Junk Food

I went to Costco today. I usually go to the nice big Salt Lake Costco on Saturday mornings after I take Wesley to Utah Youth Junior Symphony Orchestra. Today I got the flat bed instead of the cart, which means I'm ready to do some serious food shopping. Here we are headed back out to the van -

Peter is there in his carseat under the blue blanket, and Owen was lucky he still had a little place to sit. He was a good little helper. I really loaded up on food since I missed going last week cause I was with Peter at the hospital. So this will get our large family through the week and then some, with probably a few short runs to the local grocery store during the week for smaller items that I didn't need to buy in bulk. We were short on veggies this past week though so I got a lot of that - which is what is in the tower of boxes there - I am learning more and more and doing better each week at living and cooking a mostly plant based diet for myself and my family. Yesterday we had a chocolate treat though - a big hershey's kiss that I had bought with the intention that we'd use it at our family anniversary dinner. But I forgot, so we had it today after the kids cleaned up the kitchen. The kids had never seen such a big kiss!

Daniel was very excited, we let him open it -

Which made him think that this big chocolate treat belonged to him -

Which was cute, but then the kids didn't want his hands or spit all over their piece of chocolate, so we took it away and let our vegan, who was not going to be eating any of this treat, have the honors of breaking it open - 

Which Daniel found personally offensive.

"You broke my chocolate kiss!! And now you're all eating it?!!" He rejected the chocolate scraps for a minute

...but then he joined in having some bites of chocolate. I was surprised but the kids didn't eat all gone right away. It was a hollow kiss so there really wasn't that much there, in my opinion, for what I know to be their junk food eating capabilities from what I've seen in past Halloween nights. But maybe they're slowly becoming less and less addicted to the junk. 

Here is another pictures of Daniel sad over junk food today - So I have a wood thing that is hanging on the wall by the stairs. On that wood thing, I have a dozen or so ornaments

You'll notice that there is a little orange ice cream popsicle. Those have been there for as long as Daniel has been alive, I think. But today he might have just seen them for the first time, and he wanted that popsicle. So we gave it to him. And he was sad that it didn't taste very good. So he gave it back to Corey and wanted him to take off the ribbon and hook in it that were making it hang up. So Corey did. And to Daniel's dismay it didn't make it taste any better. He came to me to get me to fix it - 

I think the poor kid really just needed a nap, but we were all smiling at his frustration and trying to figure out what the deal was with that sprinkle covered popsicle. Maybe I'll get more fake junk food treats and have them around the house - to kinda visually inoculate them against the sprinkles and shiny wrappers and the call/pull that such multi colored junk food treats have over children. Speaking of that, I've recently started two books - "Mad Cowboy" and "The China Study" - you don't have to get very far in them to realize that we really do live in a toxic food environment (see China Study foreword 2 on page xvii). I'm glad that I'm increasingly becoming more aware of it and that our health habits are improving little by little as we make changes - I'm getting in my "daily dozen" most days and I'm glad that even the kids are eating bananas and oatmeal more instead of "fruit snacks" and cold cereal. Little by little.

One more note - this morning, before I left to take Wes to orchestra, I checked Ethan's phone. At Corey's request, I've been checking his phone now and then this past week (usually while he's taking a shower) to look at his texts. I did on Wednesday when he was home "sick" all day. This morning he was still in his bed but his phone was within reach, hehe, and during my snooping, come to find out he totally lied to us last night! Corey's been telling him to go on dates with lots of girls, and said he'd even help pay for his dates if he would. So Ethan said he got a date with someone named Mailee and he was going with a group to the movies, but from the texts, we learned it was just him and Ella again, and he's already seen her every night this week. She's a great girl, but we just don't want him going steady with anyone right now as a 16 year old (regarding his age, Ethan said recently "...Why do you keep holding that against me?!?!! I'm almost 17!") So I told Corey, and Corey asked Ethan some follow up questions about his outing last night, and Ethan continued in his deception. So Corey called Ella's dad to talk with him (he's a friend of ours from high school) and let him know some of our concerns. Later Corey took his iphone, and it's gone for good. We've taken it away a few times had a conversation at 4pm about what we knew, how Corey had talked to her dad, and what the consequences shall be. E was then very discouraged and upset, said Corey calling her dad has ruined his relationship with her, and he went to bed at 6pm in tears. So, that's where we are right now with raising this teen. As Corey said once, Ethan is the teenage daughter we never had. We'll get through this, I hope.