No dyes for me, thank you. I prefer food.

Every so often, I get on a rampage against something new, and it becomes verboten in our house.  Actually, that's a bit harsh.  I want it to be verboten, but I also understand the sheer difficulty of banishing said item from our "TYPICAL AMERICAN HOUSEHOLD."  This is all to say that I'm more and more under the impression that we're not the TAH, in many a way.  Technology, vacations, free time adventures, food...we tend to jam to our own off-key-only-in-the-ears-of-society-at-large tune.  Rock on, my friend, if you do as well. 

Of late, I've started an outright war on artificial dyes in food.  The things like Red40 on the labels of pert near everything, it seems.  FACT: marshmallows have food dye in them.  Marshmallows.  Those white, puffy things.  What the ever living what???  Add that to the list of things I will very likely never buy again.  Fortunately, I enjoy making them from time to time; they're super cinchy just fairly messy.  And they are da-licious when they're homemade.  T-o-t-a-l-l-y worth the time and effort for a cheap, cheap, cheap little holiday gifty to stick in to someone's stocking or goody bag.  Another FACT: gum has food dyes in it as well.  And this disappoints me heartily, but so far so good.  Not a stick chewed since the label was perused. 

It's just everywhere.  And it has links to yucky stuff like ADHD.  While I'm not really concerned about this being a problem with any of us, I have a serious aversion developing towards artificial you name it.  It just all seems to be seriously no bueno to me.  We spend so much time and money on putting good, healthy stuff in our babies when they first start to eat (When is the last time that you ever heard of a 6-month old eating color changing Jell-o as their first "solid" food?  If the food, a term I use loosely in this circumstance, "magically" changes colors when you add innocuous water, there's some serious chemical ju-ju going on with that food-like product.), so why do we give up the good fight so easily and quickly as the little sprouts start to sprout?  I have lots of theories, which I'll drone on about another time.

This is all to share that I'm on something of a mission to avoid artificial food dyes in our food choices.  They're on my bad news radar, and gross junk like that infiltrating my otherwise seemingly benign food choices makes me gag not just a little but a lottle. 

In celebration of fall, a happier harvest year, and tiny tots now being able to walk and chew crunchy things, I found a somewhat local apple orchard that avoids blind spraying, called up my mum to join us, and piled the girls in the car to go apple picking.  It was glorious.  The apples are gigant-o this year, which is especially noticeable to me as I didn't get a single freshly picked apple all of last year due to a having a little newbie and the utterly horrid growing season that we went through between cold snaps and drought snaps.  And here are the happy pickers, who each mowed through as much as they wanted of 4+ apples.  Once we let them loose, there wasn't a moment from stop to finish when they each didn't have an apple in hand and jaws working.  In fact, little sprout often went double fisted.  Cause that's the way she rolls. 

 After we packed up the car and drove all the way to the orchard (this was a day trip with a picnic planned and some outdoor exploring at a nature center and park), I mean right as I parked the car, I realized that I forgot to bring shoes for the little one.  She, obviously, didn't care. Then, she picked up a new pair of kicks in what is now an affectionate memory (yeah, right) of the time I nearly walked out of Walmart without my wallet.  In front of my mom. 

Someone was having just some fun picking apples.  Just a "tiny touch," as #1 says.

I basically never dress the girls alike, except for this.  I found these AWESOME elephant leggings a while ago, and now they both fit in their respective sizes.  And I cannot resist the requisite "We dressed alike!" pose.  Little sprout is sporting a Discovery Toys stopwatch that I got for her big sisty, who loves all things DAD and therefore all things that DAD does, which means running.  So they literally go to cross country meets for fun.  And now, she times the runners, too.  Please do not report me to Child Services, though; I obviously was right beside the little one when she had this around her neck.  Good times.