The Story of Stuff

Well, I haven't blogged in so long and really want to get back into it. I will try to blog every weekend, but I'm not making promises.
I was just informed of this video called, "The Story of Stuff" and it is just amazing.
Please watch it, http://www.storyofstuff.com/
and I hope you are moved to change some part of your life so that we can help our planet and ourselves. It's 20 minutes long but totally worth your time. We are totally committed to buying less stuff, recycling as much as possible, reusing as much as possible and buying used stuff when we can. We are also going to not buy any plastic toys or products for the house or kids and ask our family members and friends to do the same. We need to think about the effects all of this processing and chemical waste that is affecting our air we breathe and our soil where our crops are being produced. Please help save our planet!!!

Love, Shelly

More catching up!

It's been a really rainy, cold winter for us in Southern California. One day, it was raining and windy and we realized that one of the banana trees fell down. Matthew and the boys went to clean up the mess and had fun with their rain jackets and boots.

My Mom came up to visit at the end of January and we all had a great time. My Mom and Ian were playing with the treasures that Nana has send from England and Ronan was enjoying his dinosaur book in his room.

Another wonderful Toddler in the Garden class at Upper Newport Bay. We saw a snowy egret and some hawks flying in the sky. Jodi has a great bird book that has the pictures & sounds of the birds, so we found the birds in the book that we saw in the Estruary.

That's it for now!! Enjoy :)

Catching up!!

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted on my blog. I finally feel the desire to do this again. I've been definitely in a funk lately and just didn't want to spend the evening blogging and posting pictures when I could be doing other things like sleeping. I know Marilyn and James love reading the blog and seeing the boys, so I'm going to do my best to post at least once a week or more. So, I'll be catching up everyone with what we've been doing over the past month.

I didn't finish my cleanse :(

After my footbath, I had a colonic and a lympathic massage the following Saturday and I felt worse (really tired and bloated and gassy). I called Stacie who did my iridology (I posted about this on a previous entry) and she recommended I see Dr. Swilling, he has a PhD in Clinical Nutrition. So, I went to see him the following week and he put me on a totally different diet.

I'm drinking a fortified drink all day long which contains: raw milk, raw eggs, wheatgerm, lecithin, nutritrional yeast, whey powder, udo's oil, liquid minerals, raw honey and iodine. It doesn't taste good, but I just need to drink 1/2 cup of it 6x/day. I'm also suppose to eat small meals 6x/day to keep my blood sugar up and every meal should have protein in it. He's very into eggs, raw dairy, yogurt, cottage cheese, nuts and good grains like millet, quinoa, buckwheat, beans, lentils and fish. I can't believe I went from eating all raw foods to eating raw milk, eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, and beans and grains. He said if I followed his recommendations and took all the supplements he gave me, I can get rid of my Sjogren's Syndrome in a couple of months. So, after I tried this way of eating for a few days, the Sjorgren's flared up and I had horrible fatigue and joint pain. It was so awful!! But I stuck with it and my joint pain and intense fatigue went away and I felt a little bit better (no bloating, but still had some gas). I'm still struggling with eating small meals frequently. I've gained weight in my stomach because of the rich foods, so I'm trying to figure out how much food I should be eating for every meal. I've email the Doctor and waiting to hear his response. I will try this way of eating for a few months and see how my body responds. He said my body needs more protein to get my body back to normal. It's just so hard since I really love eating raw. But I have to say it's made eating with the kids easier since we are all eating the same things (yep, the kids are drinking raw milk (from Organic Pastures), raw cheese, & eggs). It makes less hassle and fighting since I'm usually just making one thing (but I still feel like I'm in the kitchen all day). I'll keep everyone posted with my results!!

We've been busy with kids as usual. On January 19th (Saturday) we went on a hike at Laguna Coast Wilderness Park to meet the Outdoor Family Meetup Group. We didn't get to talk with the group except to say "hello" because they all had older kids that could walk a lot faster. So, we ended up just hiking with Blythe and her family which was a lot of fun. Ian hiked the entire way (3.8 MILES) except for about 2 minutes of carrying and Ronan was carried about 1/2 of the time (poor Matthew). We thought the hike with 2.5 miles, but it ended up being longer and it was a lot of up and down hills. Ian was awesome and did great except for the end when he was complaining and said he never wanted to do that hike again.

The pictures above are from that hike.

More posts and photos to come! :)

Thursday- Detox Foot Bath

I had a Detox Foot Bath on Thursday and this is the before picture. And this is after 30 minutes...yuck!

I'm still on my cleanse but I've been eating solid foods which you aren't suppose to be doing. I ate a banana and some coconut butter on Wednesday and veggies and raw "ranch" dressing on Thursday. It's really hard not to have bite of fruit or veggies when you are preparing them for a smoothie or juice or when the kids are eating them. Also, I want the kids to eat more raw food, so if I'm preparing yummy food (like almond milk or raw ranch dressing) I want to try it. It's definitely hard doing a cleanse when you have children and have to prepare food all the time. I also feel like I'm in the kitchen all day long!

I've been having my green smoothies everyday and trying to have a green juice too. I've been doing a green soup too sometimes (those aren't my favorite). I've a little over 5 lbs so far...yeah!! I don't feel like my energy has improved, but it's only been a week since I've been taking the digestive enzymes (those are suppose to help). I have 10 days left of this cleanse.

Bye for now~

Pictures of the Boys

The boys at Steven's Birthday Party at O'neil Park on Sunday

Rachel and Steven(the birthday boy!)

Beautiful tree at Casper's Park

Ronan walking with Jodi (Toddler in the Garden class)

They were digging in the dirt in the dried up river bed to try to find some water or wet sand to put on their pictures drawn with watercolor pencils.

Ian was using some wet sand on his picture (Ronan was not into it)

Ronan the SuperMan:)

Ian as SuperMan (action shot)

Love, Shelly

Recap from the last 4 days!

I'm sorry I haven't written in 4 days...wow, time does fly! I've been tired and trying to be on the computer less, but I'm still on my cleanse.

Sunday, Ronan felt just fine when he woke up; we really think it's the tomatoes that are just too acidic for him. I took Ian to the Farmer's Market and he helped me shop. I learned that you should take your children out on "dates" to reconnect with them (through the parenting class I took). So, Matthew and I are going to switch off and take each kids somewhere each weekend. After the Farmer's Market, we went to Steven's party at O'Neil Park. It was a lot of fun and Rachel had made a vegan chocolate cake (that I heard was just wonderful) and had vegan food for the boys. Thank you Rachel!!

After the party, I helped out Blythe and Olga put together 400 boxes for their event in Los Angeles. Ricky Lake was showing her documentary of the "The Business of Being Born" and Blythe and Olga (their new business "Oasis Child") were one of the sponsors. I can't tell you how insane it was to put together 400 boxes...I was there from 4-9pm and they didn't sleep all night. Insane!!

Anyway, I survived that day by just eating 2 green smoothies and then had a fruit smoothie when I was helping them. I felt really good and not hungry until about 8pm. I didn't sleep well Sunday night (I was cold and kept getting up to pee from the smoothie) and then Monday I was sooooooooooooooooo tired and my legs were sore from standing. We went to the Toddler in the Garden class on Monday at Casper's Park. It seemed like everyone was tired. Mondays are just hard sometimes when we have a busy weekend.

I had green smoothies on Monday and was tired (I didn't workout).

On Tuesday, we just stayed home and Jane and Jakey came over to play. It was nice not having to go anywhere. We all were a little less crabby that day. Ronan took a nap which was good and I went to Pilates. I thought I would be tired at Pilates but I did pretty good. I think I had 2 green smoothies and a veggie juice before Pilates and then a green soup for dinner.

Today, Wednesday, we ran today (I wasn't feeling my best).

Here's what I ate today:

-mason jar of warm water and lemon

-veggie juice (pineapple, celery, parsley, asian spinach)

-green smoothie (banana, persimmons, asian spinach and parsley & Dr. Green powder)

-green soup (tomatoes, celery, chard, basil, lemon, garlic, 1/2 avocado) OK, little bit too lemony

-spoonful of raw honey with coconut butter & a banana (I was really hungry and crabby and this was the first time ate something that wasn't blended)

-green smoothie (bananas, soaked goji berries, chard) it was OK, not great


Today was good up until after we got home from the library (we went to storytime) and Ronan fell asleep in the car. I transferred him to his bed and he woke up right away. So, for the entire rest of the day he was super crabby and I was too. I just needed a break and some rest. It is really hard during this cleanse, I really need to rest for at least 30 minutes and I can't. I eventually put on some vidoes for the kids and I rested a bit in bed. UGH!!!After a big struggle with running about eating dinner (he refused to eat his veggies), we had a nice bath and they were in bed by 6:40pm. Matthew said it won't kill him to not eat his veggies, but I think it's really important to eat veggies especially at this time of year when there is more colds & flus. ugh!!!
I'll post some pictures tomorrow of the boys.
Off to relax while I can....
Love, Shelly

Day 6 of 21 Day Detox Diet!

Saturday was a very hectic day for us. First, Ian woke up at 5am and Ronan woke up at 6:50am - they both went to sleep at 6:30 the night before. I went to Pilates, then the Chiropractic appointment, then to Trader Joe's. I came home and made soup for Emily who is sick and for the boys for dinner. Matthew took the boys to the park to play. When they got home, Matthew went to his Chiropractic appt. and returned some tile and a bathroom cabinet to Home Expo. When he got home, I went to my massage appointment and then dropped off the soup to Emily. After dinner I went to a parenting seminar, "Parenting from the Heart" which was so wonderful. http://www.parentingfromtheheart.net/ They gave us examples and practical tips to really connect with our children. They offer a 18 hour course (over 3 Saturdays) that expands on what they talked about and I'm going to sign up for it. Since we've been having such struggles with the kids lately and since Matthew and I were brought up so differently, we really need to do this. I asked her about the troubles we've been having over sharing toys and she said this, "Have both boys negotiate how much time they would like to have with the toy and you should help Ronan understand the time limit. Ask each of them how long they would like the toy and if it's Ok with both of them and hopefully they will come to some kind of an agreement." I'm excited to go to the 3 day workshop to get more help.

Since it was such a crazy day, I'm not sure exactly what I ate, but here it goes:
- mason jar of warm water with lemon
- 2 grapefruits
- 1 apple
- really yummy green pudding (2 bananas, frozen mango, kale and mixed greens)
- smoothie - 2 bananas and Dr. Greens powder
- avocado salsa from yesterday and celery and cucumber

I shouldn't have eaten the avocado salsa so late the previous night because it didn't sit well all night and I didn't feel so good in the morning.

I'm writing this at 4:30am this morning because Ronan threw up and I can't go back to sleep. It looked like he threw up his soup from last night. I really hope he feels better today. :(

Lots of love,
Shelly