2nd week of March

Book of Mormon Party 
We try to have family scripture study every night.  I'd love to be able to say that we do it every night without fail but that would be a lie.  We keep trying, some weeks are better than others.  Sunday night we finished the Book of Mormon.  Dode suggested we celebrate our accomplishment Monday night with ice cream sundaes.  The girls got excited about the party and decorated the dining area with streamers.  We invited Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Lynn to come over and join us.  Elizabeth came up with a great game where we tossed a stuffed pig into a basket which had the name of a key figure from the Book of Mormon on it.  After landing the stuffed pig in the basket, the person told what they remembered about that person.  Then, we enjoyed our ice cream sundaes, followed by a game of Apples to Apples. 

Lynn's cousin Gene Zeller was still in town from Uncle Leo's funeral and he came over with Sharon and Lynn.  It turns out he and Dode served their missions in the same area, separated by 20 years.  It's a small world!  Gene lives in Wyoming and invited us to come visit when we vacation there in June.  He's even willing to pick Dode up at the airport in Billings when Dode flies in to join us for the last half of the vacation, which will save me hours of driving, miles of backtracking and two hotel rooms (We almost always exceed the maximum occupancy in a single room) for the night in Billings.  We are really looking forward to exploring that part of the world Dode's family helped settle years ago, and we're looking forward to picking up some honey candy at Gene's factory.  I'm going to buy a bunch and bring it home for the reunion in July.  Grandma Dickson always had honey candy on hand for grand kids and I thought the next generation should be introduced to the tradition.

Miriam's Birthday

Miriam is six years old!

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Miriam is a joy to have with us.

She loves vacation, but hates traveling

She loves honey and puts it on everything (french fries here)

She loves playing outside

She is fearless

She LOVES "her" Jacob

"Chocolate the Bear" goes everywhere he can with her (at the ski lodge)

She is a spunky girl. 

She comes up with the funniest thoughts about things.

Example:  She was complaining that she was tired of William being mean to her.  I told her he's learning.  She said in disgust, "They teach that at Kent Prairie?!" (his elementary school)

She's a night owl in our early to bed family

She's our little athlete. 

She's got more endurance than her big siblings.

She is absolutely self possessed. 

She has no problem spending the night away from home with grandparents.

She has absolutely no concept that she's just too little to do some things.

She's got a huge spirit packed into a little body.

Happy Birthday Miriam!

Spreading the Green Smoothie Revolution
I've written a few times about how I started drinking green smoothies to use up extra fruit and green leaf vegetables we were getting at the co-op.  It only took a few days of drinking them before I was craving them.  Instead of  day dreaming about the next rich dessert I'd be making, I started dreaming of my next smoothie, what I'd put in it, and how it would taste.  Not only has my nutritional intake improved with the green smoothies, but Dode's has as well.  Is he drinking them?  No way!  But, since I'm making dessert less often, he's eating it less often.  (Although I've noticed an uptake in his ice cream consumption!)  I'm packing a bunch of nutrition in each smoothie.  I've added flax seeds, chia seeds and kefir (made right here) to my smoothie rotation.  I was going through so many greens, I had to start buying an extra case of greens for myself when I put in the produce order.  That left me with a whole bunch of one type of greens.  I wanted to be able to vary what greens I put in my smoothies to get maximum nutrition. 

I put a special green smoothie basket up on the co-op website and figured if four other people bought a basket, we'd get a variety of greens.  Well, it was even more popular than the Italian basket this week. (21 green smoothie baskets vs. 20 Italian baskets.  As an FYI we also got 67 conventional baskets and 16 organic)  It remains to be seen if those people trying it for the first time will order one again, and if those that do re-order spread the word to their friends about how great these smoothies are.  Next week, I'm going down to a free lecture about green smoothies at the University of Washington.  They're advertising free t-shirts (perfect for day camp prizes), recipes, other un-named fun freebies, and chocolate (I don't know how chocolate goes with green smoothies but I'm in!)

Here's a fact sheet I put together to go in the green smoothie baskets:

Green Smoothie Basket

"The whole point with green smoothies is to maximize the greens, to add foods to your diet that you know are good for you but you perhaps rarely eat." -Robyn Openshaw, Green Smoothie Girl


Leslie Moss has been drinking green smoothies for over a year, here are her suggestions. Most of you want to read more and get more information about green smoothies. There are many websites and books out there about green smoothies. My favorites are Robyn Openshaw and Victoria Boutenko. Look them up for many, many different "styles" of smoothies.

Is it another fad diet? Or a passing theory? I can't say, but it can't hurt to eat vegetables that I'd never heard of or tried my 40 + years. Most people who are ordering Mrs. Dickson's fruit and vegetable baskets have confessed to me that they are enjoying the added health of eating better, because they have at their fingertips a wider variety of foods than they'd normally buy. So come on...take those fruit and vegetables and ramp up your health another notch!! The goal of a green smoothie lifestyle is health. Weight loss will come. Mine was very slow. I'm happy to talk about it and my change to gluten free eating. But that's a whole other subject, so email or facebook me. The main idea is to get to 60-80% Raw eating. Green smoothie drinking will help facilitate this. Plus, don't overdo it on the fruits. Your body will become overly acidic, and too many natural sugars will overwork your pancreas. Start out with a ratio of more fruit over vegetables; then slowly switch it to more vegetables over fruit.

To your health,
Leslie Moss

10 Top Reasons you should Drink Green Smoothies:

1. Eat amazing nutritious green foods, you normally don't eat

2. You don't need to add high-fat laden salad dressing to "get it down"

3. You will be living the way God or Nature intended you to eat.

4. A high power blender breaks down walls of cellulose better than your teeth can, making nutrition immediately available

5.You get more live enzymes in blended greens than any other food

6. Smoothies retain all the fiber in the plant, compared to juicing

7. green smoothies are fast to prepare and eat (I actually bring them with me on vacation, frozen)

8.You have a lower impact on the environment

9.They taste good- young and old should enjoy them.

10. They lower your cravings for sugar.

If you’re new to green smoothies, I suggest you start with kale or lettuce. They have a very neutral flavor. When I use spinach, I use less leaves because they have a stronger flavor. With mustard greens, I use even less.

If you make your smoothie and it tastes too much like vegetables, add more fruit.

I like some of the ingredients in the smoothie to be frozen. That makes it nice and cold and thick.

If you put blueberries in your smoothie, your children won’t even know they’re eating “green”!

Kale, Collards, and Mustard Greens can be removed from the stem, placed on a cookie sheet and frozen. Once frozen, crumble them into a freezer bag to store them until you are ready to use them.