The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Well we are still waiting to hear from our new land lord as to when we will be able to move into the new house. I just found out that my strawberry plants, rhubarb, potatoes, onions sets and garlic are due to arrive at the end of the week. Phil is going to make sure that we can start planting at the new house if not I have to come up with 50 pots for my strawberries this weekend! How fun!

Today I needed some fresh air, so I re hoed the part of our garden here where I'm planting some peas, spinach, and lettuce for us to harvest by mid June before we move. I wasn't wanting to use our good fencing for my pea trellis so I decided to use our round tomato steaks from last year and planted a pea plant at each of the three tines at the base of the steaks. Now I just have to pray that the rabbits in town here have decided to get some extra sleep these cool weeks while my plants get established.

Samuel will be helping me put our Dill, and some other herbs into larger pots today for his science class. We are also very excited to have some pumpkin, cantelope, musk melon, and watermelon plants starting to grow.

As you know our family has been switching to as much organic as we possibly can. Today I had the opportunity to take some of our raw organic cream to Philip's 4K class and show them how to make butter from cream. The kids shook cream in old peanut butter jars until the butter separated from the buttermilk. Then we salted it lightly and spread it onto homemade corn muffins. I talked with the kids about how we get our milk from a dairy farm right after it comes out of the cow and a little bit about the difference between the milk we buy and the stuff they get from the store. It was fun being in Philip's class and the kids loved having "real" butter and muffins for a treat!

Today a friend shared the following site with me. We use organic expeller pressed coconut oil for almost all our baking and sauteing. As I was checking out their products I read their write up on converting just 10% of what your family uses to organic. For those of you who are trying to make some healthier choices I thought you'd be interested in seeing the information on Pesticides as well as the list of benefits for changing just 10% of your foods to organic. Keep reading for more info on the site and the write up they have on their site.

Below is a site that has a great little write up on how converting just 10% of your food, cosmetics, or other things can impact the health of our environment and farm land. Then it lists several resources for information.
http://www.mountainroseherbs.com

Click on "Support Organic Agriculture". Read this entire page or scale down until you see:

Use At Least 10% Organic For A Better World

.........for they shall not break. Our plans for the weekend have changed, we are no longer able to get into the house as we had been told. We hope to find a weekend in May where we will be able to go down and see it. By next week we hope to know when we will be able to move which is exciting!

So, we will continue to Wait on the Lord! Waiting, a safe state to be in, resting in the hollow of His hand allowing Him to work out all the details. He knows the plans He has for us and will reveal them in His timing. So until then..... we wait...............

There are no major changes here with the exception that we are now seeing grass instead of snow. YEAH!! We've pulled out the shorts and are really enjoying our beautiful spring weather! Today it is raining and I have my garden plants on the front walk getting wet. We've had success with most of the plants we have started. Some better than others. Some of the plants seem to have stems that are WAY to long and I'm not sure what to do about it yet. I'm going to put a call into a veteran gardener in our church to see if he can come over and see my plants and give me some instruction on what to do so that they will be healthier. Today I ordered my strawberry, raspberry, blueberry & black berry plants, potato & onion sets, rhubarb, and some romaine lettuce seeds.

This weekend we hope to make a trip down to New Holstein so that I can see the house and property. We are trying to find places for the kids to stay so we can have 1 night away ALONE. It will be an early Anniversary celebration since May is looking to be far to busy. I'm looking forward to seeing the house so that I will be able to pack a little more efficiently, plus we will be able to figure out where we want to put our berry plants. There is already a nice garden plot but I don't think I want the raspberry's, & black berries to be in the garden since they will have smaller plant shoots each year coming up from their roots. Yesterday I dug up 7 raspberry plants from my garden here to move down to the farm.

The kids are all doing great! Thomas is VERY excited that spring is "officially" here, meaning, he got to fly the kite he received at Easter. Nathan and Philip keep wanting to swim in the kiddy pool I have set up to catch rain water for my garden plants. Sam and I are focusing on Multiplication, reading and English as his primary classroom work. We are also tracking the plants for science and he listens to a wide variety of dramatized History lessons, which he really enjoys. Caleb is doing better with his work habits at school and Elizabeth is just plugging along. This Friday I am visiting Philip's class to teach them how to make homemade butter. They are studying how they get "energy" from cows and the teacher heard we make our own butter and other dairy products. The kids will take turns shaking some cream in a Mason Jar until it turns into butter. Then we will spread the fresh butter on some fresh bread that I'm going to make for the kids. I'm sure it will be a fun morning!

Saturday we will be celebrating Nathan's Birthday with the boy scouts at a fishing activity. I'll let you know how that goes hopefully with some pictures next week!

I'm contemplating taking my interests about health, nutrition, and gardening to a different blog. When I get it going I'll list the name of it in my sidebar of this blog for those who are interested in recipes, and other information about those three topics.

First a funny story: Yesterday Nathan was excitedly walking down the hallway yelling "daddy! Yook what I got!" Phil turned to see him squeezing a bright orange wiggling object gasping for air. THE GOLDFISH! He laughed, rescued the dying creature and threw it back into the fish tank. Believe it or not the fish is still alive today!

Currently the boys are all outside playing in our fresh 6" of heavy snow. Over the past two weeks we've gotten about 1 foot 4 inches of snow at least!! Thankfully next week it is supposed to be in the 50's all week so maybe spring will finally come to the great north. Each morning that we wake up with fresh snow Thomas walks into my room and says in a very discouraged exasperated tone, "Mom, Spring is NEVER coming!" Today the boys have made a snowman and Nathan is standing in front of it singing at the top of his lungs,"Happy Birthday to you!"



Speaking of Birthdays, this past week we had two very special birthdays in our family. On Sunday April 6 Caleb accepted the Lord as his Savior. And on Thursday Samuel, who has really been struggling, realized that he had been trusting in the words he uttered at a young age rather than accepting Christs finished work on the Cross. Samuel too made the decision to accept the Lord as His Savior. We have seen over the past few days evidence of the Lord working in their hearts and attitudes and are praying that if these decisions were true that there will be fruit in their lives evidencing God's changing Grace!

We are waiting to hear from our potential Land Lords as to whether or not we will be able to secure the House in New Holstein and when our tentative moving date will be.

Our garden plants are doing great!! They are still inside in the peat trays NOT under the 6" of snow thankfully!! :-)

So far we have 15 cherry tomato, 13 Beefsteak Tomato, 14 Opalka Tomato, 11 Roma Tomato, & 17 Cosmonaut Volkov Tomato, 11 Hot Beaver Dam Pepper, 3 Gold Peppers, 7 Napoleon Red Sweet Pepper, 4 Utah Celery, 20 American Flag Leeks, 1 Sage, 8 English Thyme, 7 Dill, 1 Sweet Basil, 12 Greek Oregano, 12 Chives, 10 Cabbage, 12 Lettuce, 15 red onion, 9 chamomile, 20 broccoli, 15 Brussels sprout, and 50 Cauliflower plants. Some of the plants that didn't sprout well I'm going to give another week then replant, it will be nice to stagger the harvest times and will still give me a chance to see which seeds were the best. Since this is my first time starting seeds I know I may have over watered the peat pellets which may have prevented some from sprouting. I'm enjoying the learning process and I know I will love it this winter when my pantry & freezer are full of food for my family! Today I will be starting my watermelon, cantaloupe, green flesh musk melon, and pumpkin plants. Fun Fun!!

For now though it is time to make some whole grain banana bread and hot chocolate for my boys for when they come in from our April Winter Wonderland!

I made one loaf regular bread for lunch tomorrow and one loaf cinnamon swirl for breakfast. I used all organic grains and raw dairy products (my first homemade batch of yogurt)in my loaves and do they smell yummy baking right now!

UPDATE: The cinnamon loaf didn't make it through the evening. We had it for an early evening snack and it was YUMMY!! This recipe is a keeper!! I think I am going to try to soak my grains in the yogurt next time. I'm all out of WW Pastry flour now so I'm going to be grinding my grains fresh 1 - 2 times a week now. Tonight Phil is putting together my new grain mill and we are all excited to try it!


Yummy Yogurt Bread

Makes: 2 loaves

7 to 7 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1-2 TBSP Flax meal
1 cup Oats
2 package active dry yeast
3/4 cup sugar -- I left this out but you could use honey or sucanat.
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1 2/ cups plain yogurt
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
4 eggs

1.In a large bowl, whisk together 3 cups of the flour with the yeast, sugar, salt, and soda. heat the yogurt, water, and butter in a saucepan over low heat until the butter melts; the mixture should not be allowed to simmer. Add the yogurt mixture to the flour mixture and blend well. Add the eggs, mix well, and then beat vigorously by had or using the stiff hook of an electric mixer at medium speed for 3 minutes. Stir in 1 cup oats and enough of the remaining flour to make a stiff dough, approximately 5 cups.

2. Knead the dough on a floured board (or work it in an electric mixer with a dough hook) until it is smooth and elastic - about 5 to 10 minutes. Place in an oiled bowl and turn the dough over to oil the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk.

3. Punch down the dough and divide it in half. At this point you may wish to add cut-up dried fruits, cinnamon, or nuts. Form 2 loaves and place each in a well-oiled (I used coconut oil) 8x4-inch loaf pan, cover, and let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and bake the loaves for 25 to 30 minutes, until bread is a rich golden brown. Remove from pans and cool on wire racks.

I'm so sorry that it has been 5 days since my last post on Autism. When Philip reached the age of about 18 months we noticed that he understood more than Thomas did. He was talking more than Thomas and could understand basic commands. We started to notice these things February 2005. We could tell Philip to pick up a paper and go through it away. We'd put a piece of garbage in Thomas's hand and tell him to go throw it away and he would go in circles and have a blank look on his face. It was at this time when one of my dear friends was taking her child to Marshfield Wisconsin for testing for Autism. I then started to research our Autism because Thomas had many of the characteristics that her son had. The more that I read about Autism the more I knew in my heart that Thomas was Autistic. This led to 2 months of praying, researching, crying, trying to figure out what to do next all while on bed rest for child number 6. Phil and I knew that Thomas was Autistic and we hoped that with some type of official diagnosis that we'd be able to find out what to DO about it! Our public school did a bunch of testing with Thomas and were encouraging me to go see a physician too. So on April 25th, the day before I was scheduled to have Nathan I took Thomas to our family doctor, explained my concerns, which he agreed with and referred us to a Pediatric Neurologist. We were not able to see that doctor until August 19.

While recovering from having Nathan, I started to read everything I could get my hands on about Autism. I first read the book Unraveling the Mystery of Autism & PDD by Karyn Seroussi. That book caused Phil and I to consider putting Thomas on the Gluten & Casein Free Diet. I continued my research throughout the summer months averaging about 40 hours a week of reading and searching for hope that my son would not be trapped in the world of autism forever. In May we were introduced to glycobiology and started Thomas on glyconutrients. This supplement caused some amazing results with Thomas's speech! By July he was adding new words each week! This progress as a result of just one supplement helped to open our minds to the possibility of more supplements. We met with the "autism mom" of our community who had a son diagnosed with severe Autism at 18 months old. She used diet, supplements, therapy, and other natural treatments to help her son progress. She spent time talking with us and helped to guide us toward supplements and other changes that could help Thomas. We were trying to process all this while still waiting for the official diagnosis from the August 19 appointment. We still hoping that the Doctor might be able to offer more information that would give us hope for Thomas's future. I'll tell you about that Doctors appointment in my next post on our story.

My Autism Tip for Today: Try the Gluten and Casein Free Diet. Make sure you are ready to commit to it and give it all you have for at least 1 year. It could change your child's so much, what do you have to loose? If you have a friend who is doing dietary intervention with their ASD child encourage them and find out what treats their child can have. Keep a few of these special treats at your house or in your car for when you see your friend. It will mean a lot to their family to see you willing to accommodate their child's special needs.