Friesencold

I’ve been thinking about story a lot lately. I just finished reading Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and my favorite part of the book was the part about Bob Goff and his family and the story they are living. I want to have a story like that, or just a story period. I am going to go back and write down all the lines I underlined in a little bird notebook my sister gave me for Christmas. I love words and quotes and lines from books, and I love having them all together in one place so they can add up to something in my life.

Here is just one line I loved from this book, “You become the character in the story you are living, and whatever you were is gone.”

I am also thinking about placing an order for some new supplements from Hallelujah Acres. I have never taken a greens supplement before, but now that Hallelujah Acres has introduced a berry blend of their well-known BarleyMax product, I was thinking I might want to try it out. I worked it out, and the cost to take BarleyMax Berry would be $1 a day.

I also want to order some of their professional strength probiotics. I realized after starting to see the chiropractor that the probiotics I have been taking don’t have nearly enough strains, especially if I am hoping for that to help resolve the hormonal issue I referenced earlier. The chiro recommends 20 billion strains a day, and for me, he said 40 billion might be good for a while. The cost of this amount would also be $1 a day. So just for these 2 supplements alone, I would be spending $2 a day on myself. That’s not counting the Iodine supplement I am also considering, or the Vitamin D3, Vitamin B12, multivitamin, or chia gel I am currently using.

I was thinking about the 67 and the 20 which are numbers our church talks about all the time. 67% of people in the world are far from God, and 20% of people in the world live on less than $1 a day. And here I was, fixing to spend $2 a day to take a concentrated greens supplement and probiotics. I am thinking about what I think about this.

What if I took that $1 a day I was going to use on BarleyMax and actually did something different and specific with it?

I think it is so interesting that there are so many causes that a person could get involved with. For example, I was at the train station one day last week with the kids. I took them there to see the trains but it was cold enough that day that we had to go inside the train station to wait for the next train to come. I saw an old man sitting there in the train station. He was wearing glasses and he was holding the paperback novel he was reading very close to his face. I couldn’t see the man’s face as his back was to me, but I kept looking at how close he was holding the book to his face in order to see the words. It made me think, what if he needs a new prescription for his glasses and he can’t afford that, so he has to make do with the glasses he has and hold whatever he is reading so close to his eyes in order to see the words? I felt very sad for that man. I told TJ about him that night, and I have thought of him and felt sad about him multiple times since that day.

What if I found a way that I could give the money I would have spent on BarleyMax to an organization that helps people who can’t afford to pay for getting glasses, or new prescriptions, or vision check ups? That would be a true gift, to enable people to see. What if I couldn’t see the words that mean so much to me? Without the words, I would not be nearly as healed as I am. Words heal me in ways I cannot describe with words and what if that healing is what I would be offering by helping people to see with their eyes? I am just thinking about all this and wanted to share it with you.

I also wanted to tell you what is on Bauer’s little mind. Besides loving Caillou, which we discovered during the itchy days of chicken pox when all he did all day was watch TV, Bauer is truly head-over-heels about the little Lego instruction booklet and product catalog that came with the Lego City police helicopter set I bought for him recently.

I have never seen Bauer so attached to one thing for so long (except Tucker). He has been carrying the little booklet around with him for days and almost always has it turned to the one page with the big green Lego airplane that sits in the middle of the Lego airport scene. He says multiple times a day how much he loves that airplane. If he happens to forget about the Lego booklet for a little while, as soon as he remembers, he is quick to ask me where his airplane book is (and of course, I always know). He wanted to go to Target the other day just to look at the Lego stuff. He wanted to know when his birthday is and if he can get the airplane for his birthday. He wanted to know if he can get it sooner with the money in his jars or if he sells stuff he has (yes, my idea). He keeps wanting to know how much the airplane costs. He took the booklet in the bedroom before his nap today and wanted to lay on the bed and look at the airplane page for a few minutes before he went to sleep. He wanted the book left open to the airplane page when I put it on the nightstand by the bed while he took his nap.

This whole thing is just so cute for me to see, that Bauer has a desire. Something he really truly wants. I like the idea that we can try to teach Bauer to be resourceful through this want of his. Like, if you want something in life, what can you trade or give up to get what you want? I am also thinking, though, about how to teach him that we are not entitled to anything, that all we have is God’s, and that what other people need is way more important than what we want.

Here is the spring rules chart that Bauer and I made the other day. The rules are the same, but it was time for an updated look. Bauer loved decorating the chart with spring stickers and he did a great job not putting them over any of the words.

Here are the new vitamins I had promised a picture of a while back. Bauer takes the VegLife Vegan Kids Multiple multivitamin at breakfast, the Natures Way Primadophilus Kids cherry chewable at lunch, and the Dr. Sears Go Fish Brainy Kidz Children’s Omega-3 DHA soft chew with dinner. The best part is he likes all 3 and wants to take them.

I had a great time in NYC with my mom. Here are a few things we did:
-Saw Wicked and it was amazing
-Saw Alexander McCall Smith and I got his autograph
-Visited Times Square

-Had some great meals, including Toasties, Zen Palate, and Houston’s (yes, the Houston’s)
-Went to Rockefeller Center and shopped in Anthropologie and a few other stores

-Shopped a little in the SoHo District
-Bought some jeans for me
-Bought some shoes for my mom
-Watched “Little Miss Perfect” at midnight on the WE channel
-Bought fruit from a fruit vendor
-Visited FAO Schwartz and the Toys R Us with the big ferris wheel inside
-Bought Bauer a t-shirt from the M&M’s store

-Looked at cool cards at Papyrus
-Read in our hotel room
-Did a ton of walking which meant lots of time outside

I already want to go back to New York. And I want to take TJ and have him see Wicked (I want to see it again!). I have visited NYC 4 times now and each time I like it better. Thank you, Mama, for a great early birthday present!

We’ve started Bauer on a new multi-vitamin. It’s the same one my friend Lisa’s little girl Brooke takes. I was so happy for the recommend from Lisa because we were not successful with the last vitamins we tried to get Bauer to take. I also recently ordered some DHA chews for Bauer and two different probiotics, one for Bauer and one for me. All of that should arrive in the mail soon. And all of that means I had to create a new category in our budget for Vitamins. I will show you what we got once our shipment arrives. But for now, here’s the vitamin Bauer has started taking:

I’ve started on a serious regimen of ground flaxseed in the past few days. This is to help with some symptoms of low estrogen that I’ve been experiencing due to breastfeeding. I had some similar issues back when I was nursing Bauer, but this time the problem seems compounded. I recently learned that flaxseeds contain phytoestrogens and can be helpful in resolving symptoms of low estrogen. I already had ground flaxseed in our fridge which I would often add to Bauer’s oatmeal.

But I didn’t realize how beneficial flaxseed is to women’s health, so I just bought some fresh flaxseeds and ground them in our little coffee grinder. I keep a jar of the ground seeds in our fridge, front and center on the top shelf so I won’t forget to use it. Now I’m adding ground flaxseed to our smoothies, banana-oatmeal bars, and any pasta, rice, or quinoa dish that I can. I also added some flax oil to my soup at lunch yesterday. I found a lot of good information about flaxseeds at World’s Healthiest Foods.

I was pretty excited the other day when I realized I can buy two of our favorite store-bought packaged goods on Amazon under Groceries.

We recently starting buying the Lundberg Butternut Squash Risotto to have on hand for a lunch option because it is quick to make, goes great with green peas, can be made with rice milk, and Bauer loves it. TJ and I are pretty hooked too. The only problem is that one box, which lasts about one meal, is $3.19 and that’s at Meijer (the cheapest place in general). Everytime I go to Meijer, I check to see if the risotto is on sale, and if it’s not, I buy just 1 box. But then it’s gone. Well, Amazon sells a 12-box package for $25.25 which is only $2.10 per box. We are Amazon Prime members (that’s a great Christmas gift we receive each year from my parents) which allows you to get Free 2-Day Shipping on almost everything. So it really does end up being $2.10 a box. I haven’t ordered the 12 boxes of risotto yet, but I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

The other product I found on Amazon was the Back to Nature Crispy Wheats. TJ and I used to eat Wheat Thins a lot back when we lived in Orlando and before we knew about High Fructose Corn Syrup and the like. The Crispy Wheats are all natural and taste even better than Wheat Thins in my opinion. I know crackers are not a whole-foods plant-based product (anything in a box probably can’t be classified as a whole food), but as far as crackers go, they are a pretty healthy option when added to a healthy plant-based diet. Bauer enjoys dipping the crackers in mashed avocado. I like them plain. TJ likes them either way. I had stopped buying the crackers very often simply because the price for a box had increased to $3.39. I would always try to wait for them to go on sale at Whole Foods and then stock up. The sale price is usually 2/$5, but then I saw them on Amazon – a package of 6 boxes for $14.54, or $2.42 per box. Yea!

I’ll post a couple recipes for you next.