welcom to my garden video tour

Hold on to your hats....the camera moves quickly at times.

hair-de-do

Natale brought her hair clip for play time today. They girls spent their free time in front of the mirror making colorfully crafted hairdos.

 

 

super moon

I made Jay pull over so we could photograph the super moon rising as we drove down the mountain on Saturday evening.

tutu cute

Our half-way rendezvous point for exchanging Tessa is my favorite discount grocery store. 

Today after moving her school bag and her overnight bag and her snack bag from her mom's car to mine, Tessa and I headed in the store to do so bargain hunting. Somewhere after the granola bars and before the tea aisle we stumbled upon this pink tutu just Tessa's size. How could I say no? 

She was so inspired to dance she could hardly wait to get home and get started. Her free dance involves a lot of twirling which is pretty tricky to capture in one shot so I set the camera to multiple shots and held down the trigger hoping I would capture something to preserve the moment.

It made me smile remembering some other sweet little girls dressed in pretty pink tutus dancing around the living room.

figgy pudding

Last week I stopped at the local nursery to replace my mint plant that had died in the heat. When I went to pay for the plant the nursery worker was busy with another customer so I wandered back to the fruit trees. I was surprised to see several three foot tall fig trees with price tags of twenty dollars each. Now to be honest it was only this past year or so that I first tasted a fresh fig. Up until that time my fig-experience had been limited to Fig Newton cookies that my dad took in his lunch bucket. Now twenty dollars looked like a bargain just waiting to happen but I didn't have the right vehicle for tree shopping that day. I returned the next day with Jay and the pickup and now the figgy is happily adjusting to it new home.

get the lead out

Through a recent series of events I found myself in the office of a local naturopathic doctor taking a test for heavy metals. I was anticipating a high level of mercury but was surprised at the large amounts of aluminum, cadmium and lead present. The doctor said five or more metals are cause for concern and my test showed 14 metals in various amounts.

I was scheduled to start IV chelation this past week but after getting more information I've decided to do an intense heavy metal detox first and then make my decision regarding IV therapy. 

I started a healing log so I can target my eating towards foods that will help with the elimination of the toxins. I'm researching foods and adding vitamins and supplements along with the oral chelation the doctor recommended.

I now know that hair analysis is a more accurate test of metal toxin levels than the tests that measure what is being excreted from the body (which only measures those metals currently moving in the body). Heavy metals can be stored deep in tissues of the body. 

The plan in my mind at the moment is to detox from now until sometime in August and then retest (only this time using a hair analysis). I know it doesn't follow scientific procedures to retest using a different test, however, I want to use the most accurate measure possible. Neither test is cheap and I can't justify doing a second test at this point just to get accurate baseline numbers when it is already obvious that there are too many metals present.

Your prayers for the Father's healing hand as well as self-disciple with food and lifestyle changes needed for healing are greatly appreciated.

numbers

Tessa is a numbers person but Natale is much more comfortable with words. The last two weeks we decided to switch things up and start the day with math instead of waiting until after lunch. Although Natale still prefers language activities to anything with digits, the switch has made an amazing difference in the amount of math study we can take down in one setting. I figure that has got to make a difference in the long run. 

And so...although neither N or I are especially pleased with the idea we will continue to put those numbers front and center in our day.

 

 

One of our math lessons this week. Tessa worked at counting out pattern blocks to match numbers while Natale rolled big dice and used stickers to write the resulting addition problem.