An Adjustment In How I Buy Food For Our Family

 I had to change up the way I buy my groceries this week. I knew this change was coming because the cost of food has increased noticeably for me in just about every category of items I regularly purchase. I was trying to hold off on making this change for as long as I could because I believe very much in my food buying philosophy, but I was going over budget more and more and it needed to stop. So, this week I purchased almost zero organic food for our home. There were several instances where organic was actually cheaper than non-organic and in those cases I gladly purchased the organic item in question, but for the most part 95% of my food purchases were of the non-organic variety. 

I know that every family has its own focus. Some families focus on the food they feed their families; others place their focus on activities with and for their families; others place their focus on the clothes they buy, the kind of house they live in, and the cars they drive, etc...None of these focus areas are necessarily wrong or right - they are just where we are most intentional with our monetary resources, and we all have our own reasons for the things we choose to focus on. 

For me, this focus has almost always been on the food I feed my family and the cleaning products I bring into my home. I believe, wholeheartedly, that the food we ingest, or more specifically the chemicals on and in the food we ingest, are making us a very sick and unhealthy species. I often wonder if the food we ingest and the drinks we drink aren't somehow related to our rise in autoimmune diseases and other sicknesses that seems to be on the rise. The food and drink industries are so powerful and I believe the people that run those industries know that they are making us sick, and don't care because the dollar is king. Making money for them is more important that keeping people healthy.

Anyway, I 'll get off of my soapbox. My point is just to say buying organic food has long been a priority of mine because I believe that they are healthier for my children's bodies than non-organic. But, as we all know, inflation has taken hold of this country and while the minimum wages almost everywhere have increased (as they should have - every working family member deserves to earn a living wage), so has the cost of everything else - food included. Because our family is middle class, I feel that it is those of us in this economic bracket that are squeezed immensely by these changes. (I don't know of any middle-class family who has gotten a cost-of-living increase from his/her employer. We are just supposed to make do with increased costs at the same rate of pay.)

All of this has led me to where I was at this past weekend with my grocery shopping - a budget that could no longer support the standard of food it had for the last 15-20 years. My values haven't changed though even if my grocery financial situation has, so I am making do with what I can. These are my new guidelines when food shopping:

1. Plant a garden (I purchased seeds to do so in January knowing that the cost of food was getting to be too much for my budget.)

2. Buy non-gmo labeled products for those items that have been approved by the FDA to be grown as genetically modified plants. 

3. Make as much as I can from scratch so that I am buying a few chemically laden products as I can. 

Even making these changes my food expenses this past weekend to supply our family with food for the upcoming week was $400. This cost is only for 5 of us as Joshua is at school. I will be working diligently over the course of the next few weeks/months to reduce this cost as much as possible while also not trying to stray from my food values. 

I never in a million years would have thought that I would be in a place where I could no longer to afford to feed my family the kinds of foods I have been feeding them for years, but here I am. And so, I will do what any person would do whose focus for their family is challenged - I will adjust and set my sails in a different direction, but make no mistake my course may be different, but my end result will still be the same - to feed my family as healthy as possible by avoiding as many chemicals in their food as possible. 

Homeschooling 2021-2022: Weeks 15 & 16

We are now actually beginning our 18th week of homeschooling, but because I have been a bit behind in posting these I am only showing our life homeschooling through weeks 15 -16.

I couldn't figure out how to rotate this photo using blogger, so sideways it will stay.

 Last week we finished up our 16th week of homeschooling. We have been in a really good routine lately - probably one of the very best we've ever had in all of our years of homeschooling big kids. I can see us finishing up our school year with this routine, but as we all know very well, life can sometimes surprise us with curveballs, so I don't want to plan too far ahead. What I will say is that what we are doing now is working very well and I know the girls would agree. 

Opportunity Areas: Art. For sure, it is art. It is going to take us all school year to earn a semester's credit because I am terrible about executing our art lessons. The crazy thing is that they aren't terribly teacher heavy - meaning that they don't require an awful lot of prep work and, more often than not, they don't require me to buy a lot of extra resources I can literally teach the girls the lesson and then allow them the time and space to work on the project at hand and be done with it (with maybe a little extra help for Sarah). I don't know why I drag my feet on this subject because it doesn't have to be as painful as I am making it. Aargh!

Successful Areas: I would have to say that I feel that one of our strongest and most successful parts of our homeschool right now is our routine. Like I mentioned above, we are doing really, really well. 

Week 7: Ordinary Moments

I am desperately trying to regrow this guy. He withered pretty badly on our move to NC last May and I have been trying ever since to revive him to his former glory. 

My daily (homemade) planner.

My demanding creature sitting on the book I am trying to work on in order to prevent me from doing anything other than pet him. (It worked. As it always does.)

I made a commitment to myself that I would spend this year reading through the bible. My pain desire to do so is twofold: 1.) Last time I checked the bible is the most read book in the world - I want to be included in that group, and 2.) A lot of people spout off stuff about the bible - I want to have better understanding of what it says so that I can call people out when needed. Christians make me nervous because they all interpret the bible differently and they are all sure they have it right. There is something unsettling to me about that. 

This plant (or what is left of it) is a really special plant to me.  This is my Portland plant. I have mentioned it before in this space - I bought it when we first moved to Portland (at the local ikea). It was a beautiful flowering plant (I don't remember which kind) and I loved it. I went to Ohio for a visit with the kids and left it in Bob's care. He darn near killed the thing. So, I took the time to nurse it back to life, only to have it on the brink of death over the course of my time living in Portland through lack of love and care on my part. (I was barely holding myself together during that period, so there was no way I could be responsible for a plant.) I brought this plant with me (I had to downsize when we moved from OR to IN) and nursed it back to life again in Indianapolis. It did really well - slowly, but surely.  It is a hot mess again. It seems when I am going through a really hard time in life I neglect my plants. I had a really hard and terrible 2021 for various reasons (worse than anything in Portland which is shocking as I thought Portland was rock bottom. Surprise!) and I realized just a couple of weeks ago that this guy may have been neglected too much. I am giving her some tender loving care now in hopes that I can revive her once more. 

 

Week 6: Ordinary Moments

(I know I am a bit behind. I have a small handful of blogs waiting to be released, but I am trying to do so one a day verse throwing a bunch of them out on a single day. Bear with me. 

 I did not capture too many moments this week. I have to really intentional about it, and as you can tell by the limited phots and limited subject matter, I was not very good at paying attention this week. I am trying to get a bit better about it, but I am not sure if that will can be sustained. 

Yes, I am completely obsessed with this cat. 

My part-time wingman.

But seriously, though...how can I not be obsessed with this creature. He is so stinkin' cute!

Homeschooling Week 14/36

Sarah worked on her art project all on her own. I think she did an amazing job and based on her results would never be able to tell this this project was completed by a person who is blind. 

Elizabeth's art project

 We had a really solid week last week. We got through 99.9% of what I had hoped to get through and we found an easier way to schedule our school days so that we can get through our work without it being stressful or exhausting. (Although to be completely honest, for me some of the days are still exhausting.)

Each of the girls works on two subjects with me and then gets to take a short break in order for me to work on two subjects with her sister. Generally, after I have worked on 4 subjects I take a short break too. We begin our work at 10:30 am and then complete it around 4 pm most days. We are going to go with this flow until it no longer works for us and then we will look to see what works at that point. 

Sarah and I are working on outlining her science course with each chapter that we do. I am hoping that this will help her to learn the part of the body easier. She is taking a human anatomy course this year as her choice of science which comes with its own set of difficulties as I am not able to purchase tactile items for each section (such as a skeleton replica) and trying to teach a child who cannot see the intricacies of the bones in the brain and how they all fit together has been a challenge to say the least. We will get through it - we have with every other challenge we have faced, but it sometimes is not easy. 

Both girls are picking up their choice of language with more ease than I have thought. Sarah is working on Latin and Elizabeth is working on Braille. Sarah has worked on Latin in the past, but not to this depth. The curriculum we are using is really helpful and even I am learning a lot. Elizabeth had some basic understanding of braille before she began course this year, but is flying through the material that Sarah and I present her with. It is really cool to watch especially as this knowledge will allow Elizabeth an additional way in which to communicate with her best friend and sister as they get older. 

We (finally) did another art lesson last week. I don't know why I drag my feet so much with art. It is going to end up taking us all year just to get a semester's worth of work completed. The curriculum that I chose is really wonderful and provides clear and easy explanations of what to do and how to do it - I just drag my feet when it comes times to getting art completed. 

Other than that things appear to be smooth sailing. I knew that they most likely would be as this time of year has less interruptions for us than the fall. 

Rough Ridge Overlook

We had a special visitor stay with us a couple of weeks ago. Sarah's Sky View mentor, Hannah, came to visit us from Oregon. Having never been this far east (in the US at least) and living right near Mount Hood and the Cascade Mountain Range we knew we had to take Hannah to show her the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east coast. 

We ended up hiking a short hike of about .75 miles each way. The hike was pretty much straight up and then straight back down, so Hannah and Bob managed to hike it much faster than Sarah and I did because the path was not smooth at all, but we all got to the top regardless. 

The view from the top of the trail was stunning. Mountains and mountains for as far as they eye can see. The wind was rustling through the trees which added to the awe of the surroundings. 

I was/am super proud of Sarah for making it up and back. As I mentioned above, the hike was not smoothy. It was a bit muddy in parts and it was uneven and incredibly rocky throughout almost the entirety of the trail. She mentioned once that she really hated the hike, but was trying to be a good sport about it so as not to ruin everyone else's time. (Once we got off of the trail though, and Sarah had some distance from the experience, she said that she did end up liking it because being at the top was worth all of the hard work up and down the trail.)

I always enjoy seeing new things and this hike was no different. The cool thing about living in this area is that there are so many options when you want an outdoor adventure. (It is a lot like living out west just on a smaller scale.)

Sarah and Hannah

I have a very real fear of heights. I would not go anywhere near this area, in fact Hannah is the one (I believe) who took this picture because I had to hike on. Bobby, though, loves this kind of stuff and was in his element. (This spot was about 1/2 way up the trail - if my memory serves me correctly.)

I think this was taken on the way up to the top of the hike. Bobby took some of these pics, so I am not 100% certain of their exact location.

The cut out on the mountain to the right of this picture is a road.

Hannah taking in the view.

Hannah also tempting fate on those scary rocks. 

A view from the trail

Hannah helping Sarah at the beginning of our hike. As you can see here the trail was not smooth at all. 

This rock WAS the trail at this point in our hike. Imagine being blind and trying to navigate that. Not easy. 

A view from the top.

 

Cavs vs. Hornets

 We decided as a family at the beginning of the year that we wanted to budget more money towards experiences. We all felt that everyone was at the age where having "things" was much less important to us all than collecting memories together, so money was shifted accordingly, and a family decision was made to plan at least one family activity a month. No one is required to come to any activity he/she doesn't want to. We all know by now that one rotten attitude can ruin everyone's time and no one wants that, so participation is voluntary. 

Bobby has been wanting to go the Cleveland Cavaliers play for a long time in each of the cities we have lived (that offered the opportunity to see them play). Unfortunately, until now, we never made room in the budget or cleared out time to go. When Bobby saw that the Cavs were playing here in Charlotte in February and we hadn't yet decided what activity we wanted to plan for the month, Bobby suggested going to the game. So, on Friday, February 4th, we found ourselves sitting in the nosebleed section of Spectrum Center in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina.

I haven't been to a professional sporting event since we left Ohio in 2014, so I agreed to go along (as did Andy, Josh, Sarah, and Elizabeth). Basketball isn't really our favorite sport, but we thought it would be fun to see a Cleveland sports team in our (for now) hometown here in Charlotte. And it was. We all had a great time. Josh ended up going to the game with some college buddies instead of coming with us. He had gotten ahold of some free tickets that his college was giving away, so we were down a man in our family, but that was okay. I knew Josh was having a good time with his people and the five of us were having a good time together which is all that mattered. 

The Cavs ended up winning in the last second of the game which was really fun. It was also cool to see how many Cavs fans there were at the stadium. One of the nice things about a lot of the places we have lived is that they are considered transplant town/cities. This tends to there being a more eclectic fan base in which you know that there will always be fellow supporters of any team no matter who is playing verse the hometown team. 

In the end, we were all really glad we went and look forward to going again the next time the Cavs roll into town. 

White Water Center Ice Skating

 A few weeks ago, we decided to go ice skating. We hadn't been in years - we think the last time we went was when we still lived in Ohio (which is over 7 years ago). About 20 minutes from our house in Charlotte is the US Whitewater Training Center (it is one of the Olympic training centers for whitewater rafting). 

The Whitewater Center turns part of its rafting/kayaking "river" (it is manmade) into two ice skating rinks in the wintertime. They are pretty big and offer a lot of skating space - with the exception of the entrance where it tended to get a bit crowded I felt like everyone was spaced out enough to not be spreading any potential COVID germs. It was a really cool experience and I would definitely go back again. 

It took us a little bit of time to get our legs underneath us, and some of us were better at picking up ice skating again than others of us, but I would say that all of us who went (which included Sarah, Elizabeth, Bobby, and I) had a really nice time. 

I love this pic so much because it sums up their relationship perfectly: always side-by-side, steadying each other, holding each other up when needed.