Anna and I tested the pitas on a couple of different days, and we decided that they had both postive and negative qualities, but the postive qualities outweighed the negatives in many ways.

First off, fresh from the microwave, these pita pockets are undistinguishable from their gluteny counterparts. They’re delicious and soft and held up amazingly well to having ingredients added. Anna was actually a little worried that she would get sick, because she thought sure the GFL pita bread must have gluten.

After I convinced her to eat, she finished her plate in record time. The sandwich was excellently sized for someone small, but the pitas were a bit on the tiny side for a grown-up lunch.

Our biggest complaint, though, is that they do not hold well. After defrost and stuffing, there was about a 5 minute window in which the pita bread felt fresh and was easy to eat. When that window closed, the bread became hard and incredibly difficult to chew. It’s a downside to anything that has been frozen and must be defrosted in the microwave, I’m afraid. When Anna got distracted during her second lunch and left her plate at the table for a bit, she was upset to return to a sandwich that was just impossible to eat. She really just couldn’t bite and and eat the chewy/stiff bread. Reheating the sandwich gave her another small window of soft bread time, but the pita certainly wasn’t at it’s best after two trips through the microwave.

We did have a pita in our sample that arrived cracked, so that it was never really a “pocket”. That particular pita became strips to dunk in hummus. It was an excellent dip-scoop!

Our overall opinion of the GFL pita breads was that they’re very expensive for our personal budget. At $9 plus shipping per package, they can never be a regular part of our menu planning. They are the only commercially available gluten-free pitas that I’ve found, though, so they’ll probably be our fallback for special occasions and ethnic meals that really require pita to feel complete.

The quality of the bread itself, not inclusive of our pricing issues, was very good. I wish they held up longer in their delicious fresh-from-the-micro state, since we often have to hold over meals for small “emergencies” or want to take our meals along when we’re traveling. Would we recommend GFL pitas to other folks. Certainly! Will we buy them again ourselves? Probably! Are their things the company can continue to improve in the product. Definitely!

Thanks again to Rami and the gang at GFL for giving us the opportunity to try their product and spread the word to other families who eat gluten free.

Unfortunately for both our wallets and our little super-shoppers, giving birth to children with a strong desire to ACQUIRE MORE STUFF did not magically cause our financial status to change to comfortably-wealthy or come with their own little money tree where we can pick perfect hundred-dollar bills each morning to use for our spending sprees.

Learning to bridge the gap between want-to-have-it and do-you-need-it is an ongoing life lesson for the Chen family. Teaching our three kids the value of work and how to adequately control spending is important to us because we do not want them to become adults who fall into serious trouble with debt or who value possessions over people in their lives.

We have instituted an allowance plan that is helping the kids see the link between the money they have and the things they can purchase. Each child gets weekly allowance in an amount equal to the years of their lives. Our 9 year old gets $9 per week, for example, while the 4 year old is only given $4 as her weekly allotment.

From that allowance, each child must place 1/4 of their weekly total into long-term savings and at least $1 into a charity-giving account. The rest is used at their discretion to purchase snacks not covered under the family’s grocery budget, toys, and any type of extra-special treat that has not been previously budgeted for as a family expense.

We have a set list of things that are covered under the “Family Budget” rainbow. Comfortable and well-fitting clothing are a family expense, but clothing from specific brands or in specific designs that costs more than the average article must be paid for from allowance. Fruits/veggies/healthy snacks are a family expense, but candy, chips, or trips to McDonalds must be paid for via child accounts. Most books, school supplies, and hygiene items fall into the Family category, but special art supplies intended for single-child use, fancy bath or hair products, and the seventy-millionth new box of markers (bought because unnamed lazy children have left the caps off all the older markers and they’re no longer viable) are paid for by the kids.

Teaching the kids to take advantage of sale prices, plan ahead and save for major purchases, and think twice about impulse buys has taken some of the sharp edge off of their consumer hunger. We will continue to explore more ways of becoming conscious spenders, and I am excited to see what the folks over at the Parent Bloggers Network have to say on the issue.

Anyone who is interested in learning more about making wise financial choices can check out the MoneyWise Learning Tools sponsored by Capitol One.

The kids started off with empty test tubes, a large beaker flask of water, a pipette, and three fizzy color tabs. They turned the fizzy tabs and water into three tubes of liquid- red, yellow, blue. Then they used those colors and their pipettes to experiment with secondary color combinations in the empty tubes.

After the color experiment, we used some Magic Sand to study the concepts of hydrophilia and hydrophobia.

I think we’re going to love our newly restructured screen-porch Science Lab!

We’ve already started making another order at Steve Spangler. We’re a little obsessed with their Test Tube Experiment Kits. They’re incredibly kid-friendly. Simple enough that the kids can go it alone with minimal adult supervision.

Just the soundtrack for a single day in my life.

~L

Emily fixed breakfast for the kids while I slept in till 9am.  She fed everyone drinkable yogurt and blueberry muffins.  After breakfast, the two small ones watched PBS/Martha Speaks while Emily used some foam sheets and sparkles from her craft box to create fancy fish cutouts.

10-11ish, all 3 kids read books from our current library stash.  Nate read the Cat book to Anna aloud, for the 30th time, and he and Emily took turns showing each other interesting things and reading “cool” sections out loud from books about cockroaches, dragonflies, and scorpions from the Nature’s Children collection.  Anna “read” to me from Bugs Up Close and we talked about exoskeletons for a while.

11:30 – Lunch at Atlanta Bread company.  Girls chose to split an adult salad, Nate had kids meal (turkey with provolone, always) and I had a bowl of broccoli cheese soup.  Nate put his full soda cup in one hand and potato chip bag in the other and pretended to be a scale.  Determined that the cup was much heavier.  His balancing act drew the attention of two senior-aged gentlemen sitting behind us and they made a comment about the Scales of Justice.  We discussed that concept and artwork for a bit, and I borrowed the laptop from Emily to show Nate a picture of the statue of Blind Justice.  The search for the statue and viewing of pictures lead to more discussion of it’s origin, and we talked a bit about Themis and her place in the Greek pantheon as one of the Titans.

When we made it home, I used the computer to show Nate another statue of Justice. This one with Michael holding his sword and the scales.  He declared he liked the lady better because she seemed less angry.

Emily spent about an hour working on her novel at Atlanta Bread and again at home after lunch.  We discussed appropriate use of the articles “a” or “an”, and she did some editing to reflect the new knowledge.  She is still confused over the exceptions to “an” for some of the o/u vowel words like “a unicorn” instead of “an unicorn”.  I printed a general useage guide with examples for her to place in her folder.

1-1:45ish  The kids took turns quizzing each other on Subtraction and Multiplication facts using our Fast Fact placemats.  Nate is solid with his subtraction, and knows his 1, 2, 5, and 10 multiplication facts.  Of course, those are the easy and intuitive ones.  We’ll start work on the 3′s this week, beginning with skip counting songs and filling in the answers on worksheets.  He also finished his problems from the “5 a day” math workbook, though the book is a 2nd grade text and the problems were way too easy.  He did 10 problems (we don’t use it every day because it’s too simple) in under 5 minutes.  This includes the time spent actually writing down answers and rewriting the unintelligible numbers.

2-3  Emily and Anna are down for a nap.  Nate is watching Powerpuff Girls and playing with a pretend microphone.

3:05 Emily is waking up and Anna talks to her about the fact that water has “air” inside.  Emily clarifies that it’s not air, but it does have oxygen and that fish use that oxygen to live underwater.  Anna expounds on her love of fish, dolphins, squid and crabs.  She also reminds me that dolphins are not fish, which is why she said them separately than fish in her list.  I ask her if she can tell me what they are, and she says “manimals”.  We correct the answer to mammals, she repeats it correctly a few times, and then runs in to the living room and announces to Nate that she’s very happy to now know how to say “Mamminal”.  We’ll keep working on it.

4ish  Nate makes waffles in the toaster for everyone for snack.  Discuss whether or not Eggo waffles have eggs inside.  I tell Nate to check the Label for ingredients, and he finds eggs at number 4 on the list.  We discuss the fact that foods are labelled with the most important/greatest quantity ingredient first.  He decides they should have been called Enriched Wheat waffles instead of Eggo waffles, but agrees reluctantly that Eggo is a much more catchy name.  Wonders if the Leggo my Eggo phrase influnced the name of the product, or was created BECAUSE of the name of the product.  We’ll look into finding the answer to this question later tonight or tomorrow.

5-6 Complete insanity. The kids are hitting the wall so I send them all to different rooms to work on individual projects. Anna plays Club Penguin on her DS.  Nate reads more in some of the fish books from the library.  Emily rests more and begins to complain of sore throat.

6:30  Everyone has dinner, then we watch some random tv and Nate surfs the internet for a while.

The kids begin to feel lousy around 8 and everyone piles together into bed.  Emily types on her laptop for a while and Nate and Anna message each other via Nintendo chat.  Both Nate and Anna fall asleep with their chat screens still going.  Emily and I spend some time talking to Dave in the main bedroom, and then we head off into Emily’s room.  Now I’m going to read a novel while she tries to let the medicine help her fall asleep.

All in all, a productive and enjoyable day.  Let’s hope for better health in the near future.

~L

Each of the kids quickly found their comfy place and made themselves at home.

We checked out some great things, then we had to head off to take Nate to the doctor.  He had a traumatic appointment (throat swabs and bloodwork).  Then we headed home for dinner, baths, reading and playing with our library haul, and an early bedtime.  It was a busy and fun day. 

That whole thing would sound much more plausible if I had a bit of PisecoBabe’s contest luck.

~L

Now to figure out to play and then, hopefully, find some people to play with me since I’ve heard it’s not easy to play alone.

Anybody wanna play with me?