Eat to live, not live to eat!

My father always said to eat to live not live to eat. I never understood this until recently. I watch my older children spend alot of money of ridiculous trendy food and alot of time preparing and making it well a truly pleasurable experience. This is great and exciting and I do this once in a while perhaps 2 or three times a week. I see them do this with every meal. It is expensive with both time and money. They are simply pleasure junkies who live to eat. Now I get what my dad was saying. Eat to live. It is much simpler and easy to eat healthy meals that are not a circus to prepare.

Organic Everything

Several of my friends are organic everything. Grow what you can, buy organic what you can't no matter what the price and if not then don't buy it or eat it. I sit on the fence. I do have an organic garden (meaning no pesticides other than apple cider vinegar and garlic) and I do buy organic, but I am unwilling to give up all processed food as I still have 7 kids 12 and under and it's just alot of physical work to feed that crowd. I am a post-modern gal and honestly the pre-civil war approach to homemaking exhausts me at times. Yes, I do bake alot of whole grain breads, but not all of my bread!
My girfriend and I do get frustrated at the availability and cost of natural wholesome foods there is literally one store in our metropolitan area and it is always packed... so we have decided to open another one. In our imaginary store everything would be organic, of course. The meat from local and local farmer's for produce a locavore store with vitamins and herbs as well... named 007 (Only Organic 7 days a week) ~ License to Heal. LOL well we thought it was cute. Isn't necessity the mother of invention. The only problem is... with this many kids and homeschooling, would have to give up sleep to run a business.

Gardening

Gardening is giving me a good nights sleep. Unfortunately going to sleep early... I wake up earlier. and then get tireder and go to sleep even earlier... etc. In the past week have planted an Almond tree, six blackberry bushes, two hydrangeas, 9 lilac bushes, 2 butterfly bushes and 7 rose bushes. Perhaps, I won't have to wait until our other house is sold in order for this place to look landscaped. But, even with all that it is a drop in the bucket. The question is... should one try to landscape three acres? The land is so beautiful and the trees... love the trees, I'm not really going for anything other than natural with a little stamp of color. The answer is no, of course don't try to landscape, just adding a bit to the natural beauty. Funny, didn't know I would enjoy gardening, but then didn't know I would love cooking or many other things... life is just beginning in my forties.

So I am doing this workshop for our homeschooling conference coming up this weekend. The workshop is designed to teach and encourage moms who are homeschooling while managing the needs and wants of toddlers and preschoolers. They say the best way to learn something is to teach others.
In preparation for the talk I have rediscovered all the tools which I used when I had 4 children under the age of 4 and older ones I had to teach. Ironically, it has re-inspired me to use the menagerie of activities and tools which I have surreptitously collected. I used to keep a list of these posted in our schoolroom. Not just to remind me of all these wonderful items, but so that I would actually pull them out and the little ones would benefit from their use. However, I find that posted list has disappeared and I have been rediscovering resources and having a grand time with my younger ones.
Of course, many of these things even the more common ones such as playdoh and blocks with pattern cards are adaptable to some of the older kids and this has engendered alot of none video playtime with their younger siblings. So Thankful for a task which has born so much fruit.

Spring 2008 just before Mariclaire's birth

This may be a silly to mention, but taking the silverware cage from the dishwasher and leaving it in the sink promotes filling it. I just put it back in when it's full or it's time to run the dishwasher.