Camp Fire Is Affecting My Choices

Being a Camp Fire USA leader is great. I love helping the kids and watching them grow. It is a very rewarding job, so is my Birth Assistant work (which I have a birth coming any moment now) but that is another blog.

Last year, I kinda floated through the curriculum doing the best I could with the resources I was given. But the kids were in their first year too, most of them kindergarteners, so they were floating along doing the best they could as well. We had fun, learned a lot and did a few service projects.

I think the kids are ready for a whole lot more this year. I got a voter pamphlet in the mail yesterday and Chloe was very interested in voting and how it works. Camp Fire made it easier for me to explain since we decide as a group what to do and the kids pay dues to pay for activities. So taxes and programs were easily explained as dues and projects. I'm sure she wouldn't have passed any social studies test after our conversation but it was a crawl in the right direction, which I'm sure we'll go more into during this Camp Fire year. The kids are going to inch into more group decisions, eventually when they get high enough in level they're supposed to be mostly member run with just adult guidance which will be cool for them.

This year I see Camp Fire affecting my lifestyle more and more. How can I be a good Camp Fire leader and teach conservation if I myself don't even recycle (even just pop cans). And how can I teach nutrition lessons if I don't have good food choices at home for myself and my family. I really have become aware of this this last summer. Even yesterday I was looking up how to start a recycling program here in my home, which we still don't do. I'm only on step one of the three R's. I've been making serious efforts to reduce our waste which in turn has helped us eat better. Most foods with little packaging are usually more healthy... like fruits and veggies and we eat a lot more rice now which I buy in large bags instead of small boxes. (though I still can't figure on how to ditch the clear plastic produce bags completely. Things like bananas and oranges I don't worry about because they have a thick peel, but tomatoes go in the bag.)

The lunch box that Chloe has was an effort to do both reduce waste and give her healthy lunch choices (and it's lots of fun for me). The typical American school kid generates 67 pounds of discarded school lunch packaging waste per school year (how many sporks and paper sacks is that). It won't do much to just have Chloe doing it, but I have that whole service project lesson on "everyone does a little and something big can happen". So, I have to put aside my pessimism and teach her to be optimistic about her good choices.

I've finally bought some reusable grocery sacks, which happily I get a small refund for using. It's a pittance but they will eventually pay for themselves. Every store (except the evil WalMart) seems to have these, so some people must be thinking about this. The hard part is having them when you need them. I read somewhere that reusable sack users should keep the bags in their car so they're always there. I should stuff mine in my truck right now!

Anyway, I still eat meat. Hopefully that will never change. I love meat and I truly believe that humans are naturally omnivorous and supposed to eat meat. It's a the natural thing to do. (Though perhaps the small farm approach is a bit more environmentally friendly than stock farms. Maybe I'll look into buying half a cow from a small farm.) And I still wash myself with soap and lots of hot water (I'm so wasteful :D) But Camp Fire is getting me thinking about how much waste my family produces and how much crap we feed ourselves. These things have been on my mind and affecting my habits for 6 months or so. Kenny has noticed the changes and asked me if I was going all organic on him now, which he seems to like (I cook a lot more interesting dinners now). It's hard to be a good role model and teach the kids to be healthy and good stewards of the planet, but hopefully all my efforts will help them make better choices in the future when they're in charge.

Now if I could just get off my ass and be active once in a while.