fruit & veggie wash

I recently was skimming over a nutritional book and came across the Dr. Parcells' Food bath theory for cleaning fruits, veggies and even meats and eggs. It's basically a water/Clorox mixture which you soak your food in. The formula is 1 teaspoon of Clorox to 1 gallon of purified, ozonated water. The Clorox soak time is different for different foods (leafy veggies for 15min, poultry, fish, meat & eggs for 20min). After that you soak it in clear water for ten minutes then rinse and dry before storage. This totally weirded me out when I first read it but it supposedly removes pesticides, parasites, bacteria and other contaminants. I'm not sold out on the idea yet and was wondering if anyone else has used this method to clean their food??? You can read a little about it here.

good morning world

Vote 2day!

Sarasota

Clay won a trip to Sarasota through his work, so last week we spent a whole week by the pool! I was a little nervous flying with Giselle, but she did great; mainly slept on each plane. Wes & Katie Dipzinski came with us- I was glad Clay had somebody to 'play' with. Usually on vacations he gets bored just sitting by the pool because that's all I like to do (reading). Wes and Clay had one competition after the other (lizard catching, football throwing, swimming etc.) Kate and I loved it!

::The sunsets were beautiful::

...Clay showing off his guns- nice baby!

Giselle and her daddy got to spend lots of time together, as different as it was having a baby along with us for the first time on vaca- Clay said it was better.

Vacations for us often contain at least one or two days of 'fighting'. It typically looks like me being super selfish and thinking Clay is not 'serving' me enough. I assume he can read my mind when I'm angry but because he can't and doesn't change right away I get even more mad. So after a little while (or sometimes a long while) I blow-up and act like a complete brat and a fight is born. So this year with adding our little gal into the mix I kinda was thinking there would be even more of theses blow-ups. But, by God's grace we really only had one small fight which was resolved quickly and I was reminded of how wonderful it is to know God and be forgiven by Him. Clay did an excellent job serving our family on the trip. Wes & Katie did also- they were always holding Giselle when I couldn't.

Clay being silly... this is tame compared to his silliness on the plane; widdle-widdle wizzard.

The boys throwing the football- Giselle watching them (see below)

me & kit (forever::friends)

more daddy time!

We were addicted to playing the game 'pass word' girls usually won, but the boys caught up in the airport.

Mimi & Pops greeting us at the airport. Giselle was genuinely happy to see them- so were we!

kitty cat girl

we were flying back from Florida on Saturday and Giselle rode around in her stroller looking extra sweet...

looking to borrow...

Hey local friends- does anyone have a car-seat cover I could borrow? I would need it for a week starting, hehe- tomorrow. Thanks!

::to discipline or not to discipline::

A few weeks ago I was on a trip with a friend and we started talking about disciplining your children. The focus for both of us was primarily on disciplining 'babies' (like when your baby is squirming off the changing table or throwing food on the ground or biting while nursing- they don't do it out of anger or spite, they're just curious or... just being a little baby!). So there seems to be more books on disciplining and training a toddler or young child but for those littler ones I'm wondering about when to start letting them know there are things that are not right for them to do. And how do you let them know in a loving & authoritative way? This is something Clay & I will be talking & praying about more as Giselle grows. I did hear an interesting radio program today addressing this very issue and the more I listened the more excited I got about the biblical truths the program was teaching. It's from the program 'FamilyLife Today' with Bob Lepine and Dennis Rainey. The series is entitled 'Discipline from Zero to Two Years'. The advice they give is given in such a gracious way as to let the listener know that it is not the only way and every parent needs to seek the Lord for specific wisdom for their child. I subscribed to their podcast.