We continued our drive along the coast into Georgia,  South Carolina and the North Carolina. We drove through the Outer banks,  NC. It has great beaches and is generally a relaxing place. We moved from beach to beach and started a new tradition of building sand pools at every beach.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words so here are some pictures that shows our journey.

We hit the beach the first thing following our plane ride to Daytona beach. It was cloudy but the girls couldn’t care less.

That evening we camped at a camp site in Flagler beach.

We then headed to St. Augustine. Tanya and Leena tried feeding themselves chips using their toes!

We had some good fun at St Augustine. We caught tiny fish with our bare hands! The rest of the time was more water fun.

Rest of trip to be continued….

We made it to Florida after some drama. We were originally taking an Amtrak train which got cancelled due to an accident. We got lucky and found cheap flight tickets to Daytona beach for the next day.
Tanya and Leena had some good fun at the airport terminals.

We got in Daytona beach around 8pm Thursday. Was a happy reunion with dad and dog! We had a nice room in a beach hotel so we got to play”normal” for a day.

The next day we hit the beach.

Been a while, but now the good weather is here!! We are enjoying the warm days and being in the yard.

We are off for a trip to Florida tomorrow. We’ll take the Amtrak from Lewistown to Philly and Philly to Deland, FL. Johan and Rosie will pick us up. Should be lots of fun. The kids are bouncing off the walls with excitement!

Here’s what we have been doing for the last few weeks.

We took a little trip to Altoona. Tanya was a very motivated reader at that time.

The kids did all the workshops possible at Lowes and Home depot. Here are the spoils after the hard work.

This is the latest view of our camper “Bulan”. I made those cushion covers!! Can’t stop looking at them:)

We went to Way fruit farm with Tanya’s friend Eli and his parents Andy and Kelly. Was good fun.

Ride through the fields

Back at home, Tanya and Leena were up to their antics. Here’s Leena selling bananas, and then Tanya and Leena having breakfast outside on the deck.

Winter is dragging on. We are too, dragging ourselves through the days hoping and waiting for spring, our favorite time of the year. Johan heard the birds chirping today so there’s hope.

Our days are now filled with chores and its actually just blah. Some self pity is in order here!

Anyhow, we have still stayed busy with craft, because it brightens our days. For valentines I made little valentines from bottle caps. They were little fridge magnets, and went to Tanya and Leena’s school mates. I only have a B&W printer, so I printed hearts with peoples’ names on pretty paper. It was a good activity.

I also found a very cool craft with recycled toilet paper rolls. You just cut the rolls and then paint and stick them into shapes. The results are unbelievable. Mine is still a work in progress.

Tanya has been playing with wooden trains, and Johan went all out,  making a train shed and a bridge/tunnel combo with old cardboard. As you can see, we like working with recycled material!

Johan has also been making some progress with the cabin, although with everything frozen, the work goes slow. Here’s the latest picture of the greenhouse.

Tanya has been enjoying the snow as usual!

Leena is tired of being indoors, but keeps trying her hand at new experiments. She was very interested in new socks sent by Oma and quickly stripped to try them on!

Lastly, I am now grinding my own grains to make pancakes and it is working well! Johan got me a mixer with a grain grinder attachment for my birthday.

More next time!

We indulged in some art this week. When the snow hit us hard, we hung around at home. Johan made this spectacular lampshade.

In case you haven’t guessed it, the lampshade is made of little plastic creamer cups hot glued together.

Tanya is a budding artist and has many surprises up her sleeve. For Leena’s birthday, she made Vee, a character in Chuggington. She made it by cutting and stitching felt. Leena loves it:)

For Christmas, Tanya made Anna from Frozen for Leena, also out of felt.

Leena dabbled with some castle making a couple of weeks ago. She made a castle out of magnetic blocks. It was fun to watch!

For Leena’s birthday, I made Olaf out of felt. I also made some banana dolphins and apple cars for her school party. I found all the instructions online, unlike Tanya who used her imagination.

And finally, some pics of Leena’s birthday.

Here’s a great pic of Tanya with her pal in the snow!

In all my recent nutritional studies, the most fascinating turns out to be bone broth.

When I first read about bone broth, I learnt that this gelatinous soup is great for digestion. Additionally it treats many intestinal disorders. Hmm, impressive, but what’s the big deal?

The bone broth-making process involves using meaty bones or whole/half chicken boiled along with lettuce, carrots, onions and most importantly, vinegar, for 24-48 hours. At the end of this process, you will be left with a gel that is supposed to be good for you. Adding parsley 1/2 hour before the end gives additional nutrients.

I tried it, and the results were surprisingly good. The broth was easy to make and you can store it and use it for ten days or so (or freeze it for long term storage). Once the broth is ready, you just take a little out each day and make egg drop soup. The kids love it. The broth has a very soothing taste.

On reading more, I found some mind boggling info that sheds some light on what the hype is all about.

Grains such as wheat contain a protein called gluten which is very hard to digest. Over time, gluten damages the nutrient absorbing villi in the small intestine (celiac disease). Over time, gluten also causes our gut to become more permeable (leaky gut), thereby allowing proteins to enter our bloodstreams promoting an autoimmune reaction. Alzheimer’s is an autoimmune disease.

Here’s the kicker: bone broth actually heals a leaky gut and aids digestion! So now the hype make more sense. Some good ways to prevent these disorders in the first place would be to include bone broth in one’s everyday diet and either avoid or properly treat gluten containing grains. That’s another post!

What’s also great about bone broth is that it comes from materials that are otherwise considered a waste – animal bones. One can hardly think of a more elegant food.

Before we end, a couple of pics from the family.

References:

“Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/09/29/dr-perlmutter-gluten.aspx

http://glutendoctors.blogspot.com/2012/04/dementia-is-skyrocketing-does-gluten.html

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-9890/10-benefits-of-bone-broth-gut-healing-recipe.html

 

The holidays are almost over, for the kids at least. I get another week before teaching starts again.

We had a fun vacation with a breakfast with Santa and some good ice sliding fun. Here are some pics.

We had a Christmas trees with almost all home made ornaments. It made Christmas preparations pretty exciting.

For the rest, we have been busy with our projects. Johan is very busy with the cabin at Shaver’s creek, and I have been cooking up a storm!! Tanya is getting more mature with electric trains now, and Leena loves to paint.

We’ll see what this year brings! Here’s a picture of the ginger snaps that I made this evening. Not very pretty, but they taste good!

Having been a rebel from as long as I can remember, I have lately been forced to look at tradition. Leena went to the dentist a couple of months back and the dentist discovered cavities. After my usual round of guilt, I started reading “Cure Tooth Decay”, by Ramiel Nagel, and excellent book on ideas about how to reverse tooth decay. I came across Weston Price, a dentist who researched indigenous cultures in 1930s and related modern diet to physical as well as moral degeneration. I am reading his absolutely stunning book “Nutrition and Physical degeneration” now.

My recent reads bring back many memories which were buried in me as I was growing up. Mom saying, “always soak lentils” or “take the froth out of the top of the boiling lentils”. Such tips were disregarded and then forgotten, but now come back to me with new meaning. I have some regrets that I didn’t follow these very useful ideas that are key to proper handling of foods. But it is also upsetting that the “why” was lost in my (and probably most) primitive traditions, causing me to disregard these ideas as antiquated. It would be nice if cultures documented their reasons and trusted the intelligence of their future generations rather than just passing down a set of rules.

As I read more and dig deeper, conflicting data appears. My vegan friends just told me about “China Study” by “Colin Campbell” which has a dietary suggestion that is completely at odds with a Weston Price style diet. Since the stakes are high (my kids’ health), our diet decisions requires that I assimilate all data and use my conviction based on judgement and courage.

And I thought dinner just meant half an hour in the kitchen!

It was a quiet thanksgiving in State College. Johan and Tanya are in The Netherlands. Leena, Rosie and I are in State College. Tanya hung out with Jitske and Michael in Amsterdam while Johan worked. Looks like they had fun!

They are now in Delden with Ma and Klaske. Enjoying some of their usual hangouts. Hopefully they’ll have some new pics for my next post.

In the meantime we have been lonesome, but not without adventures. On the wednesday they left, we had a lot of snow. The first snow is always fun. Leena and Rosie went crazy. We also made a small snow man. Here’s a pic.

Thursday was thanksgiving. We had lunch with Josh and Katherine and their kids Ed and Mary. It was warm and fun! We hung out there for a couple of hours and then got home. Tanya also enjoyed some leftover turkey.

We took care of Leena’s school guinea pigs and they kept us busy.

Before they left, we picked up a new electric pickup truck from the Philly area. Here’s a pic.

Now school and work are back on after a week long break. Waiting for the traveling duo to return. Leena has declared that she misses Tanya and Papa! More next time.