Vacation Week & Links I'm Loving

I've been on vacation this week in Wisconsin Dells with my husband's family. We've been enjoying the Waterpark Capital of the World and the amenities of our resort with many water slides to keep us busy. 

I've actually found more time during vacation to leisurely browse the Internet and read some great blogs and news articles and the fascinating book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Also I'm participating in The Natural Mothering eBook sale so I've discovered some new (to me) blogs by some wonderful moms.

Here are the links I'm loving this week:

• New studies confirm raw milk is a low risk food at Mind, Body and Soul. 

• Heavy on Wholesome shares her experience with childhood vaccines and it's an emotional retelling of her journey.

• Disturbing news came out this week about the effects of Splenda in a recent study reported on MSN.

• Amanda Rose M.D. shares about foods to fight depression in a guest post on my blog.

• A GMO feeding trial exposes serious effects on US pigs fed GMO corn and soy. 

• Target joins the list of retailers responding to consumer demand by aiming to eliminate all GMO-based products from their "Simply Balanced" product line by the end of 2014.

• I've been reading the insightful book Quiet during vacation and I'm coming to better understand my natural introverted personality. I "discovered" I'm a highly sensitive person and found a self test by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D and also a test you can take for your child. I have one highly sensitive boy and Quiet is also helping me understand and parent him better.

My Three Sons by the Wisconsin River

What are you reading this week?

This post was shared at: Small Footprint Fridays

Vacation Treasures

I'm spending this week in Sevierville, Tennessee vacationing with my husband, 3 boys and my husband's parents. We're enjoying our resort's waterparks and the natural beauty of Smoky Mountain National Park. Our most exciting outing occurred when we went on a family hike to Grotto Falls in the park and saw a black bear on the trail a little too close for comfort. The sad thing is I've got no proof of our bear scare because the camera was dead. Below is the last photo I took before the battery died.

I'm not much of a shopper most of the time but on vacation I like to look for local specialties and interesting items to take home.  My favorite souvenirs seem to be food or body care related. I've found lots of treasures so far including local sourwood honey, apple jelly, homemade lye soap and bee pollen.

I've never tried lye soap or bee pollen so I'm excited to experience them for my self. I've heard about the benefits and many uses for lye soap so I'm going to experiment with some of the suggested uses.

I've heard of the health benefits from consuming bee pollen but had never seen it for sale. We visited a little gift shop next to bee hives and that's where I found it for $4.99.  I've read that bee pollen is one of the richest, most complete foods in nature and contains a wide variety of essential vitamins, minerals, enzymes, protein and amino acids. Bee Pollen is extraordinarily rich in most of the B vitamins and also contains only a few calories per serving. It's been used in Chinese herbal medicine as a nutritional supplement for centuries. I'm planning to add it to smoothies and mix it into plain yogurt.

I'm looking forward to enjoying my treasures after the fun of vacation has ended.