Earth Day

I want to appologize I tried to come up with something clever , something unique that would be entertaining and informative about Environmental conservation and my feeble mind can come up with nothing that sounds inpirational that would cause change on a grand scale

So I will instead tell you about the walk I took yesterday.

Here in the Northwoods it has finally warmed up enough for me to put my little ones in the stroller and go for a walk. I had to make a trip to the post office to mail something so I piled the kids in and off the two youngest ones and I went.

The walk is maybe tops a mile total nice short little walk in the sunshine I was listening to the 3 year old chatter away about this and that and I was checking the road side for the tell tale signs of wild asparagus

As I was looking for it I did notice the garbage left behind on the road but it did not shock or upset me I expect to see cans, trash, and cigarette butts littering the roadside even on my relatively low traveled road.

Today thinking on my walk this has me upset..not that there is trash there what has me bothered is that I EXPECT to see garbage on my roadside!!

I am so used to there being garbage laying around the roads that I expect to see it

I have become accustomed to the trash

my kids and I have kinda adopted our road we go for walks and pick up garbage we recycle any alluminum plastic and glass and sell the alluminum for spare change.

what amazes me is the amount we get on our walks EVERY TIME we get a lot of trash

I also know that my kids and I are not the only ones who do this on our road.

This is pathetic I live in some of this countries most beautiful land Northern WI is truly a wonder to behold and people are so ambivilant and lazy that they can't take responsibility for thier own garbage.

So what are you doing for Earth Day?

We hear so much now about "going green" different ways to help the Earth from buying organic to driving less to buying new cars and new houses and new light bulbs and new forms of energy All of this is in an effort to increase our consumption by "selling" the idea as saving energy

what we don't hear as much about is the simple ways we can save money energy and our natural resources by each person doing a simple thing.
Take responsibility

don't blame the government
dont wait for someone ELSE to do something if you wait for someone else to fix everything you will be waiting a LONG time

Dont wait for the solution to be given to you .. when given the choice each person can come up with something they can do.
Think about it if each person in every neighborhood in America would just clean up a small portion of thier place If each person would take responsibility for thier own usage of energy in a small way somthing as simple as turning off extra lights during the day or taking a shorter shower or washing clothes on cold water

we could save so much

We spend so much at the gas tanks now we have control over this !! dont sit back and think "there is nothing I can do"

I am here to say YES YOU CAN

WE as a people have a choice WE as a force have a say in how things are done

I read a statistic online yesterday that this year compared with this time last year we used 1% less gasoline or something like that it was on Yahoo if you want real details look it up

THAT IS A SIGNIFICANT amount

I know that amount was saved by conservation. people are driving less and driving smarter. This is a great thing we all know all the ways to save gas and save energy
what we have to do is make the commitment in our lives to do this.
Kinda like an alcoholic taking the AA pledge we have to choose each day to do better to be stronger we have to choose each day end our addiction to mass consumption

Once we do this we will save ourselves and save our money

If each of us does this it will send a message more powerful than a vote more powerful than a boycott it will send a message to the

"haves" that the "have nots" have had enough

We dont NEED them but you better belive that "they" (the wealthy and those clammering for our votes) NEED us

We have power we just need to take it back by doing little things we can make a difference we can change things. We don't need to buy new cars or new anything to do this

Ok enough preaching on to tell you about my kids because they are funny and cute and I LOVE thier enthusiam for things and thier dedication to change is inspiring

First we will start with Alex

G-Force now has a couple teachers interested in starting actual real school group Alex is so thrilled he wanted me to make him a G -force shirt for today but I was not feeling well last night and I am out of printer ink and I think I am even out of iron on paper so no luck there

I wanted to just use fabric paint to make him a cute shirt saying "Of course I recycle next year this shirt will be my little brothers" and then on the back have it say "Hand Me downs are my gift to my sibs!" or something dorky like that but he was not fond of it
So Alex is hopeful about his Green Movement and wants to make a huge difference he gets into these lovely discussions with his Dad at the dinner table (Dave is playing Devil's advocate with Alex) Dave will disagree with Alex and Alex tries his best to come up with ways to convince Dave to change (Dave just likes to argue LOL)

Tim has been indignant lately he is coming into his own as a 13 year old that confusing time when you have more hormones than brains and everything just makes you angry he was angry about the amount of litter outside calling people idiots and morons and lazy bums

You gotta admire his conviction

Now Zach my little partner in crime

Zach is ...a typical 8 year old he is passionate about his cause he wants to change the world. and he really wanted an Earth Day shirt I saw them at Walmart but could not justify buying one

So I took one of his favorite old stained shirts for Zach this is not hard to find most of his shirts have unidentifiable stains on them he is 8 and if his shirt is unstained it is brand new and he has only had it on for a few seconds. If you have an 8 year old boy you have few options when it comes to neat clean clothes.

So on his old shirt I used some fabric paint and put this saying on it
"Save Energy Wear a dirty shirt"

he loves it

He also took a small coffee can with some of his red wiggler worms to school to show them off to his teacher he wants her to see his efforts in recycling . I think it is cute he is so dedicated