December already!?!?!

Wow,
life has certainly kept me busy enough over the last almost 6 months. I can't believe I haven't written anything since June! Probably just as much because of my poor time-management skills.... as me truly being busy.

We have had both some fun times and some sad ones; lot's of vacation time spent on the river this summer, and also 3 weeks spent in Sweden, with my dad in the last week of his life and with friends and family in Göteborg. It was sad and happy and strange all at the same time, it was also comforting to talk about all the fun times we had with my dad during his life and the legacy that he left us, his children and relatives. Even though my belief is different than that of my siblings, there are still a lot of things that keep us together and we enjoy each others company. It is kind of fun that my sister and I, and esp. our daughters look so much alike that they could easily pass for each others siblings.

This year we are doing an experiment for Christmas, we are de-commercializing it and only doing a couple of presents, including stocking stuffers, and amazingly enough even the kids are excited about this, esp. after watching "the story of stuff" and talking about what we really want in life as opposed to just the next, new shiny it-thing that everyone HAS to have this year. Part of de-commercializing the Holidays for us means that we are choosing not to buy anything that is made in China... now that is harder than I thougth, almost everything plastic is made in China, most shoes are made in China, a lot of clothes are made in China and pretty much all electronics are made in China, and the list goes on......
The big deal that we really want, and that we are focusing on is spending real time together and having fun as a family - that is our big present from Santa this year. I will let you know how it all goes.

Now to check in on our other projects, things are going well, we still use and love our homemade laundry soap. The baking soda and apple cider vinegar for our hair is slipping a little bit, my husband is the only one that is using it faithfully, my oldest son still wont even try it and the rest of us are part-timers, we alternate with regular shampoo and soda. As far as my failure to find a good substitute for dish-washing machine soap, I still haven't found any, but we have stopped using the dish washer altogether and are only washing dishes by hand anymore so for us it is not a big deal. I know it sounds a little crazy - but we found that we keep the kitchen cleaner that way, we just wash the dishes right away instead of waiting for the dishwasher to run and/or waiting for someone else to fill it. To be honest we didn't try this on purpose, but our dishwasher broke and we couldn't get it fixed right away so we had to start doing the dishes by hand and after a few days of this, we decided not to replace the dish washer at all but rather stick with a plan that is both environmentally friendly and keeps our house cleaner! I call that a win-win!
I wish you all a very happy ending to another amazing year.