Don't Pee on the Bee

Go away, bad germs!

 
JJ woke up early Sunday morning, throwing up.  I'll confess to some initial "swine flu" panic, but it definitely wasn't that!  By 3:00, he was outside with his dad, building a new bike bridge across the creek! 

He and I crawled into the bed in the guest room that morning and talked and snuggled in between throwing up.  JJ asked why he was sick.  I told him that he just had some bad germs in his body, and they needed to come out.   When he started having stomach pains, he hit his stomach and said, "Go away, bad germs!"  I repeated, "Get lost!  We don't need you here, bad germs!"  And then every time after JJ threw up, he looked at me with whatever grin he could muster and said, "Mommy!  Now more of the bad germs are gone from me!"  I guess that's one way of looking at it!  It was one of those moments where you want to laugh and cry at the same time!  And man, do those boy's ears get RED when he throws up!!!

Completely off topic now!  If you've been enjoying the Hundred Dollar Holiday posts, be sure and check out the comments posted by Robin Main, author of Santa-tizing: What's Wrong with Christmas and How to Clean It Up, as well as from Donna of Re|Create www.recreate.org   Interesting and helpful!

Thomas Merton appears

If you read Wednesday's post, you might recall that I mentioned printing out something about Thomas Merton, a name that I have frequently encountered in my reading over the years, but a person I know very little about.  And then, as the world seems to do, a bit of Thomas Merton dropped into my lap from Spirit Booster's blog .  I share it with you. 

The Beginning of Love

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." -- Thomas Merton

Black Friday, eco-style

No coupons or hits on where to get the best deals from me!  Sorry!  Black Friday is NOT my thing!  I am not a big shopper anyway, so a day like this gives me the heebie-jeebies!  I'm more inclined to get online in a day or two and get all my shopping done in one fell swoop and have it delivered to my door!

But here is something eco-friendly that I saw in Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine (November 2009): flowering gift wrap from Little Kay Gardens.   It's wrapping paper pre-seeded with flower seeds.   Wrap your gift in this, and then the recipient can plant the paper in their yard and have beautiful flowers as a further reminder of your love and generosity!  Sounds cool to me!

 

You can check out their time lapse to see how the flowers might look.  (I would assume that these are ideal growing conditions!)

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Tibetan style!

JJ:  "Ooooooh, Mommy!  Is this a Tibetan singing bowl?  Look, Sarah, look!" as he proceeds to rub the rim of the gravy bowl with the ladle!  (Impressive that I could take a picture and not pee my pants at the same time!)

Happy Thanksgiving!  And may your gravy bowls sing!
 

Blessings or curses?

 

Last Sunday when I was posting from Spirit Booster's blog, I enjoyed a fabulous ride through cyberspace as I started checking out links on their website.  I was in a particularly "spiritually needy" mood that afternoon, so it was perfect!  I found some things that I will definitely blog about in the future:  soul bytes, an interesting sounding book called Rest Your Dreams on a Little Twig, ideas about prayer and different types of prayer in another interesting sounding book called Prayer Notes to a Friend, and a short paper on Thomas Merton, someone whom I have always wanted to learn  more about.

The one link that really shifted my mindset that day, though, was a paper from The Reverend Whitney W. Roberson who is the Associate Pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.  I urge you to read this one page paper Grace at Work: Living the blessings and see where it takes you.  Even if you are not currently working, this will have relevance to your life, I assure you.  

And if you've got a few minutes (or more!), I highly recommend checking out the Grace Cathedral website.  Even if you're not religious, you will likely find something fascinating here: incredible labyrinths, recordings of sermon, beautiful photos.

Blessings to you and yours!

Kiwi cool stuff!

Have you heard about Kiwi magazine?  Growing families the natural and organic way.  It's really a great magazine.  I've made it up to page 42 and already have 7 pages turned down--which means 1) something to blog about, 2) an idea/activity to try, 3) something to possibly buy, 4) you get the idea!

Here are a few of things that have piqued my interest already:

Check out this website http://www.myhealthyschool.com for great information for parents and teachers.  MyHealthySchool.com provides teachers, administrators and parents with action plans for creating greener, healthier, more socially responsible schools and children. Then check out this page for creative gifts for teachers.  There is a lot of really good information on this site.  You might even want to share it with any teachers you know.

Another website I want to check out is www.DrGreene.com.  Dr. Greene is a father of four and a pediatrician at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto.  He is also a clinical professor at Stanford.  Sounds like impeccable credentials!  He also has a new book out, Feeding Baby Green, which is not relevant to me now  but which I would have loved to have read when my kids were babies.

There was a short article on aromatherapy.  Did you know that rose is an aphrodisiac?  Not me!  Might have to try that one out!  The article also listed some eco-friendly air fresheners.  I might actually buy one if it smelled nice and not so intense!

Lip Love listed seven really nice sounding lip balms.  I'm curious to check out Yes to Carrots C Me Smile Lip Butters!

There was a great article about two kids who started a campaign called Crayons4Kids which sends crayons and coloring books and other items to kids who are in the hospital.  Their dad is a doctor, and after visiting the hospital with him one day and seeing the "really sad" kids there, they decided to do something about it!  Way to go!

Another great website to check out Celebrate Green  which has fantastic ideas for keeping the holidays green.  (In line with Hundred Dollar Holiday!)  Check out the "Santa Sacks" for a great idea on keeping the wrapping paper issue a non-issue!

And last but not least, I found what I am going to buy for my nephews for Christmas!  Yahoo!

Let me know if you check any of these things out!

Christmas Never Was Christmas (Hundred Dollar Holiday)

 
Wow!  In chapter 1 "Christmas Never Was Christmas," Bill McKibben gives a very thorough history of events leading up to the development of Christmas.  He cites Stephen Nissenbaum ("the preeminent Christmas historian" and author of The Battle for Christmas) and Penne Restad (author of  Christmas in America) frequently throughout.  These are books that I would love to read too--if only I had more time!!! 

I think that most of us have heard that December 25th was eventually chosen as Christmas Day when it was originally the longest day of the year.  Pagan rites became combined with Christianity, and there was much merry-making going on!  Later, the Puritans tried to ban such "festive" celebrations.  Soon the tradition of wassailing began--"bands of boys and young men would walk into the halls of the rich to receive gifts of food, drink, even of money."  But eventually the men and boys would drink to the health and wealth of their master, knowing full well the interdependence of serfs and their masters. 

As life in the cities grew less personal, however, the gangs became tougher and meaner, and New Yorkers in the 1800s set out to change the holiday.  Enter Clement Clark Moore, "an extremely rich professor of Hebrew," (does anyone else find this fascinating???) who wanted to change the feel of the urban holiday and penned "The Night Before Christmas," reintroducing St. Nick, and therefore, Santa Claus.  Christmas was being moved into the home, no longer the streets.  Entrepreneurs saw dollar signs as the new Christmas was being invented.  Christmas ornaments, Christmas cards, presents and eventually the Christmas tree all came into being.