New Youtube Videos

I just wanted to let you all know that our videos are up on youtube.com/and you can find the high quality ones on our website at Uncle John's Band Videos

Pleae let me know what you think. Alan has been working hard on the editing :)

Autumn Recipes and Fall Cleaning

I wanted to mention a blog I love to read. Pinch of Salt has great recipes, and this time she has some links to some great pumpkin recipes. Fall recipes are always my favorite especially when they have fall squash, pumpkins or apples in them. I know here in the desert it is still 96 degrees but the evenings and mornings are cooling off. What a wonderful feeling when you take a early morning walk, look at the stars and feel the cool breeze on your skin.




Whenever we have a change of seasons I find that I am in my cleaning mode. I know I mentioned that I would be revamping my storage areas and garage. I am 1/2 way done. I have only done one area per week as I said so I don't make myself sick. I have been doing well. Making lots of donations to good will and the library along the way.


Last thing
Schoolhouse Rock. I watched this on Saturday mornings in Canada and always loved them :)I think that is why I came here with the belief of freedom and the pride felt by Americans.

Did Anyone Else experience a "WEIRD" week

I have so much blogging to do with so little time. What is striking me this week though is how weird it was last week. Just weird things happened. Weird one, my hubby's work was odd. Things fell out of place with how things really happened. I am not going to get into it but it caused alot of stress here. The other 2 things that happened were the death of my son's dwarf hamster and my daughter's black russian hamster. I can only imagine that it was something on some of the greens they had eaten. Although my youngest hamster seems spared of whatever killed the other two. How heartbreaking it was on Friday to have my son say that his hamster died, and that he was fine early. Holding him while he cried. Saturday we went to Mt. Lemmon to escape and enjoy the scenery. Check out the website I attached and experience the drive we enjoyed. When we got to the picnic area we relaxed and played games. I even read a magazine. We drank hot chocolate from our thermoses and it was great. We go back home and Luigi, our black russian is very sick. My daughter and I stay up to midnight with the little guy. When he finally was no longer awake. We had put him on a hot water bottle and blankets to keep him comfortable. It broke my heart. Two hamsters in two days. Thank goodness, my youngest hamster is still alive and well in her room. I am not sure if I could have handled another death or another tear. I am glad we are starting a new week. I am hoping it is not as weird and sad as this last week. Did anyone else have some strange occurances happen? I am really curious. Everyone I talked to around here said they had some of the most trying weeks in a long time.
Hope everyone has a beautiful week this week. Tomorrow is the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere. I hope that it is a better, non-weird week. I know it is my favorite season. My youngest and I decorated her window for the first day of fall the first day of a new transition.

My horoscope last week held true :)

Spend some time in that special nook of your community that you love to visit to restore your sanity. Maybe the weather is still summery in your area, and a picnic would work for you. A teacher appears when the student is ready; you may have two different teachers with different advice for you, but try to find the nugget of wisdom from both.

Dr. Weil hits it right on.

I love Dr. Weil and he is very true in the article he wrote. He states that the 14 ingredients you need to exclude in your anti-inflammatory diet are:

Animal fat, such as lard
Artificial sweeteners or non-nutritive sweeteners
Coconut oil
Corn oil
Cottonseed oil
Fractionated oil
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil or vegetable shortening
Margarine
Palm or palm kernel oil
Blended vegetable oils
Safflower oil
Soybean oil
Sunflower oil

I know that we are going to hear so much information on how bad High Fructose Corn Syrup is and how it is killing us. It is bad, very bad. Soybeans are in everything and being allergic to it make is very hard to avoid. Back in the 80's to 90's it was the hydrogentated oils that were bad for you. Each year it just keeps getting worse and our bodies keep getting weaker.

Other Articles
Why is HFCS bad for me

Not so sweet for the planet

I do want to say that the AMA doesn't think that HFCS leads to obesity or other issues. (I will disagree with that) and the FDA says that it is natural. I can't agree with that either. Of course, this is just my opinion. I think too much of anything is a bad thing and HFCS is in everything.

Thumbs Up to Evolving Wellness!

SodaPop ~ I just read a great article from Evolving Wellness Blog. I know what things are bad for me and what things are not bad for me. What makes me sick and what doesn't make me sick. To look up each and every tidbit on products can be "time consuming" if you have four kids it is way too much time. This articles was great to get all the information I wanted without having to research the whole internet myself. Please check it out when you have the time.

Wow, time flies when you have MCS

It has been another busy week living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or whatever the new name de jour is! I know I have been reading MCS called by many other names but to me, it is still just MCS. Ah but that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) Living with MCS by any other name still makes your life a living hell. We tried to go to a cross-country meet on Saturday that Ryan was participating in. There was so much cologne, perfume, suntan lotion and toxic smells from the lake that we had to go and hide in our car till our son's race was finished. We were sick. You know what bothers me most is that even outside we get sick when we are around people. My other problem for not getting to my writing is my daughter Jaclyn. We have all been spending a great deal of time working on her pronunciation of words, helping with her letter sounds, sight words and everything else.

I guess you can tell who comes first in my world. I do want to let you all know that we have been fairing okay with the MCS. We still have our good days and our bad days. We decided to spend the weekend at home after the cross-country meet just for our own safety. My youngest has finally master her alphabet and my oldest has been able to stay away from the AXE exposures at school. My middle daughter was having alot of problems with the kids using the hand sanitizers at school before lunch. (What happened to just washing your hands before you eat?) We have now gotten to a page in our life where we have to sanitize. Scary huh?! No wonder we have SUPERBUGS in our world. We don't let our own natural defenses protect us. I found out that my oldest daughter was getting huge headaches from the hand sanitizers at school so I had to do my own research and find out what would be good. I chose Hands2GO hands down. It works well, doesn't seem to smell all that much even though it contains lavender and chamomile. My daughter has not complained of headaches from the using this product. Unfortunately no one else in the class uses it so she says that she can't sit to close to her friends at lunch until the smell dissipates.

Busy Week- Detoxification and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

The rest of the week was very busy between the kids karate and school. We have been working with our youngest because of the mold she has always had difficulty with her speech. This was noted on her neurological workup. So I haven't been writing I have been working on beginning letters and sounds. We have always been working with her but this has been a little more intense at least for me because I am always thinking of new games that we can play to learn. So if anyone has a great game they can think of let me know. I am always up for new ideas. I haven't even been drinking or making kefir.




I have been doing more research on detoxification. I have found that the best detox I can do for chemicals is to drink alka-seltzer gold. Our environmental physician recommended it and I have found that it helps. I know that if I am in a bad place or have been in a bad place I drink a bottled water with two tablets of alka-seltzer gold every 1-2 hours and I feel much better. I also have been using grams of Vitamin C. They say that you can take as much Vitamin C as your bowels can handle. If you get diarrhea you know that you have reached your limit. Vitamin C to bowel tolerance. The most affective form of Vitamin C is ascorbic acid NOT from corn. Begin with taking 2,000 to 3,000 milligrams (mg) every day and increase by 1,000 mg daily until you have a loose stool several days in a row. Remain slightly below that dosage, daily. You can split the dosage throughout the day if the milligrams run high during the detox process. Ascorbic acid removes toxins from the water stores within your body, and ideally, every cell within your body should be bathed in water. When the ascorbic acid levels have successfully reached every cell within your body, the excess vitamin C excretes in your stool, which makes it soft and watery. I have never reached my limit. These two remedies have helped me feel much better, never perfect, but good. I recommend crystal vitamin C because I think your body can absorb it and use it better. Also, remember if you are watching your PH Vitamin C can turn your urine quite acidic. I have discovered this myself with my PH strips. You can buy Alka-seltzer gold through amazon.com or at CVS Pharmacy in the United States.

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Hopefully I will write more soon.

Insects

This really has nothing to do with MCS but I had to share. I have been busy with my computer for a couple of days adding an external drive for storage so although I have plenty of topics to discuss my day is coming to a close. It has been monsoon season here in the sonoran desert and with it comes our second growing season and rebrith of many creatures. The rattlers are out and about, the birds and bats are singing and flying. I have seen plenty of hummingbirds a few deer, coyotes, roadrunners, and lizards but the most interesting for me is watching the different insects. We have had eleven Praying Mantis on our three windows tonight. They are spending their time catching insects. This is the most I have ever seen here. I had a tarantula in our garage that I removed to the great outdoors, a huge one crawling on our window, outside, and one that I removed from my daughter's classroom for her teacher. I have killed a black widow, outside, at our front door, and a brown widow, outside, at our backdoor. I cannot leave out all of the wolf spiders that have been in and out of our house this past month. This morning I had a striped lizard that looked like a rattlesnake's rattle that freaked me out. Not to mention uncountable gambel quail and antelope jackrabbits. See, as I said it has nothing to do with illness, just the everyday creepy-crawlers of the desert. The cutest of all are the little baby quails following their parents, Hope you all have a great night.

Long Weekend and so much information to share.

I hope everyone that had celebrates labor day had a wonderful long weekend. For those of you that don't I hope you had a nice weekend. My headache is finally gone and I can think straight again. That is always a great feeling but when I feel better I do extensive projects. I think I am starting my total organization month now and I fill you in later how it went.

I wanted to share two things that I find very useful in my life. The first thing I am sharing with you is that Sundays and Wednesdays are the days that I do my juicing, yogurt making, hard boiled egg making and smoothie making. I find that these two days work great because of farmer's markets and the three day rule of making my smoothies and juices. Orange Juice I end up making almost every other day but that is because it takes alot of orange to make juice for my 5 juice drinking family. I also make my green smoothie on those days. Kefir making is everyday and the hard boil eggs sometimes can be that frequently too.

The next thing I want to share with you is that our breakfast is our most important meal of the day. We usually start it off with a yogurt or kefir with some homemade granola and organic blueberries, a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, one hard boil egg plus or minus the egg yolk (I am usually just an egg white protein sort of person). I make a whole grain hot organic cereal (oat bran, cream of wheat, cream of brown rice, oatmeal etc.). On Sunday nights I like to crockpot the steel oatmeal overnight so it is ready in the morning which gives me a break from the cooking cereal in the am. The kids usually get a green smoothie which is full of bananas, oranges and spinach. This has totally satisfied all my eaters until lunch time. They don't usually get a snack in the am at their school except for my kindergartener. So I am glad that they say they are full till lunch. I really wonder how many other kids aren't absolutely starving by lunch. I guess you can see we have hit on whole grains, yogurt, protein, veggies and fruit in one quick breakfast. My husband and I have alot of food allergies and we find that this breakfast has been good for us too. We don't usually get irritable or spacey brain when we eat like this. I find that if it is sugary or doughy like pancakes of french toast our brains and bodies feel like we were hit by a train. I hope this helps some of my MCS friends. My hubby and I also find that certain eggs bring are symptoms up too we had to try different ones that didn't make us feel yukky. I think on this note I am going to call it a night.