Forced lockdown
of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door
armed searches without
warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched
without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut
down. These were
not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic,
but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United
States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the
military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused
perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing
provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should
have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation
of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us
as much or more than the attack itself. What has been
sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect
and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics
in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media
crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the
new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads
and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras
pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught
the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance
to make a getaway.
The “shelter
in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts
was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police
state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check
on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect. No, the suspect
was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public.
He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to
the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance
cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs
with the police. As journalist
Tim Carney wrote
last week:
“Law
enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects,
but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public
to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the
FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance
videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private
businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on
their property.”
Sadly,
we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government
is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is
to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role
is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can
only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in
Boston.
Three people
were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that
over 40
persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes
ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These
cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks
and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens. This is unprecedented
and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about
our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands
that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend
to protect us.
While the loss of human life in tragic incidents like these is disgusting, it is not an excuse to cower in fear or allow the police or government to take away your freedoms. You have the right to protect yourself, even though that right is under attack. Be vigilant, take precautions, but never allow your rights to be taken away! There will come a day when government won't be holding your hand and you need to prepare for it.
This song makes me tear up every time. It was written by a soldier and it is about the Iraq war. Makes me sick to my stomach that these stupid politicians risk the lives of our citizens for absolutely nothing. If you wouldn't send your own child to fight, then stay away from our children! Our policemen of the world attitude is causing our freedom at home to die. We will more than likely be in a new war in a matter of weeks, days or even hours. May God protect our sons and daughters and bring them home safely.
It is hard to get your daily intake of fruits and veggies, so we make it easier by making smoothies out of them, which the kids call smooties. As I write this, Landon and I are sharing a berry (blueberry, blackberry, raspberry), almond milk, kale, broccoli and flax smooty. Yummy!
Every Most mornings I make myself a little potion that jump-starts my system and gets me ready for the day. No, not coffee. I am just not into coffee, I do use it for other things, but more about that in a later post. In the morning I get up and get Aurora ready for school, I put 16oz of spring water into our coffee maker to warm it up. I then use 6oz of the water to brew a mug of green tea (my favorite is Traditional Medicinals Green Tea with Lemongrass) and put the rest in a large glass. I then squeeze the juice out of one lemon and put it in the large glass. Once the green tea is done brewing, I pour it into the large glass as well. Voila! I now have a morning booster that is good for all sorts of things, like preventing cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers and Parkinsons and detoxing the body, It is also good for your immune system and highly beneficial to A's, since our immune systems aren't typically the greatest, especially if our diet consists of sugar. Every once and awhile I will put in some Himalayan pink salt. You can read about the benefits by clicking the link. We bought ours at Costco and have been really pleased. The Costco one has a grinder, so it just tastes fresher and less chemically treated.
So now you know my morning secret recipe! What do you consume first thing in the morning?
Before we jetted off to the beach, we had our first teacher conference with Aurora's teacher. We know Aurora as the bossy firecracker. Her teacher sees a whole different side. :) She had nothing but praise for Aurora. She said not only is she excelling in all her school work but she is a good person. She includes kids that don't usually have anyone to play with. She helps other students and has great manners. All the girls in class write about Aurora in their journals. They talk about how nice she is and how they like to play with her and how they want to come over to her house and play barbies. She is also quite popular with the boys, which has Russ researching all girl schools.
She is reading at a 2nd grade level, she is in the highest math and is starting to write stories. We couldn't be prouder. We apparently did something right, that and the fact that she has some great genes. She tested above the first grade level for reading and math in October when she started Fairview. It is a great feeling knowing that I taught my little girl how to read, write and do math before we let her go to a public school. It makes all the hard days seem worth it. She has a great foundation to build off of. She has gotten into trouble once for whisper talking when it was time to pay attention to the teacher, now that sounds more like my daughter.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
If you can call packing for 6 people and taking care of 4 little kiddos that run 4 different ways, a vacation. See you next week!
When we started making changes to our diet, we also looked at ways to limit our exposure to other things. Our water is heavily treated with chlorine, so much so that it sometimes smells like a swimming pool in our bathroom. So we installed a chlorine filter on our shower a few years ago and couldn't be happier. My skin doesn't get all dry and itchy and I can take a long, steamy shower and not feel as bad about inhaling the steam. You can read about chlorine effects here: http://www.waterbenefitshealth.com/chlorine-in-drinking-water.html
Quick tip: Another way to offset the effects of chlorine in the bathtub is to add baking soda to the water.
We also use brita filters to filter our tap water. There is a significant difference in taste. I have not drank out of our tap in a looong time, but I did the other day and I had to spit it out. It tasted like pool water.
I realize that just about everything in our modern world causes cancer, but I pick and choose the things that make my family and I feel more comfortable. I hate the smell of chlorine and don't think I should inhale it every time I take a shower. I prefer to shower with water that is as pure and as naked as I am. :) If the chlorine doesn't get me, I am sure the wireless internet or the wireless "smart" meter for our electricity will get me. It is time consuming and it is also expensive to worry about everything, so I start small and go from there.
This is the almond milk that we made earlier this week.
After much research and studies it was discovered that dairy is not good for you. The government has been feeding people lies. Big shocker, right! About 75 percent of the world's population is genetically unable to properly digest milk and other dairy products. Both A and O should avoid dairy, so we switched to almond or rice milk a couple of years ago. Of course I still have ice cream and the occasional cheese, especially on pizza. But I usually get a sore throat, a cough and notice my nose starts to run. I have experienced these symptoms my entire life, I call it "ice cream cough." Aurora gets it as well. We are pretty much poisoning ourselves every time we eat ice cream, but it tastes so darn good! :)
We had been buying our almond milk at the grocery store, but recent research has found that the food additive carageenan causes extreme digestive upset and possibly cancer. This additive is in all alternative milks. I knew you could make your own milk, but never was brave enough to try. We bought a vitamix at Costco a couple of years ago and I am not ashamed (maybe a little ashamed) that I pretty much used it as a homemade blizzard maker and margarita maker. So a little google bing search later, I came across this video. The most time consuming part is peeling the almond skins off the soaked almonds. After that, it is a breeze. I knew we had 4 little food critics to pass this by and so far the reviews have been great. Aurora said it tasted just like the store bought stuff and the boys said "yum" as they drank it. So I guess it is a keeper. We use our milk in cereal, smoothies and any recipe that calls for cow milk. I will be making a new batch tonight, so hopefully it is just as good the second time around.
This weekend I will experiment with finding a yummy almond milk ice cream recipe. I will let you know if I find a good one.
We all know, at least I hope you all know that the food industry has slowly poisoned us over the years. It started in the 50's with fast food, breakfast cereal, soda and TV dinners. This food is so overly processed that you aren't getting any nutrients out of it even when they add some vitamins in to it! It is around this time that people started getting heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other food related diseases more often. We now have a 50% chance of getting some sort of cancer and that is due in a large part to our food intake. It is not my intention to be preachy or judgmental. I am a food addict. I struggle with knowing what is in the food and still shoveling it down my throat. My main weakness is sugar. And once I get a taste for it, it is all over. I know that the food companies are putting sweeteners and additives that make my brain feel a complete euphoria when I eat a brownie and I still can't stop myself. I have been better at limiting myself, but I fly off the bandwagon A LOT! I made a complete over haul to our diet after Aurora was born, but each time I got pregnant that all flew out the window. Why would I want eat broccoli when I was pregnant when I could have a milkshake?? It got really bad with Landon's pregnancy. Not only was I eating burgers from Burger King almost daily, the kids were now joining me. If you see any pictures of Wyatt and Trevor around this time, you would see little chubby cheeked chipmunks. It was doing a number on them and I chose to ignore it, because you can't be pregnant forever, right? An unplanned pregnancy that came just months off of a double pregnancy can do a number on your mental well being, paired with the fact that I had to take care of 3 little ones too, it was a recipe for disaster. I gained 30lbs with Landon, the most ever for me and he ended up being well over 8lbs, my heaviest baby. I looked bigger with Landon's pregnancy than I ever did with the twins, that is saying a lot.
We are now almost 4 years from the time our little baby joined the family. 4 years! Can't use the baby weight excuse anymore. I will pat myself on the back, just this once, for the fact that I lost every pound that I gained with Landon's pregnancy and technically Aurora's pregnancy. While I like to talk about weight and we seem a country obsessed with weight, I am realizing more and more that it is about health. I have been relatively healthy (knock on wood) for the first 30 years of my life. I had 3 healthy pregnancies and delivered 4 healthy babies. You can't ask for anything more. As I hit my 30's this year, I feel my health is starting to become an issue. My body can't bounce back from my food binges like it use to. Any new exercise program leaves me sore for longer than it use to. I hate to say that at 30 I am getting old, because it makes people in their 40's, 50's and beyond laugh out loud. But if this is how I feel at 30, I don't want to know what 40 may feel like.
I have 4 kids that are full of energy and vitality. I am the person that makes their lifelong food habits. I am the one responsible for nourishing my children. While I wish my parents took a different route when I was growing up, so I don't have to struggle as much. I am thankful for the experience because I now know what needs to be done. I have been down the fast food, frozen dinner route and I know where it leads. My parents weren't aware of the poison they were feeding us. We were essentially and still are, guinea pigs for the food industry. People my age, some I went to school with have already had chemo for cancer, or strokes. To say that it had nothing to do with diet, is foolish.
I remember when the low-fat diet came on the scene. My Mom bought low-fat Twinkies that tasted like cardboard. Anything that said low fat usually tasted like crap. Then came the sugar free junk, because people were starting to get diabetes at an alarming rate. Crap. It all tasted like crap. Now studies are showing that low fat diets are leading causes of heart disease and that "diet" pop is actually causing diabetes and cancer. I am glad that my parents never feel for the diet pop scheme. I may have been a health nightmare. I don't care what sweetener they come up with, if I am going to drink pop it will be one with old fashioned sugar in it. Then high fructose corn syrup came along and started replacing sugar in everything. Now they are adding soy to everything, and it is genetically modified, meaning our bodies can't process it. I dare you to find anything in the grocery aisle that is in a box that doesn't have soy in it. Lets not forget that most farmers feed their animals corn and soy. So even though you are eating a steak, it may still have corn or soy in it.
I am responsible for the choices I make and while the food additives in most foods cause me to desire more of it, I can't place the blame solely on the food industry. They are trying to make money. But we as consumers have allowed them to make money off of our health. They will still continue to make the crap as long as we buy the crap. Once again we have taken something so simple and twisted it all up. God made plants for us to eat. He gave us fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds and animals to eat. Couldn't we just leave it alone? Nope, we had to start feeding those animals "feed" that has nothing to do with their god intended diet. Then we had to take the grains God gave us and modify them to grow bigger and better. Who cares if our bodies don't recognize it as food as long as someone is making money.
Over the years we have taken steps to rid ourselves of the Franken food. While we still eat the crap, we don't do it everyday. We use almond milk, but recently discovered that the additive carageenan is horrible on the digestive system and started making our own almond milk. It is a pain to make, but it is worth it. The kids drink fresh veggie juice out of our juicer. They gobble up smoothies. They ask for vegetables. They have probably had more variety of veggies in their short lives, than I ever have. Aurora eats raw beets and radishes, I remember years ago I actually vomited when someone tried to get me to eat a beet. Now I can't get enough beets. It is my favorite thing to juice. Wyatt pleads for more green beans at dinner. Trevor and Landon eat carrots until I make them stop. I may feed my children junk food occasionally, but they still have a taste for God's bounty. That is one thing that I am immensely proud of. Their Mother may struggle with food and make poor choices, but they are exposed to real food and consistently make good choices.
I am working on myself and have made a lot of progress. I eat things now that I would have never eaten before. It sucks that I have to think about food, pretty much every minute of every day. As the chef in the house I have to make a meal plan, a grocery list and cook this food for 5 other people. It is a daily struggle and some have compared it to alcoholism. Which sort of make me cringe because alcoholics destroy the relationships around them and do stupid things while intoxicated or to score some alcohol. I like to think that my food addiction hasn't gotten that far. I have made the decision to stop worrying about how much I weigh, I know it is easier said than done, and start worrying about my health. I will focus on making healthy decisions each day and transforming the foods we eat to make them healthy for us all. I will share some recipes on the blog and give some progress reports, good or bad. This will mean more blog posts and more emails if you are signed up, so please let me know if you want me to take you off the email list!!
Of course along with eating healthy comes exercise. I am a type A, so my body responds differently to stress. It takes a long time for me to recover from it. So I am choosing light walking at least 3 times a week and Qi Gong and yoga. I will focus on stress release. With 4 kids, this may prove to be quite the challenge. :) We also have a 4 day beach trip coming up next week and as we all know vacationing has a way to bring out the inner food binger. I am taking "precautions" to limit the damage and will let you know how it goes.
I am taking steps toward bettering myself and my family and welcome you guys along for the ride.
