Camping, Expoing, and Boating...Oh my

Is expoing a word? Probably not. Anyway I am not sure what you call it when you go to an expo.

As Lyle mentioned camping was an experience this weekend. It was cold and windy and rainy, but Keegan didn't seem to mind. He wasn't too big on playing in the camper. There just wasn't much space for him to run around with me, Lyle, my parents, and 4 greyhounds occupying floor space. It gets crowded with us all squeezed in there. I am hoping later this summer we can use our tent again. It would be nice to get some use out of the tent!

On Sunday we went to the Living Green Expo which was, as always, interesting. I have been wanting to get granite countertops put in; while we were there I saw something more interesting than granite. They can do recycled glass countertops. Check it out here: http://www.vetrazzo.com/products_palette.html Very pretty countertops and very unique looking. So, while Lyle is interested in geothermal heating for the house, I am more interested in new countertops :-)

The other thing I spent some time looking at there are cloth diapers. Most of the cloth diapers now have inserts that you wash instead of the whole diaper. After talking to the lady and reading about "How to wash all of these diapers", I decided I would probably spend as much energy washing diapers as I was saving by not using disposables. So I started looking into an alternative. G diapers have a flushable, biodegradable lining that goes into a cloth outer diaper. I ordered a starter pack; so we will see how that goes... See here for how they work: http://www.gdiapers.com/

As always there were coupons for $$ off organic foods. That is always awesome because it is so hard to get money off all of the organic food we buy. Also interesting information on biking, neat displays of locally made kids toys, oh and of course bamboo clothing. I bought some bamboo towels to give them a try. I'll let ya'll know how that goes :-)

While we are talking green here's an update on the stuff I started using a couple months ago. So far I've really liked the Korres line of face/body care stuff. The Giovanni organic hair care has also been really nice. The Seventh Generation stuff has been kind of hit and miss. Their surface and glass cleaners work really well and don't make my eyes sting. Their fabric softener and toilet cleaner are also awesome. The dishwasher detergent is horrible and leaves awful residue on the dishes. The toilet paper, paper towels, and tissues feel like the cheap stuff you get in a public bathroom. The diapers work really well but, they smell like...welll...pee after Keegan pees in them (not perfumed). We also got a bad case of diapers where none of the tabs were glued to the diapers so I had to send that case back to Amazon. Which really pissed me off.

We've been trying to bring reusable grocery bags to Target when we go. But I have this problem with remembering to put them back into the car. Either that or I get in the store and leave them in the car; hopefully I'll get better at this as I do it more. And the latest green step we are trying to take is to replace the plastic bottles in the house with aluminum or other bisphenol free bottles. We have a Foogo sippy cup for Keegan and I ordered a Sigg cup for him and myself. We'll see how these work. They are a bit pricey but maybe since they are metal I won't accidentally melt them on the heating element of the dishwasher. A number of our plastic cups have lost their lives in this way :-(

Okay onto the boat outing. I am not sure that it was the life jacket that had Keegan all bent out of sorts. That was part of it, but he also didn't like the boat moving back and forth under his feet. Between the boat movement and that huge back flap on the infant life jacket, he was having a lot of trouble falling over and then not being able to get back up. That boy signed "all done" over and over as fast as I have ever seen him do it. I felt kind of bad for him; trying to explain that when you take the boat out on the lake you can't just be all done that fast.

Last night I finally broke down all of the cardboard in the garage for recycling. I am getting antsy to get some more landscaping done this year. Most of the bushes are bought we are just waiting for our "Architectural Change Form" to be approved by the association. It's ridiculous; we want to plant some trees and add some bushes so we need to fill out all these forms. What a joke. Although, we do it because we didn't do it last time and it was quite a hassle to fix. Hopefully the nice weather will continue and we can get out there to enjoy it! Oh, and Keegan's bike trailer is supposed to be getting here any day now! I am excited to try that out.