We heart mini donkeys

We happen to think that mini donkeys are downright adorable and the other day we saw a mother and baby as we were driving by. So we stopped and asked if we could take a closer peek. The owner was kind enough to turn off the fence and let the kids have a little visit.

   This little baby is 3 weeks old and his name is Jumping Jack. 

“Okay everyone I am going to turn the fence on…..NOW”!

Gotta love the perks of homeschooling. Spontaneous field trips!

Losing it....the weight I mean.

We started eating real whole foods last fall. But I hadn't been losing any weight. Dan asked me if it would be motivating for me to have a goal/reward/carrot. I said well, yeah! So we came up with the goal of losing 10 pounds and he would get me the Wii balance board and Wii Fit Plus. I accepted the challenge. It took me about two months and I am still losing. I LOVE playing on Wii fit, but that's not really how I'm losing weight. I promised my facebook friends I would share my secret so here's what I'm doing.

• Eating whole foods as much as possible, avoiding processed foods, corn syrup and artificial sweeteners.
  
• Replacing vegetable oils or shortenings with traditional fats and oils.


• Drinking raw whole milk and eating full fat dairy, butter, cheese, etc.


• Limiting breads and giving up processed cereal.


• And my number one secret for making this all work.....COCONUT OIL!
  

Here's why I think the extra virgin coconut oil is the catalyst for my weight loss. It contains medium chain fatty acids that increase metabolism, keep me feeling satisfied longer, and reduce my sugar cravings. I cook my eggs in it for breakfast. I put it on my oatmeal, in my coffee or tea, or make a warm vanilla milk drink with it. I sometimes cook or bake with it when it fits the recipe. I use a couple of tablespoons a day, and when I hit a plateau with my weight, I make sure to work on incorporating it into my diet more. Find out more about coconut oil, good fats, and weight loss here.

So that's my secret. It's working well, I'm not hungry, I try to limit portions, but I still eat dessert sometimes! I'm trying to excercise too. I have lost 15 pounds so far and am hoping to lose more. I feel like the food I am eating is nourishing me, and my body is letting go of what I don't need now, that it's happier :)

How to get a really strong iced coffee for $1.05 (and rip off DD)

Yeah. I'm pretty pleased. I just got this really robust iced coffee for really cheap.

It's because I married a Java Genius. When I'm at home my JG just makes me an iced coffee with espresso, ice and half 'n half. But he figured out a way to get this same Beautiful Beverage when we're on the road, without paying a lot of money for it.

And although I'm not willing to share my JG, I will share this fantastic secret with all of my Dear Readers. Here's whatcha do.

Go to Dunkin Donuts and ask for: a double espresso, on ice, with cream (and sugar, if that's how you take it). But hold on, it's not quite that simple. Now comes the hard part. You must wait while the teller is momentarily befuddled. "Can you repeat that?" he says. And you do. "That will be a dollar five," he says. And yes, that's $1.05 for a BB at DD without even having your own JG!

So, DR, are you curious why it costs so much less than a regular iced coffee? It's because you're not paying for water. A double espresso (also known as a turbo shot at DD) is only $1.05, and they don't charge extra for cream or ice. If you make the mistake of ordering an iced coffee with a turbo shot you're going to pay somewhere around $3 which is just too much to shell out very often.

And if you don't drink coffee and you still want a novel way to cool off you can try Lily's method:

Let me know if you try either of these hot tips, I'd love to know what the tellers tell YOU!

A few of my favorite things

The beautiful shape of these mangos. What a fantastic Designer!

Blue sky in the background, chubby cheeks in the foreground.

Morning sun making shadow masks, jammies stained with that one little sip of Dad's coffee.

Bair piggy toes peeking out from blue jeans, gripping the floor with all their might.

This bright yellow vintage highchair, it makes me happy when I look at it.

What would you do?

What would you do if someone threw things at you from across the room

What would you do if they threw something at your child and she screamed in pain

What would you do if someone followed your child around day after day and screamed insults and accusations at her

What would you do if they ripped photos of your children out of their frames and destroyed them

What would you do if someone could make your child cringe with just a word or a look

What would you do if someone made your baby cry in fear

What would you do if someone like this was with you and your family 24/7

What would you do if this someone ... was your little girl?

Beatrix LIVE!

Bea the Biter

Bea and the Barnyard

Bea and the Basket

b&m&b: Real Food on the Run

One of the big challenges for our family in eating real food right now is what to eat when we are in town and haven't packed a lunch. Cadi has been going through fast food withdrawal, but we are making progress.

When we are downtown on a weekday we like to go to Bagel Central, a local bagel shop that makes fresh homemade food. I get the girls a bagel with melted cheddar, and I like the potato pancake served with applesauce and sour cream. Especially in the winter it's nice to be able to have something warm and tasty to nourish us during our busy day of errands and appointments. Plus, it's one of my favorite spaces; exposed brick, long tables, and now they even have WiFi!
Tonight, we were out shopping and had planned to head over to Bagel Central but they close early on Friday night for the Sabbath. Out next stop was Target so we decided to throw in the dishtowel on getting good food and get something from the snack bar. I will NOT tell you what Dan and the kids ate other than to say it was "foodless food" as Holly has christened it. I was

going to eat the same thing for lack of better choices, when I discovered that Starbucks has oatmeal! I mixed in the dried fruit, nuts, and brown sugar, and enjoyed my sweet but nourishing supper. In fact, I kinda kept going on and on about it to Dan, who was not nearly as thrilled as I was. Our dinner entertainment was this little girl sitting in her stroller making funny faces and laughing to our uproarious response.
The girls were also highly amused by Dan's warning to them that they might not be able to get pretzels at Target because the machine might be broken or something. When we got up to the counter, lo and behold, the woman told us the pretzel machine was broken! (Miller family smirks and giggles.) She said that the pretzels in the case were just for display. I'm thinkin' those ones probably have as much nutrient content as the ones they make anyway.

I still need to work on more ideas for eating on the run, but at least now I have two. Tomorrow I'll be making granola bars, which would also be a good thing to pack for snacks in the car, but I have a feeling they won't last long around here!

Get out and play in it!

'Bout time for a blog post with family pictures eh? I thought so too. When it snows, my family has a tendency to be gloomy about it. But once you get out there and start playing in it together, it is kind of fun. That is, if you can find your boots, and mittens, and your ski pants feel just right.

Beatrix, waiting for a snowflake

Lily, on the slide

Mom thinks I can't possible move in this snowsuit,
but the bathroom door is open and now is my chance.

Seals do it, and so can I. Slap-swish, slap-swish.

Bub-bye.

Merry Christmas 2009

Make a Smilebox photobook

Bread and Milk and Blackberries for Supper

I haven't blogged in forever. I have thought about blogging at least every other day. Tonight the kids are in bed and Dan is watching a movie I don't care to watch, and it seems like a good time to just start.

You might remember bread, milk and blackberries from the story of Peter Rabbit. This is what the little bunnies had for a simple supper when Peter was sent to bed with chamomile tea. I am introducing Bread, Milk, and Blackberries for Supper as a new "foodie" feature of my blog. I have blogged about food before, and posted a recipe here and there. But recently food has become more of an interest for me.... specifically "real" food, like bread, and milk and blackberries. Let me tell you where I'm coming from.

For Mother's Day Dan got me some ducklings. When the starter feed ran out I went back to the farmer's supply store to get more and it was out of stock. I asked if my ducklings were old enough to switch to corn, and was told that they were. So I brought home a bag of cracked corn. I hadn't started giving them kitchen scraps yet, so all they had was corn and water. Being a very new farmer-person I thought that was good enough. Soon though, the ducklings started having seizures. It was so disturbing to watch that I didn't want to go out and see them. I went online to see what could be wrong with them and discovered that they had symptoms of vitamin deficiency. Especially the vitamin E found the green stuff they should have been eating. So that night I fixed them a big pan of spinach and scraps with vitamin E capsules drizzled on top. They loved it, and the seizures resolved right away once their poor little bird brains were sufficiently nourished. I started feeding them kitchen scraps with lots of green stuff and mixed rabbit pellets in with the corn, which they thrived on.

A few months later I came across a book called "Real food for mother and baby" by Nina Planck. It was eye-opening. Many books and articles and films later, I realized that I had been starving my own brain pretty much the same way I accidentally starved those little ducklings. I hadn't been eating real food. I had been eating whatever was at the store, which seems like food but is often so far removed from the actual thing, it is now something else entirely. And when you trace it all they way back to what most of this "food" is made from, you come back to......corn. The same thing my little ducks tried to live on but couldn't. I want to give my kids nourishing food. This family's brains can definitely use all the help we can get.

So stay tuned for more "Bread, Milk, and Blackberries for Supper". You can count on the bread being homemade, the milk being raw, and the blackberries being local. I will be serving up some recipes, ideas, and chronicling my new quest for real food, in between turns on the tire swing.