Fair Trade S'mores on the Beach

As you know if you've hung out on this blog for any time, I'm passionate about the plight of child slaves in the chocolate fields. We do our best to purchase only fair trade chocolate (which can be very difficult at times), and I've now indoctrinated my sister and her family as well. So when we made s'mores, we used high-quality fair trade chocolate (which, I must say, is vastly superior to mass-produced chocolate starting with an "H" anyway!).

We enjoyed our campfires and s'mores so much that we had two evening campfires during 5 nights at the beach.

The first night was a bit chillier

Mike waiting for the coals

Nadine and Ryan

Carrying firewood

With sweet Nick

Girls with Mom

The second night we had an AMAZING sunset as our backdrop, and the evening was quite a bit warmer (shorts weather).

Playing in the surf while the fire got going

Dad

Gorgeous sunset

Mom relaxing

We were so glad my mom was able to stay all week at the beach. She had a scare one morning when her heart went back into atrial fibrillation. They called her cardiologist and made plans for her to have an EKG that day. They packed up all their stuff and drove to our rented house to let us know (since we didn't have cell phone coverage where we were). Once they arrived, Nadine took her heart rate, and it was back to normal! I've said it before and I'll say it again...I'm so glad to have a doctor in the family!

Mom and Dad holding up our fair trade chocolate sign--
I'm going to post the photos on Hershey's Facebook page to urge them to stop using child labor

If you like our signs, you can download one for yourself here--at the Raise the Bar Hershey site.

Perfect coals

Oldest and youngest

Please spread the word about the chocolate industry and its very bad practices of using child slaves to produce the chocolate so many people love! You can easily purchase fair trade chocolate at Trader Joe's, Fred Meyer, Whole Foods, and many other places. And it tastes delicious!