Avoid These At The Grocery Store

Do not buy any foods or groceries containing the following ingredients:
* Sodium nitrite (meats)
* Monosodium glutamate (soups)
* Aspartame (diet soda)
* Yeast extract (snacks)
* Hydrogenated oils
* High-fructose corn syrup

(From Dr. Mercola's Website)

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So today we were up pretty early. Taylor had his basketball sign-up and evaluation thing at 10am. He did really well and everyone there was SO nice!! It sounds like such a good program. It's call 'Upward', you may have heard of it. Anyway, this year for the games, they are going to shut the lights off, get the spot light out and announce the players just like they do at real games. I think the kids are really gonna like that, I know Taylor will! I guess they also provide a dinner/snack for the kids on nights they have practice so the parents don't have to worry about feeding them before and they have a concession stand during games and everything they offer is free. It only cost $40, not bad at all! We also got our schedule today, so that was nice. They only have games on Saturdays and my dad works every Saturday so I was a little bummed about that because he won't be able to come to all his games. However, there is a "Grandparents Day" in February, so I'll see if he can take that day off and go. I'm sure he will. I was very impressed with the whole program and all the people were so nice. I think this will be a great experience for Taylor.

Today is Chloe's birthday. She is 3. We decided to take her to Petco because they had Santa there today and you could get your dog's picture taken with him. So when the boys and I got back from basketball sign-ups, we grabbed Chloe and my mom and went. Well, the picture was extremely expensive and Chloe was very scared so I decided not to have it done. We even took her little Santa hat for her to wear, but she was just too nervous. So, we walked around the store and picked a new collar out for her and then went to the bulk doggie treats and stocked up on a bunch of different goodies. They were only $3.99 a pound. What a good deal! We'll have to go there more often. While we were in line, we met "Trina", another little Shihtzu. She was only 6 months old. Her owner was so nice. She was older and you could tell she just treated her little puppy like a queen. She was asking me questions about Chloe and I was asking her questions about Trina and when I asked her what kind of brush she used, she grabbed her purse and took it out and showed me. Now that is a committed dog owner... one who carries her dog's brush around. LOL It was cute. We tried to get the dogs to interact with each other but neither were interested. Chloe was just not happy about being in the store so we left. A dog rescue group was there and had cages with adoptable dogs down the center isle. I knew better, but I had to look. I walked down that isle and was in tears by the time we got to the end. I'm sure people thought I was crazy, but I just felt so bad for those poor little guys. Here we were, taking our dog out shopping for her birthday and those poor little things were caged and looking for good homes. It was sad!! I just LOVE dogs and I'm a total animal lover so things like that just get to me more than normal people I guess. I would have brought them all home if I could have. Although I overheard one of the women who ran the rescue talking to someone about how so many of the dogs were actually getting adopted today, so that made me feel better. Plus, they were all medium to large sized dogs and we really have no room for a big dog. I'll tell ya what though, if they would have had some small dogs, we probably would have ended up with a new addition to our family today. Cause I'm a sucker like that!

After that we ran through Wendy's and headed home. We need to run up to the library in a little while and maybe to the video store. I want to rent Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". Other than that, hopefully we can just stay in and relax. I may do some Christmas shopping online tonight. I've still got quite a bit to do. Only 16 more days!