good. I will definitely partake in that again.

I entered at least 100 of the giveaways offered and I won two of them!

The first was a $100 gift card from Amazon.com at PediaScribe! OMG...can you just see me dancing around the room. I plan to get some stainless steel sippy's for the boys and maybe a few books for me. Thanks to Karen over at PediaScribe for picking me! Check out her blog. It is pretty cool!

Update: I already did order my items from Amazon and got the following:

2 Klean Kanteen Stainless Steel Sippy's.

I also ordered The Keeper. This will hopefully cut back on our grocery bills slightly and will also save on trash. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is my motto!! I have a few friends who use the Keeper or the Diva Cup and really like them, so I decided to give them a go! Check both The Keeper and The Diva Cup out.

And lastly I was able to order two titles I have been wanting to pick up.

Both excellent titles that I cannot wait to sit down and read.

I also won a cool t-shirt from bkindwear.com. This giveaway was from Elaine at Blog in My Eye.

This is the t-shirt that I picked for Aiden. It is just too cute!! I'll be sure to post a picture of him in it as soon as it arrives!

Thank you to everyone who posted a giveaway. I had so much fun browsing all the sites and even subscribed to a few (10-12) dozen blogs. As if my inbox is not already full enough! Make sure if you didn't check out the Carnival this time you check it out next time...I think in March or April.