Learning Nutrition from T Colin Campbell and Men as Au Pairs

It's all too easy for the life of a SAHM to slip into a rut.  But it's time for some ch-ch-changes!

Nutrition course
I've been messing about with being vegan for about 15 years now and learning a lot about it, but I have absolutely nothing to show for it - except greatly improved health and a bunch of wonderful friends, and a great blog.

But that isn't enough anymore!  For my 40th birthday I asked DH if we could budget for me to take Dr T Colin Campbell's Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition from eCornell.  It's flexible enough even for a SAHM to work into her schedule.  And I have now Signed Up.

I dream of becoming a health consultant and helping people learn how fantastic plant based eating is.  There are some great people working on this in New Zealand, but not enough.  Wish me luck and lots of learning!

Help from abroad!
(well, not from a broad, from a young man...)

Through our local vegetarian network (in fact, to the lovely Alice Leonard who runs the vegan specialty shop Angel Food and will ship anywhere!) came a polite request in admirable English from a father in Germany.  His son wants to work for a year as an au pair in New Zealand for a vegetarian or vegan family.  It occurred to me that we are a vegan family!  A few "wunderbars" later, and we may actually be doing this.

Largely due to efforts to reduce our stuff, we can make a room available for a handy helper. As well as the obvious lure of having an extra hand on the child-taming job and an on-call babysitter, other advantages are:

• More male influence for the children
• Exposure to another culture
• Exposure to the German language (Alex's school does IB German!)
• Tennis lessons (this young man is the next Roger Federer :-)

We're currently working on turning our office into his room.  We're still on the before pictures, but I'll keep you all posted.  See the hers/his office setup below.

       
Stay tuned!