One month of being vegan

Like I mentioned in my last post, Kevin and I are going to do one month of being vegan. We have been vegetarian for several years and want to see what it is like being vegan. We will blog that entire month (January) about our feelings and our daily menu as some have been asking what the heck we would eat. As I mentioned before, I don't think it will be that much of a swing as we are just removing dairy and eggs. The egg thing might be a little challenge as it is in so many things so we will get good at reading labels. So here is the link to our blog for those interested in following: http://veganforamonth-snavleys.blogspot.com

SNOW

We got dumped on with about 18 inches of snow this week. The kids are in heaven but the roads get so bad. There have been several accidents, some of them fatal. The wind has kicked up so the trees are bare once again. It sure is pretty when the trees are drooping with snow but it never lasts long here.

The last couple of weeks have been so busy between me over-socializing and Kevin having lots of choir performances, many of them 35 miles away. I love to be social and entertain but I seem to overdo it. I am now in disengage mode. I just need to shut down for a while and not have a lot of people around me. I am also having another one of those weeks where I am aching to be on the road. I'm just longing for simplicity right now. I feel like we have gone back to the very thing we were trying to leave behind when we pulled down the Alaska Hwy. in our motorhome. We live a little more simply but I long for REAL simple or as the White family calls it......................BARENAKED. I am going to start with removing anything out of my home that complicates my life more than it does enhance it. I just need to find my center again.

I think what I need is an unschooling conference right now!! I need to be around people who are sweet and gentle to their children, people who embrace the good things in life, people who are loving and tolerant and.....FREE! April is just around the corner right? Life Is Good Conference here we come!!!

Kevin and I are about to experience one month of being vegan. We are both vegetarian but we would like to experience being vegan so we have both agreed to a one month comittment. I am also going to give up my coffee for one month to see if it makes a difference in how I feel. I have been fighting acne on my chin for four years now and I also have TMJ, which can be very painful. Apparently caffeine irritates the TMJ so I am going to see. We are going to blog about our experience on a different blog. I will post the link as soon as I get it started. Our start day is Jan. 1.

Readers Digest Interview With Will Smith

These are a couple of questions from an interview that Readers Digest had with Will Smith. I think he is an unschooler and doesn't even realize it :)



Interviewer: Have you ever thought about going back to college?

Will: The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school. Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests – not on comprehension of the material and its application to your life. Jada and I homeschool our children, because the date of the Boston Tea Party does not matter.

Interviewer: But there are some basics in education that need to be taught.

Will: Of course there are. Reading, writing and arithmetic, because those are the languages of our country.

Interviewer: So, you don’t see any reason to go back to a formal education yourself?

Will: I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand in front of a class.

Interviewer: They put physics in a book, but I know I could never be a physicist.

Will: The first step is you have to say that you can.

busy, busy

Wow, what a busy week!

Wednesday was one of those days that the kids just wanted to experiment all day long! It was great! Calista painted and blew up her volcano. Of course, we couldn't just do it once, we did it over and over until we were out of vinegar. She wanted to know how volcanoes "really" blow up so she checked out a National Geographic video this weekend. Then the kids started playing with cornstarch and water, one of their favorites that we call oobleck. Calista wanted to see what happened when you cooked it, so she made pancakes out of it. We learned that it makes a glue, of sorts. You will notice in the pictures that Calista was too busy to even get dressed, she just wore her jammies all day.

Tristan LOVES to cook so he started getting a bunch of ingredients out to make some things. He had seen someone eating chocolate covered raisins so he thought he would experiment with different ways to make them. They put the raisins in with a bunch of chocolate, in the saucepan, while the chocolate was melting. That didn't work so well but they thought it was pretty tasty. They also made some chocolate chip pancakes. Tristan has been doing quite a bit of experimental cooking lately. One of the things he made last week was eggs with cheese, green onion, and celery, it was actually quite good and we have eaten a lot of them this week. Maybe we will have a chef in the family :)

Calista has been into running businesses. In the last couple of weeks we have had a mail order business, a video rental, a bank, a restaurant, and a coffee shop. She takes it quite seriously, there is no pretending! Cash register, money, adding machine w/receipts, packages that are wrapped and taped, menus, real food, the whole nine yards!

Kevin has 1 1/2 weeks of concerts starting yesterday. They gave a concert at the Anchorage Museum yesterday afternoon. They had the choir lined up the grand staircase overlooking a pool thing. It was a beautiful concert and a beautiful setting. They have two school tours, another concert that is part of a nativity celebration, and three full concerts (three hours long). In between they have rehearsals, including a four hour one! It is amazing to me what these kids do but they love it. I will post pictures soon. I didn't have my camera yesterday but a friend of ours took a bunch so hopefully I will get some this week.

Martin's car is in the shop this week, getting repaired from a hit and run. Since he has to use my vehicle this week we will be able to do some stuff for Christmas. The kids and I are busy making little gifts and we plan on making a gingerbread house this week.