Another Marla

Have you ever Googled your first name? I hadn't until today.

Meet Marla Olmstead, 4 year old abstract artist from New York who has been painting since she was 2! Maybe you've already seen her and her amazing artwork on TV (the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes II and others)... Check out the website, where you can watch 3 short video clips of her in action.



This one is called Flowers Growing in Outer Space. It is my favorite!

Candy, the Natural Way

Yellow #5, Red 40 or Blue No. 2?
These are too scary for me and you!

These are the names for the colorings added to candy and other foods. As another holiday approaches in which many children get bags and bags of candy loaded with unnatural ingredients that range from chemical dyes, to imitation flavorings, to straight sugar, it may be high time to make a little change that could make a big difference!

Synthetic food dyes are the most likely suspects when it comes to triggering behavior problems in children. For decades allergists have reported that food dyes can trigger reactions like hives and swelling in sensitive people. The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs has found that they can cause respiratory problems. Researchers in the United States, Canada, England and Australia have shown that these dyes can bring about many behavior problems, even when children eat only a small amount.

Food dyes are not new - they have actually been around for well over 100 years. They were originally made from coal tar oil, but now are synthesized from petroleum! In past generations, children were not eating foods with these artificial dyes on a regular basis, and their foods came in more natural forms than today. Many of their candies were made with chocolate and pure vanilla (instead of the fake form of it commonly used today, known as "vanillin.") They had candy treats only at special times of the year. When they went to school, they were not offered soft drinks and junk food. They didn't get up in the morning and start the day with a sugary, red or green cereal, or blue toothpaste, or imitation "juice drinks." No processed, chemically treated prepackaged lunch in a box from the store for them!

I saw this list of natural candy possibilities on Feingold's website: (when we get back to the U.S. I want to try some of these!)

Pearson's Mints (available at many WalMart stores)
Valomilk Cups (sold at Cracker Barrel restaurants)
Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Squares with White Mint Filling (found at Kmart, Target and WalMart)
Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses
Canel's Milk Lollipops
Linette peanut butter cups are available at WalMart
Joby & Marty's Amazing All Natural Pearlies: Dark Chocolate, Marvelous Mint Filled Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, Peanut Butter Filled Milk Chocolate
For fruit candy, find Florida's Natural Au'some Fruit Juice String & Au'some Fruit Juice Nuggets: Strawberry, Blueberry, Apple/Cranberry, and Orange.

Also try visiting the natural foods section of your supermarket, a health food store, or healthy market (Whole Foods, Wild Oats, etc.)

For your own homemade goodies, these are some wacky tips I came across in an email, also from the Feingold Association:

* Use baby food carrots (or pureed cooked carrots) in your cake icing instead of other liquid to make a pretty orange color for cupcake frosting, etc.
* Use concentrated no-pulp orange juice to make a delicious yellow frosting. You might have to adjust the amount of liquid called for to get the right texture.
* And if you need pink coloring, the easiest way is to open a can of sliced beets and use the beet juice! (Eat the beets in your next salad or as a side dish at dinner.) Supposedly, after you add all the sugar and vanilla flavor, nobody will ever suspect a beet ever came near your cake icing!

The Family

Awhile back, I grabbed this book, The Public Orphanage, from my bookshelf (published in 1995) and started flipping through it. I had read it years ago, but now I am shocked by it all over again.



(available for purchase here)

On the very first page is a most interesting paragraph.

Probably the biggest and most subtle shift in discussions about the family came in the last two decades. During that time educators and policymakers began to refer to families instead of the family. They became more sensitive to the diversity of family configurations.

and...

To make people feel better, the trend is to define a family as just about any configuration of people living together who care for one another. We've solved the problem of broken families by declaring that no family is broken, just different.

The Public Orphanage describes the many ways that schools are attempting to become the new American family. It used to be that children helped to boost the family income and then would help to care for their parents in old age. But as fathers increasingly began to work away from the home, children were no longer contributors to their family's business. Today, many women have entered the work force, divorce has increased, and the old version of "The family" has withered away into nostalgia. Children have become a burden. Or so we are led to believe.

With such problems in the family, the school has become the answer for all of our needs. It "cares for children, all day, from birth (daycare to preschool to Kindergarten) to school age, and after school every day until parents return from work, and in some cases, all summer. Those who say they are "pro family" now are probably thinking that these schools should be for everyone. What that boils down to is a full-service school (including breakfast, since parents are too harried to even feed their kids in the morning) which allows "field trips" home in the evenings and weekends. In other words, a "public orphanage."

Instead of looking for ways to bring the family back to front and center and suport it, it too often has unburdened parents from their responsibilities.

It is hard to believe, isn't it. How much more government intervention can we take? I've had enough. This is one of the many reasons my children are at home. They don't need a government nanny when they've got Mom and Dad. Even if you still want to keep your kids in school, this is a great book to read, to help you be aware of the myriad of government programs and its experiments on our children and our schools.

I pray that the parents of today will wake up and once again realize the blessing God has given us - our children. They are OUR responsibility. Not the government's!

Hidden in Their Hearts

Today, my boys recited a whole Psalm to me. What a treasure they have in their hearts now.

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. 4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
8 Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.
10 Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
11 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.


They have been working on this Psalm since we started school about a month ago. Two days a week they alternately copied parts of the psalm and also wrote it from dictation. At the end of each week, they would recite the verses they had learned that week, along with the previous ones, until this week, when it culminated in the recitation of the whole psalm. They surprised themselves, thinking it an impossible task, but realizing that little by little it really wasn't that hard!