Conceiving, Organic everything, Portland

Conceiving: Well the journey still continues. I have been a member of fertility friend for a while now. It is a great network of super women. However, somehow I still feel so alone in my struggles to get pregnant. I mean one major obstacle is that my partner doesn't produce sperm. So trying to get pregnant every chance we get is kind of out of the question. So finding sperm, good sperm, inexpensive sperm has been a battle for us. We did not attempt conception this month because Jess' aunt died and we spent my days of ovulation in California with the Celebration of Life and cleaning up her aunt's house. I would not have traded that time for a chance at conception, so we will just try in May when I ovulate again. We have planned a nice relaxing trip to Omaha to spend a night or two in a hotel, inseminate, go to the zoo, and eat good food. It's mother's day weekend so we'll be back to Kansas City Sunday morning to spend time with our girls, but we thought it'd be nice since it is mother's day weekend to attempt to become mothers together.

Organic Everything: I did some more research online last night as well as developed so more plans for how to make our family's life more "green". I saw a show called Greenovate, it's kind of like those normal renovation shows but this one goes through someone's house and makes changes that are environmentally friendly and ends up saving the homeowner money in the long run. They installed 6 solar panels on this woman's roof for only $2000. I had in my mind that it would be tens of thousands of dollars for something like that to be done. So Jess and I are seriously considering having them installed on our new home. They increased the home's value by 10% I believe and she saved 40% in her utility bills each moth. They also installed a toilet that has one flush for liquids and one for solids, therefore saving water. In her bathroom they used recycled tile and it looked gorgeous. They used organic fabrics and furniture and nontoxic paints. It was just so neat to see.

We have made a decision as a family to no longer use plastic bags for household garbage or leaves/grass. We are going to get paper bags for our groceries and use those for our household garbage and buy paper sacks for lawn material to go in. It was just startling how much plastic we throw away each week that will never biodegrade. Here are some other cute things I found specifically for baby that are all organic.

Portland: If here is anyone out there in blogland that could give us any information on gay rights, schools, housing, and neighborhoods in the Portland or Beaverton, Oregon areas that would be fantastic. We are thinking about following our dreams of moving to the west coast in a year. Right now there are just so many possibilities for the future that it is super exciting!

Check back tomorrow and I'll hopefully have more info about living "Green" and maybe more info on Portland. :)

It takes roughly 1/3 of a pound of chemicals to grow enough cotton for one T-shirt!!

Cotton uses about 25% of the world's insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticedes.

Eighty-four million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on 14 million acre's of cotton in 2000 ranking it 2nd behind corn in total amount of pesticides sprayed.