Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Traveling for Adoption

No, not me this time. But, a very good friend of mine will be traveling to China, hopefully very soon, to bring home their four year old boy!

She asked me a while ago if I would write a blog post with a list of suggestions of what to pack. I said "sure!" and was very excited about the thought, but then got busy with this, with that, and I was shamefully neglecting my blog, and forgot about the notion.

We just got back from a wonderful dinner with my friend and her family, and I remembered....oh yeah! list of what to pack.

So here it is. Packing suggestions for traveling to pick up an internationally adopted child. (Not baby, child. Babies have a whole other set of needs.)

Making him feel more comfortable--

A few small, interactive toys to use as an icebreaker. Toa of Boy was scared to death of us when he was first turned over to our care. We had visited him the night before on his own turf, surrounded by people he knew and trusted, and he was having a ball playing with us then. He even called me "Mommy". I was *thrilled.* So, it took me off guard the next day when he was brought to the room where we were staying and just sat on the floor, frightened. We sat on the floor, a little ways away from him so as not to crowd him, and played with a small, foldable cloth frisbee. Passing it back and forth between us and Sweetling and talking and smiling and encouraging Sweetling. After a few minutes we braved a pass to Toa of Boy, who snatched it and tossed it back. We gradually pulled him into the game that way, and he became more comfortable and animated with us. Having something fun and nonthreatening like that was so very, very vital.

A present just from his new sibling. Often, children warm up to children faster than they warm up to adults. Toa took a birthday card and small present from Sweetling almost right away. (Before we had even started the frisbee game.) Plus, being the first person in the family to give the new family member a present gives the sibling an important task and reaffirms the pre-existing child's sense of belonging and value within the family structure. It shouldn't be wrapped, because the new child might not ever have had any experience with unwrapping a present, and the prospect of tearing paper might be confusing, since they've likely been taught that tearing something is a huge no-no.

A small bag with his name on it. This should be something small enough to fit in his backpack later, but easy to get things in and out of. With Toa, I quickly realized that he was afraid to put down his card from Sweetling or his stuffed Nemo, or some other little thing that he had attached to. He was trying to walk around and hold onto all of these little things to keep them safe. I took a gallon sized ziplock bag and wrote his name on it in permament marker and showed him how his things could go in it. He was thrilled and it was much easier to carry around than all the little things were. In retrospect, I wish I would have brought a small canvas bag with handles. (We had to keep a close watch to make sure he didn't try to wear the plastic bag on his head. Yeah, I know. Don't call child services on me. He's still alive.)

A picture communication card. A card (or a strip) with simple pictures on it to help him communicate basic needs. We didn't need this for Toa, because Toa spoke some basic English. But, for a young boy without any background in English, you can relieve a lot of the stress and scariness of communicating a simple need (like I have to go to the bathroom) by having a card with simple pictures on it that he can point to, letting you know what he needs. I'd suggest a picture of a toilet, a picture of a bowl of food (something that he will recognize like a bowl of rice or a bowl of noodles), a picture of a cup or glass to represent something to drink, a picture of a bed or pillow to represent sleep. You keep one copy with you, especially if you are out of the hotel room, clipped to the outside of your purse or worn as a lanyard around your neck. You keep one copy with him, clipped to the outside of his backpack. And you keep a couple of spares in your suitcase in case one gets lost.
You use the cards a lot when you are talking with him. "Are you hungry?" "Do you want something to eat?" (If you know the Chinese word or phrase for food or hungry, you can use that with the picture and with the English.) With a lot of repititions, he'll pick up on if he's hungry, he can bring a card to you and point to the picture of the food. Later, he'll learn the English words for all these things. But right now, your main concern is helping him feel safe and cared for. It will help him bond, and once that basic emotional need is met, he'll be more able to tackle a language as alien and strange-sounding as English. 

(Alternatively, you can use simple infant signs for some of these basic concepts. This has the advantage of not needing a picture card. It has the disadvantage of he needs to remember the sign to be able to use it.)

A safe zone in the room you'll be staying. Ok, this isn't something you can pack and take with you, but establish an area (an armchair, a corner, a side of a bed) that is his safe zone. With Toa, that was the lower bunk of the bunkbeds he and Sweelting were using. When Toa climbed up on the bunk, that's where he could go to be left alone. He needed a safe place where he could retreat when things got overwhelming.

Keeping him entertained--

Now, I'm going to give you a list of things that are nice for keeping a scared, confused little boy entertained and happy in a strange hotel room, in the American Consulate office where you'll be waiting for forever, on the plane, and in the airport while your waiting in the immigration office. Don't give him all of these at once. You will overwhelm him. Give him one at a time, maybe just before you go to a new place. (In other words, don't introduce a brand new toy or activity in the Consulate office. That's just one more new, confusing, overstimulating thing. Introduce it in the hotel room a half hour before you go to the Consulate's office. It will still be very cool and intriguing for him, without contributing to the overwhelming factor.) The twelve hour airplane ride is an exception to this subrule. You can introduce a new thing on the airplane, especially if you've already been on the airplane for a few hours.

Bring the same set of toys for the pre-existing sibling! Being older, the veteren sibling should have a couple of special things suited for her interests, (Sweetling brought books and a couple of her own stuffed animals), but the basic toy set should be pretty much the same. Mark everything with a permament marker, and let each child keep their things in their own backpacks. But having the same set (or at least similar sets) serves a couple of purposes. One, the existing sibling is getting new toys at the same time that the new sibling is. That makes it less "all about the new sibling" and helps the existing sibling remember that this is an exciting time for *everyone* in the family, including her! Two, if the new sibling has no earthly idea how to play with the toys, the existing sibling models appropriate play easily and naturally. Children learn from imitation. Having a good role model will help new little brother. Three, new little brother won't be as tempted to grab big sister's stuff, because the stuff will be the same. Yes, new little brother will pick her stuff up by accident, but that is easily remedied and is much less of a threat or an offense in big sister's book.

Here's some field tested winners of what to bring--

Crayola Color Wonder Markers. These are cool because they only mark on the color wonder paper. Not anything else. Not knowing how much experience or training he might have had with crayons and markers, you might just want to play safe and give him something he can draw with....but only on a certain surface. Bring extra paper. Don't give him the whole pack of paper at once. Doll out just a couple of sheets at a time. (You can bring regular paper and washable crayons and break them out if he seems to be doing well with the wonder markers.)

Cheap tiny animals or dinosaurs. Cheap, because they won't all be coming home with you. One will get lost here, another over there. Take a little bag or special container just for them. Some of them come in a storage tube, but if not, take something. Toa of Boy kept himself enterained for quite a while just taking them out of their container, lining them all up, and putting them back in. Farm animals or zoo animals are good for naming and at least hearing their English names. You could also count them as they come out of the container and go back into the container.

A backpack for travel. His personal things (ie--his new toys) should go in there. His canvas bag with the handles should go in there. (His canvas bag is just for use in the hotel room. Yes, there is a difference. But, he should still have access to his back pack in the hotel room.) He needs something that zips up when you leave the hotel room. His change of clothes, his extra socks, etc DO NOT go in there. Otherwise they will get pull out when not needed and risk getting lost. For long times away from the hotel, a sippy cup or a snack could go in there. (I don't know what the current airplane regulations are on those things.) If he seems worried about where his next meal will be coming from, knowing he has a granola bar in his backpack might be comfort. (Warning, he will eat it immediately. Keep the snack you want him to have later in your own backpack.)

DVDs and a DVD player, or a laptop with a few movie files on the hard drive. Say what you will about this, but there will be a time in the hotel room where its 7PM and no child is sleepy but Mom and Dad are exhausted. (And frankly, both kids might have also had an exhausting, overstimulating day.) A 30 minute veggietale will be your salvation. Don't expect the 4 year old to sit through a 90 minute Disney movie (he might, but likely not). But 30 minutes is a real possibility.

Other possibilities, these might work, they might not, depending on the child. These aren't the sure fire winners of the above list, but if you want a couple of possibilities to hold in reserve, these are it.

Sticker sheets (and paper for them to be placed onto). Be warned, stickers might go everywhere. My recommendation is to save them for the airplane ride. He might need some help 'starting' the stickers. (Pull up just one corner or edge.) But its a good fine motor activity that should keep him quiet and busy. Don't go for fancy stickers with lots of wierd shapes that could rip when he pulls them up. Go for simple shapes that are easy to pull up. Big sister, of course, can have the fancier stickers (or even a sticker story book).

A koosh ball. The ones that have all those soft rubber wigglies on it and look like squishy sea anenomes. Don't get the ones that are filled with gel fluid. Those will rupture. Trust me. But the squishy sea anemones can be used for a game of catch, they can be used like a rubber band yo-yo, and they are a neat sensory/tactile object to hold and fiddle with.

A simple bedtime story book. If you are planning on using a book as part of the normal bedtime routine, bring it and start it reading it. It should be realitively short, with not too many words per page. But, the more routine you can build into your days up front, the easier the adjustment will be for the child. Part of the stress of adoption, for the child, is not knowing what to expect. Everything familiar has been taken away. If you do the same bedtime routine every night in the hotel room, that will help start building up a sense of consistancy in his life again.

Practical stuff to have on hand--

Over the counter medicines for children and for adults. Trust me, if big sister comes down with a cold and a sore throat, you don't want to be in China trying to figure out how to by a child's cold medicine. Likewise for the grownups, and for new little brother. Put any liquid medicines in a ziplock bag and keep the medicines in the bags you check, not your carry ons.

Motion sickness medicine or ginger tablets, if this is an issue for any of you. I don't know how long its been since your little girl has flown, but even if you and your husband don't have a problem with this, it might not be a bad idea to have on hand in a child's dosage for the two kids.

Lots of boy socks and underwear. I packed a gabillion pairs of socks and underwear for Toa, and we ran out. I don't know how that happened. I packed way more pairs than we had days in Gautemala, but we still ran out.

Pull-ups. Yes, I know your new little guy has been in big boy underwear for quite some time, but this falls under the 'better safe than sorry' column of advice. But you will want to put him in a pull up at night time and for the airplane travel. Let me tell you why. First, many children who have been staying dry all through the night experience bedwetting in response to a drastic change or stress in their lives. At three a.m., you don't want to discover the sheets need changed and the hotel room mattress is soaked, especially if big sister is sharing a bed with new little brother. Much easier to put little brother in a pull up for the night. Second, if you are in an airport or on a plane and suddenly the little guy has to go to the bathroom...but your in the middle of boarding or there's a huge line for the one restroom in the plane and little guy doesn't quite make it... Well, it much easier in those cases to change a pull up than an outfit. Plus, if he is already nervous, scared, and insecure, you don't want to unnecessarily add the drama and stress of wetting himself.

Wet wipes and hand sanitizer. I'm betting you already keep these in your purse anyway. Use them a lot :)

A small toothbrush or nail brush. Scrub like you are going into surgery whenever you wash your hands. After our bout of illness in Guatemala (and we were careful and followed all the traveler's rules), I can't stress thorough handwashing enough. Even in Guatemala, I washed my hands and used hand sanitizer like crazy, but the doctor that we saw down there recommended brushing under the nails. He said that the bacteria can get under the nails and not get washed out when the hands are washed regularly.

Antibiotics for the adults and for the children. We got a presciption filled for each of us and took it to Guatemala with us. And we needed it. Did we ever need it. As bad as our illness was, it would have been so much worse if we hadn't started an antibiotic immediately.

Shoes for the little guy. The ones he will be wearing might be too small for his feet. I had gotten this as a tip before we went to Guatemala, and it turned out to be a good tip. The tip I got was to bring along the sandals that velcro around the ankle and velcro over the top of the foot too. Get them in a slightly larger size than you think you need and then use the velcro to adjust them down as necessary. This worked beautifully for us, but we were in Guatemala in late May, not northern China in January. So, maybe the velcro sandals won't work so well for the climate. Regardless, take along a couple pairs of shoes.

Jacket, clothing, etc. I don't know what the policies are where you will be adopting, but its safe to assume he won't be coming to you with anything but the clothes on his back, so take everything else you think he'll need for the few days you will be in China and for the travel time home.

A camera. Like you needed me to tell you this one. But take lots of pictures and try to document as best you can where he came from and the story of how he came home with you. That's an important piece of his life and of who he is. He will need to have that, to hear that, to look at the pictures again and again. Our Toa of Boy used to wake up in the middle of the night crying. I found that one of the only ways to comfort him and help him settle down was to go back to those pictures, to talk about where he used to live, and to tell him again the story of how he came home with us. In that telling, it helped reassure him of how much we love him and how he will always be with us and how God has always had a special plan for his life.

Hope that helps!

I'll ask the Jedi to read over this and see if he has anything he can think of to add. He's the more practical minded of the two of us. (Big shocker there, right?) I'll tag on any of his suggestions in a separate post.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Runaway Blog

Help, Help, A Horrible Heffalump!

I got a facebook message from a friend the other day. Here's what it said:

I don't know how to fix it, but your blog is spamming my blog with links to your blog. I've deleted quite a few links, but still have about 40 to go! I think the problem is on your end, but I don't know what to tell you about how to fix it. I'm going to see what I can find out.

The joys of technology!
Really? Really?

First, let me say....if my blog has spammed anyone else's blog, you have my sincerest apologies. I promise, it was absolutely without my permission, intention, provocation, knowledge, awareness, etc.

It was, in fact, one more strike in the great computers and electronic conspiracy.

Second, I have gone over all my settings. I hadn't changed anything in the past few months, but I double checked everything anyway. I've poured through the blogger help forums. But I have NO IDEA why my blog would do such a thing or how to fix it.

My best game plan is to hope that it stops itself as mysteriously as it started.

Third, if it's still happening to anyone, please let me know. If the problem hasn't resolved itself, I'll write about it directly to blogger help. I'm sort of saving that as a last resort, because I don't want my blog to get flagged as a spam blog. Or deleted.

But, I also don't want it spamming other blogs for no good reason.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Contents of the Kitchen Table

At the end of the day, after the dinner dishes have been cleared off, there's always a few scattered things pushed to one corner of the table. (On a good day, its just a few things pushed to one corner. On a bad day, we eat in the living room. Don't judge me.)

The type and amount of items left on the table serve as an indicator of how the day went. Today was a great day for school. After the Jedi took the kids to Tae Kwon Do, I sat down with my phone and half a cup of hot chocolate, and recorded what was still on the table. (Besides my hot chocolate cup, which was a new arrival.)

Remnants of a good day:
  • One plant in surprisingly good health
  • One homemade basket filled with napkins
  • One bottle joint supplement
  • One miniature pumpkin
  • One glass bowl with 2 apples
  • One box ibuprofen
  • One roll medical tape
  • One thank you card from neighbors
  • One painted tile (still waiting to be hung on wall) 
  • One cut scrap of paper leftover  from earlier project
  • One awana handbook 
  • One halloween pencil 
  • One pink highlighter 
  • One baggie of awana bucks 
  • Two glue sticks 
  • One yellow highlighter 
  • One chapter 5 math test 
  • One history portfolio and time line 
  • One green plastic army man
In other news, its been a while since I've blogged. One would think I would learn by now that whenever I have grand plans and schemes for my blog, that my blog posts actually decline in frequency. I get "behind" on the arbitrary standards I set for myself, and then I stop blogging until I can get "caught up."

Forget that.

Instead I bring you contents of my kitchen table. You can thank me later for not including the contents of my kitchen counter.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Retooling the Curricula

We're a month into our school year, and so far, I couldn't be happier with the bulk of our curriculum. 

I'm especially pleased with Toa's language arts curriculum from Royal Fireworks Press. Anytime a very active 8 year old boy says, "can we just read one more part please, Mommy?" That's a winner. And, when I quickly agreed to the request, the response was, "Hooray! I get to learn what a conjunction is!" 

No lie.

I am also super pleased with Sweetling's science curriculum from Education Exploration. I can't tell you how cool it is to see her assembling a wooden glider with a wingspan slightly greater than two feet. Her projects are so cool, and she can work through her science curriculum completely independently, which has a huge appeal for her.

Likewise, the Writing the Breakout Novel text is really a great resource. I'm stealing it from her on weekends and reading it, and taking notes, myself. I've spied on Sweetling, and she keeps her writing notebook close at hand while she's reading.

And, while her Geometry text has had a couple of unfortunate errors, on the whole it's been a win. (And Sweetling has zipped off an email to the author about the most blatant misprints.) I was also please to note, that when she was picking out folders and notebooks and color co-ordinating them to match each of her school subjects, she picked green, her favorite color, for geometry.

Our Bible curriculum isn't the most exciting thing in the world, but it works for both kids. That's a pretty nice trick in itself. And its rather thoroughly covering the basics of all the books in the Old Testament.

Last, skipping third grade math was absolutely the best choice for Toa. He's picked up the fourth grade math book and run with it. We're in the third chapter, which has had a 'theme' of sharks. Bonus for lots of cool shark facts.

However,

There are two key areas which aren't working for us.

First, Toa's super cool science curriculum that I was so super excited about? It's too easy and way too elementary for him. We're going to finish it up, because we spent $60 on it, and I think that some of the projects and lessons will still be really cool. But, overall, we are going to fly through this science curriculum. I wish I had purchased the Intermediate Level for him instead of the Elementary Level.

I think when we finish this science curriculum, we'll try something new. I'd love to try Apologia Science, but since I've already blown my budget on curriculum, I'm not sure how feasible that will be. I might have to settle for  a cheap used copy of Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space.

Second, putting together my own History of the 20th Century course is a wash. It's way too much work for me and for the kids. I feel like we're reinventing the wheel, and coming up with a bumpy, lumpy one at that. I'm officially throwing in the towel on this idea.

I took a second look, (ok, really its a third, fourth, or fifth look if you want to get technical), at some pre-assembled curricula kits. There are several that I really like, but remember, I've already burned through my homeschool book budget and then some. So, money was definitely a factor.

I'm going to order the Time Travelers: The Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression curruculum CD from Homeschool in the Woods. I'll have to add in my own library books, but we'd be doing that with any curriculum. I think it has everything I'm looking for. And, here's the real sell, check out the project pics in the left hand column.

We'll use this through the fall. (So, what's left of September and the whole month of October. We're taking a break from most curriculum in November for NaNoWriMo. In December, we'll focus on making our own Christmas presents, which we will tie in to our study of the 1930s.)

In January, we'll order the next in the Time Travelers series, World War II. I'm sure that will take us through at least the beginning of March.

And then we'll be back to winging it for the second half of the 20th Century in the spring.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Two for Tuesday: French Toast Casserole

Originally, this recipe came from allrecipes and was called "Overnight French Toast II". I haven't changed much about the recipe, just added a sprinkling of cinnamon.That and I rarely make it overnight. Hence the name change.

French Toast Casserole

Ingredients
  • 2 Tbs corn syrup
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • cinnamon to sprinkle
  • 1 loaf French bread (white or wheat)
  • 5 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp salt
Directions

  1. Combine the corn syrup, butter, and brown sugar in a small sauce pan. The original recipe says to simmer until the sugar is melted. I've never figured this step out. My syrup always seems grainy, but it works.
  2. Grease a 9x13 casserole dish. Pour syrup mixture into the bottom of the casserole dish. Sprinkle the surface with cinnamon.
  3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla, and salt.
  4. Slice bread into thick slices, like an inch and a half thick. Place bread slices in casserole dish over the syrup mixture.
  5. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the bread slices. Yes, this will completely fill the pan and the spaces in between the bread slices. It's supposed to do this.
  6. Cover with plastic wrap. Place the dish in the refrigerator overnight OR prep this in the morning and let it soak all day for dinner in the evening. (And as a side note, don't be like me. Clear off a place to put this before you open the fridge door and try to hold the heavy dish full of liquid with one hand while you precariously stack plastic containers of leftovers and half full salsa jars with the other hand. That sort of scenario rarely has a happy ending.)
  7. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. 
This dish does not need a syrup, since it makes its own. This makes it great for taking places, as long as you do the appropriate prep work the night before or early enough in the day. (In other words, you can't wake up at 7 and try to make and bake this dish for a 9am Bible study.)

I'm a big fan of breakfast for dinner once a week, and I like using this recipe for that purpose. I serve it with either thick bacon slices or thick ham slices and fresh fruit (strawberries, cantaloupe, honeydew melon) if I have some.

Normally, I'd leave you with a link to another interesting looking recipe, but right now, I'm trying to recover from blogroller turning evil and hijaking my blog. Curse you blogroller. Curse you.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Two for Tuesday: Egg and Cheese Bake

Shhhhh.....I have a secret to share.

This was a recipe I originally found on allrecipes as Easy Quiche. But, the Jedi says he hates quiche, and would never have touched dinner if I had said I made a quiche. Voila, the birth of...

Egg and Cheese Bake

Ingredients

  • 2 cups milk
  • 4 eggs
  • 3/4 cup biscuit baking mix (ie--Bisquick)
  • 1/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup cooked  and crumbled bacon
  • 1 to 1 1/2 cup shredded cheese mix (the kind I used is called "Fiesta Blend" at Walmart)
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease a deep dish pie pan.
  2. In a large bowl, beat together milk, eggs, baking mix, butter and parmesan cheese. Batter will be lumpy.
  3. Pour into prepared dish. Dump a ton of cheese on top. Dump all the crumbled bacon pieces you have on top of that. (I think I put about 1/2 a cup of bacon on mine, but I would have added more if I had it.)
  4. Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes, until eggs are set and top is golden brown.
  5. Allow to cool for five to ten minutes before slicing and serving. And of course, don't mention that the original recipe was called a quiche.
 My family loved it. It was easy, filling, and went great with the homemade wheat bread and homemade apple butter that Sweetling had made that afternoon for her cooking project. I fried up some potatoes as a side dish as well. (The secret is to microwave them first, then let them cool before cutting them in chunks and frying them. That is how I finally defeated my whole potato-curse thing.)

The other thing I made last week that was TO DIE FOR was a flourless chocolate cake. You can find the original recipe here on Gluten-Free-Easily. Do not change a thing. Follow her instructions to the letter because really, why would anyone mess with PERFECTION?

Monday, August 29, 2011

Food Pantry List

Here's the challenge.
  • The church food pantry would like to provide a week's worth of groceries/meals to a family whenever needed.
  • The groceries should include everything the family needs for meals, with few, if any, other ingredients needed.
  • The pantry cannot give out perishable foods, both because we don't have any refrigeration/freezer units and because we never know when a family will need the pantry's services, so we can't keep foods with a limited shelf life on stock. (Sometimes we'll supply groceries to three families in one week, and sometimes two weeks will go by before the pantry is needed.)
  • In good conscience, I can't give out food which I wouldn't be comfortable feeding my own family, which means I'm trying to limit the amount of processed food we give out and I'm trying to ensure the meals are balanced and healthy.
Got that? Five to seven meals, plus some breakfast, lunch, and snack items. No extra ingredients. No perishables or short shelf life foods. Healthy, balanced, limited processed foods.

Yeah, it strikes me as quite a puzzler too.


Oh, and I don't want the recipes to be too involved, too time consuming, or too labor intensive. Or have too many special ingredients, since I'm depending on donations to put the bags together.


Fun mix, all of that.


That being said, I am going to keep two of the staple meals in that I'm using right now.
  1. Tuna Helper. Easy, quick, and the congregation is great at keeping me supplied with the tuna and the tuna helper boxes.
  2. Pasta and spaghetti sauce. Same reasons.
Which means I need three to five other meals.

Rice and Beans. Simple. Few ingredients. Few processed foods. 

Ramen Casserole. The kids and I eat a variation of this at least once a week at lunch time.

Tomato Macaroni and Cheese. Right now I'm giving out boxes of mac n cheese, but I feel bad about this since the box mix calls for milk and butter to complete. Here's a nice alternative to that.

I'm considering the Turkey and Dressing, but am not completely sold on it yet.

What I'd really love are a few other ideas. Anyone have a good suggestion?

(We do also put several cans of soup in each bag for a couple lunches.)

((And somehow, this sat unpublished for two months. Why or how, I don't know.))

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Two for Tuesday: Lemon Bars

Let me start off by saying that I don't like lemon bars. I don't like key lime pie either. Lemon/lime desserts just don't do it for me.

And yet, these...THESE....are DELICIOUS.

Sweelting made these. She got the recipe from Teens Cook Dessert, which she found and checked out from the library a couple of weeks ago.

Have I mentioned the deliciousness factor? Cause they were. Delicious.

Lemon Bars

Ingredients

CRUST
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 cup butter
FILING
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
GLAZE
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 3 Tbs lemon juice
 Directions


To prepare the crust:
  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. Mix flour, powdered sugar, and butter in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed for 2 minutes, or until crumbly.
  3. Press mixture into bottom of an ungreased 9x13 pan and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until lightly brown.
  4. Remove from oven, but leave oven at 350.
To prepare the filling:

  1. Stir eggs, sugar, flour, and baking powder in a medium bowl until completely combined.
  2. Add lemon juice and stir until completely smooth.
  3. Pour the mixture over the warm crust and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is golden brown.
  4. Let cool completely.
To prepare the glaze:

  1. Stir powdered sugar and lemon juice in a small bowl until smooth.
  2. Smooth the glaze over the bars, let set for 30 minutes.
  3. Cut into 2 inch squares. 
 And, because some crazy woman decided to call this "TWO" for Tuesday....I'm looking for a recipe that I'm thinking of trying. Now, for the past couple weeks, I've posted things that I never thought I'd like, until I tried them. Here's a recipe with lots of great things that I love, in a combination that perhaps should never, ever, have been brought together. And yet, I'm considering it.

Buffalo Chicken Lasagna.

Do I dare?

Monday, August 22, 2011

Things I Need to Do

I don't know why I think making a list will make me more likely or motivated to get any of these done. Maybe making a list will entice some magic list fairy into coming over and magically accomplishing one of the items. Sort of like The Elves and the Shoemaker, without all the hard work the shoemaker puts in every day.

Anyway
  • Revamp/ revise what goes in our food pantry bags. Search for some internet recipes that are still cheap and easy, use only non-perishable foods, and avoid unhealthy or overprocessed food. See why my to do list never gets done?
  • Develop a sign up sheet for the list of items the food pantry will need each month so that families can sign up to commit to bringing a few specific items each month
  • Put together a weekly lunch menu for the kids and me. Again, quick, cheap, and healthy are the must haves.
  • Clean out and organize the 6 big plastic drawers and three skinny plastic drawers of school and craft supplies downstairs.
  • Put together a 'price book' for grocery shopping.
  • Find some online directions for bridge building for Toa's history project this week.
  • Schedule an outing with Aunt Smurf. Preferably one that involves a penguin parade at Newport on the Levee.
  • Trim and hang some 'post cards from America' calendar pages as a border for our 'art door' in the hallway.
  • Schedule some outings for the new LITE Lab in the Cincinnati Museum Center.
On a side note, someone got chocolate smudges on the pages of Sweetling's Geometry book today. I'm blaming the accident on the indescribable joys of indirect proofs. 

Friday, August 19, 2011

Weekly Wrap Up.....School With a Side of Summer

Once again, the weather was beautiful outside, while, theoretically, we were supposed to be doing school inside.

Here's how our Monday went....



Now, before anyone is tempted to call the school board, we got all our school done that morning before we took off to play hookey ;)

That evening, we had hamburgers for dinner, and ate on TV trays in the living room so that we could watch the Civil War episode of America: The Story of Us.

Let me tell you, warn you, that Civil War battlefields do NOT make for good dinner time viewing. Even if you fast forward through the "field amputation" segment.

And I would say that maybe the loss of good dinner ambiance would be worth it, if both children had come away with a good understanding of the Civil War in a nutshell. But, at the end of the hour long video, Toa asked, "So.....who won?"

Other than that small disappointment, I've continued to love all of our curriculum. Here are some of our highlights from this week:

History:

Toa and I loved this awesome book, A Street through Time. We sat on the couch together reading the book and searching the large, two page illustrations for examples of the various technologies and changes. It was an activity unto itself.




Science:


Sweetling finished her cool car this week. She had it tied off to a cup which was weighted down by her Bible and the little guy was just zooming around in circles on our kitchen floor. I took a video of that, but I'm not techno-cool enough to be able to share that.










Having conquered that project, she went on to begin building a balsa wood glider with a wingspan of 33 inches. She is still searching for the perfect name for it.





Toa's science lesson this week was on gravity. He got to use the car he built last week to experiment with different steepnesses of inclined planes. I have no pictures of this process, because I got kicked out of the room while it was going on. There are some things, apparently, which are just between a boy and his car.

Health and Safety

Every year, the Jedi's company sponsors a safety poster contest for children of employees. (This is cool for me, because participating often covers my state requirement for safety.) This year, the theme is safety in the workplace (including overall health and wellness.) Here is Sweelting's finished poster. Because I'm not so good with the camera, the lettering is difficult to read in the photo. It reads, "Protect Your Hearing: 85 db and over is the danger zone!"

Toa's poster is on Healthy Eating habits, but isn't quite finished yet. I'll post up a picture of it next week.

Reading:

Yay! I finally got my copy of The Book Whisperer from the library! I've been on the hold wait list since early July. I only have read the first chapter, but I'm really looking forward to gleaning some insight from it. Toa considers himself too old for children's picture books, but he isn't quite ready for the traditional chapter books either. And many of the "I can read" chapter type books are just not that engaging or just not that hot when it comes to children's literature. I'm sure there are a few exceptions to that, but I'm having a bear of a time finding them!




Meanwhile, we've started keeping a literature log. And when I say "we" I mean, I'm making him write a couple of sentences about a book when he finishes it. I know, the cold depths of cruelty I am capable of is just astounding. This week, we finished Bunnicula and Friends: Hot Fudge. Last week we read Sam and the Firefly. Toa reads almost every day. He loves our reading time together, cause we sprawl out on the waterbed while he reads aloud to me. We pause and talk about the book and make predictions and discuss the character's choices. But, the reason Toa loves reading is that reading is always followed by a short tickle time.

James and the Giant Peach is our current read aloud. I love James and the Giant Peach. I read aloud to Toa in the evenings. Sadly, I don't get to it every evening, because our evenings are pretty crowded, but we do get to it fairly regularly, and he really enjoys the stories we read together.

Writing:

Sweetling finished her first chapter in Writing the Breakout Novel. I, of course, am not allowed to peak in her writing idea notebook, but I was pleased to see that she had it out while she was reading. Now I just have to pinch the Breakout Novel text back from her so that I can read chapter two :) There are twelve chapters in the book, so I think we can finish the text before NaNo, and then begin the workbook in January. This time when I say "we" I mean "me too!!!"

Cooking:

Friday afternoon is our time for cooking projects. Toa made Cuppa Cuppa Cake.

Sweetling made the world's best lemon bars from scratch and then went on to make delicious fish tacos for dinner.

Finally, having started our week out with an awesome outdoor fun time, we were blessed to be able to finish it off with a fantastic pool party. Our youth pastor's family rented out a local community pool for two hours on Friday night as a giant combined birthday party for him and his two boys. It was a great ending to a great week!


Check out what others are doing on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Two for Tuesday: Fluffy Pancakes

Yes, it's Thursday. Why do you even act surprised about these things anymore?

Even though it's Thursday, I'm sharing my favorite pancake recipe of all time.

Fluffy Pancakes

Originally, I found this recipe on allrecipes.com. I haven't changed anything from the original except that I double the recipe when I make it for the family. We have breakfast for dinner about once a week. We don't always have pancakes and eggs, but we often do.

Here is the recipe, with the amounts already doubled. (So, don't double them again and come whining to me about it making a crap-ton of pancakes.)

Ingredients

  • 1 - 1/2 cups milk
  • 1/4 cup white vinegar
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 2 tsps baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • cooking spray for pan
Directions

  1. Measure milk and vinegar into a large bowl. Set kitchen timer for five minutes and allow milk to "sour."
  2. Meanwhile, measure dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) into another bowl. Use a wire whisk to blend completely.
  3. Melt your butter if you are still waiting for the 5 minute timer to beep.
  4. When the milk has soured for 5 minutes, whisk two eggs and the melted butter into the milk.
  5. Add your dry ingredients to the milk mixture and whisk until all lumps are gone.
  6. Heat your skillet over medium heat and spray with non-stick spray. Spoon 1/4 cup batter into the skillet to form pancakes. Cook until bubbles begin to form on surface. Flip and cook until browned.
This recipe doesn't lie when it calls the pancakes "fluffy". These pancakes are absolutely the best. Thick, rich, light...and yes, they CAN be all three of those things at once. I've been making these for two years now as my go to pancake recipe.

I've considered stirring in some other ingredients. Blueberries or chocolate chips or bananas or sliced strawberries. I haven't gotten around to try that yet. (Mostly because I'm usually pressed for time and not feeling very creative on pancake night. There's a reason I'm making quick and easy pancakes for dinner. Stir-ins sort of defeat that whole quick and easy goal.)  If someone else does try some stir-ins, let me know how it goes.

And the two part of my Tuesday, Cuppa Cuppa Cake from the Pioneer Woman is going with me to a friend's house on Saturday. After I pick the gross rubber grapes out of the can of fruit cocktail of course.


Monday, August 15, 2011

Not-Back-to-School: Meet and Greet

Sweetling

 
  • Favorite Subject: Science
  • Favorite Thing about Homeschooling: "the freedom that's involved with it"
  • Least Favorite Thing about Homeschooling: "It's also kind of distracting doing school in my house because there are so many other things in the house that I enjoy doing."
  • Most Anticipating This Year:   learning Spanish

Toa of Boy


    • Favorite Subject: Math
    • Favorite Thing about Homeschooling: "I don't have sit for 800 hours and get sleepy and stuff."
    • Least Favorite about Homeschooling:  Spelling
    • Most Anticipating This Year: "the end of school"
    Mrs. Random


    • Favorite Subject: Art
    • Favorite Thing about Homeschooling: "marching to the beat of our own drum"
    • Least Favorite about Homeschooling: "teaching higher level math"
    • Most Anticipating This Year: "cooking with Sweetling"
      Not Back to School Blog Hop

      Saturday, August 13, 2011

      Weekly Wrap Up.....First Week!

      Not our First Week EVER, of course. Just our First Week for this school year.


      We don't have any First Day of School Traditions. I feel like a heel admitting that. I do try to do a special dinner on the evening of our first day of school, this year it was homemade pizza, but no super cool breakfast or first day of school parties that we do every year.

      But this year, we lucked out. Our good friends were having a double birthday party for the two boys of the family in the afternoon our our first day of school. So, on our first day, we did school from 8 am to 11am and had a happy, productive morning. Then, at 11am, we made some cards for the birthday boys, ate an early lunch, went shopping for two presents, and was at the party at 1 pm. The kids spent the afternoon outside with good friends tossing water balloons, going down slip n slides, playing in a sprinkler, tossing corn hole bags, eating iced watermelon, breaking a pinata, and having cake and ice cream. Best Back to School Activity EVER.  (The only downside, in the rush to get card made, lunch eaten, and out the door in time to get presents and get to the party, I didn't think to grab my camera. This is sad, because some outdoor pictures by the lovely beds of flowers that bordered the back lawn at the birthday locations would have made terrific First Day of School photos.)

      What I do have pictures of is our art project for the week.

      This year, we're doing a "badge/ribbon" earning system for school work. Here, you can read about all the kinds of "badges" the kids can win if you want to know more about this project. For the badges themselves, I'm going to grab small clip art images, make some pages in MS Publisher with the little image and the badge title, and print the page onto iron-on transfer paper. Then I'll cut out the images with their labels and iron them on to wide white satin ribbon. Behold, quick and easy 'awards' for school projects. I, of course, don't have any pictures of any finished ribbon badges, cause they aren't anywhere near finished. That's tomorrow's project.

      But, as part of this whole concept, I picked up cheap 17x23 cork bulletin boards for each child. This week they painted the bulletin boards as their art project for the week.

      Toa went with an abstract using analogous colors. He is going to sort his badges by type, lining them up in rows and pinning them to his bulletin board.
      Sweetling decided to subdivide her bulletin board into ten sections, one for each month we will be doing school. She will pin her ribbons up and organize them by month she received them.

      But the biggest news from the first week, is that I am really, really pleased with our curriculum and textbook choices.

      My biggest worry was in my purchase for Toa of Boy of the Language Arts Island Series by Michael Clay Thompson and Royal Fireworks Press. But so far, we love the books. We dug into Grammar Island this week, spending a few minutes on the couch each day reading about what parts of speech are and about nouns and pronouns. Sounds dry, doesn't it? SURPRISINGLY NOT. Thompson did a phenomenal job making this very pleasant to read and to look at and easy to understand.

      Our reading introduced the difference between subject and object pronouns. I knew this was the only concept that wasn't going to stick in Toa's mind from just the reading alone. Thompson gently suggested memorizing the lists. That sounded like drudgery. Instead, I invited Toa outside to play a game. In preparation, I made fifteen small tiles out of cardstock, printing one pronoun on each tile. (You and it were on each list twice, so they wound up with four tiles between them.) Before we went outside, I shuffled the tiles and let Toa sort them with the book open to the page with the lists of subject and object pronouns. He placed the subject pronouns in a pile at the top the book and the object pronouns in a pile at the bottom of the book. Then he sorted them again with the book closed, and remembered them all correctly. Then we went outside.

      I asked Toa to draw three large circles on the driveway. Then I labeled the circles, subject, object, and either. I drew a  nearby line for Toa to stand behind. The game was, Toa pulled a pronoun tile from my hand. He stood on the line and tried to throw a rock into the appropriate circle. If the rock landed in the correct circle, it stayed there and would count as a point for Toa. If it bounced out of the circle, it counted as a point for me. If he threw it, or it landed, in an incorrect circle, I knocked it and another rock outside the circle to be two points for me.

      Toa loved the game. We played it three times, at his request. If later on, we ever need to review subject/object pronouns, it will be super simple to do again.

      Another huge curriculum win was our science curriculum from Exploration Education. You know its a huge win, when a child is CHEERING when it is time to do science.

      This week, Toa's lesson was "What is Science". He will be studying a unit on Forces, Machines, Motion and Energy. The first step of that unit is to build a small car, (all materials and instructions are included in the curriculum kit.) Toa is rightfully proud and pleased with his car.

      Sweetling is beginning a unit on Electricity and Magnetism (I think, Sweetling is doing her science curriculum independently.) She has the Advanced Intermediate curriculum level from Education Exploration. So her car building was different and more involved.
      Note the glue gun on the table? Toa and I came upstairs from building his car at his old school desk downstairs. Toa said, "I smell burning feet." I didn't know burning feet smelled like a really old hot glue gun, nor did I know that Toa was an expert on such matters.

      We are doing a home-brewed history curriculum this year, another nail-biter decision for me. But, after the first week, I can breathe a sigh of relief for that one too. We're planning on focusing most of our studies on the events of the 20th century. But, I felt like we needed at least a couple of weeks of some further background.

      Every year on the Fourth of July we read and discuss the Declaration of Independence together. From just general conversation through the years, I felt like Toa had at least a basic understanding of colonial America and the American Revolution. And, during our three week road trip out west this spring, we hit a lot of Oregon Trail and Westward Expansion type museums, so I felt like that period of American History had also been reasonably covered. (Sweetling had already spent an entire year studying American History from exploration/colonialism to 1856, so it was primarily Toa I was concerned about patching in any gaps.)

      After some discussion with the kids, we decided NOT to do an in-depth study of the Civil War or Reconstruction. The Jedi is not in favor of this decision, and since he is almost always right, I'm sure I'll regret this decision later. I'm so sure of it, that I'm considering searching for a four week unit study on the Civil War and Reconstruction. Anyone have one they can recommend?

      For now, we are watching America, the Story of US, specifically the episodes on Division and Civil War to quickly patch in this important chapter of our history.

      We're also spending time daily reading from the abundance of library books crammed on our shelf.

      Finally, we completed a lesson on how to create historic timelines. I'm planning on writing a separate post for a history link up about the steps for making your own timeline. But for now, it was a great introduction to the process, and a technique I'm hoping to use throughout the year. I let each child pick their own topic. Toa picked the year some of the States we drove through on our trip West had joined the Union. (That's a terribly constructed sentence. I have a gold star sticker for anyone who can fix it.)
      Sweetling chose to research and create a timeline for important events and developments for the deaf and hearing impaired. I haven't yet seen a finished product, which means this might require some poking tomorrow.


      In ultimate irony, the weather outside has been absolutely beautiful this week. Normally, we start school in late summer when the weather is too hot and crappy to have any fun outside. Since we are stuck inside all day, we just get busy with school. Then we take a fall break when the weather's better. Well, all summer, the outdoor temperatures have been hovering around "stupid hot". It's just been unbearable. We should have started school in July, but I wasn't ready. Finally, everything is in place and we start school, and the thermometer drops nearly twenty degrees outside and we are blessed with a beautiful, beautiful week. And we're doing school.

      In response, we scrapped our afternoon of history on Thursday and headed to the park instead. Sweetling took inline skates, her mp3 player, and earbuds and just skated away.



      Toa and I tried to sneak up on Sweetling to take some candid shots of her. See what ninjas we are?
      And then Toa had to try to hide from the camera.
      Failing that, to run from it.


      After Mommy was happy with some camera shots, Toa and I headed to the playground while Sweetling skated the path around the edge of the playground area. Toa found a boy from church to play with, and I sat and read the first chapter of Writing the Breakout Novel, part of Sweetling's language arts choices for the year. I took a little notebook with me and jotted down some ideas for my own writing projects.

      Our week wrapped up with some cooking projects on Friday afternoon. Sweetling made whole wheat bread completely by hand and she made sweet carrot jam to go with it. The wheat bread needed a total of 4 to 4 and a half hours to complete. She made the carrot jam during its first rise of its hour and a half. The jam needed to be cooked and stirred for an hour. She stood at the stove reading a book and stirring her jam.

      Toa made some more of the delicious mango-avocado salsa which we had tried earlier in the summer. This time, we used the food processor to finely dice our pepper, onion, and mango. He also helped make twice-baked potatoes for dinner. Grilled chicken breasts completed our meal, and what a hearty one it was!

      Perfect first week of school!

      Check out what others are doing on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

      Wednesday, August 10, 2011

      Wordless Wednesday: Indoor Basketball


      I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

      Day Three of School.

      Lesson Two of Geometry.

      I was stumped on problem number two. This does not bode well for the school year.

      Sweetling, fortunately, got through all twenty problems without any difficulties.

      The lesson is "Evaluating the Validity of Statements and Arguments"

      In the student exercise, we were to apply the concepts taught in the lesson (changing "all" statements to "if...then" statements, using the Law of Detachment and the Law of Syllogism, and finding counterexamples), to determine whether a series of 20 statements were true or false.

      I resorted to just marking the statements as true if I liked them. I got 16 out of the 20 correct. Sweetling actually used logic and did much better, only missing one where she had misread the greater than/less than sign.

      However, I am turning for help to my good friends for one of the statements. Sweetling marked it, correctly, as false, but I want to know why, using the basic rules of logic, this statement is false.

      The statement is: "There is a unicorn on Saturn who loves pepperoni pizza."

      We encountered this past spring, doing some sample pages of the text to determine if this was the text we wanted to purchase for our upcoming school year. Sweetling marked the statement as 'false' both times we have encountered it.

      Because, she says, hello? Unicorns?

      I have two cute webkinz (which Sweetling brought to me to console me at the end of the lesson) which say, yes, thank you very much, unicorns.

      Our textbook agrees with Sweetling that the statement, is in fact, false.

      I fail to see anything inherent in the statement that would necessarily mandate that it is false.

      Could someone else please explain to me, in simple easy to understand terms, how that statement is logically false?


      Monday, August 08, 2011

      Not-Back-to-School: Our "Room"

      Through the years, our school room has literally moved all over the house. 

      I started at the kitchen table when I was homeschooling my youngest brother. My teenage sister was living (and unschooling herself) in our spare room, and our own daughter was two. Our foster daughter joined the family at the age of 15, and she joined us at the kitchen table for some of her lessons, and worked at the desk in her room for others. (Her favorite algebra lesson was one done with permanent markers on the outside of partially full brown paper grocery sacks that were all over the kitchen table. It had been one of those days. I had managed to get the groceries in and the perishables put away. It was getting close to dinner time and I was bound and determined that we were indeed going to get algebra finished, but the table was still covered with the bags of groceries, so.....)

      I got sick of trying to juggle schoolwork and cooking and everything else at the ONLY table in our house. When my sister moved out and moved into the dorm room at college, I converted her room to a school room. I loved that solution. That little room stayed the school room for most of my daughter's schooling. But, when my mother needed to move in with us for health reasons, we had to relocate.

      I spent two or three years trying to arrange one side of our basement recroom into a school room I was happy with. And I never really succeeded. Oh sure, it looked like a school room, but I was never motivated to go down into the basement to do school.

      We spent all of last year with our materials and books downstairs, while we hung out on the couch and did school at the table upstairs.

      I've thrown in the towel this year and moved everything up to our small living room. But, I'm pretty much a clutter magnet. I didn't want the living room shelves crammed full of books and looking all cluttered and crappy. 

       I had visions of beautiful organizer boxes, color coordinated for each of my two children, all lined up looking neat and pretty. Those visions lasted until I started hitting stores and pricing those lovely looking boxes. At $6-$12 a box, there was no way I could the ELEVEN boxes I wanted to get to sort our school books into.

      But check out what I managed instead. I'm so thrilled with this!

      This is a little hand me down shelf tucked under our living room window. See how nice the containers are? Want to know how much they cost me?

      $5.24 TOTAL, plus tax and a little time and effort.


      I used a few cheap plastic magazine organizers which I had out in the garage, and I made a few other boxes, using the cardboard boxes our curriculum had shipped in.

      I bought a can of brown spray paint ($3.24) and headed out to the driveway to spray everything down to make it uniform.

      Then I covered the front, the top, and an inch or two of the sides of each box with shelf paper from the dollar store. (Two rolls at $1 each.)

      Last, I made labels using some paper and cardstock I had leftover from my scrapbooking days.

      The other thing I'm really pleased about is that when it time to do math with my boy, we just grab the Math box off the shelf and carry it to the kitchen table. Then it goes back to the shelf when we grab the next box. No more stacks of books everywhere. No more twenty minute trips downstairs "to get a pencil".

      Two more boxes like this wound up on the bottom of our video shelf. We also had to take over a three shelf case at the top of the entry stairs. Our basic school supplies went into plastic organizers on the top shelf, our rotating library books are on the middle shelf (still looking a little cluttered, but c'est la vie.) And the bottom shelf is our history resource books and portfolio binders.
      The large clear plastic boxes on the bottom of our supply shelf are a great find I made last year. I got a flat tackle organizer from the fishing department. It comes with small plastic dividers that can be used to create a variety of compartments of different sizes and shapes. Ours holds crayons, colored pencils, markers, and a few other things, like glue sticks and scissors.
      So, while we don't have a "school room" this year, I am happy with how we have our books and supplies organized!

      Tour where and how others do school on The Heart of the Matter.




      Friday, August 05, 2011

      Ferb, I know what we're going to do today....

      Dear sweet, zombie-loving cousin' Charlie is absolutely to blame for derailing my morning.

      She posted a link on Facebook to a site called Pinterest. It's highly addictive. It should never have been allowed anywhere near me. Putting that up on Facebook was nearly akin to leaving a loaded gun laying around the house where young children live. I should counter by sending Charlie a free copy of plants vs zombies or something. That's the loving thing to do, right?

      What is this evil she fostered upon my day? A HUGE online collection of craft and gift ideas, that's what.

      Valentine's Day for Toa.












      And Sweetling too











      Now I need to make a separate, never to be seen by others, post for Christmas gift ideas.

      Thursday, August 04, 2011

      Weekly Wrap-Up.....End of Summer Theme Song

      There's 104 days of summer vacation
      And school comes along just to end it
      So the annual problem for little family
      Is finding a good way to spend it

      Like maybe...
      Adopting a Torchet,
      Or making a mummy,
      Or riding up the Gateway Arch

      Sewing a Japenese sailor fuku (Haruhi, no! )
      Or petting a two foot shark!

      And also...
      Making some salsa
      Without the tomatoes,
      Or killing a seqoia tree

      Spelling our names on the Salt Flats of Utah
      And capturing Mommy's queen! (thrice)

      Baking yummy "Pake"
      Breaking a safety net
      Or making some patches for school! (It's not done yet!)

      Eating some barbeque
      Losing at Pandemic
      Or watching a Fire Lord duel! (Go Aang!)

      Escape a buffalo
      Jump off a pontoon boat
      Or climb upon a mountain side! (They were "foothills"!)

      Buy a propeller cap
      Become a teenager
      Or drive through the Great Divide! (With Christmas carols!)

      As you can see
      There's a whole lot of stuff we did
      Before the start of school. (Where's my pencil?)

      So to sum it up our summer break
      Was really, really cool.
      Yeah to sum it up our summer break
      Was really, really cool!

      (Dad! Mom is making us plagiarize a theme song! )

      Hope your summer was a fun as ours. To see what other homeschoolers are doing, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. 

      Tuesday, August 02, 2011

      Two for Tuesday: Mango Salsa

      I don't like mangoes. I don't like avocados.

      This recipe has both of those things as its two main ingredients. Toa of Boy, who is allergic to tomatoes, wanted to try to find a salsa recipe which he could eat. Toa of Boy loves both mangoes and avocados, so we thought we'd give this a try. I just planned on not eating any myself.

      This stuff was delicious. Capital DEEEEEE-li-cious. Yum yum yum.

      Here it is.

      Avocado-Mango Salsa

      Ingredients

      • 1 mango, peeled, pitted, and finely diced
      • 1 red bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
      • 1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
      • 1 tablespoon white sugar
      • 1 tablespoon olive oil
      • 1 tablespoon lime juice
      • 1 avocado-peeled, pitted, and diced
      Directions
      1. Toss together mango, bell pepper, onion, sugar, olive oil, and lime juice.
      2. Gently fold in avocado.
      3. Season with salt. 
      That's IT!!!

      This was delicious with chips. This was delicious served over a grilled chicken breast. This was just delicious, delicious, delicious stuff.

      And, to keep my "Two for Tuesday" status, here's the next recipe I'm drooling over, but haven't made yet. They're called Knock-You Naked Brownies. I mean, how can you go wrong with a name like that?

      Next week, I'm planning on posting with an easy, melt in your mouth, beef fajita recipe, but I might change my mind, so no promises!

      Thursday, July 28, 2011

      M.O.B Blog Hop!

      Mothers of Boys

      We brought our son home from Guatemala four years ago, just a week or so after his fourth birthday.

      He rocked our world.

      Before that, our family had consisted of my husband and me, a teenage foster daughter, a daughter through birth, and (not pictured) my teenage sister who had lived with us for a couple of years. Lots of girls. No young boys.

      By the time our son came home, my sister had long since moved out to go to college and be on our own and our foster daughter had grown-up, gotten married, and was also out on her own. For about 6 months before we brought our son home, it was just my husband, myself, and one quiet and sweet little girl.

      And then I got my first glimpse at what having a boy was all about. This is us on a playground in Guatemala, the day after we met our son. My husband's expression pretty much sums up how ready we were for an active little boy.

      (If you have an hour and a beverage of choice, and would like to read the journal I kept for the week we were in Guatemala, you can find it here.)

      Granted, when he first came home, he was so small and so scared. Poor little guy.


      But it didn't take him long to adjust, come out of his shell, and let us know that he was "all boy". It's hard to believe that these photos were taken only a couple weeks after he first came home. He seems like a different child than the small frightened face in the photo above.


      The journey hasn't always been smooth and easy. But it has been rich and rewarding.

      In the years since, I've been doing all I can to be a better mom to my boy. That's required a lot of patience and support, and not a small dose of humility. I still remember going up to another mother of boys and asking her, was it common for little boys to miss the toilet every time, or should I be concerned?  (Yes, she said. She said she had to clean her bathroom every day to keep it from smelling like a truck stop urinal.)

      I am blessed to be able to homeschool both my children. My daughter, Sweetling, is now 13 and my son, Toa of Boy, is now 8.

      On my blog, I try to post about activities, both school and recreational, that we have done that I think other families might also enjoy trying. I occasionally put a recipe up on my blog as well, and since I'm no cook, any recipe I can make is gotta be easy and pretty fool-proof.

      I'm really looking forward to linking up with some other Mom of Boy blogs, because I know we still have quite a journey ahead of us!