Adventure

I hope everyone had a great Passover and/or Resurrection Sunday. Our weekend was a little crazy, but good. DH was involved in both the Friday and Sunday services at church, acting in a drama and singing with the choir/worship team.

I got to go on a really fun outing last night. It had been a rough weekend. On Saturday DH went to take care of a friends' kids so they could celebrate their anniversary while I stayed home with our three.

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For some reason all three kids have decided to test the limits to the max, with behavior that we've never allowed and I've never seen to this extent from any of them--blatant disobedience, hitting, etc. I expected Baby E to be doing her two-year-old-testing-the-limits thing around now, but I wasn't expecting to get it from all three kids at the same time. Hopefully a few more days (weeks?) of consistency will get us back to our normal sweet, cheerful, cooperative kids.

On Saturday it was nearly constant, with the kids pushing my buttons and each others' every few minutes all.day.long. If a child is really determined to disobey, there's really nothing a parent can do. I tried making things fun, trying to minimize the battles created in the first place, imposing consequences, lecturing, keeping them busy, everything I could think of. Nothing worked, at least in the short-term. For instance, you can put a child to bed, but you can't force them to actually sleep.

By last night I really needed a break. So DH took all three kids for the evening while I went on an exploration.

I got on the internet and, with a compilation of information from the phone listings, vegan and organic websites, and other web searches, I mapped all the stores in a particular area that carried a large selection of natural and/or organic foods. Then I started off to see how many I could visit in one evening.

It was so much fun. Each little store or co-op had its own personality and products. One carried stinging nettles in the produce section and organic free-range grassfed beef from a neighbor/friend of my grandparents. It was fun to see a name I recognized on the package--I may have to call them and see about buying some meat directly.

Another store had an in-house bakery which used no enriched bread flour in any of their products. I found all kinds of breads we could eat, both with yeast for DH and the older kids, and sourdough (free of commercial corn-grown yeast) for Baby E and myself. They also carried 100% olive oil shower gel, deliciously scented with pieces of mint and rosemary leaves. What a luxury to find liquid soap I can use. A couple of the stores also carried a line of shampoo and other personal care products that looks like a possibility for me.

The third store I visited carried my new favorite saeurkraut for a better price than I'd seen it elsewhere. They had yeast-free bread from a local artisan baker marked down to $1 per 2-lb. loaf, fresh that morning. They had a nice selection of organic produce, and they have a farmer's market one day a week with activities for children.

This morning we had sourdough artisan bread with rose hip jelly. It was so delicious that we ate almost the entire loaf. But, at $1 for a huge loaf, that's okay. It's a far cry from the tough, sour, frozen yeast-free bread we usually buy at 5 or 6 dollars for 8 ounces or a pound.

This week I'm going to try making my own sourdough starter and sauerkraut, as well as making some soup to freeze and working on the garden. And, of course, homeschooling. It should be a fun week.