The Land of Plenty

Houston is a big city.  The Land of Plenty.  On any given day, there are handfuls of things to do. Yesterday was a prime example.

HMNS had a dino day going on.  There was a farmer's market, an International Festival, a British Festival, a couple of movies playing at different outdoor venues, and the AHA Houston Heart Walk.

There was no way that we could have done all those things.  Let's not forget that weekends are a chance for finishing that long list of things that should have been done during the week.  Like recycling, grocery shopping, and buying new shoes.  So we could really only choose one special thing to do.

Lucky for us, the choice was easy.  We had a few filters that the event had to pass through in order to be chosen.  Firstly, we wanted to do something on the southwest side of town.  We wanted to meet up with some lovely friends in that neck of the woods, so that narrowed it down to two things: the farmers' market and the International Festival.  Secondly, it had to be cost effective (i.e. free).  The International Festival was free.  The farmers' market was technically free, but you know that we would have spent money on ugly tomatoes and local honey.  And finally, it had to be kid friendly.  The International Festival won since it was put on by the Fort Bend ISD and meant to educate children and showcase the diversity of the school system and community.

The kids had a great time.  They had "passports" and collected stamps.  They collected little knick knacks (which are knick-knacking up my house as we speak...) from various countries.  We even squeezed in some arts and crafts before we had to move along on to the next tasks.

Recycling was next.  And then the kiddos finally got to meet little Miles.  And lastly, I managed to get our grocery shopping for the week done.

But we never could have packed our day clear full.  Nope, not this last Saturday.  There was no way that we were going to miss the LSU/Alabama football game.  And boy, are we happy that we didn't!  Troy and I just love a good football game.  We especially love a good LSU football game.  And hopefully our kids will love LSU football as much as we do.  And according to this article, they are likely to.

So we donned our purple and gold, and we got our shoutin' voices ready.  We were ready for the fight.  I'm sure that if you watched the game and weren't invested in the team like we were, you probably would have found it to be a little boring.  There were no touchdowns and the score stayed tied for most of the game.  But me, I'm invested.  At various times throughout the game I was holding my breath and wincing.  At other times I was jumping and screaming.  During overtime, I was doing all of the above.  My kids were trying to sleep and pleading with me to stop yelling.  Oops.  But in the end, we won by 3 points.  Not much, but it was plenty enough for me.

Geaux Tigers! #1!!!



I can't wait for next week.  I don't know what's in store, but I'm pretty sure that we'll find something to do!

Megamind (title courtesy of Orry)

I'm pretty worn out this week.  I've felt like I had a million things to do.

Monday was lab work (blood and stool) day.

Tuesday was Open House night for Orry.  In case you are wondering, he's smart and delightful.  That's a very brief summary.

Wednesday was the day I was scheduled to bring snacks in for Isaac's class.  We decided to go with rice krispie treats cut with cookie cutters.  We also had children's choir practice that night.

Thursday was spent with a great friend and her beautiful baby!

Friday I pulled Orry out of school early in order to take him to the doctor.

Today is Saturday.  I would like to say that we slept in late and just hung around all day, napping and reading books, eating and watching football.  And we did do those things.  I'm so happy.  I stayed in bed until about 8:30.  Heaven.  I took a nap by 11.  Heaven.  I read Isaac some books and made a second breakfast.  Oh how wonderful.  Then in typical Becker fashion, we flew by the seat of our pants and packed the remaining  daylight hours with as much as we could.  We took our month's worth of recyclables to the recycle center (yes, we finally found it).  We visited the dinosaur museum, rolled down the big hill in Memorial Hermann Park and played at our neighborhood park.  We also managed to squeeze in a couple of new adventures.

Firstly, we visited the Beer Can House.

Yes.  Someone covered their house with various parts of beer cans and considers it art...  And secondly we ate tacos from a food truck that was parked in the grocery store parking lot.  They were surprisingly delicious and all the kids loved them!

One weekend we will rest.  It may not be next weekend or the next, but one of these weekends it will happen.  And maybe one week, in the far off distance future, we will have time to stop and catch our breath.  Right now I have time to catch up and transcribe the story of Orry's "black eye".   Now this is in his own words.  And I've gone back to add in that he read it over my shoulder and had me change things while I was writing.  Gotta love that kid.

"One day, when me and Nathan were at recess, I was walking and Nathan was running.  Nathan hit my cheek under my eye.  And I cried and I got to be the line leader.  We went inside and got a drink.  And the pattern is restroom, sanitize, drink.  When we were reading, a boy hit my head and I got an ice pack.  The ice pack is at the nurse.  Mrs. Taylor wrote my mom a note.  Then I left.  And you need to get your binder and your backpack.  And I am route 144.  The end."

Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit our blog!    

Repurpose!

Repurposing has got to be hands down my favorite of the three R's.  Wait, repurposing isn't actually one of the three R's.  Let's see.  There's reducing, reusing, and recycling.  Well, it should be one of them.  There should be four R's.

There are two dish towels inside each hot pad.

I can see how you could lump repurposing into the reuse category.  After all, when you repurpose something, you are reusing some or all of its parts.  But it's more than just reusing your shopping bags or reusing your plastic containers, it's finding a different purpose for your stuff.  My kiddos old cloth diapers have found new purpose as cleaning rags.  My old kitchen towels have found new purpose as hot pads.

I love the challenge of repurposing.  I asked Orry what he thought one of Daddy's old work shirts should become.  In my mind I imagined it would make a cute stuffed bunny, but he said it should make a scarecrow.  Good idea.  We'll have to implement that plan this fall if our pumpkins make it that long.

Pass me a cloth napkin! 

The other thing I love about repurposing is being able to keep using things that you really love.  I have a top that I got in Korea and I love it for that reason alone.  The bottom edge started to fray and instead of just boxing it up and looking at it longingly for the rest of my life, I repurposed it into a dress for Annie.  It's far from the cutest dress I've ever seen, but its sentimental value sure gives it a boost.

I am far from being the expert at repurposing.  Most times I just donate the things I don't want or don't have a use for anymore.  But I want to challenge myself everyday to think of new ways to use old things.  I also want to challenge my kids to do the same.  So let's get our creative juices flowing!  Leave some comments with ideas for ways to repurpose or ask for some inspiring ideas for something you have lying around.

Here are some links I found to help us get started:

• http://www.craftynest.com/category/repurposing/

• http://www.younghouselove.com/2009/02/waste-not-want-not/

• http://trash2treasure.wordpress.com/category/repurposing-ideas/

• http://simpleorganic.net/refashion-repurposing-t-shirts-and-more/

Let's have fun creating a cleaner world!

Recycle!

I hate throwing away things that can be recycled.  I hate how much garbage we can produce in a day and I hate knowing that a lot of the things that fill our trashcan can easily be recycled.  But for the past year I didn't recycle. Our neighborhood doesn't have a recycling program nor does it have a recycling center nearby.  So day after day I threw away our juice bottles, our metal cans, and our paper and cardboard.  Shameful.  I know.  So I decided to change.  

Deussen Park

For the past few weeks I have been collecting all of our recyclables.  I had a bag for plastics, a bag for metal cans and aluminum, a bag for all our plastic grocery bags (which I never did throw away, instead I periodically took them back to the grocery store for recycling), and a bag for paper and cardboard.  I told myself that I would find the nearest recycling center and I would drive there with a car full of trash and sort it out myself.  So after these few weeks, when our small kitchen was being overtaken by recyclables, we loaded it all into the van and set out to find the recycling center.

Troy had gotten directions from Google maps and we set off.  When we got to the place where the map said it should be, we were disappointed to find that it wasn't there.  We drove around a bit more, checking out the surrounding area and found a nice park and recreation area.  We decided that we needed more help and used our mobile shout out to call our sister-in-law Nicole for better directions.  With the new directions in hand we set out again, confident that we would find it.  After about an hour of driving, we gave up.  We still couldn't find it.  But we did get rid of our recyclables.  We sorted them at the local (where we were at the time) middle school.  After all the emissions we generated, our good deed of recycling hardly made up for it.  But don't fear.  We are not deterred.  We are still going to collect our recyclables and give it another shot.  Maybe we'll have better luck finding another recycling center.  

The main reason that we go though so much trouble to do these things is because we want our children to be good stewards of the Earth.  We want them to grow up thinking that recycling is something that you just naturally do.  In order for that to happen, we have to do it.  Our actions speak louder than our words sometimes.  My children will grow up thinking that cloth diapers are normal, that cloth napkins are normal, and they may not even know what a paper towel is. They will hopefully grow up with the great habit of recycling.  And I love that idea.  

Don't let other dinosaurs suffer a similar fate!  Recycle!!