Pep-up

Here's a great idea for getting healthy stuff into little bodies.

We make a fruit smoothie packed with protein most mornings. We do it pretty inexpensively, too, which is always important with a large family. :-)

We take:

2 bananas
milk
about a cup of powdered milk (for extra protein)
magnesium powder (1/2 tsp -- too much tastes bad)
1/4 cup orange juice concentrate
a few thousand mg of vitamin E (we squeeze the oil from the capsules)
a few capsules of vitamin A & D
tsp of vanilla
a tablespoon of lecithin granules
wheat germ
vitamin c powder

sometimes we'll add protein powder, raw (pasteurized) egg, strawberries or other fruit, or other supplements, such as kelp.

We blend it all up, without too much milk, or it won't fit in the blender.

Then I pour about 1/3 a cup for each child, and add more milk.

It's really tasty! You'll need to play around with it to find the combinations you like best. But the vanilla and banana and orange juice make the whole thing really palatable, even for very finicky kids.

Whenever we start our day like this, we all feel really good. This is generally a "mini-breakfast" which we follow with a 10 am mid-morning snack of oatmeal or eggs. It gives the kids a really good start on the day.

We discovered the Pep-up recipe in the book, "Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit", by Adelle Davis.

What is it about Harry Potter that lends itself to trivia contests by child genuises?

Last night my 12-year-old son was talking with another boy he'd just met. They spent an hour asking things like, "How many points do you get for throwing a book through Moaning Myrtle's stomach?" (Moaning Myrtle is a ghost in the story.)

Now, I read those books three times, and I didn't remember half the situations they were discussing, and I knew almost none of the answers!

I've seen my son have these kinds of trivia challenges about Harry Potter with a number of kids. I never cease to be amazed by the recall of minor details from the story.

It's really fun to watch, even though I can't quite understand it!

Here's a laundry tip for large families:

I always let the kids help me with the laundry. The older ones can now handle all the laundry by themselves! They don't do all the laundry all the time, but they can, so that's a real good thing, certainly.

Each kid has a laundry job. We'll rotate the jobs after a few months. One kid sorts all the laundry by color. (Usually a younger child has this job.) One runs the washer, one runs the dryer.

For folding, they sit in a big circle in the living room, and I hold up an article of clothing and say, "whose is this?" The right child yells out his name, and I toss to him and he folds it and puts it in his pile.

This really saves my own back (folding clothes is hard on my back) and makes the job so much faster. It's really fun, too, because it turns it into a game.

I don't worry if the clothes aren't folded to "my" standards. I get to fold my own clothing, and I can be as big a perfectionist as I want on those. For the kids, they're learning, and they get better at it each time.

Scientology Resource Directory - Kids & Teens

One really great tool for teaching kids how to get along in life is The Way to Happiness by L. Ron Hubbard.

The Way to Happiness is a non-religious moral code, and I've studied it along with my children. It's really fun creating activities based on the precepts, and the kids really enjoy it, too.

We even helped get booklets printed in a newspaper in Israel.

The kids have outgrown most of their Halloween costumes, and I'm not in the mood to sew 6 different costumes this year...

So we're planning a trip to the Salvation Army, where we'll pick up odds and ends. Maybe a few "fancy" dresses and some gypsy clothing. One kid wants to be an Indian (he's already part Indian, but he wants to look it), and another is interested in being Sleeping Beauty's Prince!! (pretty creative, I think.)

We have a big box of "dress-up" stuff that we keep. I throw funny scarves and dressy gloves and strange things that get passed down to us from friends. The kids love the dress-up box.

Families with lots of kids tend to get lots of hand-me-downs from friends. I guess when people are giving away clothes Johnny or Jennifer have outgrown, the first family they think of is the one with "all those kids!" It's really nice.

Anyway, we always end up with something that we can't really use - like a bright orange belt. Or purple cowboy boots. Or a purple and green scarf. These are great in the dress-up box!

I found a great link about creativity - L. Ron Hubbard and the Arts