Looking for Amy Barton

The Amy Barton I am looking for attended Beaubien School (or Jean-Baptiste Beaubien Elementary School) in Chicago, IL, in the late '80s. If anyone knows how I might get in touch with this person, please contact me.

Thanks so much!

Maggie
gentlemama2mineTAKETHISPARTOUTPLEASE@gmail.com

Nate Silver and Smart Guys

Nate Silver is cool!

Who He Is And How He Became Famous
A Video Related To The Article

He seems like a nice guy, too. :)

I'm tellin' ya; smart people are gonna rule the world. However, we can't forget to add love to the mix. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Lucky (and blessed) me, I have a smart, cute, funny, sweet, adorable, loving and lovable hubby. :D <3

Girls, go for brains (and kindness) first. Six-pack abs will get boring and wouldn't make a very good pillow. A smart jerk will quickly get irritating and intolerable. So, find a smart, sweet, funny guy (especially one who loves Jesus) and you're all set. *grin*

I made a smoothie, using that unsweetened original hemp milk we just bought, which, by itself, is somewhat icky. Maybe it just takes some getting used to.

The smoothie ingredients:

unsweetened original hemp milk (about 10 oz?)
unsweetened vanilla almond milk
frozen mangoes
cinnamon
vanilla extract
almond extract
stevia
ground flax seed

It was very yummy and filling.

My Culinary Masterpiece ;)

I felt like making something tonight. First, I should prepare you by saying that when I make something in the kitchen, especially late at night, it involves things I can add to a big stainless steel bowl with no cooking and using limited kitchen tools. So, with that said, I wanted to make something, and I felt like having some kind of nut butter, which was a big pain to mix up. I decided to use the bowl I used for mixing the almond butter before transferring it back to the jar. In the bowl, I put:

a banana
cinnamon
vanilla extract
almond butter (three large spoonfuls)
pumpkin puree
almond milk
carob powder
coconut butter
stevia
a little sea salt

I had to keep adding things from the list above to the mixture until it tasted right, meaning until I thought the kids would eat it. ;) I told them it was pudding soup and I put little colored sprinkles on the top, which they loved.

It was pretty good, although my stomach feels a bit weird right now. :-o I didn't eat a huge amount of it. I dunno... The kids seem to be fine, though. Praise the Lord!

I often make smoothies for the family, and I guess this was somewhat similar. Once, I made banana chocolate pudding by combining a banana, some peanut butter and cocoa powder and maybe stevia, and it was fluffy. I loved that texture. I probably used too much almond butter this time, but that's OK. It turned out all right.

I'm tired. I need to watch the rest of Music from Another Room. Good movie - pretty funny.

Just say "no" ... to vaccines!

"Love them. Protect them. Never inject them."


I LOVE it! :D It's a excellent and clever alternative to the absurd propaganda: "Love them. Protect them. Immunize them." See more about it here.

Props to Wendy Callahan of Hawthorne, FL, to whom the slogan is credited!

Actually, I should mention that I do not believe that parents who choose to vaccinate their children are not loving them or protecting them. I was just really irked by the original slogan and the amended version made me chuckle.

Katie is 6 now. She had a birthday at the end of May. My parents and grandpa were here and we went to the Mall of America and rode some rides. The kids had a lot of fun. We also had a little party in the back yard with some of her friends.

I bought a paper journal for the first time in a long time. I thought it might be nice to have a hobby I could practice away from the computer. It might help me organize my thoughts a bit and be relaxing, hopefully therapeutic, as well. I will continue to blog, though I know I have not been very good about updating, as it is!

We had a bit of a problem with discussions about Santa, recently, between Katie and the neighbor kids, who believe. She told them Santa wasn't real. Oops! I talked to her about it and she agreed to not say as much about it next time, but she mentioned it again today. :-o She said she forgot and I believe her. I'm stressing to her the importance of allowing their family to participate in those traditions, but I am not responsible for her behavior, either. I'm doing all I can by reminding her. Hopefully, she will remember next time.

I wish I could take a looong nap! Maybe Luke will nap in a bit. That would be nice!

I'm going to end now. I hope you all are having a good week!

Breastfeeding "Rights"

Tennessee health officials and lawmakers actively support breastfeeding mothers. Tennessee passed a law in 2006 protecting a mother’s right to breastfeed a child 12 months or younger in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are authorized to be present;
prohibiting local governments from criminalizing or restricting breastfeeding. Another law requires employers in Tennessee to accommodate breastfeeding mothers at work. The Tennessee Department of Health and WIC program, along with hospitals and health providers, stress that workplaces and communities can work together to protect this important practice by establishing a breastfeeding-friendly environment.

Quote is from http://health.state.tn.us/newsreleases/080107.htm - bold mine.

That is a joke. Actively supporting breastfeeding mothers by protecting a mother's right to nurse in public until their baby is 12 months? Obviously, the people who wrote and passed this law were not familiar with breastfeeding relationships or facts. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends nursing until at least 2 years of age and beyond that as is mutually agreeable to the mother and child. There are nutritional and emotional benefits to nursing past one year of age. So, the Tennessee lawmakers really need to be educated in this area and the law needs to be amended to remove the limit on the age of the nursling whose right to breastfeed is protected.