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The Business of Being Born

Posted by html404 on April 10, 2010
in DVDs & CDs

Ever since I heard about documentary, The Business of Being Born, I have wanted to see it. There was even a screening here in the Chicago area, but being a bit of a miser I decided to wait until it came out on DVD. Then life happened and I forgot about it until this past week when a friend and colleague mentioned it on Facebook. So I looked it up online, found it and watched it. It was really good.

Business of Being Born dvd

Director, Abbey Epstein and executive producer, Ricki Lake did a great job of documenting how birth has become big business and how normal, healthy pregnancies can produce a healthy birth at home. Both of these ladies actually had a birth filmed and a part of The Business of Being Born.

Here’s another tidbit about me, I am actually a bit of a prude. So I don’t enjoy seeing other women in all their “glory” giving birth. Although, I do love their responses as they meet their newly born child – that moves me to tears. I also do not like fowl language, which The Business of Being Born did not “bleep” out the few times that it was uttered by participants in the movie, but that did not detract from the message of the film. It did make my ears ring though. Not that I don’t ever spout off something I shouldn’t when I am upset, I do, after all I am human. However, I do not use the “F” word and think it sounds atrocious to be honest. Very unlady like and unprofessional in my opinion. But I will say that some of these ladies were giving birth and in pain, so in part they really did not have had much control at the time either.

I think this is a must see film for all women planning to have children, expecting or who may even be done having children. Each group of women will take something away from it and it will challenge the way they view and think about birth.

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The Guys and Spring

Posted by html404 on April 9, 2010
in Family Stuff

Just wanted to update you on our Wordless Wednesday. This was one of the days we made it to the park last week. The guys were enthralled with the pee wee baseball practice going on behind the playground. They should have just turned around in their swings and they could have been swinging while watching the other boys and their dads/coaches practice!

A cute thing happened this week when our two-year-old came up the stairs with a milk crate of clean cloth diapers, without being told! We wouldn’t ask such a little tike to do a job like that anyways. His big brother helped with the last step but other than that we had no idea he was dragging up the crate. He barely made a sound while doing it. Then once he had it in our room, he proceeded to start folding diapers! How’s that for training? Just by watching others do it he figured he could too! Truly a precious boy.

This week has been cold, wet and rainy. We had to cancel our appt. to see the farmland and will reschedule on a nice day next week.

Yesterday, I had my first midwife appointment. I am 20 weeks and 2-4 days. Baby wouldn’t stay put for very long when the doppler was used, but at least we did get to hear his or her heartbeat. My blood pressure was good, but my iron is down a bit. That was odd for me, mine is usually higher, so I am going to try and up my iron intake. Technically at 28-32weeks it is suppose to have a healthy, expected drop, but we don’t want mine to drop we want it to remain the same.

Tomorrow Milwaukee Zoo is having a free day if anyone is near that city and interested!

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‘NETFLIX® & Nostalgia’ Giveaway

Posted by html404 on April 9, 2010
in Giveaways

THE PRIZE:
The Winner of the ‘NETFLIX® & Nostalgia’ giveaway will receive a vintage prize package, including:

*A 6 month NETFLIX® subscription
*$25 Starbucks® gift card
*A box of See’s Famous Old Time Chocolates®
*A jar of homemade strawberry jam
*A Big Band music CD
*A Mini B-17 Model airplane
*Vintage stationery and pen
*British specialty tea
*WWII style playing cards

For more information just click on the icon above! Contest will run April 5th and run through April 25th!

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Wordless Wednesday – The Guys

Posted by html404 on April 7, 2010
in Family Stuff

April 2009 008

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Spring is Here!

Posted by html404 on April 6, 2010
in Free Stuff

I have several reviews to get posted, but am finding it hard to get them written up amidst everything else we are currently involved in! We have been having gorgeous weather – 70-80 degrees most of last week. This week we were expecting some of the same this week, but it’s been raining with thunderstorms most of the time.

April 2009 002

We had an “episode” last week, our two year old son gave us a scare with DeCon. My husband had brought home his mom’s shop vac, which she keeps in her garage where she puts down DeCon to control the mice population. There happened to be some on the shop vac and my husband found the DeCon on our floor beside Noah after bringing the shop vac into the house. It was a scary few days, but we are thankful to report that he is just fine. Whew. My poor husband was kicking himself, but it is one of those things that happened…and put our hearts in our throats and our emotions on our sleeves just thinking about losing Noah.

Then we were fortunate to come across a free upright freezer, which my husband and his brother picked up and got set up in record time in our garage. Now we have two upright freezers to help store food for our growing family.

We also came across some farm property for rent. Just land for rent, no house as it is already rented out, but if we were to rent a couple of acres we’d be able to put up a huge family vegetable garden to help feed this crew of ours. We are going to see the property tomorrow, which is fairly close to our house. So I am in “farm mode” again as I try to finish up our online farminars with PracticalFarmers.org, set up our mentorship through our Farm Beginnings facilitator (for those of you unaware, this past winter we won a full scholarship to Stateline Farm Beginnings for beginning farmers and those interested in farming). April 2009 023

So, if I you are wondering why I haven’t posted, you now know why, as this is all in addition to what I do at home for our homeschool and for our clients! Plus, we began our deep cleaning of our garage which desperately needs finishing so we can make room for this new little person growing inside my womb – he or she has begun to make more movements that are more noticeable to me! It is such a wonderful feeling! The weather and my husband’s health has not been very cooperative this week to get the garage done. 🙁

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Enter to Win a Ruffle Scarf from Mayu!

Posted by html404 on April 3, 2010
in Giveaways

ruffle-scarf_blakc-199x300

Just received word that Mayu is hosting their first giveaway, so I thought I’d share it with all of you. Mayu is hosting their first giveaway! Remember that Mayu is a fair trade company that sells eco friendly, organic hand-knit alpaca products.

They are giving away a chocolate colored ruffled scarf. This is Mayu’s best seller and retails for $119 and could be yours for FREE! All you have to do is go to Mayu’s blog and check out the ways to enter this great giveaway. I even entered for the fun of it since I was going to write this up anyways to help them promote their giveaway.

See details on Mayu’s blog: www.shopmayu.com/blog.

Mayu would appreciate help in spreading the word about their giveway, so please feel free to pass this information along to others!

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When Your Hut’s On Fire!

Posted by html404 on April 2, 2010
in Uncategorized

When Your Hut’s On Fire!

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him.

Every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming.
Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few possessions.

One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst seemed to have happened, and everything was lost.

He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, ‘God! How could you do this to me?’

Early the next day, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him!

‘How did you know I was here?’ asked the weary man of his rescuers.

‘We saw your smoke signal,’ they replied.

The Moral of This Story:

It’s easy to get discouraged when things are going bad, but we shouldn’t lose heart, because God is at work in our lives, even in the midst of our pain and suffering.

Remember that the next time your little hut seems to be burning to the ground, it just may be a smoke signal that summons the Grace of God.

Author Unknown

This was passed on to us via email from a friend.

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Girls and Dresses

Posted by html404 on April 1, 2010
in Children's Clothing, Family Stuff

Our girls love dresses, well, most of them do most of the time. This year with the help of friends and each other our two older girls made their own civil war dresses for an annual event that we have become a part of – Liberty Day. Liberty Day is usually held in February-March. This year it was on March 20th. It is usually a day long conference of learning history from a constitutional perspective, then in the evening there is an event called the Liberty Day celebration. The celebration includes skits, music, special performance of the 2nd Virginia Convention and an hour or so of dancing the Virginia Reel and other dances from that time period – all in costumes from many different eras, not just the civil war.

This annual affair has become a delight to our girls. They love picking out patterns, fabric and notions for their dresses. The past couple of years they have even purchased all their materials with their own money. It helps that both of them have Christmas and birthdays early in the year to put their gift money towards their coveted costumes.

In some ways, this is a rather extravagant affair since they really don’t wear their dresses anywhere else except when they act out their own plays at home. However, we have heard of friends wearing their dresses to places like Old World Wisconsin, Williamsburg and other places that are very historical. The thing is, I hate to squelch the desire they have to create, sew and be a part of the event itself. They have a blast making the dresses and then when they come home from Liberty Day talk of nothing else for several days! These are the things that make memories for them to treasure their whole lives.

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Wordless Wednesday – Civil War Dresses

Posted by html404 on March 31, 2010
in Uncategorized

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Did You Participate in Earth Hour?

Posted by html404 on March 30, 2010
in Uncategorized

World Wildlife Fund poster:Layout 1 Just wondering if anyone participated in Earth Hour on Saturday night? We did, but we were late starting because we were watching the movie, Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog, and with only 15 minutes left we opted to do our hour from 8:45pm-9:45pm. By the way, good movie!

I had grandoise plans for our family, but I guess I should have shared them with everyone before hand because while Earth Hour was spent in the dark, it wasn’t anything like I was expecting!

First, Robert was not feeling well. Second, I had pictured all of us crowded in our bedroom with perhaps the flashlight, (I considered candles but with so many bodies in one room decided for the safety reasons the flashlight was enough) and we’d get some discussions going.

Well, when you put a sick husband, seven children and a wife/mom who wants to talk in a dark room for an hour what do you get? Giddy children, grumpy husband and a disappointed wife/mom!

I am sure our children will have fond memories of our hour of darkness because they played and goofed around, while my husband asked them to tone it down because he had a headache and I bemoaned that this is just not what I pictured us doing.

Result? Happy children, tired, sick husband and disappointed wife/mom. But we did conserve energy.

How was your Earth Hour?

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