Spend Nothing Month

Sort of.

I like the idea of a spend nothing month- figuring out how to make do with what I have, and really thinking about what a necessity is.  Of course, it's not really practical (or possible, depending on your situation) to spend absolutely no money, bills will come, and we have to eat, but for the month of january we're going to spend as little as possible.  We'll get our milk delivery, and set aside a small amount of cash for groceries that we need- and once it's gone, it's gone.  The idea is to really consider where you're spending your money, and whether it is improving your life enough to be worth the cost.

There's one SIL weekend planned that I'm not counting (though I'm going to be careful with expenses that weekend).

Kind of a cleanse for the budget and the influx of stuff (most of it wonderful and much loved) at Christmas.

Anyone want to try it too?

Doing the best we can- the hummingbird challenge

So often I feel overwhelmed with what I see as unfixable problems.  There are a lot of things that I, on my own will never be able to fix.  But, like the hummingbird, I can do the best that I can.



This clip was from the documentary Dirt.  It was really interesting, and I think I could (and will) watch it over and over again.  It talks about what dirt is, and our relationship with it.  As we forget its importance, and allow it to become damaged, it stops nourishing us with healthy food.  I was talking to my aunt and she mentioned how her stepson wouldn't eat carrots for a long time after seeing our grandmother pull them out of the garden.  We've become so accustomed to seeing our food in neat little packages at the store that we've forgotten where food comes from.  In an effort to produce more to meet the endless demands of cheaper food, the quality of our soil has decreased as we pump pesticides and herbicides into it.  Our way of life is not sustainable, and eventually we will be forced to make changes.

I believe that God put us on the earth to learn and to grow.  Part of that growth and learning, is learning to be good stewards of the life around us.  That includes the dirt.

It's not practical for everyone to stop buying corn fed beed, or switch to organic foods.  However, like the hummingbird, even if we can't completely change how we eat, we can do what we can.  If that means growing our own garden, great!  If it means buying locally produced meats (Christensen's Family Farm in my side link sells grass fed beef and pork!), then do it!  If it means you switch one meal, or one meal more, each week from a meat based meal to a vegetarian one, it can make a difference (plus vegetarian meals are often cheaper).  If it means you find organic gardening and yard care solutions, great!

So my challenge to all five of you who read my blog, is be a hummingbird.  Find something you can do to put out the fire.  How will you respond to the hummingbird challenge?

Merry Christmas 2010 in review... sort of...

Merry Christmas to our friends and family!  I thought I'd make things easier on myself by putting a link to my blog in our christmas card, and not sending a million copies of our christmas letter around.  Also, I didn't write a christmas letter.  I sat down to start one, but was interrupted in the first attempt by J throwing up.  The next week when I sat down to do it again, my Mister and A had come down with the flu.  The funny thing is that I've put off writing anything on my blog because after nursing sick people for two weeks, I am sick, along with CP and baby E.

Due to my lack of sleep/general achyness, I can't really remember everything that happened this year.  My most recent memories involve trying to get the binky to stay put in baby E's ear, until it dawned on me that that was not where binky's go, and taking a handful of wet burp rags to the garbage can instead of the laundry.  (I caught myself in time).  Remind me not to hold the baby when trying to do anything else, or he's likely to end up in the bread box or something.

The second-biggest thing we did this year was, after unsuccessfully trying to sell our home for a year, we decided to try the rental market, and had renters within a week or two.  We then moved in with my parents, and are now living in their home while they are on an LDS mission in the Lima Peru Temple.  We miss them, but are glad they're doing something they love and serving in a wonderful area.  (My Mister also served his mission in Peru, which has J (age 9) very excited about serving a mission in Peru someday also.)

We're currently crossing our fingers and jumping through hoops in hopes of building our dream home on some family owned property adjacent to my parents' house.  Send good building thoughts our way, and also to the city council and planning commission.

J (age 9) is in 4th grade this year, and has a wonderful teacher.  We love her!  He's growing up so much- the other day I looked at him, and couldn't take my eyes off of him.  I can see signs of maturity.  Luckily he still wants to snuggle with mom on occasion.  His favorite things are his wii games, (preferably anything lego), his bike, and books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians set.  For christmas his brother bought him The Heroes of Olympus, Book One: The Lost Hero, by the same author, and he's loving it.  J also likes basketball and soccer, and can't pick one over the other, which makes for a couple of crazy weeks when the two overlap.

A (age 6 11/12ths) is loving first grade, although he has decided that kindergarten was "more fun".  He's learning to be independent and is testing limits, which has been an adventure, but he's also the first to give me a hug and a grin.  A also played soccer and basketball for the first time this year.  We're hoping he can pick a favorite, but we're not holding our breath.  My Mister has been giving him piano lessons here and there, and he thinks that's pretty neat too.  His absolute favorite thing to do is build things, whether it's "paper wallets" (mom has had to be really careful about throwing random papers away in case A has stuck his life savings inside), or working on his miniature tool bench that he got for christmas last year, or building forts around the yard.  If you come to our house, you'll see off the front porch an elaborate system of rope, wood and cardboard boxes.  A also enjoys playing with legos and does that pretty much anytime he can't go outside to build something.

CP is 3, and continues to be a fun and happy kid.  We've enjoyed nearly everything about him for his entire life.  He likes to help A build things, and play on mom's ipod.  He's gotten pretty good at some of the puzzle games, which has convinced mom that he's going to grow up to be a genius.  He likes to "play toys", and will do pretty much whatever his older brothers will let him tag along for.

Baby E (about 5 months) is an adorable baby (he's the biggest thing we did this year!), but we wish he'd sleep more.  He likes to be held and played with constantly (I can't blame him, we're a fun family- who'd want to be stuck of in a baby chair at the side of the room!).  He can roll over from front to back, and gives the best baby smiles.  He was doing pretty well sleeping until we messed up his schedule by taking him to Oregon for Thanksgiving, he still hasn't forgiven us for that car ride, and wakes us up several times a night to remind us not to do that again anytime soon.

We hope you all had a peaceful Christmas.

All Our Love!

Eating from the Pantry Challenge Summary

It's been an interesting month of eating. For the most part, I'd say we ate pretty normally, we were more careful about how many eggs we used (which wouldn't have been an issue at ALL, if our chickens were laying....) and we didn't drink big glasses of milk as often as we might have had we not been trying to make it last.

Our total money spent on groceries for the month of January was $92. That's quite a bit over the planned $60, however, 15 of that was to replenish my son's lunch money account (he eats school lunch one day a week), and that doesn't come out of our regular grocery budget. That puts us pretty close to $15 over budget, which is how much we spent on wheat. After years of storing hundreds of pounds of wheat, we've finally used all of it up, and didn't pay enough attention to our supplies.

Some thoughts from this experiment:
I need to store powdered milk- if I used it in baking more often, I wouldn't need to buy as much milk, and also would be covered in case of emergency.

I also learned that it's really useful to have eggs around. I might look into powdered eggs for use in baking- as a back up for times when our chickens are not earning their keep.

Limiting trips to the grocery store made a big difference in how much I spent. I've been in the habit of going shopping every week, but have discovered if I buy an extra gallon (or even half gallon) of milk, that we do just fine going longer in between.

I've missed fresh produce. While I bought some at the grocery store (3 times during the month), it really wasn't enough. My parents shared some apples and pears that they received as a gift. But today as my Mister finished up a race, and approached the table with bananas, bread and gatorade, I had a "I NEED a banana moment". I'll be looking into joining a food coop again for fruits and vegetables, we've done one in the past and really enjoyed the variety.

I'm thrilled to have some extra grocery money this month to split between our camper fund (which is where the wheat money will come from), and The Road Home.

Our list of things that are needing some serious restocking has grown pretty long this month, so it will be interesting to try to resupply over the next couple of months without killing my grocery budget. (I admit to having thoughts of using part of our tax return to shore up our food storage....).

Changing the way we live

I've been thinking a lot lately about why we do things the way we do. Why we buy the things we buy, and eat the things we eat. And why we're so hesitant to look at other options, and so quick to laugh and label different ideas as "crazy liberal ideas". Ideas can't hurt us, so why don't we do research and then accept or discount the ideas based on their actual merit?

I've been reading books like, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and watching documentaries like Botany of Desire and Food Inc..

I gow a garden in the summer, and can as much food as possible for winter use. I raise chickens for eggs (if they'd start laying again), and I try to eat real food as much as possible, though we do still eat convenience foods more than I'd like.

I've been thinking more and more about living in a sustainable way, and the changes I would have to make are scary, but I think they're scary because we've grown up thinking that the way things are are the only way.

What do we do when we can't go to costco and buy a jumbo bag of frozen chicken breast? It sometimes feels easier to live in ignorance of where your food comes from, because once you've seen it, it's a lot harder to continue eating it.

I've joined the coupon craze, though mostly for non-food items since we don't eat a lot of the things there are coupons for (though I got a great deal on walnuts and butter and now have a nice supply in my freezer), but even for things like razors, I've had feelings of guilt for quite some time. I can get razors for free, but not the extra blades, so to never pay for razors we'd end up throwing away entire razors every time the blade goes dull. It's hard to balance the desire for a years supply of all things and still not be part of a rampant consumerism culture.

There are lots of things to think about, but in thinking about starting small, I'm researching how I can avoid eating commercialized meats. Being taught not to waste things, we'll finish up the bag of frozen chicken in the freezer over the next couple of months, and hopefully by then I'll have ideas on where to buy chicken that was raised in a sustainable way, that is healthy for me, for the farmers, and for the planet. I'll also look into the milk I buy and decide if I need to pay more for organic milk, and if that means that we'll be drinking less of it. And, if my chickens don't start laying again, I'll be looking into cruelty free eggs.

I know all of this sounds crazy to some people, but I feel strongly that we humans were placed on the earth to be wise stewards over all things, and I can't justify supporting companies that don't care if they're making us sick, or if their chicken farmers are developing allergies to antibiotics because of their overuse in the chickens, or workers on a killing floor who lose their fingernails to infections, or who care more about their bottom lines than about people dying from e coli poisoning.

UPDATE:

I'm adding links to locally grown/sustainable farms as I find them. The one I have so far is Christiansen's Hog Heaven, which sells heritage breed pigs all processed and delivered in little packages. We're ordering a whole pork and splitting it among family.

Story Hour

We weren't in there for an hour, it just seemed like it. I've read that children who wear cloth diapers toilet train faster than children who wear disposables. I think it's because parents get tired of changing cloth diapers faster than they get tired of changing disposables... :)

It's really not so bad, but for some reason I keep thinking that he's old enough to be using the toilet. He's old enough to tell me that he doesn't like his "new" diapers after all. He just doesn't get it. He can sit on the toilet for 20 minutes (it's good reading time- even my 5-year-old joined in on the fun) and do nothing but toot (which he does get excited about!) and then five minutes into a clean diaper, he "goes". It's driving me crazy.

How do I get him to do his duty on the potty? He does make some nice faces while he pretends to poop. It reminds me of my friend whose little boy said to her "don't strain yourself".

My Brother and the Shenpa

My brother is in an interesting position in life. He's trying to figure out what to do to support his family. Should he do something to make a lot of money? Should he do something to help others? I think Ideally, he'd like to do both (although maybe money is not so important to him....). I'd imagine he'd like to provide comfortably for his family.

Here's a really good post on his blog about money.

I want my money.

Check out his other posts too. I've really been enjoying his new blog.

Motivation

Over the weekend, I attended a youth leadership conference in Logan with my city's Youth Council. During the conference (and this is the 3rd one I've been to now), we get to hear some really good speakers. My favorite from this year's conference was Mike Schlappi. He was accidentally shot by his friend when he was a teenager, and paralyzed from the waist down.

He has taken a horrible experience and used it to accomplish amazing things. He was on the US Paralympic Basketball team for 4 olympics, and he presents an amazing story to motivate those he speaks to.

In past years there have been other speakers that I have found to be similarly amazing, people who go through horrible things, but use those experiences to do more with their lives than those of us who have things pretty easy and just continue on day to day doing what we always do.

It really makes me wonder about motivation. What makes some people step up in the face of adversity when others retreat? What makes ordinary people decide to do amazing things? What would I do if I were to face any extreme challenge in my life, and why would I need to wait until then to make a difference in the world?

Where much is given, much is required. I know what it feels like to hurt, but my life has been pretty easy. I've never been hungry without knowing where my next meal would come from. I've never really felt like my life was in danger. I have a comfortable life, so what do I need to do with it? I try to be involved in good causes, I am trying to be more patient with my kids, and do things with them to give them healthy childhood experiences. I guess it's difficult to say whether our everyday actions are "amazing" or not, at least short-term. Maybe our goal should not be to accomplish amazing things, but to not waste the time we have. I can sit and come up with excuses about why I should rest and not do anything all day long, or I can do something with my kids to teach them to serve others.