my bEarthday

Every year I get so excited for my birthday, probably my kid side coming out :) And it's always a regular day and I end up feeling a little disappointed. I woke up this morning and tried to figure out what to do...

I decided since it is also Earth Day, I would do a combo celebration. I wanted to do some green errands I haven't gotten around to and just have a relaxing, fun day. I wanted to consider our impact on the environment and our health in all of our decisions today :)

We had switched most of our 38 lights in our house to CFLs when we moved in, but had some rarely used lights that had old light bulbs. So I went around and counted what we needed, we hopped in the hybrid and drove to Freidman's (local store) to buy them as well as some clothesline. Then we went to Sebastopol to check out Earth Child (thanks Sarah B!). I was interested in checking out the store and we bought a locally made silk scarf like the ones used in music class for Emma.

It was lunch time so we decided on the Sebastopol Brewery for lunch (local restaurant!) It was soooooo good...

Then we went home for the kids' naps. When they got up, we went to Pacific Market for some mostly organic produce, organic milk and organic fair trade coffee :) I was almost out of coffee and that's critical!

We headed home, Matt switched out the lights then went to throw the old ones away. I thought I remembered that you just can't toss out incandescent light bulbs, so we researched it and found where we can bring them so they are disposed of properly. We ate Mary's (local again!) for dinner.

Earlier, when I was thinking about what to do today, I daydreamed about buying new cleaning supplies, new canvas and produce bags, new water bottles for all of us, donating to carbonfund.org and greendimes.com, buy smart strips or something like them... etc. But obviously that's not realistic or we would be broke, so I researched them instead and we'll discuss and think about what it best for us. I researched what are the best plants to have in your house for cleaner indoor air quality, and Matt researched good trees to plant in our yard. We talked all day about what we'd like to do in the future...

I had a really good birthday this year :) It was a regular day (besides eating out twice - yum!), and I hope the rest of our days are this kind of regular... I hope we keep doing our part as much as we can, incorporating new ways to live as the time comes and encouraging Emma and Abby to do the same in their world which is hopefully better than it would have been had we all done nothing.