Celebrating 5000 with another food dye mishap

That's right, yesterday marked the 5000th hit on my blog.

We have learned to be very very careful about what we feed our children. But somehow those nerotoxins still seem to sneak in. This week it was salad dressing at golf camp. How ironic that my 2 boys were among the few that chose to eat the beautiful healthy salad since there were always chips, cookies, brownies, etc. OH MY GOSH! It was not until I even typed this that I stopped to consider the brownies. Those can often have red #40 too.

I noticed Ben getting progressively more negative and grumpy at home all week. I kept asking him what he ate. I suspected they had the lemonade at camp. Both boys insisted they only drank water. Then it dawned on me when I asked a food server to check the ingredients on the potato wedges that looked a little too orange. Sure enough, there was dye in them, so we avoided those. That's when I looked at the Italian dressing they were having all week. Nice red bits, deep yellow base, pretty sure we had the culprit. Luckily this camp encouraged parents to come eat with the kids every day so I could be the overprotective "no you can't eat that" watch dog of a mom. Well, that part's more due to the milk/soy/wheat allergy than the food dyes.

But, trying to keep it all in perspective, my boys loved golf camp and may be developing a lifelong interest they can share with their dad. They developed skills, made friends, behaved well, avoided injury, and ended the week with a new bargain set of clubs so they don't have to share anymore. The camp also included new golf shoes and a Tiger Woods hat for everyone. So while I would prefer to not have the grump and the energizer bunny running around my house for the next 2 days, all things considered we are still doing pretty well. I'll try to count my blessings. On second thought, there must not have been red#40 in the brownies. I ate them 3 days in a row (Ben kept getting too full to enjoy good chocolate so someone had to do it). If there really was red#40 in them, I'd be way too irritable to write about counting blessings. So that's another blessing.