Happy Birthday to Me

This month I celebrated my 34th birthday. I cannot believe I'm 34. I don't feel 34. I don't look 34? (Don't answer that.)
Anywho, my birthday came and I have so much to be thankful for. The Good Lord has blessed me with a wonderful, witty, sometimes not-so-charming husband who cooks, repairs toilets, washers, and super hero heads (but fumbles through diaper changes after almost 4 years of practice! But he DOES change them), 2 beautifully amazingly perfect children with impressive vocabularies, excellent appetites, and who are 100% Mamma's Babies, a brother who is my friend, my family, there's not really a word to describe what he means to me and to us, a mom and a dad who would drop anything and everything to do what we need, a successful career, a humble home, 2 dogs, a high maintenance cat,an abundance of fun and reliable friends, and a partridge in a...
One of my thoughts was, "Wow, I'm lucky." But not really. Luck has nothing to do with it. The Good Lord has blessed me, yes, and I've made lots of decision, put up a lot of elbow grease and hard work to get where I am. I'm so proud of what I have and of who I have around me. Happy Birthday!

My favorites

Going Green

You can't get crazy about growing your own food without changing everything else. Here's a start at going green inside.

Food!

As most of my friends & family know, I love food! I love to cook, bake, shop, prepare, and eat good food with those I love. Our garden is a might bigger than last year's (see awesome photos on down) and we have an awesome compost bin. Maddie and Jason know all of our fruit and vegetable waste heads outside to the composter. I love that M & J have helped with the garden and are actively involved in tending to it. We've recently joined a CSA (consumer shared agriculture) where any day now, we'll start picking up a weekly share of food grown from a family farm, we'll soon be purchasing our eggs from a farm as well. If I could find raw milk at a fair price, we'd even switch over.

My lastest concern/fixation is on genetically engineered crops. Watching a documentary I learned that corporations, specifically, Monsanto, can now own by having a patent on seeds. This patent allows them to control their seeds as well as their prodigies (offspring or other seeds and crops) regardless of there they spread or how they get there. That allows these corportations to essentially own almost all crops as seeds spread so easily. These companies are changing the seeds at the cellular level by adding ecoli DNA to make them resistant to their particular brand of herbicides and pesticides. They are even experimenting with altering seeds so that they must be sprayed with their own brand of starting agent in order to begin germination! That's terrifying when you think that a large corporation is controlling our food supply. Because these corporations have so many of their employees in Washington and on the payrolls at the FDA, there is no regulation on tinkering with the genetic make-up of seeds, they are patenting all kinds of seeds, and there is currently no law requiring food that contains genetically engineered crops to be labeled!

UGH! I think I'm going to convince Trav to take our backyard garden & compost pile and head to a deserted island, I'll send yall pictures and postcards.

Happy Trails,

Dishes are Done!

Tonight Maddie & Jason "helped" me do the dishes. It took us 40 minutes. I also got to mop the floor tonight.