a hippie with a minivan

the adventure of my xmas gift…

Simon has an Ipod which has most of our music on it… and I had a small mp3 player that was just not cutting it anymore… I had to change the music on it often because 1 gig just wasn’t enough to get me through the day…

So I asked Simon what he was getting me for xmas and then told him that I would love to have a new music player…

I didn’t want to spend too much and I wanted to have more space… So I looked on the net and starting “window shopping”… I was about to decide on a sansa 8g that was on amazon for 129$ and Simon “OK’d” the price… but then I saw that the brown Zune 30 was on special for the same price so I decided to go for that… of course since I am in Canada I would have to have it sent to a friend… By the time I got her response on if she minded or not the price had already went up… so… determined to get it around that price… there was a few places that had it at 99$ and I looked around and found it at Dell for 95$… I was so excited… I paypaled my friend the money and she bought it for me… then a few days later I noticed that I would only get it in Feb!! I checked on online a bit and saw that I was not the only one to have ordered it at that price and have a Feb delivery date… it was a “black friday” special so all the prices had since gone up… so people were stuck waiting or cancelling their orders…

So I decided to call Dell… I told them that I was in Canada and I had bought it though a friend and that I was dissapointed in the delivery date because it was a gift… they told me that I could cancel my order and give me a 45$ credit so I could get another colour (the other colours were being sold at 195$) so I told them that it was not fair that I should need to pay more for the same player in a different colour because they had sold too many and couldn’t deliver. So I got a 95$ credit! So I asked my friend to get one of another colour… then saw that with the 95$ credit the new Zune 80 would only be a 50$ price difference… and only 20$ more then I was originally going to pay for the Sansa… So I got that instead…

My friend was so amazing and patient because there was a wait and everything with the refund and credit but it all worked out and I did all of the talking with Dell so she didn’t have to deal with all of that…

I just got it on Friday and I am LOVING it… the software is not great but the player itself is amazing and I am LOVING listening to all my music and having podcasts etc… and I still have tons of space on it!

Some yummy bread…

I got this recipe from one of my best friends… and it is a keeper!!!

It is a simple bread made with oatmeal, millet and flax seeds (though I ran out of flax so I used sunflower seeds) and it is sweetened with Molasses…

This makes 5 loaves… so it is a large recipe.

You need:

2 cups of Oats
1 cup of Millet
1 cup of Flax seeds
2 tbsp of butter/oil
1/2 cup of Molasses
3 3/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp yeast
Flour

Put the Oats in a large bowl and add the 4 cups of hot water and then add the butter (so it will melt).

In another bowl place the grains with equal amounts of hot water and soak.

When the water in the large bowl is warm to the touch, add the molasses. (if you are using intant yeast you can add it directly to the bowl, if you are using traditional yeast, proof it first and then add)

Add the soaked grains to the large bowl and then start adding flour. Add flour until the the dough starts to come together but is still very sticky… add the salt and mix it in and then let rest for 20 min.

Flour the counter and turn the dough out and knead for about 10 min or until elastic, adding flour as needed.

Shape into a ball and let rise.

Preheat oven to 350 and grease the bread pans.

Once dough has doubled, turn the out onto the counter, fold and cut into 5 pieces.

Bake for about 45 min or until ready (the bread will sound hollow when tapped)

Rising…

Here are the 5… um… 4 1/2 loaves I made… (It was so good that one just didn’t make it into the pic)

Happy Holidays!!

Whatever you do or do not celebrate…. I wish you health and happiness and a great year to come…

…..

We had a great xmas eve… my mom came over with her boyfriend… the kids went to bed like usual and then we ate fondue into the night…

This morning the boys woke up and their faces showed all of the excitement from the presents under the tree… the opened their presents and what was fun is that they took their time and played in between…

Xavier got mostly Lego… Colin got Playmobil and Khéna got a spaceship…

I am waiting for one of my gifts to come in the mail… but I got a new mouse for my Charming Tails collection, World without End by Ken Follett and chocolate… and then we lounged around all day and ate leftover fondue with the boys…

great times…

changing the language around breastfeeding…

I have talked about this a few times already here on my blog…

Why is it that the breastfeeding is always compared to Formula in a way that makes is sound like Formula is the norm and that breastfeeding just better… It makes is sound like yeah sure breastfeeding is great but Formula is good enough… and of course no one is perfect so really why breastfeed?

The problem is… Breastfeeding is the norm… Formula can be dangerous and the choice between breastfeeding and Formula is not a simple choice to make, children die because they are not breastfed, really it should not be a choice at all… we need to make the language reflect that.

Here is a Hathor comic that is a great example…

(oh… and just a disclaimer… I got a few comments and e-mails from some moms who seem to love to hate this blog…Though I do believe that it should not be a choice, I do know that Formula is sometimes that lesser of two evils and that the choice is made for moms. However, that being said, in many or most cases, that is where education of doctors and nurses need to come in because they often have no clue about breastfeeding and often the children that can be hurt by formula the most are being hurt… also milk banks should become more widely spread and availible, so that more children will not suffer the effects of a lack of breastmilk.)

ups and downs…

For the last two weeks we have all had our turn of being sick… now it is Khéna and Colin a bit… both seem to have a touch of Bronchitis. I used to deal with bronchitis myself a few times a year so I know the signs and sounds of it… since both have it it is most likely viral so the only thing that we can do is let it pass…

Khéna has just been having a few rough days and night though, which of course means that we too have been having a few rough nights.

Besides being sick, I have been having a lot of rough times with Xavier in the last while. He has been emotional and has been tantruming at the drop of a pin… He always needs to be close to us, almost on us all of the time and I get to feel very touched out because of it and I get impatient which I do not like. I hope something clicks soon, because the constant confrontation is really wearing me out. Of course I can’t focus on the negative and I have to say that other things have changed with him… he has gained a big interest in letters and sounds and writing. He can write his name without a problem and will write other names by asking what letters to write. He also started to sound out words, though it hasn’t clicked completely how to link all of those those sounds together but it isn’t far away I think. He is also drawing a lot more and

The other boys, besides being sick, are doing great and are such a joy to be around.

Colin is really understanding and very compassionate. He has his moments of course but it is really easy to reason with him. He makes us laugh constantly and is such a bundle of energy… I forget that is not even 3 1/2 at times though… his language skills are great and we can have really cool conversations with him… He is amazing at puzzles and his imagination is so fun also… He has a Harry Potter figurine and loves to play out Harry Potter stories but doesn’t have the other characters so his hands become Hermione and Ron, his hands walk and talk and play out tons of adventures…

Khéna is also a little bundle of smiles and is really easygoing… He is walking full time now and can now stand up from sitting without assistance also which makes it so that he never crawls anymore. It is so fun to see another kids walking around the house. It makes his presence in the house different and makes us realize that we have another little boy in the house. He loves the gift we gave him at his birthday… He walks with it, put things in it, takes the sides off and sits in it and plays… or sometimes sits in it and gets pushed around the house by his big brothers… It was such a great gift that really I still have no clue what to give him for x-mas because there is not much else that he needs and he is too young to want anything… Another change is that he has gained a lot more interest in food and eats pretty much anything that we eat… it makes it weird that instead of preparing 4 plates at supper time I am now preparing 5…

So here we are… we have been having a few ups and downs…

so it is life as usual I guess…