R.A.M...Random Access Me-ness

Two for Tuesday: Buttermilk Cinnamon Syrup

2012-01-24T22:11:00.000-05:00

Yep. You read that right. Syrup.

Because what syrup really needs is real melted butter and buttermilk to round out the whole American eating experience.

This was borne out of desperation. I made my standby of fluffy pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs for dinner. I knew the bottle of syrup was running low, but also knew that I had another bottle in the downstairs pantry. I was right on the first point, and very wrong on the second point.

Allrecipes came through with this delicious and miraculously easy solution. I don't keep buttermilk on hand, but I put a half tablespoon of vinegar in a half a cup of milk and let it sit for five minutes. The original recipe made two and a half cups of syrup. I halved it for our family dinner. (Thie amounts give are the amounts I used. It filled my little creamer pitcher perfectly.)

Buttermilk Cinnamon Syrup

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk + 1/2 Tbs vinegar (or 1/2 cup buttermilk)
1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 Tbs corn syrup
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking soda

Directions

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add everything else except the baking soda. Stir. (The milk looks curdled and horrible at first. Don't panic. It blends in eventually.)
Bring to a simmer while stirring.
Whisk in baking soda. Mixture will froth like a volcano. Whisk 10 seconds and remove from heat.
Continue stirring (but not whisking.) Syrup will begin to lose its foamy top.
Let sit for a couple minutes, then pour into small pitcher for serving and pouring. It will be very thin at first, but will start to thicken as it cools.

This stuff is creamy, smooth, rich, and heavenly. The cinnamon is a very subtle flavor.

On a completely different subject.....

My family needs to love zucchini. I love zucchini. Zucchini is delicious.

And this scrumptious looking stuffed zucchini dish might be hitting our kitchen table sometime in the near future.

Life Skills

2012-01-24T07:48:00.001-05:00

At the beginning of the school year, I was writting about how to make sure Sweetling really learned everything she would need to know to function as an adult. (Even though I don't really want to think about how few years we have left before she is an adult. Why do they have to grow up so fast?)

Shortly after that, I got a call that our co-op needed someone to teach the high school Life Skills class. Hmmm......

Yesterday was my first class. Other than me being the smallest person in the room, I'm really excited about the class. I decided that trying to teach life skills in a lecture format, or from a book, is just pointless. So, we're going to have a project driven class. I put together a syllabus and a list of projects and their requirements. Each week in class, the students will share with each other what they learned by doing that week's project. Then we'll briefly discuss the upcoming project with the time we have left in class.

I don't think this approach would work with a begrudging group of students, but I happen to have an awesome group of young men who I feel confident will really do great with individual projects that require a lot of self-initiative.

And because I labor under the delusion that someone else might be as interested in this as me, here is the front page of my syllabus for the class.

Welcome to Life Skills. This is a single semester, project driven class. Students will be expected to work independently to conduct research and complete multi-step assignments outside of class. We will be using class time to share the results of our projects and to discuss the next project. However, the bulk of the students’ effort and learning will be taking place outside of class.

The goal for this class is to help prepare the high school student to step into the role of an adult with confidence and integrity.

Students will be receiving a letter grade for this class. Each project will receive a letter grade, all of which will be averaged together for a final semester grade. Projects will be assigned a letter grade based on the following criteria:

A—Project completed with excellence. Project meets all given requirements PLUS includes an additional student selected and student driven element.

B—Project completed with excellence. Project meets all given requirements.

C—Project completed but is substandard OR lacks one requirement.

D—Project lacks more than one requirement.

F—No project is presented.

Please note that projects will be accepted up to one week late but will be marked down one letter grade on the grading scale. If a student is unable to attend co-op that week, projects can be emailed to the instructor before class time or can be sent to co-op with a friend or other family member. (With advance written notice, exceptions will be made for extended travel time.)

A single class is insufficient to completely prepare a student in all the skill and knowledge areas needed as an adult. However, we will try to focus on some key concepts. It is my hope that the experience of researching and problem solving can be used and applied to other areas of life as needed.

Several of the assignments will have more than one project option so that students may pursue an area of unique interest to them. Some projects will require more than one week to complete, and should be started in advance. A three-ring binder to organize projects and assignment sheets is recommended. Regular Internet access is invaluable for research. Parental involvement and assistance will also be needed for some of the projects.

And here is the list of projects with their due dates and their requirements.

Christian Life (due January 30th)

Complete a personal gift inventory. (There is a youth or an adult version on kodochrome.org or you can use another of your choosing.)
Give an interpretation of what this inventory means for you. This can be a written essay, a power point presentation, a video file, or other format.)
Research options for personal discipleship and present your findings.
Keep a record of when and where you are engaged in discipleship. Make note of the strengths and weaknesses of this plan.

Time Management Log (due February 6th)

Record how you spend your time for three consecutive days. Pick days that are fairly typical of your normal life.
Add up the amount of time you spend in various categories (school, work, sports, activities, tv, computer, video games, hobby, etc). Create a graph or visual display of the proportion of time.
Make a basic weekly schedule for yourself based on the activities and time breakdowns you are currently using.
Review your time log and weekly schedule. Are there any areas which should be adjusted? What and how?

Project Completion Sheet (due February 13th)

Pick any medium or large project that is of interest to you and is something you haven’t tried before.
Write out the steps needed to complete your project and the approximate time you think you will need to complete each step. It’s better to estimate a little high in terms of time needed than to estimate too low.
Look at your weekly schedule and pencil in when you will complete each step of the project.
Work on the project, make note of time differences, difficulties, and what you did to adjust in each of these areas.

Post High-School Options (due February 20th)

Research at least three different and specific options you might like to pursue post high school. These options should be ones which can be pursued within a few months of graduation.
Make a list of the requirements needed for each option as well as the benefits to be gained by pursuing them.
For each option, complete a brief financial analysis (cost to pursue the option or wages earned from the option.)
How on track are you for meeting the requirements of any of these options?

Menu and Grocery List (due Feburary 27th)

Create a basic 6 day meal plan for one or two people. Include balanced choices for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Using your meal plan, create a grocery list for all needed ingredients or components of your plan.
At any store, or stores, of your choice, compute how much you menu would cost for a week. If you “purchase” some of your food in bulk, include both the total cost for the trip as well as the cost for just the amount you would have consumed that week.
With this data, project how much you would be likely to spend on groceries for a two week period and for a month.

Housekeeping Schedule and Application (due March 5th)

Option ONE—Check out FlyLady.com. Read about her concept of developing daily routines and dividing the home into cleaning zones. Either complete her detailed zone cleaning list for this week, or complete a daily mission for the zone each day of the week. Share what you learned.
Option TWO—Take over all regularly scheduled cleaning in your home for the week (including laundry, dishes, etc). Share what you learned.
Option THREE—Develop your own cleaning schedule for a home. How will your schedule ensure that both the regular maintenance and the less frequent deep cleaning gets accomplished? Try out your schedule for one week. Share what you learned.
Option FOUR—Use another resource of your choosing to implement a housekeeping system. Try it for a week and share what you learned.

Computer Maintenance (due March 12th)

Option ONE—Learn what you can about spyware, firewalls, virus protection software, and data back up. How do each of these affect the performance of a computer.
Option TWO—With the permission or assistance of an adult, learn how to install software.
Option THREE—With the permission or assistance of an adult, learn how to install or upgrade hardware or how to set up a computer.
Option FOUR—Research the rates outside services charge for data recovery, virus removal, or other computer repair services.

Home DIY Project (due March 19th)

Option ONE--Pick any home or garden repair, decorating, or building project that you would like to attempt. Use the internet or library resources for instructions and get permission before you begin. Work on and complete the project. Take before and after photos and share what you learned.
Option TWO—Assist in any home repair or building project which requires skills or knowledge that is new to you. Share what you learned.

Community Service (due March 26th)

Complete at least three hours of community service in a field or area which you have never worked in before.
Explain how and why you picked the project and whether it was a good match for your skills, abilities, and interests. If it wasn’t, what would be a better match?
How can you continue to include volunteering in your regular life?

Car Maintenance and Repair (due April 2nd)

Option ONE—If you don’t already know how, learn how to safely jump a car or how to change a flat tire. With supervision, practice the new skill.
Option TWO—What is the recommended maintenance schedule for changing the oil in a car? How do you check the oil level? If you haven’t done so before, find someone who will let you assist in this process. How much does it cost to do it yourself? How much does it cost to have it done somewhere?
Option THREE—What fluids go into a car? Where do they go? How do you check their levels? When should you add more or change them? How do you check the tire pressure? With supervision, check all these items on a car and add more if needed.
Option FOUR—Assist a friend or family member with any car repair or tune up.

Apartment Costs (due April 16th)

Shop for a basic apartment in the area which you might like to live. How much is the rent? The utilities? The deposit? How much is it to get phone or cable connected?
What furniture would you need to move in? How would you get these items? (Include dishes, towels, pots and pans, small appliances, etc)
What basic cleaning supplies would you need? How much would they cost? (hint—check the dollar store for some of these)
How much money, total, would you need to have in savings in order to move into this apartment?

Personal Budget (due April 23rd)

Using the research from your post high school options, your apartment cost project, and your menu and grocery list project, complete a possible personal budget. How much money would you need to earn in a pay period to make such a budget work? (don’t forget items such as gas, car insurance, phone bills, entertainment, clothing, tithing, and savings)
Is your budget achievable based on the type of jobs you might be likely to get soon after high school? If not, what adjustments could you make?
Do you know how to balance a checkbook against a bank statement? Ask your parents to let you observe how they balance their own accounts.
Keep a real record of your own spending and any earnings for a one month period. Is how you are handling money now consistent with how you hope to handle money in the future?

Safety (due April 30th)

Option ONE—Research dating violence. What warning signs should you be aware of? How do you protect yourself on a date and in a relationship? (Remember, abuse isn’t always physical. Men can often find themselves in a relationship with an emotionally abusive woman.) Share what you learn.
Option TWO—Research identity theft. What precautions can you take to protect yourself from fraud? Share what you learn.
Option THREE—Take a self-defense class.

Relationship Reports (due May 7th)

Select and read ONE of the following books:

For Men Only, or For Women Only, or For Young Men Only, or For Young Women Only, by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhann;
Love and Respect, by Dr. Emmerson Eggerichs;
The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman;
Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts, by Les and Leslie Parrott

Write a brief report or summary of a few of the key concepts you learned in the book.
Talk to your parents or to another married couple you know and respect. Ask them about their marriage. What makes it strong? What difficulties did they have to overcome? What advice would they give to a newlywed couple?

Jesse Owens

2012-01-24T06:48:00.001-05:00

I've just realized I've been avoiding posting on the "week in review" because our history projects this year haven't been as photogenic as our projects last year. We've still been learning, and I really like Homeschool in the Woods. All the same, Sweetling's main project has been writing articles for a newspaper (which doesn't lend itself to a photograph....unless I get her to dress up as an intrepid reporter). Likewise, Toa of Boy has been working on the components of a lap book, again, not the most exciting thing to photograph.

And without photos, just saying "this week we learned about some of the famous people who became between 1870 and the break out of WW2," just doesn't make for an interesting blog post.

But, it does when I tell it in a story like this.

Our lesson last week was a huge smattering of famous Americans from the Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression. As always, I popped the Time Traveler disc into the Media Center PC which is hooked up to the big flat screen in the living room. We read the lesson, and as we were reading, we'd pause and do google searches on the people and topics we were reading about. We pulled up photos of P.T. Barnum, of Jumbo, and Tom Thumb. We pulled up photos of Buffalo Bill and Anne Oakley. We listened to "The Entertainer", to "Stars and Stripes Forever", and to a few famous hymn written during this time. We watched the Fantasia 2000 segment of Rhapsody in Blue as well as a silent film of Harry Houdini performing a rope escape. We read about Helen Keller, Jesse Owens, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart--people who did what others claimed couldn't be done.

The next day, Sweetling churned out another page of newspaper articles and Toa of Boy put together a fan book of many of these famous people. The day after that, Toa of Boy added five fact cards to his 100 cool things about America, choosing 5 of these famous people to highlight. Sweetling added an advertisement for The Greatest Show on Earth to her newspaper.

And I didn't write up a week in review because I didn't have any pictures to make our learning look interesting. And somehow, I thought we weren't doing as many cool projects and learning activities as we had done last year.

Then Sunday night at church, the kids were asked to name some people who were truly great. The nearly all boys group came up with Michael Jordan and another basketball player whose name I'd butcher if I tried to recall it.

And then Toa of Boy raised his hand and said, "Jesse Owens." And then he proceeded to give a brief reason of why Jesse Owens was truly great.

I had this "aha" moment where I realized, wow, we really are learning cool things this year after all!

Yeah, I know, I'm slow like that.

Jesse Owens, I am not.

Two for Tuesday: Spaghetti Pizza

2012-01-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

This is a great answer to the "what's for dinner?" question.

Spaghetti Pizza (or Pizza Spaghetti, if you prefer!)

This was born out of the realization that I had little on hand to make a decent dinner with, not a lot of time, and I didn't want to fall back on my boring old staple of plain spaghetti. Thus the last minute birth of Spaghetti Pizza!

Ingredients

1 lb spaghetti noodles ( a little less than a pound actually)
28 oz jar of spaghetti sauce
shredded mozzarella cheese
any pizza toppings you might have on hand (pepperoni, diced ham, chopped peppers, etc)

Directions

Preheat oven to 425.
Pour a tablespoon or two of oil onto of a large pot of water. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Add spaghetti noodles.
While noodles are boiling, grease a 9x13 or so casserole pan. Also, heat spaghetti sauce in a separate pan. Complete a scavenger hunt through your fridge and pantry for "pizza toppings".
When noodles are cooked (but not mushy), drain water COMPLETELY. Trust me on this one. Put a lid on the colander and shake all the water out.
Spread noodles in the greased casserole dish. The entire pound probably won't fit. (Remember, you need to leave room for sauce and toppings.) Put the extra noodles in a container for lunch leftovers or something.
Spread warm spaghetti sauce over the noodles.
Sprinkle shredded cheese over the top until sauce is covered.
Top with whatever ingredients you have on hand. Place toppings on half or on sections if you have certain family members who don't care for a particular topping.
Pop it in the oven for just long enough to melt and slightly brown the cheese. (Just like a 'real' pizza.)
Allow to cool for 5 to 10 minutes, then cut it with a pizza slicer and use a spatula to serve out the pieces. (They won't maintain their structural integrity, but that's ok.)

We had this last night for dinner, and my family loved it! It might just go on our regular menu rotation.

Meanwhile, I just finished baking a batch of pineapple zucchini muffins. My children are very skeptical about such a combination. A conversation with a certain young lady went like this:

Sweetling: What kind of muffins are you making?
Me: Pineapple zucchini muffins.
Sweetling: Wait, seriously?
Me: Yes, they will be delicious.
Sweetling: Of course. And you're not crazy at all, are you?

I have just laid down the "you have to ate least try these" law with both my children. It's good to be the Mom, baby.

Weekly Wrap-Up: In With the New!

2012-01-06T19:02:00.000-05:00

I don't think I've written a week in review since August. But, to quote Flylady, "....just jump in where you are."

This week. I'm just going to focus on this week, and not go into a lengthy explanation of how I got so far off track.

This week started with taking down the Christmas tree. That's always a bittersweet thing. I like the Christmas tree, and yet, I'm also ready to get back to a routine. (Well, I'm a little ready to get back to a routine.) In our family, each year we take turns deciding how the tree will be decorated. This year, it was Mama's turn. (My mama, my mama lives with us now.) She decided we were each going to make heart shaped paper ornaments and write our favorite Scripture verses about Jesus on the ornaments. It was lovely.

Since the tree was all decorate in red and pink hearts, I considered petitioning leaving it up until mid-February for Valentine's Day. But, in the end, the tree needed to come down so that we could get back to the business of school.

So, by Tuesday, we had gotten back into the swing of things. We're using Homeschool in the Woods' Time Traveler series for our history curriculum, and our timelines are coming along so well, we need the entire living room floor to spread them out.

Art led us to a cool pop up of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters (part of our Time Traveler's pack). AND, to a neat cardinal in winter art project, courtesy of Deep Space Sparkle.

Showcased behind the cardinal is some bare winter tree branches. We took our camera outside and snapped some pictures of branches highlighted against the blue sky. We each took turns with the camera and zoomed in on the section of branches we wanted to photograph. Of course, it was a warm, beautiful, sunny day....so this turned into an excuse to take a walk around the neighborhood.

Back inside, we pulled the photos up on the computer, talked about the negative space in between the branches, and used our photographs to inspire us when we drew the branches behind our cardinal.

Then we followed Deep Space Sparkle's directions to complete our art. We painted the sky using blue metallic acrylic paint. We painted in the cardinal and the branches and used a thin black brush to add details.

We haven't done the final step of using a Qtip dipped in white paint to add snowflakes. We're waiting for the rest of the paint to dry first.

Sweetling's science has been on hold since October. Her November subjects got paired to the bone in order to free her up to participate in NaNoWriMo. This week, she got back to her amazing glider. Check him out...I put a folding yardstick by him for a scale.

His wings are covered in this cool plastic which she shrunk to a perfect fit using a hair dryer. Supplies and directions were all part of her Education Exploration science curriculum.

Toa of Boy is more than ready to move on in science, and he wants to study space next. So, Apologia's Exploring Creation through Astronomy has been ordered and is being shipped. In the meantime, Chapter Two is available as sample pages on Apologia's home page. Chapter Two is all about the sun, so we read about the sun, got a soccerball and a peppercorn to compare the size of the sun with the size of the earth. (It was supposed to be a basketball, but we don't have a basketball, so we did our best.)

And, most importantly, Toa of Boy got to witness a small fraction of the awesome energy of the sun by using a magnafying glass to burn a hole in a leaf outside. (We tried a piece of paper first, but wound up using a dried leaf.)

Not bad for a first week back in a long time!

To read what other homeschoolers are doing this week, hop on over to Weird Unscocialized Homeschoolers.

One for Wednesday: Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

2012-01-04T07:05:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's really Two for Tuesday. On a Wednesday. And though I was going to post just one recipe, I now have another.

So it is Two for Wednesday, really. But I can't use that as a blog post because it doesn't have any poetic value.

Maybe there's some sort of 12 step program for alliteration addicts.

Anyway, love this cookie recipe. It makes a TON of cookies (maybe 4 to 5 dozen?). Be warned. You should half it if you don't want to spend all afternoon taking trays of cookies in and out of the oven. But they keep well, and they are full of whole grains. And, most importantly, they are delicious.

I always divide the dough and make half with semi-sweet chocolate chips, and half with white chocolate chips. Plus, I believe cookie dough is the stuff that holds the chocolate chips together, so I tend to go heavy with my chips. Stir in as much or as little as you and your family personally like.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

1 and 1/2 cups butter, softened
4 eggs
3 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 cups rolled oats
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups EACH of white chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to just 325. Not 375 like most cookies!
In a huge bowl, cream butter. Beat in eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla.
Add oats, flours, baking soda, and salt.
Divide dough. Place half in another bowl.
Add between 1 and 2 cups chips to each bowl. (White in one and semi-sweet chocolate in another).
Scoop by heaping teaspoon to cookie sheets.
Bake at 325 for 10 to 12 minutes. Don't overbake!

I think a couple batches of cookies might be hitting the counter in the near future. The very near future. We've burned through almost all the Christmas goodies. Time to restock!

And the Two part of my Two for Tuesday. I haven't made these yet, but I've asked the Jedi to give me one more week to do something with the pumpkin sitting near my desk downstairs. The pumpkin might be volunteering for this:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Told you I was in a cookie mood.

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

Every year, I promise myself I WILL NOT make any New Year's Resolutions. I never keep them.

Yet, every year, I come slinking back and make a couple New Year's Resolutions. Telling myself the lie that this year, this year, it will be different.

Here I am again. But this year, this year, it will be different.

This year, I'm not makin a whole list of resolutions. This year, I'm going to start small and keep it simple. I'm going to make one resolution. Only one. I'm going to keep it for a month. Only a month. And they are going to be small, manageable, easy things. Small manageable easy things that will make my life better.

January's goal is to remember to turn the dishwasher on before I go to sleep.

Simple, right?

And how happy will it be to start the day out with clean dishes.

Traveling for Adoption

2011-12-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

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.

Runaway Blog

2011-11-26T11:15:00.000-05:00

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.

Wordless Wednesday: Ice Pirate

2011-11-09T12:54:00.000-05:00

Contents of the Kitchen Table

2011-11-01T16:54:00.000-05:00

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.

Retooling the Curricula

2011-09-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

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.

Two for Tuesday: French Toast Casserole

2011-09-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

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

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.
Grease a 9x13 casserole dish. Pour syrup mixture into the bottom of the casserole dish. Sprinkle the surface with cinnamon.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla, and salt.
Slice bread into thick slices, like an inch and a half thick. Place bread slices in casserole dish over the syrup mixture.
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.
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.)
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.

Two for Tuesday: Egg and Cheese Bake

2011-08-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

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

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease a deep dish pie pan.
In a large bowl, beat together milk, eggs, baking mix, butter and parmesan cheese. Batter will be lumpy.
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.)
Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes, until eggs are set and top is golden brown.
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?

Food Pantry List

2011-08-29T21:41:00.001-05:00

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.

Tuna Helper. Easy, quick, and the congregation is great at keeping me supplied with the tuna and the tuna helper boxes.
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.))

Two for Tuesday: Lemon Bars

2011-08-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

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:

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

To prepare the filling:

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

To prepare the glaze:

Stir powdered sugar and lemon juice in a small bowl until smooth.
Smooth the glaze over the bars, let set for 30 minutes.
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?

Things I Need to Do

2011-08-22T17:02:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2011-08-19T23:08:00.001-05:00

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.

Two for Tuesday: Fluffy Pancakes

2011-08-18T20:51:00.000-05:00

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

Measure milk and vinegar into a large bowl. Set kitchen timer for five minutes and allow milk to "sour."
Meanwhile, measure dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) into another bowl. Use a wire whisk to blend completely.
Melt your butter if you are still waiting for the 5 minute timer to beep.
When the milk has soured for 5 minutes, whisk two eggs and the melted butter into the milk.
Add your dry ingredients to the milk mixture and whisk until all lumps are gone.
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.

Not-Back-to-School: Meet and Greet

2011-08-15T16:16:00.002-05:00

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"

Weekly Wrap Up.....First Week!

2011-08-13T19:28:00.000-05:00

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!

Wordless Wednesday: Indoor Basketball

2011-08-10T16:52:00.000-05:00

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

2011-08-10T08:52:00.000-05:00

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?

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

2011-08-08T20:35:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2011-08-05T06:34:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2011-08-04T09:03:00.002-05:00

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.

Two for Tuesday: Mango Salsa

2011-08-02T06:56:00.001-05:00

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

Toss together mango, bell pepper, onion, sugar, olive oil, and lime juice.
Gently fold in avocado.
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!

M.O.B Blog Hop!

2011-07-28T13:49:00.000-05:00

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!

Two for Tuesday: Caramel Banana Cream Pie

2011-07-26T08:56:00.004-05:00

It's Two for Tuesday! I almost forgot!

This week's recipe is:

Caramel Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients:

graham cracker crust
1 box instant vanilla pudding
3-4 bananas
14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 3/4 cup milk
whipped cream for topping

Directions:

Caramelize the sweetened condensed milk. You can do this in several ways. The easiest, and quickest, is to simply open up the can of milk, pour it into a sauce pan, and heat it over low heat while stirring constantly to keep it from sticking and scorching. Heat and stir until it just begins to caramelize. The longer you heat it and stir it, the harder and chewier it will become once it cools. (An alternate method is to put it in a crock pot full of water and heat on low for 10-12 hours. But then you don't know what you are getting till you open the can.)
Remove the caramel from the heat. Allow it to cool off some. (You don't want it to be so hot that it cooks the bananas in the pie. Gross.)
Meanwhile, slice about two of the bananas to cover the bottom and sides of the graham cracker crust.
Spread the cooled, but still slightly warm caramel over the banana slices.
In a mixing bowl, mix pudding mix with 1 and 3/4 cup milk. Whisk or beat on high for two minutes. (Yes, I just did use the word mix or mixing three times in one sentence.)
Add another layer of bananas on top of the caramel in the pie pan. Spread the pudding over top of all.
Refrigerate for 2 hours until set. (For real, let it set. Show some self restraint.)
Top with whipped cream to serve.

You could, if you were feeling adventures, try reversing the order of the pudding and caramel layers, so that the caramel layer was the top layer of the pie. I can't promise that the caramel will spread easily over top a layer of bananas floating on pudding, but you could try it. The benefits would be that you could then drizzle chocolate over the caramel top layer. mmmmm....drizzled chocolate....

AND, because I still feel strange calling this "Two for Tuesday," but only sharing ONE recipe, here's a recipe that I found on another blog. I'm hoping to try it out, as soon as the temperature falls back down below stupid hot. Yes, stupid hot is a perfectly valid weather index, thanks for caring.

I love brownies, and I've been looking for a healthier, more substantial version of a brownie recipe for a while. The cheap brownie mixes just don't cut it anymore. They are just mushy, sugary, and don't really satisfy me at all any more.

Here's a recipe that uses a cheap easy brownie mix, but packs in black beans for protein and substance and some shredded zucchini besides. I will, of course, be stirring in some extra chocolate chips as well.

Good Friends

2011-07-25T07:04:00.000-05:00

How do you spell friendship?

P-E-N-G-U-I-N-S

Everyone knows that, right?

No? Not everyone does?

Behold the proof....

Cause how many people go on vacation to Gatlinburg and while there think, "Oh look, penguins. I think I'll send their photos to my good friend, Piglet?"

Curriculum 2011-2012

2011-07-22T06:30:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the extra comment step. I hadn't realized that putting my curriculum on its own tabbed page wouldn't have an option on the page for leaving a comment.

I really do want your feedback please!

Friday Fill-Ins

2011-07-22T06:13:00.001-05:00

(To play, copy and paste the text. Replace the underlined words with your own fill in the blank information.)

And...here we go!

1. I hold _the awesome power and responsibility of packing up the van for our weekend trip to Canton. In our nearly two decades of marriage, this is a first. Be impressed with my new job title!____.

2. _Sweetling____ is someone I like to travel with because _I think she is just zoned out in her little world, until she calls out "yellow car." Then it is game on, baby :)____.

3. That day, _when the Jedi told me I was one of the sunsets he liked to watch, that was the day I fell in love with him____.

4. _I'm really excited about our new school badges system____ this year.

5. Trust _your animal spirit guide. Mine happens to be a squirrel. I think that explains a lot about me ____.

6. _(Pretty sure I don't want to lose my PG blog rating, so I'll leave this one blank)____ in the dark.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to _visiting with my oldest brother in Salineville_OH___, tomorrow my plans include __going to Talbert's ice cream parlor with the Jedi and his two moms___ and Sunday, I want to _stay cool at an outdoor graduation party near Columbus OH. Luckily there will be pontoon boats on the lake and a swimming pool to help with that ____!

Your turn!

Patch Land!

2011-07-21T09:50:00.003-05:00

(We almost held this meeting in Sweetling's room. I was pretty pumped about that possibility. It was like being invited into the Fortress of Solitude. I took my netbook in and plugged it in, but then some Mommy person went dancing up and down the hallway while humming her own spy music theme. And the netbook wouldn't see the internet. And if we held the meeting in the living room and used the media center computer, everyone could see the screen. So, no Fortress of Solitude field trip for Toa and I today.)

Here is what our meeting, and thereby this post, is about.

Tia Smurf called this morning with a rocking idea for what to do about grades. I'm super pumped about the idea, so we are meeting to work out some details we can all three agree on.

Tia Smurf's idea was this, in addition to letter grades for math tests, unit reviews, etc....why not have something Toa of Boy can earn for different aspects of schooling. Toa LOVES earning patches, jewels, badges....why not carry this into our schooling?

We are so down with this :)

So, here is our brainstorming list on patches we can earn. Sweetling is getting dragged into this too. Cause that's the kind of loving Mother I am.

We are going to purchase and paint a cork bulletin board for each child. We'll hang these bulletin boards at the end of the hallway to display the awards.
We'll buy white ribbons of different width and use permanent markers to draw and design the "patches". Tia Smurf is coming over to help with this step.
We will have a specific list of the types of awards, and what is required to earn each award.
For each category, we will have a Master Patch which will be big and cool and fancy and which can be earned whenever 10 regular ribbons are earned in that one category.
We will decide if we are going to call these things ribbons, patches, badges, awards, or something else.

Types of ribbons.

(Edited to organize by subject.)

General Patches:

Discovery Patch--Independently discover and record three things you never knew before.
All A's Award--Get all A's for a week in every subject.
The A Honor Roll-- Get all A's for ten weeks in one subject.
The A Average--Get an average grade of an A for ten weeks in all subjects.
Daily Star Award--Get a star in each subject of the day for attitude. (not eligible for Master Patch individual. Instead, you need to collect 10 Weekly Star Stundent Patches to receive a Master Patch.)
Weekly Star Student--Get four Daily Star Awards.
Power Point Patch--Put together a power point presentation about one topic of your choice.

History Patches

Detective Patch--Find and record 10 interesting facts about person or event in history.
Producer Patch--Re-enact a scene from a book or from history, using live actors, paper puppets, stuffed animals or claymation. Film with video or take a series of still photos with captions.
Historical Sketch Artist--Sketch or draw an object, event, or person from history.
Time Traveler Award--Create a labeled and illustrated timeline with at least 10 events.
Current Event Patch--Write a short paragraph about three different current events.
News Hawk Patch--Publish a recreation of the front page of a newspaper from a given time or a newspaper article which could have been written about a specific occurrence. MS Publisher optional. OR write or act out a script of an eyewitness news reporter broadcasting "live" from at the scene of a historic event.
Ripple Effect Award--Pick one event in history and explain its significance, both in terms of its immediate impact and its long term effect. List your sources.

Literature and Language Arts Patches

Webster Award--Learn a number of new words equal to your age. You can find these words in books you are reading, in your school subjects, or anywhere you encounter them.
Ivy League Award--Write at least one, thoughtful, in-depth response to a piece of literature you have read.
Poetry Patch--Write, and revise, your own poem.
Recitation Patch—Memorize and recite, with clarity and meaning, a poem of your choice. Be able to discuss the language, meaning, and poetic devices used with your audience.
Young Author Patch--Write your own piece of fiction (or a chapter in a longer piece.)
NaNoWriMo 1-2-3 Patch--Meet your daily writing goal for three days in a row.
Agent "W" Patch--Write and answer five "w" type questions about a book you have read. If you are Sweetling, these five questions must be more in depth and not just factual recall.
Script Writer Patch--Like the Producer Patch, but with your own creative fiction.
Linguist Patch--Learn an alphabet or ten/twenty vocabulary words in another language.

Art and Music Patches

Manga Award--Complete one manga project, or complete a discernable goal in a larger project.
Illustrator Patch--Sketch or draw a character or scene from a piece of fiction (your own or someone else's.)
Discovering Artists Award--Learn about one artist and their art and create a piece in that style.
Music Patch--Learn to play a song on an instrument, learn to sing a new song, or learn about music in a given time in history.

Science, Technology, and Critical Thinking Patches

Science Patch--Build a successful project or conduct a successful experiment.
Inventors Award--Learn about one invention or inventor. Convey or record your learning in a format of your choosing.
Capture the Queen Patch--Capture your opponent's queen in a chess game outside of co-op.
Checkmate Patch---Checkmate your opponent in a chess game outside of co-op.
Animal Patch--Put on a presentation about a certain type of animal.
Lego Patch--Complete a Lego Quest challenge.

Health and Life Skills Patches

Exercise Patch--Complete at least twenty minutes of exercise or physical activity on three different days of the week outside of Tae Kwon Do and co-op P.E.
Healthy Patch--For one week (five days), keep a food log. Eat a balanced diet.
Fruit and Vegetable Patch--For one week (five days), eat 5 servings of fruits or vegetables in each day.
Cooking Patch--Make two new recipes. (Or assist in two new recipes).
Bible--Pick ANY requirement for another Badge and complete it for a topic from our Bible curriculum.

AND, I just got an email from my friend Nora with a link to some rubricks. Hooray!

Grades

2011-07-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

Toa of Boy wants grades. He wants the chance to be able to earn some A's on his schoolwork.

I'm not a grading kind of homeschooling mom. Most of the stuff we do isn't easily quantifiable for a score. I like it that way.

But Toa of Boy wants grades. And a report card. These things are important to him.

The Jedi has wisely stated that if they are that important, I should try to incorporate a system of grades into our schooling.

Math has unit reviews that I can use as tests. But, I don't want his grades to just be based on a handful of test scores. Yet, I also don't feel that he should be marked down for making mistakes on his daily work. If he can do his daily work perfectly on the first try, its obviously too easy for him, and I should be giving him something more challenging.

I'm in a similar boat for spelling, only worse. His spelling program includes a review test for every 40 lessons. For us, that's one test in 10 weeks. That one grade can't possibly reflect 10 weeks worth of work.

I have no idea how to "grade" him on reading. Or language arts. Or our cool history projects.

And, for the record, he wants an A, B, C, D, F letter system grade, complete with pluses and minuses. None of this "Outstanding, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement" type of system.

I blame Arthur for this whole idea.

But, I can also see how Toa of Boy, who loves to earn Awana jewels, would love to earn good grades with his school work.

And, since this is so important to him, I want the grade book to be somewhere accessible to him, and I want the system to be one he can understand. So that, whenever he wants to, he can sit down and look at his grades and know where he stands.

Lastly, I want his attitude to be reflected in these grades somewhere. I want questions of, "Do I have to?" and "Awwwww, man!" and general whining and griping to count against him. Ok, spelling might not be his favorite subject, and I don't expect him to be happy about it, but I want to get through a lesson without the bellyaching. And without having to threaten to tell his father about it if he doesn't straighten up.

So, that's where I stand. I looked around for some free downloadable grade book, but I didn't see anything that immediately struck my fancy. Plus, I really need to resolve what exactly I'm going to be basing these grades on first.

Help, please??

Since I was ruminating on these topic all through the day, I asked Sweetling if she would be interested in grades.

She gave me a blank Sweetling stare and said, "I don't see how that could possibly work with the sort of schooling we do."

"Neither do I," I concurred, "but Toa wants some, so I'm trying to work a system out. I just want to know if that would be something that would be important to you, and if you would like to have a grading system for your schoolwork as well."

After a moment of reflection, Sweetling replied, "While it is nice to have some feedback and to know how I'm doing with my schoolwork, I just don't think it's practical, especially for your teaching style. I think I will opt out for this year at least." (Which I think means she's going to wait and see if this notion flops or flies this year.)

Wise, wise Sweetling.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-07-20T08:59:00.002-05:00

Wifey Wednesday: Mirror, Mirror....

2011-07-20T08:00:00.045-05:00

I went through three outfits this morning, not including the clothes I pulled off the hanger, then put back without even trying them on.

No, I wasn't shopping. No, it isn't really a special occasion.

I just couldn't find an outfit I was happy with, despite the fact that my 'closet' is an entire side of a small basement room that is packed full of clothes.

Sometime, late in this process, I had to stop and wonder, just why am I doing this?

It isn't to impress my husband, not entirely. My husband does an AMAZING job of letting me know how lovely he finds me. But, as I was going back and forth between two different necklaces, I can't claim this is to impress my husband....since he really doesn't even like me wearing jewelry. (He says that jewelry is a distraction from my face. How sweet is that?)

And it isn't to impress, or compete with, an old friend from college who's in town for a visit. Really, if I were seriously struggling with my weight or body image, she would be one of the first people I would run to for help. So, I don't feel the need to seem perfect around her.

And it certainly isn't to impress the strangers at the restaurant we'll be going to tonight.

So, what was it?

I don't know for sure. I only knew that I really needed to feel good about how I looked today.

It reminded me of something I had read a few years ago, in a book called Captivating. Adam and Eve were both created in the image of God, therefore, both man and woman have unique characteristics which they reveal about God's nature through their own nature. Among other things....

A woman is created to reveal God's beauty.

It's why the pioneering women lived in little sod houses, yet carefully stitched together scraps of fabric to make pretty curtains for their one tiny window. Why women for centuries scatter a few flower seeds along the edges of their sustenance vegetable gardens. Why a woman can't help but try to catch a glimpse of herself in each reflective surface she happens to pass.

We are created to reflect and reveal God's beauty, and the beauty of His creation.

Yet, we are fallen, and we live in a fallen world. And that can cause us no end of frustration and consternation.

In our hearts, somewhere deep, we carry a yearning for beauty and we desire that for ourselves, and we desire to bring that to the environment around us. But we, and our world, are not only imperfect, but flawed. When that core desire clashes with the limits of reality, we develop all sorts of defense mechanisms to deal with it.

We can become obsessive about it, going on diet after diet or buying clothes and beauty products well beyond reason for our means or our circumstances.

We can become despondent about it, dwell in despair and give up trying...because sometimes its easier not to try than to try and continuously fail.

We can turn to some other outlet, developing all sorts of addictions, in an effort to avoid the stress and uncertainty.

We can be destroyed by it. Eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, out of control addictions---so many of these cancers are germinated and fed by the discrepancy between our desire for beauty and our reality.

And just to be clear, when I say "our desire for beauty", I do not mean a desire to look like a super-model. Fundamentally, our desire for beauty is something good and healthy. The desire for beauty can, and should, take many forms. A desire to be physically attractive, desire to be a beautiful person, a desire to create a lovely environment around ourselves. All these goals are good, and worthy to be pursued. As long as a healthy balance presides over that pursuit.

So, where does this leave us, and how does it impact our marriages?

First, I think we need to confess to ourselves and to our Lord any sin that this conflict has led us into. Bitterness, avoidance, excessiveness. I'm not saying this to heap more guilt on anyone's shoulders. Heaven knows, if we hadn't felt so guilty about 'not being good enough', none of us would have struggled with most of these issues in the first place. So, don't read the word 'confess' and either turn off your computer or start crying, or both. But, it is important to be able to honestly face what we struggle with so that we can be healed, and learn to move beyond it.

Second, I think we sometimes need to get additional help in the healing process. This can be from a prayer circle, a mentor, some quality reading material, a counselor, or a support group. I know personally several women who were genuinely transformed when they allowed themselves to face, get help, and work through an area of struggle. Don't sell yourself short. Don't pretend like a problem isn't really a problem. Do what you need to do to be the strong, beautiful woman God has created you do be.

Third, we really, really need to let go of unrealistic expectations. You know the kind I mean. We create in our minds some fictional super-woman. We take the components of many good role models around us, and roll them all together into this impossible standard we set for ourselves. And then we beat ourselves up when we can't reach this unobtainable mark.

Fourth, we need to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. It's unreasonable to expect ourselves to let go of unrealistic expectations, if we do not also learn to appreciate what we have. Otherwise, we will always be stuck in a "grass is always greener" mentality. Start keeping a journal, a little notebook. Everyday write down specific things that you are thankful for. But, everyday, make each of those items something different than the day before. How many small things can you start noticing about yourself, your spouse, your life that you are truly blessed by? Can you, over the course of several weeks, come up with 1000 different blessings to thank God for?

Let me take another moment to say, yes, I know this is all easier said than done. I know because I've struggled down this road myself. It is a struggle. It is hard work. It does take effort. It does take determination. Yes, there are days when you'll feel like you've messed it up, again, but those days get fewer and farther between the more you keep at it.

Fifth, we need to let ourselves be the revelation and reflection of beauty that we are intended to be. Think this is contrary to the first four steps? Think again.

Only after we have begun to move past our hangups, to let go of our unrealistic expectations, and to become women who practice true joy and contentment can we comfortably and confidently be free to express the beauty of our inner selves.

Last, we need to recognize that our husbands are naturally drawn to that inner beauty, when we allow it to shine through our outer selves. They are drawn to it, and they crave it, and they are sorely, but silently, crushed when we try to stifle it.

We can show love to ourselves, to our husband, and to our Creator, by carefully nurturing our inclination for beauty.

1. We can take care of our health and appearance. No, this isn't about being a certain size or a certain weight. But it is about making an effort to be healthy, to eat well, to remain active. Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Such a temple deserves some good upkeep. (It also deserves a hot fudge sundae from time to time, I'll agree. I'm not ever going to suggest eating nothing but rice cakes and carrot sticks. But you can't run a temple on junk food, and you can't keep a temple strong without movement.)

2. We can dress well. No, this isn't about buying designer labels, expensive jewelry, or the latest fashion. This is about showing a healthy pride in ourselves and in the calling God has placed us in. For some, that might mean jeans and a cute top. For others that might mean professional attire. Its not the type of clothing or the cost or the size. It's that you feel confident and happy with it. (Notice I didn't say comfortable. My jammies are comfortable and there are days that I just want to and do hang out in my penguin pants, but I try to make those days the exception, not the rule.)

3. We can make time to create. Carve out 30 minutes twice a week. Carve out an hour once a week. If nothing else, carve out 15 minutes. But carve out some time to allow yourself to pursue some creative endeavor, art, craft, or hobby. It doesn't have to be something that the Smithsonian will be displaying, or that Martha Stewart is asking to feature in her next magazine. Whatever it is you enjoy doing or making, even if you don't think you are all that great at it, give yourself permission to do it at least once every week. Don't let interruptions or the things on your to-do list keep you from just a small window of time to allow your soul to indulge and participate in the act of creation.

4. We can beautify our home. Again, this isn't about a right and a wrong style. This isn't about trying to copy a magazine, unless that's what makes you really happy. And this isn't about having the cash to install new kitchen counters or get a new living room set. This is about being able to look at what you have and smile. It's about being happy to walk into your home.

5. We can stop making excuses. No time, no money, no energy. I know, I know as women we are tired, we are busy, we are often overwhelmed. But making a commitment to make some small changes will make such a huge difference in your attitude and your contentment, and those changes will spill over into other areas of your life.

You are worth the effort.

Two for Tuesday

2011-07-19T07:35:00.000-05:00

Common Sense would ask, "What is 'Two for Tuesday?' "

To which I reply, "Two for Tuesday is for me to share a recipe that I like."

To which Common Sense will point out, "Yes, but that's only one."

"Yes," I say, "But if I share it with someone else, that makes two. You and me make two."

Common Sense says, "But more than one person is going to read it."

"Well, very likely," I say, "but it's sort of the principle that matters here. Plus, I really like how the phrase Two for Tuesday sounds. Alliteration makes me smile."

All of which explains why Common Sense doesn't often visit me.

This week's Two for Tuesday recipe:

Gluten-Free Peach Pie (or "Pake" if the name suits your fancy)

The original recipe comes from Gluten Free Easily, in a great post called Mom and Apple Pie.

Ingredients:

5-6 peaches, not overly ripe
1 cup Pamela's Pancake Mix , we found ours in our local grocery store, in the same aisle as the other pancake mixes
1/2 tsp almond extract
~ 1 tsp cinnamon/sugar mix (I keep a mixture in my spice containers and I didn't really measure it when I sprinkled it on.)
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup melted butter
1 egg

Directions

Spray the inside of a deep dish pie plate with non-stick cooking spray. Preheat oven to 350.
Peel and dice peaches. Place in pie pan. Drizzle 1/2 tsp almond extract over peaches and toss to coat. Sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar over peaches. Toss again.
In a bowl, mix 1 cup Pamela's with 1 cup sugar. Stir in melted butter and egg. Mixture will be very thick.
Spread batter over peaches in pie pan. (The first time I made this pie, we slightly stirred the mixture into the peaches. The second time, I just spread it over the peaches. It didn't seem to make a difference either way.)
Bake at 350 for 50 to 60 minutes. It will be slight goopy under the crust, but it shouldn't be completely liquidy under the crust. According to spell check, neither goopy nor liquidy is a word. Too bad. You know what I mean
Let cool completely. I mean it. Make it and leave the house and come back to it. Or make it in the morning for a dessert after dinner. But you must let it cool for a few hours before cutting into it, or you will have a runny mess. Hey, if I can show a little self-restraint, so can you. Suck it up and let your pie cool.
Serve in a dish with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Further notes:

I haven't tried this recipe with a regular gluten baking mix. If someone wants to be brave and experiment, please let me know. Also, this recipe doesn't work at high altitudes. I didn't get to observe this effect myself, but apparently the pie becomes Peach Vesuvius while trying to bake at high altitudes.

Also, if you are wondering where the word "Pake" comes from, it's because this pie turns out a little like a pie, a little like a cobbler, and a little like a very moist sponge cake. Whatever you want to call it, it is very, very yummy. And very, very easy. That makes it a two-fer in my book. Which is why I can share it with confidence on "Two for Tuesday."

Take that, Common Sense.

Day 18: Homeward Bound

2011-07-18T14:22:00.000-05:00

Friday, May 13th

Despite the thunderstorms which rolled through in the early hours of the morning, the sky was sunny and the weather was beautiful when we left the motel. (The breakfast 'bar' was just some donuts, packaged cheese danishes, a loaf of bread and a toaster, but with the promise of bbq on the horizon, we weren't too phased by the poor breakfast choices.)

We headed out to Memphis in May. We drove around for a bit, checking the prices of the various lots near the event, before finding that parking was free in the field next to the event. We went with that option.

Sadly, though the website hadn't listed any 'open to the public' times, we discovered when we walked up to the gate that the general public wasn't being admitted until eleven o'clock. So, we headed back to the van to play Munchkin.

Back at the van we met a couple from Vancouver (I think?). We talked with them for a while, and they were really nice. And we played zombie munchkin on the little table in the back of the van. We had the windows open for ventilation, and we had some amount of grief with cards getting blown off the table, but it was still a fun game.

At eleven, we headed back up to the gate, and set out to explore Memphis in May.

I was immediately blown away by the size and complexity of the booths. They had seating arrangements, decks, and landscaping.

They had multiple levels, sometimes reaching three floors.

They had canapies and spiral staircases.

And many of them has some pretty unique flair.

I would never have guessed this, but each year the festival tries to spotlight a different country. This year, the spotlighted country was Belgium. I asked the Jedi what Belgium had to do with bbq, but he said that was the point.

Still, a few of the booths proudly displayed international flags from past contest years.

By far, the most amazing thing about the booths was that they are all transported, erected and decorated, and then broken down and carted away. What a massive amount of work and dedication each of the booths represented.

The competitors were not allowed to sell any bbq, and there were only a few actual bbq venders there. That was a bit of a disappointment, but we got some bbq from the venders, and found a shady curbside to sit and eat. The food was good, not competition quality by any standards, but still good.

Getting our picture taken, AGAIN, was not as good.

After our lunch, we headed out of town toward HOME. For the past few days of the trip, Sweetling has been counting down how many more days until we are HOME. I have to confess, as much as I loved the trip, I'm looking forward to being home, too.

Our last stop of the trip was in Nashville. Being the geeks that were are, we had to stop and see the Parthenon. Unfortunately, since we couldn't get in to Memphis in May first thing in the morning, as we had hoped, we didn't hit Nashville in time to tour the inside of the Parthenon. That will have to wait for another trip, perhaps.

This time, we were happy to snap some pictures, admire the friezes, walk around the portico, and play on the playground across the street.

From there, we headed to a nearby street to have dinner at Rotier's. Onion rings, burgers, and good shakes. What more could we ask for?

As we left the restaurant, a nasty storm was brewing. We hurried back to the van, hoping to beat it out of town, but, sadly, I made my first serious fail as a navigator and got us turned around. Consequently, we wound up driving through some pretty nasty weather for an hour or so.

We stopped at Louisville to put the van seats down and get out the sleeping bags for the kids.

It was sometime between 2 and 3 a.m. when we pulled into our driveway. I was too tired to write down the exact time of our homecoming. I had called Mom from Nashville to tell her we were on our way, but wouldn't be getting in till very, very late. And even though I had tried my best to discourage her from waiting up for us, guess who came out the front door in her nightgown just before 3 a.m.? Yep. She claims she was in bed, but had heard the Jedi open the door before he came back to the van to carry in the sleeping children. I couldn't even fuss at her, I was so happy to be home.

Our total mileage for the trip was 6,203. We had been gone 18 days, had driven through 16 states and slept in 12 different cities. We had spotted 46 state license plates as well as plates from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, D.C., the Sac and Fox Nation, the Muscogee Nation, and the flag of Germany. We had visited 6 national parks, three state parks, two or three local parks, and ten museums or science centers. We had encountered two brand new weather types, gropple and virga, and had seen big horn sheep, a charging buffalo, a golden eagle, a pronghorn deer, wild turkey, three chipmunks, one small cute lizard, many huge mean looking ravens, and around 15 elk.

But most importantly, Sweetling won the yellow car game with a total of 168 sightings.

Read from Day 1
Back to Day 17

Getting Back on the Wagon

2011-07-17T21:44:00.000-05:00

I fell off the Grocery Budget Wagon these past several months.

I was doing good last summer, when I was a couponing queen. But couponing was just way too time consuming to keep up during the school year this year. I kept falling behind and wasn't able to use my coupons effectively. When they weren't being used effectively, I was barely saving enough to cover my newspaper subscription costs. Also, I was trying to get away from processed food, so wasn't buying as much of the foods that were featured on coupons. For the hassle, it ceased to be worth it.

I threw in the towel on couponing, but the grocery budget took a huge hit because of it.

Now, the challenge is, can I get back on track with the grocery budget, without couponing?

I'm already at or near, my budget ceiling for July, so I can't put a new strategy in play this month, but I'm trying to get my game plan in place for next month.

We do have a deep freeze now, so I'm going to get back to buying good quantities of meat on sale so that I can freeze them. I also continue to try to wait and buy other items on sale. I don't have to abandon those practices just because I've abandoned couponing.

But, here's the new game plan. I don't know how effective it will be, but I'm going to give it a try for the month of August at least.

My grocery budget is $500 a month. That breaks down to $16 a day, assuming 30 days in the month and leaving $20 for paper and cleaning products. (That's a completely unrealistic number by the way. I'm sure we go through more than that on toilet paper alone. But I can only fix one area at a time, so I'm focusing on the food first.)

Let's pretend that we can do it on $16 a day. If I break that down by meals, it looks like this--

$2 per day for breakfast, or $14 per week
$3 per day for lunches, or $21 per week
$1 per day for snacks, or $7 per week
$10 per day for dinners, or $70 per week

However, we also spend at least $12 a week on milk, and maybe $6 a week for frozen juice concentrate. That's $18 a week that needs to come out of our weekly totals. So, here's how I'm adjusting that.

I do NOT cook seven dinners a week. We eat leftovers at least one night. That's $10 off my weekly total. Plus, some of the lunch and breakfast spending should include the milk and juice, so I'm going to shave some off of their totals. The adjusted numbers look like this:

MEAL	Daily	Weekly	Monthly
Breakfast	$2	$10	$40
Lunch	$3	$17	$68
Snacks	$1	$7	$28
Dinner	$10	$60	$240
Milk	--	$12	--
Juice	--	$6	$24

Now, when I go to the grocery store, I'm going to organize my written list by meal category, and as I put items in my cart, write down the cost of the item. I have a homeschooling children whom I might just put in charge of keeping track of the totals for the categories. Behold the power of the homeschooling mom.

I'll set up a spreadsheet on my phone (I lose pieces of paper), to record the total spending for each category by week and month. That way I can at least see which items might be putting us over budget.

I'm hoping just being more conscious of how much I'm spending on different meals and snacks will help me to bring the grocery budget back into check.

Portrait of Humiliation

2011-07-17T19:23:00.000-05:00

This was the scene ten, maybe 15 minutes into our chess game. Toa was playing white. I was playing black.

I'll spare you the agony of trying to figure out what white pieces are missing from the board. I only captured two, a rook and a pawn, and I paid dearly for falling into the trap of taking those pieces.

I need to find some good "Chess for Dummies" books or something. This can't happen again.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-07-13T07:20:00.002-05:00

Day 17: Come Hell or High Water

2011-07-11T10:17:00.001-05:00

Thursday, May 12

After a long day on the road yesterday, and two more long driving days ahead of us, we took our sweet time at the hotel this morning. The Jedi took Toa of Boy swimming in the hotel's indoor pool while Sweetling got a shower and hung out in the room and I uploaded ever more photos to my blog. It felt so good not to be on a time table this morning.

Even though the morning was leisurely, we were still out the door and leaving Oklahoma City by 9:33....further proof that we have this whole hotel/travel thing down to a science. It was 69 degrees, with a slight chance of rain, and an expected high of 88.

Once again, our plan was to eat up the miles. We didn't have many stops scheduled for the day. We grabbed lunch at Arby's and ate in the car....and I got my second turn behind the wheel for the entire trip.

(On a side note, I don't know what the bunny did to deserve this fate....)

The one stop we did make was a slight side trip to DeValles Bluff, Arkansas...to a small family run pie shop. We drove back and forth on what I guess was a main street to this small little town before we found it. The pie shop is a small cinderblock building behind a residence. I personally didn't take any photos while we were there, because I didn't want to risk being rude. But, here's a photo from Road Food.

Because its run by a sweet grandmotherly woman named Mary, it is hit or miss as to what types of pie she felt like baking that day and when she sells out. Today's pies were chocolate cream, with a homemade meringue, or coconut cream. Which means, we bought a chocolate cream pie which I was tasked with eating ALL BY MYSELF. What a darn shame that was for me ;)

Mary gave us some styrofoam containers so that we could cut the pie up and fit it in our little refrigerated cooler in the van. She said she had made some turnovers earlier that morning, but that they sold out very quickly, since the National Guard was stationed nearby and they had been coming in to buy treats from her.

Back outside, I chatted with one of Mary's neighbors. I told her how excited I was to have a real meringue on my pie. I don't think I've had that since Mammaw was alive. Oh sure, Mammaw showed me how to make a meringue. And when Mammaw was standing right beside me in the kitchen, my meringue turned out "right fine". But when I try to make it on my own, it flops, melts, becomes rubbery, and generally inedible.

We also went across the street to a bbq joint, where the Jedi got a pulled pork sandwich to snack on. Sadly for the Jedi, they had put coleslaw on the sandwich....so guess who scored herself a pulled pork sandwich too?

Driving out of town, following the little state route 33 north or east or something to get back to the interstate, we came across the National Guard. There they were, with a barricade across the road, some military vehicle parked beside it, and soldiers in fatigues hanging out in lawn chairs. The area to the north and the west of us was completely flooded. So, we turned around, and backtracked back to the west to get back to the interstate the way we had come. Again, I didn't snap a photo. My hands were too covered in bbq to work the camera.

For miles as we headed east towards the river, we would pass one field where a farmer was out plowing his field, then several that were completely flooded, then a field where the farmer was out plowing, then more flooding. Sometimes roofs of houses were just visible above the waters.

The picture is deceptive, because it looks just like a lake. It isn't a lake. The line of trees marks the edge of someone's crop field. See how close the water comes to the highway embankment?

As we drew closer to the river, the land was just completely underwater for a good two to three miles.

Our destination was Memphis, Tennessee, where we were planning to spend the night and attend Memphis in May in the morning. The traditional location for the BBQ festival was a park next to the river. Since the park was completely flooded out, they had moved the location to the local fairgrounds, several miles further inland.

The motto for this years Memphis in May had become "Come Hell or High Water." You can see why.

Because we knew some roads downtown were closed due to flooding, and because the site of the festival had been changed, the Jedi had canceled our reservation at a down town hotel and moved it to a motel much closer to the festival.

We drove in to downtown Memphis, found a reasonably priced parking lot, and walked over to Rendezvous for dinner. It was good, but different. The rib rub seemed pretty heavy on the chili powder. Not too heavy, mind, but just a lot different than what we are used too. The place was totally packed out, and the bulk of the seating was in this underground labyrinth of rooms with distressed brick walls and small round wood tables. So, I felt a little claustrophobic, but it was still a nice restaurant and I'm glad we went.

After dinner, we climbed back in our van and headed out to find our motel. Once we did, we sat in the tiny, barely off the street parking lot trying to decide what to do. It was too late to cancel our reservation, and yet it was clear that this little "Roadway Inn" was not in a fairly rough neighborhood. With our van just feet off the sidewalk and our big car top luggage carrier, we just didn't feel like the van was safe where it was. There was a hospital nearby, and the hospital's secure parking garage and its big fenced gated parking lot was right across from the motel. So, the Jedi suggested that we drive over and ask about parking there for a nightly rate or whatever. The attendants in the parking lot totally understood our situation, and told us where we could park in the lot and not to worry about it.

So that's what we did. We parked in the secure, fenced, well lit lot, grabbed what we needed from the van for the night, and walked back to the motel. Inside, the room was one of the biggest we stayed in. It was clean, and everything was in good condition. We hung out for the evening, and I had a, um, few, pieces of my delicious chocolate pie.

Read from Day One
Back to Day 16
On to Day 18

Sweetling's Portfolio 2010-2011

2011-07-06T07:58:00.000-05:00

Language:

This year, Sweetling continued in her study of Vocabulary from Classical Roots. In July and August, she did the review exercises at the end of the Level B workbook. Through the rest of the year, she completed her Level C work book. (The top photo show a portion of the first lesson in the book, and the bottom photo a portion of one of the last lessons in the book. Clicking on the photos should display a larger image.)

Also this year, Sweetling embarked on learning ASL, through a Conversational Sign Language course at Learning Tree Co-op. Not only did she learn a wide variety of signed vocabulary, she learned how to put those signs together to construct meaningful conversations and how to view and understand longer sentences in ASL. Since ASL is its own language, with a different word order and different linguistic and grammatical rules than English, this is quite an accomplishment. Her instructor approached me after co-op last week full of praise for Sweetling's focus and progress. She suggested I encourage Sweetling in her learning and study of ASL and said that if Sweetling should ever chose to become a professional interpreter, that goal would be well within her range of ability.

Lastly, Sweetling worked through the intermediate level of PowerGlide Spanish. Sweetling has already worked through this curriculum before, so this was not 'progress' in the sense of learning new material. However, I was proud of her initiative to maintain her knowledge and skill level in this area.

Literature:

Our goal for literature with Sweetling this year was two-fold. Sweetling is already a voracious reader. Therefore, our goals did not reflect an increase in the amount or time of her reading, but an increased depth of what she got out of her reading. First, through the year, Sweetling read books which were set in different cultures of the world to learn through literature different perspectives, values, and beliefs. Among those were Spring Pearl by Laurence Yep, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates by Mary Mapps Dodge, and Bruchko by Bruce Olsen. Secondly, as she read these books and many others, Sweetling kept a literature log, in which she was free to write about her thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the book, her opinions on the character's choices, and her observations of the author's craft.

Two short excerpts from her lit log, one from the first book she read and responded to,

Trackers by Patrick Carman features a boy named Adam and his friends Emily, Lewis, and Finn. Adam is advanced in his knowledge of technology and makes his own devices. He decide that his technology would be perfect for the government, so he and his friends often run field tests on them.

And one sample from a later reading--

The Kane Chronicles: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan starts out with Carter describing to the reader how to acsess a stone that gives the holder unlimtited power, but warns them to not keep in for over a week. He then describes that he’s not allowed to look inside his fathers workbag, and that it was his good luck charm in times of trouble. I think that the stone describe in the beginning is carried around in Carter’s dad’s workbag. Next, Carter describes learning that his mother died by the Cleopatria Needle. At a museum, the dad uses a special item on the Rosetta Stone and summons Orisis, the Egyptain god of the dead, along with a strange creature. The creature then does something strange to the father- and I think he pulled Carter’s dad into the afterlife.

Writing:

Sweetling is already an accomplished writer. Because she feels her future might be in writing, at least in part, our goals for the year were to help Sweetling hone and refine her craft as well as provide ample opportunity to allow Sweetling to write about subjects and topics which interest her. To assist us in reaching these goals, Sweetling completed the lessons and writing exercises in the book Writing Strands 5. Recommended for 15 and 16 year olds, Writing Strands 5 focused on such skills as the narrative voice attitude, arguments, writing for action, portraying characters through dialogue, tense control, organizing descriptions, utilizing flashbacks, and controlling reader response.

From one of Sweetling's first exercises from Writing Strands--

The old man ran across the snow, hoping to get to the rabit trap and back before dark. His family was hungry for dinner, and he promised to get them a rabbit. Suddenly, he realized that the rabit might hear him coming and run away, so he snuck behind the nearby berry bush to spy on the rabbit. He saw a rabbit and its mother scampering about, trying to find their favorite patch of grass. Not realising that it was hidden in the snow, the mother decided they would search under the evergreen tree.

And from a piece of writing later in the school year--

The kids marveled at the underwater city in front of them. The residents, however, were not as happy. The tribe in Atlantis thought very poorly of people from the surface, because most surfacers, as they were known, were very greedy and chaotic. They would take many pictures of the underwater village and cared only to be famous and start an Atlantis Tourisism Company, but all the merpeople cared about was living in the seclusion of an unknown city.

The kids in their scuba gear swam down to the sea floor.

“Greetings!” the oldest one, Martin, said.

What is he thinking? The Atlanteans thought. Doesn’t he know that we don’t appreciate his kind? Much to the kids’ surprise, the natives assumed a battle position as they grabbed their pitchforks.

Math:

Prior to this year, Sweetling had already completed two years of an advanced pre-algebra curriculum and one year of the first half of an advanced algebra curriculum. Sadly, through this process, math went from Sweetling's favorite subject to something she hated. Thus, our primary goal for this year was to rekindle Sweetling's interest in and pleasure from math. To do this, we spent the first part of the year just reading about math. Together, we read Isaac Asimov's collection of essays titled Asimov on Numbers. As we read, we worked out some of the math concepts in notebooks. For example,

"The problem, in essence, is this. you are offered any number of unit weights: one-gram, two-gram, three-gram, four-gram, and so on. Out of these you may choose a sufficient number so that by adding them together in the proper manner, you may be able to weigh out any integral number of grams form one to a thousand. Well, then, how can you choose the weights in such a way as to end with the fewest possible number that will turn the trick?"

This problem was at the introduction to an essay on binary numbers, which we then learned not only how to convert a ten-based number into a binary number and vise a versa, but how to add, subtract, multiply and divide binary numbers in binary form. That was just one of our activities in the first half of the year.

In the second half of the year, we had fun playing with math and logic puzzles contained in the book Math for Smarty Pants by Marilyn Burns. Once again, we enjoyed trying to solve the puzzles and conundrums posed. A simple sounding one that had us stumped for a while read like this,

Every afternoon the three little pigs take an ice cream break. They head to the closest ice cream shop, where each orders a double-dip cone. There are only two kinds of double dips that the pigs ever order. It's either a double-dip vanilla cone or a licorice-chocolate combination.

If pig #1 orders vanilla-vanilla, then pig #2 orders the other. Either pig #1 or pig #3 orders vanilla-vanilla, but they never do so on the same day. Pig #2 and Pig#3 never both order the licorice-chocolate combination the same day.

Which of the three little pigs ate a vanilla-vanilla cone yesterday and will order a licorice-chocolate cone today?

All in all, our year let Sweetling practice skills of logic, reasoning and puzzle solving and left her feeling refreshed and ready to tackle high-school geometry next year.

History, Geography, and Government

Sweetling studied the countries of the world using the Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum from My Father's World. In addition to learning the locations of the countries of the world, she learned major geographic landmarks on each continent, climate and climate regions, and the exports and natural of major countries. She learned about the major religions practiced in each country and region we studied as well as the history of the country and the many forms of government around the world. In addition to a wealth of library books specific to each country, Sweetling used Rand McNally's Answer Atlas as well as their Classroom Atlas and she used Window on the World by Daphne Spraggett. She completed the research activity pages in World Geography by Richard Rayburn. Additionally, for each country, she did a lot of independent reading and research using both the internet and resource books from our library.

The work samples enclosed are a sample page of one of the research project pages from World Geography

and a brief country report on Mexico.

Facts
Capital: Mexico City
Offcial Language(s): Spanish
Form of Government: Repiblic
Area: 761,606 sq mi
Population: 111,211,789
Chief Products: corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, beans, cotton, coffee, fruit, tomatoes, beef, poultry, dairy products, wood products

Information
Government- Mexico has a government not unlike that of the USA. It has a legeslative branch, an executive branch, and a judicial branch. The Congrees of Mexico consists of The Senate and The Chambe rof Deputies. The Senate includes 128 representitives of the states; the Chamber of Deputies 500 representitives of the nation. The legislative branch can pass laws, impose taxes, declare war, prove the national budget, and approve or reject treaties. The president has a six-year term and can only be elected once. There is no vice president. The executive branch can appoint Cabneit members (though the Senate must approve) and veto bills.

People- Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. About 13 million people living in Mexico descend from indigenous peoples. In Mexico there are three kinds of holidays: statutory holidays (holidays that are observed nationwide and grant workers & students a day off, such as New Years, Constitution Day, Independence Day, and Christmas), civic holidays (holidays tht are observed nationwide but do not grant a day off, such as Flag Day, Cinco de Mayo, and Marine Day), and festivities (such as Ephiphany, Day of the Dead, and Christmas Eve).

Religion: Mexico has no official religion, but most Mexicans are Catholic Christians.

Education: Kids usually start basic education at age 6, and it goes on until age 18. The schools are divided into primary school (primaria), junior high school (secundaria), and high school (preparatoria). Primary school is for kids ages 6-12, and basic subjects are taught here. Junior high schools is for kids ages 12-15, where more specialized subjects, such as Physics and Chemestry, are often taught. Finally, high school, for kids 15-18, is intended as a precursour to college.

Land: Mexico has tropical reigons and desert reigons. The land is often used for farming.

Economy: Most people in Mexico earn about $100 a week. Many people in Mexico work in commerce and services, inculding government-related activities.

History: The Aztec, the Maya, and other indiguous peoples have lived in Mexico for what many belive to be 23,000 years, and are believed to have been civilizations for 9,000. In the early 16th century, Mexico was invaded by Spainards, with the assistance of the introduction of smallpox to the locals. It was then called New Spain. On September 16, 1810, Mexico delcared independence from Spain and named itself after its capital.

As we have been planning a family vacation, three week road trip to California and back, Sweetling has been very involved in doing research for the trip. She has used the internet, library books, and travel guides requested through the mail to help find possible attractions and places for us to visit. She has been using google maps to then check her destinations with our drive route out and our drive route back to determine how feasible a detour to that location would be.

Lastly, Sweetling has been keeping up with current events, spending time each Friday reading news stories online and then discussing them at dinner that evening.

Science

This year, Sweetling studied biology for half of the year and ecology for half of a year.

For biology, Sweetling used the text Apologia Biology, completing written responses to the section questions, using a microscope and slides, and performing lab and field work. The photo was taken at a local nature preserve where we had gone to collect four samples of pond water for her study of the Kingdom Monera. (Trust me, the photo is much more pleasant than the pond water samples were after being 'fed' and allowed to grow in a warm dark place for two weeks.)

And a sample of her written responses to chapter questions--

2.    If a fungus form haustoria, it is parasitic.
3.    All fungi have rhyzoid hyphae.
4.    Chitin provides protection for a fungus.
5.    Fungi in these phylums have these traits:
    a.     Fungi in phylum Mastigomycota have motile spores.
    b.     Fungi in the “phylum” Imperfect Fungi have no known means of
sexual reproduction.
    c.     Fungi in phylum Amastigomycota have non-motile spores.
    d.     Fungi in phylum Myxomycota have traits of both Protozoa and Fungi.
6.    The gill of the mushroom holds basidia.
7.    Yeast is a part of class Acsomycetes, mushrooms are part of class
Basidiomycetes, and bread molds are a part of class Zygomycetes.
8.    Wheat rusts and smuts are parasitic. Wheat rust and smuts take food
from wheat.
9.    The plant and the funugs are participating in mycorrhizae.
10.   The antibiotic known as penicillin is produced by a fungus.
11.   The specimen is most likley a yeast from kingdom Fungi.
12.   Slime molds feed in a similar way to Protista.

For ecology, Sweetling learned about the many ecosystems of the world, using the text Properties of Ecosystems by Debbie and Richard Lawrence and watching the BBC series Planet Earth. She studied how plants and animals of each ecosystem interact with each other and with their environment, and how changing elements in the environment effected the population of plants and animals in the ecosystems. She also studied conservation and man's impact on the environment.

Music

Sweetling has begun learning how to play the guitar this year. We purchased an acoustic Squier by Fender for her at the beginning of the school year. She has been taking Beginning Guitar classes at Learning Tree Co-op and practicing regularly at home. She has learned how to tune her guitar and some basic chording.

Also this year, Sweetling has taken Jewish Dance at Learning Tree Co-op. This has really increased her confidence level and by February, she was confident enough to join the praise dance ministry at our church, Dayspring Church of God, and partake in the Forest Park Gospel Fest. She will also be dancing during the Sunday service on Palm Sunday and on Easter Sunday this year.

Art

Sweetling has really grown as an artist this year. Though she still claims that art is, and I quote, "not her thing", I am really impressed with the complexity and depth she has achieved in her art this year. She has been completing art projects based off of and and inspired by the cultures of the world. For a sample of how Sweetling's art has progressed, please read this post on our study of French Impressionism.

Sweetling's favorite piece of art for this year is her desert sunset, completed during our study of Mexico.

At Learning Tree Co-op, she is in the class, "Discovering Artists", which focuses on studying the style of famous artists and then reproducing aspects of those styles. I framed and hung on my kitchen wall her Sunflower still life.

Physical Education

Sweetling has been in Tae Kwon Do for nearly four years now, however, this year, she tested for her Junior Black Belt. Testing for a belt of that level really required her to step up her training to a new level of difficulty and dedication. It required going to the dojo on additional days for extra practice as well as extra practice and training at home. She has demonstrated mastery of some of the highest level forms and is currently working on perfecting her technique for her black belt form. She has had to increase her aggressiveness, speed, and combination techniques during sparring matches. As part of her test for her junior black belt, she had to perform a flying side kick over an obstacle to break a board.

Toa of Boy's Portfolio 2010-2011

2011-07-06T07:56:00.000-05:00

Language:

Toa of Boy has continued to make great progress in his verbal language skills. Not only has his speech continued to improve in diction and clarity, he now more consistently speaks in complete sentences, expresses complete thoughts and tells stories or retells events with much detail and understandable sequencing of events. He has memorized and correctly recited many Scripture verses and was able to complete not just one, but two Awana handbooks this year. He was one of three young boys who memorized and recited all the books of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, in their correct order, from the pulpit during Sunday morning service at church. That was a huge accomplishment for him, since previously he was very self-conscious and shy about his speech differences.

His vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds this year as well. He loves learning new words, mastering how to correctly say them, and then using them in context as often as he can. Thus, his speech throughout the year has been sprinkled with new words such as "cumbersome", "sufficient," and "hinder" to name a few.

Before our school year started, Toa of Boy decided he wanted to learn cursive. We purchased him the first cursive book from Handwriting Without Tears, and he's been working through it steadily. He is really pleased with his progress and on his own initiative, he loves to write some of his spelling words and sometimes his Scripture verses in cursive. (Of the photos below, the top photo shows one of Toa's first cursive pages, and the bottom is one from this spring.)

Reading:

This was the year Toa of Boy really took off as an independent reader. While at the beginning of the year, he could read, with assistance, simple picture books with just a short sentence of simple words per page, he now can read short chapter books, like Amanda Pig, Little Bear, and Frog and Toad completely independently. With assistance, he can read longer, more difficult chapter books. His favorite books series is the Captain Underpants books, of which, with assistance, he has read seven. He is currently enjoying assisted reading of Club Penguin Pick Your Path novels.

We also completed several read aloud books together this year. Not only did we spend time every day reading from both fiction and non-fiction picture books, but we also read several chapter books together. Among those were Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Muñoz Ryan, Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat, and Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan. [For a brutally honest look at how some of our reading time and lesson extensions go, please see the first part of this post.]

Spelling:

We have been working regularly through the lessons in the first Sequential Spelling book by AVKO press. Toa of Boy is really mastering the spelling patterns taught and I have seen a big improvement not only during his spelling lesson time, but I've seen the learning carry over to his writing and his reading skills as well. (The page on the left is one of our first spelling lessons, on the right, one of our more recent lessons. You may click on the photo, or any of the photos on my blog, to see a larger version of it.)

Writing:

As his confidence in his language skills and his spelling skills has increased, Toa of Boy has really begun to express himself as a writer this year. At the beginning of the year, it was a slow and difficult process to coach him through writing a single, simple sentence. Now, he is writing poems and short stories of his own initiative. (Again, the top photo is one of our first attempts at free writing at the beginning of the year. Each sentence was written on a different day. Note the subject matter. The middle photo is a poem written later in the year. The bottom photo a list Toa of Boy decided to write on his own during his own free time. Again, clicking on the photos should display a larger image.)

Math:

We completed Singapore Math Primary Mathematics 2A and 2B this year. Toa of Boy has mastered addition and subtraction of three and four digit numbers with regrouping and has also learned his multiplication tables 0-5 and 10. Not only has he achieved the ability to read and solve word problems on his own, he is able to independently solve two step word problems, requiring the finding of an intermediate number before being able to find the final solution. For example, from page 101 of Primary Mathematics 2B; "168 men, 287 women and 113 children took part in a parade. How many adults took part in the parade? How many more adults than children took part in the parade?" (Top photo from the beginning of the year, bottom photo shows a some recent review problems.)

History, Geography, and Government

The "spine" of our homeschooling this year was the Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum by My Father's World. We "traveled" around the world, mapping countries and continents, reading and learning about history, government, and culture, and dabbling in art and music of each land. It was truly an amazing and enriching year of learning. For a good sampling of how all these subjects typically came together for Toa of Boy, please see this post about Africa.

At our Learning Tree co-op, Toa of Boy participates in a Country Studies class. He comes home every week excited to tell me what country they are learning about, what hands-on project they completed, or some new information he has heard about a particular country. As part of the class, he now has a massive binder full of information on several countries around the world.

In addtion to our "around the world" curriculum at home, we have been planning a three week family road trip to California and back. (This is a real trip even, not just a conceptual one!) As part of the planning and research we have been engaging both Toa of Boy and Sweetling in reading and learning about the different states we will be passing through, helping to find attractions we might visit, and assisting in mapping out our route of travel.

The post which best describes this process can be found here, but it rather long, and only a few paragraphs are relevant, so I've just copied that small piece out.

"In late April 2010, we're taking a three week round trip drive to California and back. It just so happens that we are studying America right now in our Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum from My Father's World. I expanded the two week USA study into a three week unit so that we could take the bulk of this week and learn and read about the 16 states we'll be driving through in our trek.

We started by having the kids find and label these states, plus a few key others on a blank map of the US. Then I used google maps to pull up a map of our journey out to California, and the kids drew our route in our their maps, and traced it with a red marker. We did the same for our journey back.

Then we read how each state got its name and its nickname in Greetings from the 50 States. We looked at Our 50 States, A Family Adventure across America as well as some library books I had grabbed, each highlighting a different state. Each day, we read and learned about a group of three or so states, taking them in order that we would be driving. (So the first day, we read about Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.) As we read, we made a big list of anything in that State, that was close to our driving route, that we might want to see. Doing so involved using google to pull up the location of the attraction and checking that location with our route.

It was really interesting, and highly motivating, since we were actually going to get to visit many of the places we were adding to our list. On Thursday morning, I was sitting in the living room at 7:30 am reading my Bible, and two pajama clad children wandered in. They pulled library books off the shelf and started looking through them and discussing them with each other. At one point, Toa jumped up and ran down to the school room to come flying back up the stairs with a large laminated map of the US so he could find one of the places they had been talking about. And, that entire scene, from getting out the books to running for a map, transpired without any input or prompting from me whatsoever."

Science

Once again, Toa of Boy has been eager to share with me information he has learned in his Exploring Science class at Learning Tree co-op. Included in the topics they have covered has been our solar system, the human body, weather, and physical science. Toa of Boy has come home with a nearly life sized human skeleton made of paper and jointed together with paper fasteners and a construction paper model of a tornado storm system.

At home, we have been learning about different habitats around the world. Toa of Boy is now able to name several characteristics of each of the major types of habitats and can also apply general learning to other situations, such as recognizing and naming a food web when we were watching some other documentary.

Here is a sample of one of our activities. We did a lot of reading form library books, but this activity happened to be a follow up to a video. In the photo, Toa's project is on the left. This excerpt comes from this post, but I have clipped out the science section here.

We watched two Planet Earth episodes. I just snagged the series from the library, so we started the week by watching the first episode in the series, From Pole to Pole on Monday. Then watched Great Plains on Tuesday. I was worried that Toa might find them boring, but he was requesting more Planet Earth on Thursday and on Friday, so I think he enjoyed them. Equally important, he remembered and retained some of the information.

On Wednesday, I wanted to do something more hands-on for science, but didn't have the energy or time to track down an experiment or project. So we did a quick and easy review of what we had learned from the video. I wrote a few facts on the kitchen white board, leaving some key words blank. (ie...The tallest grass in the world is _______ _______ which grows in ________.) I did this while the kids were sitting at the table eating snack. They were enjoying coming up with the answers. After snack, I got out green construction paper, and drew lines along its length to divide each piece into 10-11 long strips. I told the kids they were each to write 7-10 facts about grass or grasslands, one sentence per strip. They could use any of the five fill-in the blank facts I had put on the whiteboard, or they could come up with their own. If they couldn't remember something, they could look through the non-fiction library books we had on grasslands. I also warned them that we would cut the strips apart after they had written, so to be careful to keep their letters to the center of the strip so that tails of p's and y's and such didn't get cut off. (Sweetling elected to type her facts up and then send her green paper through the printer.)

After they had their collection of facts, they cut the green strips apart, and tapered the ends of each strip to make blades of grass. Then they glued their grass blades to blue paper. Voila, green grass facts. :)

Music:

As part of our Exploring Countries and Cultures, we spent time each week listening to, learning, and singing songs from many nations of the world. We used Wee Sing Around the World as our main source of music. Toa of Boy loves music and songs, and really loved hearing and learning songs from other countries. Many of the pages in our Wee Sing song book also contained information about the cultural background/history of the song and often included a game of some sort that would often accompany the song in its native culture. Toa of Boy enjoyed the games, which indirectly taught about beat, rhythm, repeating lines, choruses and verses in music.

Art

Toa of Boy loves art and thinks he might become an artist as an adult. We spend a lot of time on art every week, and I could stuff this portfolio full of photos of beautiful projects. This year, not only did Toa learn about and create the art forms of many cultures, but he also acquired some new techniques that he can apply to many different genres of art. He learned about shading and blending using charcoal pencils and using chalk pastels. He learned about warm and cool colors and the juxtapositioning of the two, as well as the effect of juxtapositioning complimentary colors. He learned about perspective in art and landscapes and how near objects appear larger than far objects. He learned about the use of different types and thicknesses of lines to create rich and interesting patterns. Some of these skills he learned at home, and some he learned in his art class at Learning Tree Co-op, but most he learned and used in both places and they reinforced each other.

For the sake of keeping the portfolio at a reasonable length, I'll limit myself to including only three photos of his art. First, a simple color mixing lesson from early this fall.

Second, a simple shading exercise in charcoal,

Last is a piece from just this past week done in chalk pastels, demonstrating the use of graded colors to show water depth and the choice of warm colors against a cool background to enable his subject matter to really stand out.

Health

This year, Toa of Boy learned about the food groups. He learned to distinguish between making healthy food choices and not as healthy choices and practiced making the former. He learned about what makes a balanced meal, and practiced assembling his own healthy lunches.

Physical Education

This year, Toa of Boy started taking Tae Kwon Do classes. In the course of the year, he has tested for and advanced through three belt levels. At the beginning of the year, he could not do a single push up or a single sit up. Now, he can complete up to thirty full double-punch sit ups unaided and over fifteen push-ups while maintaining near perfect form. He has mastered two Tae Kwon Do forms and is learning his third. He has learned several different styles of kicks and punches, and can use a few of them to kick through one-inch thick boards.

Also this year, Toa of Boy participated in a Physical Education class at Learning Tree Co-op. There he learned rules for common sports, such as kickball, baseball, basketball, volleyball, and soccer. He learned and practiced many skills and techniques needed for these sports.

Sweetling's Homeschooling Goals

2011-07-01T13:24:00.000-05:00

Edward Bear is here to supervise and to keep me in line during this process. (No, I have been corrected. He is just here because he is Sweetling's Edward Bear.)

Overall goals:
"To do good in school and to learn Spanish."

Literature:
"To read good books. I don't think you can really apply standards to an subjective measurement," says the Sweetling when I asked to to qualify the use of the term 'good.'

an interesting plot
interesting characters
character development

Language and Writing:
"To complete National Novel Writing Month. Preferably to complete it, but I think if I at least get decent progress in it I'll be happy."

Language, Other:
"I'd like to learn Spanish and ASL."

Math:
"Math, groan." [Interjects the Mommy, last year our goal was to have fun with math again.] "Yes," says Sweetling, "I think we still need to work on that. Do we still have that book we looked at last year? The one with the unicorns on Saturn?" [yes, we do. Its a geometry text that I was planning to order since she seemed to enjoy it.]

Science:
"I'd like to do something interactive."

History, Geography, Social Studies:
"Aren't we doing history together? The History of U.S by Joy Hakim. I think a list of possible projects to pick from would work well." [suggestions include: manga comic strip of history, library books, videos, designing her own power point presentations, using publisher to make the front page of a newspaper for a particular date]

Art:
"Manga. I like that style of drawing."

Music:
"I'd like to stick with the musical classes I'm taking at co-op."

Bible:
"I'm fine with what we've got." [Curriculum of the overview of the Old Testament.]

Health, Home Ec, Life Skills:
undecided. I shall resist adding my mommy comments.

Toa's Homeschooling Goals

2011-07-01T08:36:00.000-05:00

I have told Toa that this will be a painful, tortuous process....but that he won't feel it, because he is a zombie.

After protesting that he was NOT a zombie, he began to complain that I didn't have any spears or knives or swords or anything, so where was the pain? I told him that the pen was mightier than the sword. He wasn't impressed.

Here are Toa's goals for the upcoming school year.

Says he, "Why can't we just do regular stuff? Like two years ago?"

Reading goals.
"I just want something harder than last year."

Language:
"But I already speak the language! Why do I need to learn about English? I'm speaking English right now!"

Spelling:
"I just want to finish the book by the end of the year."

Writing:
"Can I only do that on Friday? Or how about Wednesday and Friday?"

Math:
"I don't even know what is in 4th grade math. What do you learn? Do you learn divisions? What is divisions?"

History, Geography, Social Studies:
"Where the first monkey lived."

Art:
"I want to draw, to be able to make, a paper monkey."

Music:
"I thought we were going to not do music. Do I have to do music? What about Sweetling's little piano book? Can I just do that?"

Bible:
"Can we just make it a mystery?"

Anything else?
"I think that's enough subjects for me!"

Oh, Science:
"Argh!"

Mommy's goals for Toa for the year.

Reading:
To become a stronger independent reader. To be able to have meaningful conversations about what he has read. To complete projects, such as diaromas, lap books. or timelines to help him think about and process the reading material utilizing other parts of the brain. To be able to recognize the main characters, the main problem, the key plot events, and the resolution of a story.

Language:
To begin to develop his understanding of the construction of language. To recognize complete and incomplete sentences. To pick out and understand the functions of some of the basic parts of speech.

Writing:
To make regular time for creative self expression through written language.

Math:
To review and practice the 1-5 multiplication tables and to introduce and learn the 6-9 tables. To review and master regrouping in addition and subtraction problems. To learn multiplication of two or three digit numbers with a single digit. To introduce division. To recognize simple fractions and to be able to add and subtract fractions with common denominators.

Logic and Reasoning:
To practice chess skills regularly and to learn the importance of wise chess openings. To practice solve word problems and logic puzzles.

History, Geography, Social Studies:
To have a basic understanding of the key events and central figures in modern American history. To understand what life was like through some of the times that helped form our modern nation. To learn tales of heroism through times of great evil or great hardship. To begin to understand why it is important to us to learn from history to help encourage us to stand up for justice for all people.

Art:
To experiment with differing medias and technique. To recognize the difference between abstract and realistic art and the many variations within each. To understand the effects of a constrained palette and understand what a monochromatic, analogous, and complementary color schemes are. To make use of a variety of lines, shapes, and forms. To understand the difference between a flat work, a relief, and a sculpture and to create pieces of art in each.

Music:
To learn the basics of sheet music including the staffs, the names of the notes on the scale, whole, half quarter notes, time signatures, and measures. To learn to read and play simple songs either on the recorder or on a keyboard.

Bible:
To have a basic understanding of the timeline and major events of the Old Testament and to understand how those books relate to one another. To continue to memorize and master memory verses in Awana.

Science:
To conduct experiments and complete hands on projects that help develop an understanding of the basic principles of physical science.

Monkeys:
Really? Because apparently no school year is complete without monkeys.

Alaska Sighting

2011-06-27T16:36:00.001-05:00

We were at our neighborhood branch of the library today. On our way back to our van, Sweetling, who was lagging behind, exclaimed, "Look! I found an Alaskan license plate!"

Toa and I backtracked a bit, and there was indeed, a car with an Alaskan plate.

"What are they doing in Ohio?" asked Toa. "Don't they have libraries in Alaska?"

(About the plate: Kathy's Alaska License Plate - Kathy Sarns has been an artist in Alaska since 1982. Her original design for the Alaska Gold Rush Centennial License plate won the "Best Plate in the United States Award" in 1999. Computer graphic design created in Mac Freehand with electronic pen.)

Day 16: That Left Turn

2011-06-25T15:09:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, May 11

A good friend of ours from college made a nearly three hour round trip to meet us in Albuquerque for breakfast. We sat and visited for a while, and Sweetling took a photo of the Jedi and I with our friend (which Toa somehow squeezed himself into. You can get away with a lot when you are cute.) I'm trying to make Facebook hand over its copy of this photo, but Facebook isn't listening to me. Apparently, Facebook doesn't find me cute or attractive. I think I've been insulted.

When we left Albuquerque at 9:55, it was 55 degrees and sunny, with an expected high in the mid 60s.

Today, the plan was, eat up the miles. And so we did. I gave each of the kids a pack of 100 fuzzy craft wires (also known as pipe-cleaners), and let them have at.

Which means our drive was full of this...

...and this (which is, I'm told, the same creature except he got mad so all his arms are going GRRRR.....)

And Trogdor...

....and, is this Strong Sad?

And lots of Pokemon. One of each "type", in fact.

The Pokemon with their Trainer.

We did a drive through lunch and ate in the van. We stopped by the Mid-Point Cafe for a picture, but it was too close to dinner to eat here.

Instead, we had dinner at the Red River Steakhouse.

Check out the cattle brands and the Harley parking only sign on its exterior.

Loved the old west murals too.

The interior was just as awesome, with corrugated steel ceilings, blue bandana napkins, rodeo photos and license plates and deer and buffalo heads on the walls.

There was a pass through to the kitchen, where scrumptious, scrumptious, scrumptious steak was prepared. Oh my goodness, the scrumptiousness of the steak.

The waitresses all had a sweet Southern accent. And I realize I really miss hearing people say "y'all" up in Cincy. (Of course, for the past day or so of the trip, I've been struggling unsuccessfully against sliding into a southern accent myself. At one point, we had pulled over to get gas, and across the little intersection with the gas station was what looked like a freshly plowed cotton field. There was still tufts of fluffy white cotton fibers stuck in the fence. I told the Jedi I wanted to "hop out an get me some of that". The Jedi cracked up and said, "Will you listen to yourself?")

As delicious, oh so delicious, as our steak dinner was, at the end of the meal, I experienced a major, heartbreakingly dissappointing moment. All dinners came with a free piece of cobbler. Today's choices were apple or peach. The Jedi and the kids all went for the apple. I went for the peach. I took a bite, and I about cried. It was by far, the most delicious peach cobbler I have ever in my life tasted. It was, and here is the heart-break, it was better than Mammaw's. I made sure to tell them how unfair that was when I filled out a comment card at the end of the meal.

At the far end of the parking lot away from the restaurant was a pen of Texas long-horn steer. We couldn't be in Texas and not go see the long horns. The long horns were happily munching on their hay, so we quietly walked towards them.

The long horns immediately stopped munching on their hay, and fixed us with the most piercing stare I have ever encountered on an animal. Doberman pinchers ain't got nothing on long horns when it comes to a fierce looking stare. I can see why some native tribes nicknamed the long horns the "devil cows."

Needless to say, we stopped walking over to see the longhorns. I used the telephoto lens on the camera to zoom in, and we stayed well way from them. Herbivores my butt. I bet they get fed the raw trimmings from the restaurants kitchen. (The camera doesn't have a setting for "evil", so the complete fear factor doesn't really translate into a picture.)

There was a warning sign for the stupid. I have to say, if you are that stupid that you need a sign to not mess with these animals, you are probably also to stupid to read and pay attention to a sign.

We reached our hotel in Oklahoma City at 10:03. I didn't have any nightmares about the devil steers.

Read from Day One
Back to Day 15
On to Day 17

Day 15: Impact!

2011-06-25T14:13:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, May 10

There was frost on the windshield as we headed out to the van at 7:28. It was a brisk 33 degrees, with an expected high in Flagstaff of 47 and 64 in Alberquerque, our destination for the night. More gropple fell as we left the Grand Canyon.

Driving south down the Arizona highway, the Jedi spotted two cowboys on horseback, traversing their range. I wasn't quick enough to get them on camera, but I did get some of the country side.

And a little piece of road side Americana.

Our first stop was the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. This was ranked number one on Sweetlings list of things to see during our return trip. As we pulled into the observatory, its gates proclaimed it as "Home of Pluto."

We arrived at 9:30, and had sometime to explore the small science center before the first tour started.

One of my favorite displays was a small tube that you could look through that framed lights which were suspended from the ceiling to form the big dipper. Then, the display challenged you to walk to a different spot and look at the same set of lights. The lights were all hung to represent the stars distance from Earth. Viewed from Earth, they look like the Big Dipper we recognized, from elsewhere, of course they didn't. It really helped Toa understand that concept much better than I ever could with words alone.

And of course, having a piece of the huge meteorite which had formed Meteor Crater was also very cool.

We gathered by the info desk for the tour, and the tour guide was asking us where we were from. I thought we would win the prize for distance traveled, but no, the family of three who was standing next to us were from England!

Lowell itself isn't used as a scientific research station anymore. Even though nearby Flagstaff has enacted strict lighting ordinances to minimize the light pollution, its still too much for the sensitive equipment today's astronomy needs. Instead, the Lowell scientists have a few different, more removed, locations where the actual research is conducted. As they were relocating equipment to those locations, the casing for one of the telescopes was too heavy to be transported across the unpaved roads. It would sink the truck it was on into the earth. So, the casing was left behind, and a new casing was forged at the new location.

The founder of the observatory was Percival Lowell. He came from a wealthy, well-educated family, who believed each of their offspring should find some way to make a contribution to better the world. So, Percival, who was interested in Mars, went west to find a spot to found an observatory to study our nearby planetary neighbor.

He dedicated his life to astronomy, and when he passed, he was entombed on the hill...

....right beside his original observatory.

The observatory is open a couple nights a week for the public to come in for a stargazing session. We weren't able to be in town on one of those nights, but learning about the observatory, its history and construction, was fascinating.

One of my favorite stories was the construction of the roof. Percival Lowell went into Flagstaff, which was at the time, still a very rural Western town. He saw a sign in the window of a bicycle shop which advertised "We can build anything." Percival went inside, and took the brothers who owned the shop up on their claim. They set to work building and designing the large domed roof of the observatory.

At first the roof rotated on huge cast iron wheels and required several strong men to move the roof around so that the door opened to reveal the appropriate slice of sky. Later, when electricity came to Flagstaff and to Lowell, small motors replaced the manual operation, but they had to be plugged in, unplugged, then replugged, as the roof rotated to different positions. Occasionally, someone would forget to unplug a motor in time, and a cord would get ripped out, generating dangerous sparks inside an old pine timber building.

One of the other attempts at designing a system to move the roof on was a narrow canal full of water built at the top of the side walls that the roof was supposed to float in on little pontoon feet. However, the water would get sloshed over the sides of the canal and saturate the wooden walls of the observatory, causing water damage and risking rotting or warping the wood.

Today, the roof rests on a series of large tractor wheels. The wheels themselves are stationary, and several of them are connected to motors. When the motors are turned on, those wheels turn, and the whole roof turns on top of the tractor wheels.

Our guide described all this and demonstrated how the roof would spin around, how the large doors would open, and how the telescope could be turned and aligned for viewing. Against the side of the observatory was the chair and ladder arrangement used for viewing objects when they were close to the horizon (which required a more horizontal position of the telescope.

The Lowell Observatory telescope was also one of the first in the world to be outfitted with a camera, and the first to take a picture of Hailey's comment. I would never have recognized the bronze tube enclosed in its glass case as a camera, but that's what it was.

After our awesome tour of the inside of the observatory, we spent some time in the gift shop, before hitting the road again at 11:20.

Our next stop was Toa's top pick for the return trip, Meteor Crater. Located in the country outside of Winslow Arizona, the land was flat cattle ranches,

and yet still at 1600 meters in elevation. I was also impressed by the weird, molten looking, red rock that filled the land. It was the perfect set for some low budget science fiction movie. Or the filming of an old Star Trek episode.

So, flat, cows, molten red alien rocks, high elevations, Captain Kirk, and, just in case all that wasn't enough, possible Indian ruins on the horizon.

Oh, and a giant impact crater. Let's not forget that.

Meteor Crater, if I remember correctly, is still privately owned.

It was used for astronaut training during the Apollo missions to the moon and it retains its strong connection to the astronaut program.

This wall of plagues represents the names of all the American astronauts who have flown in one of our space missions, the first column of three plaques, the top plaque of the second column, and the first four names of the middle plaque all the names of all the astronauts who flew in all the programs before the space shuttle. ALL those other names, all of them, were astronauts who flew as part of our shuttle program.

Inside, we learned that the rim walk tour had been canceled due to some dangerously high winds, but we had fun watching a short film about the Crater, and participating in a brief question and answer session about meteors, craters, and impacts.

And, of course, we had to ham it up a little in front of a "bottom of the crater" photo op wall.

Outside, the first thing we learned was that distance was deceptive. See that tiny little white spot at the middle of the crater? See the fence surrounding the remains of a mine shaft? No, that's ok, it's a tall chain link fence, so probably hard to spot in the photo. How about the six foot tall astronaut and the 3'x5' American flag next to him? You can see those, right? No? Don't feel bad. I couldn't either with my naked eye. That's right, to clearly see a man at the bottom of the crater, you need binoculars. That's how far away the bottom is, how deep and big this crater really is.

Even when we went up to the upper viewing platform and could see the people on the lower one, it still doesn't give the proper sense of perspective.

We had learned during the presentation inside that one reason meteor crater was really valuable to the astronaut training program was the unique way the rock layers get flipped at an impact sight. The scientists wanted to collect some rocks from deeper down in the lunar crust, to see what traces of metals and minerals might be buried on the moon. However, sending up drilling equipment to obtain rocks from a hundred or more feet under the surface would be too expensive, too impractical, and too dangerous to be feasible. However, at the sight of an impact, the rock layers are flipped. The upper rock crust gets buried by lower layers that are flipped over by the force of the impact. NASA brought the astronauts to Meteor Crater in Arizona to train them to be able to recognize this flipping, so that they could distinguish the proper types of craters on the moon, and collect rock samples that represent the lower layers of the lunar crust.

Here, you can see the red rock which is the surface rock of Arizona, which we stared at for miles on the drive to the crater. On top of it, the paler rock of a layer that had been flipped over at impact.

Or, if you are Toa, you can just climb around on the red rock layer.

We stayed at the Crater till 2pm. From the Crater, it was a short drive to Winslow, which began our tour of a few more of the Historic 66 sites.

Also of note, I managed to get through the whole day without singing, or excessively humming, the line from that Eagle's song. Otherwise, I might have found myself standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona watching the van drive away without me. There is a 'Standing on the Corner" Park in Winslow, but we did not make a detour to see it.

What we did visit in Winslow was La Posada Inn, another building by architect Mary Colter.

Since the Inn still operates as a hotel and a restaurant, we didn't go intrude upon the interior of the building, but we did enjoy wandering through the beautiful gardens.

I love secret gardens.

Especially when they contain beautiful settings like this.

From Winslow, we drove a short distance to Holbrook, where we drove through the parking lot of the famous Wigwam Motel.

They did a great job of finding several classic cars to display with the Wigwams. It also looked like at least a few of the wigwams were still in use as rooms that could be rented. Have you slept in a Wigwam lately?

The Jedi was thrilled to see a Studebaker. (I don't even know what a Studebaker is.)

And, of course, they had to play up the Cars theme.

We ate a late lunch, early dinner at Joe & Aggie's Cafe.

It was a great little place with good food, big servings, and excellent and friendly service. The Jedi tried several different flavors of Jones' soda. I ordered and managed to finish a huge "Navajo Taco".

After stuffing ourselves with yummy food, we headed out toward Toa's second most anticipated stop, one of Arizona's famous 'rock shops'....Jim Grey's Petrified Wood.

On the way, we happened to pass by a street named "Bucket of Blood Road." No kidding, that's what was on the street sign. Sweetling happened to spot it, and we all took a turn speculating on how it might have gotten such a name.

The rock shop was a little boy's dream come true. In addition to the fountain, gold fish pond, and spacious planter area in the center of the shop, the place had aisle after aisle after aisle of all sorts of rocks, minerals, fossils, and carvings, furniture, windchimes, knick knacks, bowls, and decorative items made from petrified wood, precious stones, crystals, and what have you.

It was just amazing. We bought several souvenirs for other people in here. (I bought small torquoise cross pendents for the girls in my small group.) Toa got his very own, break it open when you get home, geode. That, as far as he was concerned, was one of the best parts of the trip. If we had had 5 to 10K to spend on a table, plus the several hundred it would have cost to have it shipped home, we would have gotten a big petrified wood coffee tables. Those were just beyond gorgeous.

We finally managed to drag ourselves out of the store, past the cool classic car in the parking lot, and were on our way again.

Our goal was to drive through the petrified forest, making one short hike along the Giant Logs trail, and then drive north through the park to see the painted dessert at sunset.

It turned out to be a great plan.

The Giant Logs trail was a perfect short hike. There was plenty to see and experience as it made a loop through the park's highest concentration of petrified wood.

The high winds were still blowing strong, and the temperatures had dropped, so we were happy the hike was a short one.

We drove through the park, taking a couple of photos of the 'petrified dunes' as we passed them.

And reached the painted dessert just at sunset.

Another Mary Colter creation, the Painted Desert Inn, sits perched on the edge of these lovely dunes.

Even the dry desert vegetation seemed to light up in the evening sun.

We finally had to tear ourselves away from this...

...and this...

....and head back to the highway.

Read from Day 1
Back to Day 14
On to Day 16

Day 14: How Deep; How Wide

2011-06-25T08:27:00.002-05:00

(Yes, this post took forever to actually assemble. Mostly because we took well over 200 photos, and I was simply overwhelmed when it came time to sort through them select a few of them, then rename them, resize them, and upload them where appropriate in the story.)

Monday, May 9

Let me say how cool it is that the Jedi snagged us rooms inside Grand Canyon National Park. No, we weren't in the famous hotel that is right on the edge of the canyon and that books up a year or two in advance and costs an arm and leg, but still, we were inside the park, and that was really cool.

We got in after dark the night before. It was only 9:30, so it wasn't too late, but still, the winding park roads were pitch dark through a pine forest. Our Tom-Tom couldn't figure out where we were, and we nearly didn't either. We eventually found the little building where we checked in, and then drove to our room in Yavapai Lodge.

The morning turned out to be much chillier than we had anticipated, 42 degrees, overcast, and a little windy. The Jedi brought in the "extra" bin which had extra long pants for each of us. We layered our clothes and wore some windbreakers and headed out. In the parking lot, we encountered more of that weird, round, pellet snow like we had seen at Colorado National Monument.

Our first stop was the visitor's center to talk with a ranger and come up with a game plan. We wanted to do a little bit of hiking, but we wanted to make sure we were on a short, kid-friendly trail. There was a rim trail, but our experience with a rim trail in Hocking Hills turned out to be rather scary, and we didn't want a repeat of that, especially at the Grand Canyon.

We had read about the number of people that need to be rescued from the depths of the Grand Canyon. Two hundred and fifty a year, in fact. Most of them are young, healthy men who attempt to hike down to the river and back in one day. There were warnings and cautions everywhere about NOT attempting that. "Do not underestimate the Grand Canyon," was even in the little info binder in our hotel room. And of course, everywhere were also cautions about making sure to drink water and to carry water with you. So, in addition to layering our clothes, we each had a large, full water bottle and carried a few snacks. The kids carried their waterbottles and their snacks in small backpacks they had received just for this hike. I also threw a little first aid kit in Toa's backpack. Between that and checking with the ranger, we felt ready for the Canyon.

While we were at the visitor center, I asked the ranger about the weird, round pellet snow. The ranger said the snow was called gropple, and also affectionately referred to as "styrofoam snow". He said it's only noticeable at higher elevations. What happens is that in the upper level of a cloud, a perfectly normal 6-pointed snowflake forms. As it falls, it passes through a slightly warmer pocket of air and it partially melts, just enough for the points of the snowflake to dissolve in on itself. Then it hits another cold pocket of air and refreezes. It falls then as this tiny little round pellet of snow. The same phenomena might also happen at lower elevations, but at lower elevations, the gropple melts and turns into rain before it can fall all the way to the ground.

At the ranger's suggestion, we took the shuttle bus to the South Kaibab Trail. A few pictures were taken at the top, on a little outcropping, but the cloud cover was so low that most of the view of the canyon was obscured. The Jedi and I were really worried that if the weather stayed like it was, we wouldn't really get a chance to see the Canyon.

Our intention was to hike down to the first lookout point on the trail, called "Ooh Ahh Point", and then turn around and hike back. The top of the trail had a sign warning about ice on the trail and recommending the use of crampons. We decided if we got to an icy point, we would turn around and come back. Near us was a couple speaking French having a similar discussion about the possibility of ice on the trail.

All suited up, we headed down.

At the first switch back on the trail was a sign instructing hikers to stay to the inside of the trail if a mule train was coming through.

We could see our destination from this point as well.

Sadly, the obscuring cloud cover made "Ooh Aah" Point rather underwhelming.

So we decided to hike down a few more switchbacks just for fun.

Our endeavor began to pay off. As we hiked down the trail, two things began to happen. We went under the cloud cover, and could therefore glimpse a little more of the canyon...

....and, the morning sun began to break through the cloud cover, lighting up the rock ridge we were hiking along.

And of course, if there was a flower, which there was, you know I had to photograph it, which I did.

We think, based off the map we saw in the visitors' center, we were hiking along a stretch of trail called Cedar Ridge. It seemed like each piece of the trail might reveal something new if we just kept going a little bit further. We had left the steep series of switchbacks, and were now hiking along a genle, nearly level, downhill slope. The Jedi wisely pointed out that we could really fool ourselves at this point and get into some real danger. Since it was so easy and pleasant to hike along this trail, the temptation was to just continue hiking for a while. We could have easily hiked much further into the canyon without realizing how far from the edge we had really gone. Even though we had snacks and a large, full water bottle for each person, we knew hiking too deep in the canyon would make for a potentially dangerous and certainly exhausting ordeal to hike back out of the canyon. Since we wanted this experience to be memorable in a good way, we picked a spot we could see on the trail ahead and agreed that no matter what we could almost see when we got there, that would be our turn around point.

But, can you agree with me that scenes like this were very difficult to turn our back on and walk away?

We hiked to our turn around point and had a short water and snack break. Look at what good sports my children are about having their picture taken on the trail. I, of course, couldn't see their faces in the little view screen of my camera, so I'm treated to this after we get all the pictures downloaded. I love their sense of humor.

Then we turned around and hiked back. Let me tell you how glad I am that we did so. I was sucking some serious air as we huffed back up all those switchbacks. We stopped periodically to catch our (ok, just mine really) breaths as we got to a bend that was wide enough to step off the trail for a moment.

And we made it back to the top, where we had a restroom stop and a snack and drink break while we sat on the rocks waiting for the next shuttle bus to come by. The shuttles ran every 15 minutes or so, so we didn't have to wait long.

Because the shuttles came by so frequently we could get off whenever we wanted and check out some of the other overlooks before we went back to the visitors' center where our van was parked.

We drove out of the park for lunch, and got some fast food so that we could eat lunch in the car on the hour long drive over to the watchtower. Surprisingly, we saw two other Ohio license plates in the Wendy's parking lot...some of the only other Ohio plates we have seen on the trip. Sweetling said, "What, is Wendy's some sort of Mecca for Ohioans?"

As we drove up to the Watchtower, we were reminded that we were indeed in mountain lion territory.

And, as we drove, we made stops at the overlooks. It was just awesome to stand there, hold the Jedi's hand, and marvel at what was before us.

We got our first glimpse of the Colorado River.

The Jedi said he'd be very tempted to try an overnight hike, just to get down there and back, if it weren't for the thought of spending the night outdoors in mountain lion country. I have to agree with him on that point.

Sweetling took several pictures on her new 3DS. She had saved her money, and sold her old DSi just so she could bring the 3DS on the trip with her to take some 3D pictures of the Grand Canyon. They turned out really cool, but of course, I can't share them here. If you see her, you have to ask her to share them with you.

This is our destination in the distance.

The Watchtower was designed by Mary Colter, and has a remarkable story behind its construction. I was delighted in its design and attention to detail in the rocks chosen.

We went out to the point of the lookout....

...and explored the patio of the watchtower....

....before going inside to explore the gift shop.

The interior of the Watchtower was beautifully painted...

...and we spent a good deal of time climbing up through the levels.

Our visit to the Watchtower was a nice end cap to our day. We headed back to our rooms for snacks and showers and a little bit of downtime. It was our intention to then take the shuttles out to the western edges of the park to see the sunset. We did, but the clouds had come back, and there was no sunset to be seen.

There were however, many elk.

We were much closer to some of the elk than this, since a group of about 9-15 were strolling and grazing calm as you please along both sides of the road. It was, in my opinion, far too close to comfort, especially after our buffalo encounter on Antelope Island. So, we refrained from taking any pictures when we were nearer the elk.

After spending some time, cold and miserable, on a western lookout waiting for a sunset that didn't happen, we headed out of the park hoping to find a reasonably priced dinner option at a restaurant in the nearby town. Strangely, the selection was rather limited. We wound up at We Cook Pizza and Pasta, whose name pretty much sums up the dining experience.

Back in our room, we played a few rounds of Space Munchkin before turning in for the night.

Read from Day 1
Back to Day 13
On to Day 15

Think Tank

2011-06-23T13:05:00.001-05:00

I had this brilliant idea in the middle of the night. (That is the hour that genius strikes, correct?)

A couple of years ago, when Toa first started showing an interest in chess, I tried starting our school day with a simple pawn game or chess puzzle. That worked well for a while, but then began to quagmire for lack of variety OR because simple chess puzzles evolved into full out games which meant no other school was getting done before lunch.

I want to reinstate this practice in some form. Not in the same form, obviously, since that hadn't worked out so well for us. But, I still feel that starting the day with a little brain stimulating exercise has merit.

The solution? (I hope.)

The Think Tank

The Think Tank shall be a container containing a pocket folder for each child, as well as other materials, to be rotated in and out. In the folders each week shall be five challenges, puzzles, brain teasers, math word problems, tangrams, or other activities.

At 8 o'clock (hey, I was nearly dreaming), the Think Tank comes out. Each child picks one challenge from their folder. If they solve it in 5 minutes, fine. If they take 30 minutes and its still not solved, fine. If they finish before 8:30, they may have some free choice time to read, draw, or do any other approved activity.

If they spend the full time on it, and need more time, they'll have to wait and come back to it either the following day or later in their free time if they'd like to. (Or, they can put it away, curse Fibonacci and his rabbits, and never look at it again that week.) After 15 minutes of working on it, they can ask for help if they'd like some. OR after 15 minutes, they can change their mind and pick a different challenge. But I think we are going to set the rule that you must try to solve it yourself for 15 minutes.

With that in mind, I'm starting to scour the internet for challenges that can be printed and put in the Think Tank folders.

Here are a few chess puzzles. I like these online chess puzzles as well. I've just given myself permission to put online link cards in the Think Tank folder.

Here's a great list of sites which have different brain teasers for kids. And here's a similar list for gifted teens.

And a few more sites with brainteasers.

Math problems just for Sweetling. Fibonacci and his rabbits are not alone.

A scattering of logic or math problems for Toa. And more kids math puzzles.

I have a workbook of Daily Language Workouts which I can toss in for Sweetling.

And of course, a regular Lego Challenge needs to go in for Toa.

Teenager in the House

2011-06-21T06:56:00.001-05:00

When I got married, I could cook three things. I could, thanks to Mammaw, make an awesome fruit pie from scratch. I could make a packet of ramen noodles. I could heat up a can of soup or a can of ravioli. That was pretty much the extent of my cooking skills. Notice boiling spaghetti didn't make the list.

To make sure Susan enters adulthood with better cooking and better life skills than I did, I want to take one afternoon a week to do either a home ec class or another life skills class.

Here are, in no particular order, the things I want to make sure she can do before she turns 18. Some of these, obviously, will wait till she's of driving age. Some of things I haven't mastered, but are still good things to be able to do.

cook several different, healthy dinners
plan a weekly menu and grocery list that stays within a budget
know how to safely store foods (how to freeze, shelf life, etc)
know how to read and understand food labels
sew from a pattern
mend and repair garments
put in a hem
check and change the oil in a car
check other fluids in a car
jump a dead car battery
change a tire
read a map
get a driver's license
budget income and living expenses
balance a checkbook
troubleshoot a computer
remove spyware
add memory
replace a harddrive
install an operating system
protect her personal safety
recognize red flags in relationships
recognize red flags in financial deals and offers
plan, plant, and tend a vegetable garden
plan and manage a weekly schedule
plan and manage a home
be proficient in minor home repairs
volunteer in a variety of services
plan and co-ordinate an event
know how to complete a job application
know how to put together a resume and a portfolio
know how to conduct herself on a job interview
know how to dress professionally

Are there any areas which I am missing?

I'm looking at doing a home ec cooking class this year, perhaps teaming up with another mom who wants to do a sewing class. But, I think I might have her look over the list and pick what she wants to work on first.

My wonderful sister sent me this great link for Jamie's Home Cooking Skills.

Getting Organized

2011-06-20T08:21:00.000-05:00

Warning.

This is a boring post.

Despite my friend Insight's lovely compliment, there are some subjects that no amount of snarky comments on my part can liven up.

Schedules are one of them.

I have a love/hate relationship with schedules. I love the sense of control and calm order that they bring. I hate the dose of cold hard reality I have to swallow when I'm first forming them.

We start school on August 8. I spent some time last week making my final curriculum choices and patching together a basic weekly schedule.

All the experts I have read on organization and home and time management have said that one should have a basic plan for the week in place. Women who have their act together recommend a day for errands, a day for laundry and housework, a day for desk work, a day for baking, etc. Women who have their act together also recommend a basic menu plan that dovetails with the basic week plan. Since my act more often resembles mayhem at the circus, I'm trying to heed the advice of others.

Here's what I got:

...	Main Focus	Afternoon	Dinner	Evening
Sunday	Church & Family	moderate cleaning	big family dinner	pack for co-op
Monday	Co-op	library	casserole or crock pot dinner	counseling or family night
Tuesday	School	Home Ec Class	new foods and recipes	Tae Kwon Do
Wednesday	School	grocery shopping	quick and easy meal	Church
Thursdary	School and Laundry	Deep Cleaning	breakfast for dinner	Tae Kwon Do
Friday	School	something fun	family favorites	more fun stuff
Saturday	Free Day	free	leftovers or dinner w friends	free

Now, here's the problems with this schedule. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi.

Home Ed Class is the day BEFORE my grocery shopping day. This is going to be a problem, cause I'll need specific ingredients for the cooking part of this class. I would prefer to switch those two days, but I'm co-ordinating with another mom, so it's not all about me.
No, I can't switch library and grocery shopping. We're at co-op from 9 am till 3:30 pm. I can't try to tack a two hour grocery trip on the end of our co-op day. It's just not happening.
I've got a deep cleaning day on Thursday, which is sparring night at Tae Kwon Do. I'd rather have some easier activities on the afternoon before sparring night, so I'm not exhausted before I even get to class. But, I don't see another day to switch it to, so?
I'd love to have some time to blog and write during the week. I usually don't feel like blogging or writing on Saturday. Friday afternoon is a possibility, but a slim one.
I don't have a whole lot of time between the end of school and dinnertime on any day. I'm worried that the activities I do have slated for the afternoon are going to be totally unrealistic and I'm going to be frantic and getting dinner on the table late three nights of the week.

Here is my basic school day schedule. Click on it to enlarge the image. I'm finished with my teaching part by 3pm, but I need to have dinner on the table by 5pm. See the time crunch problem with the afternoon activities?

Riddle me this, Batman

2011-06-10T07:16:00.000-05:00

Let's pretend that a certain family went on vacation for three weeks. Let's pretend they ate very well for those three weeks, and that, aside from a few hikes, they didn't get a lot of exercise. Let's pretend that three of the family members gained a little weight. (One member stayed her sweet and lean junior black belt self.)

Let's pretend that this week, one member of the family decided she was getting back to running. Let's pretend that she also severely limited her sweets for the week. Severely. Like one single cup of hot chocolate for the week instead of one each morning and one each night and no desserts, with two small exceptions. That's severe.

Let's pretend this person also jogged for 30 minutes every morning this week.

So then, please tell me, purely hypothetically speaking of course, how it could be remotely possible that every single morning this week, the Wii Fit has been recording this persons weight as increasing slightly every day? Really? How is that possible?

More importantly, how is that even remotely fair????

WFMW: Lego Quest

2011-06-02T13:20:00.001-05:00

We are on a token system in the summertime. Which means, that to watch TV or play video games, my kids need to have some tokens to cash in. Its a pretty simple and straightforward system, if it wasn't, I could never stick with it. Here's how it works, in case you missed it.

One of the thing on our blue list for earning tokens is "building"...with the stipulation that the building be appropriately challenging. We have an awesome construction kit, but it requires a lot of adult guidance. I was looking for some building challenges that Toa could tackle all on his own.

I found this awesome blog called Lego Quest.

It looks like the blog takes a break during the summer, but that's ok. We went back to quest #1 and just started from the beginning. (Ok, I lied. Technically, we went back to quest #2. The first quest was "build a car". Toa proclaimed that he built lots of cars all the time and that this was not new or challenging.)

Quest #2 is monochromatic.

Pick a colour, any colour, and use only that colour of Lego.

Build anything. The sky is the limit. A structure, a sculpture, functional, non-functional, anything at all, but you can only use one colour!

Toa went off to build the Statue of Liberty.

I'll post a photo up when he is done.

I really love the list of quest ideas on Lego Quest site. It Works for Me!

WFMW: Electronic Game Tokens

2011-05-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

I've seen a few friends on Facebook asking for advice on what to do about kids video games and TV time in the summer.

Here's what Works For Me.

1. Keep them busy. (Yeah, I know this is easier said than done, but bear with me here.)

Make a list with the kids of activities and outings. Plan at least one a week. (Here's how that works for us.)
Have a regular library day.
Check into free programs offered by your local park and local library. Have the kids tell you which ones they are interested in.
Get around to doing some of those "someday" projects together....plant a garden, make your own salsa, build a model, paint that old bookcase, learn a craft, etc.

2. Keep a routine.

Have a morning and afternoon list of chores, just like you do during the school year. (Here's how we get our chores done and make it fun!)
Have regular day for library, park, swimming, or other weekly activities.
Keep a weekly calendar on your fridge. Write the plans for each day on it.

3. Keep electronics in check.

And now we get to what this post is all about. Here's my token system for balancing electronics with other, more mind engaging, activities. We used this last summer, and it worked great.

It worked so great in fact, that my kids expected it this summer.

To enact this system, here is what you need:

two sets of tokens, one red and one blue. I found a pack of bulletin board border at the dollar store with red and blue stars on it. I cut the stars out and voila. Plastic card chips (like for poker) would also work.
one basket for each color token.
two jars or cups for each child. One is their "bank" and should stay in their room. One is a "deposit box" and should stay in the kitchen, office, or family room (whatever tends to be your 'command center').
stickers for decorating the "banks" and "deposit boxes", including some way to put each child's name on each of those two items.
a TIMER! This can be on your stove, on your microwave, on your phone, or a small kitchen timer. I'd recommend more than one.

Here's how it works.

At least fifteen minutes of a pre-approved activity equals ONE token. I don't round up and I don't let them "save" extra minutes. Keep it SIMPLE or you will be overwhelmed. If a child reads for 23 minutes, the child still gets ONE token. If the child paints for 37 minutes, the child gets TWO tokens. See how that works?

When a child receives tokens, they go in that child's bank in their room. Any tokens I find on the table, floor, etc, are mine again.

TWO tokens may be turned in for thirty minutes of electronic entertainment. Three for 45 minutes, and four for an hour, etc. I don't let them cash in a single token for just fifteen minutes. Ever try to get a child off a computer or a video game system after just fifteen minutes? It's ridiculous. I just don't go there. I haven't yet had a need to limit how many tokens they can turn in at once. If they hand me 8 tokens, I don't have a problem with them goofing off for two hours, if it fits in the schedule already in place for that day.

Physical exercise and activity earns RED tokens. Creative or mentally engaging activities earn BLUE tokens. Yes, we make a distinction. Keep reading and you'll learn why.

On any day, three RED tokens must be turned in before any BLUE tokens may be turned in. This keeps my kids active and healthy.

Tokens that are turned in for electronic time go in that child's "deposit box" in the kitchen. That lets me keep track of how many red tokens have already been turned in from each child.

Already scheduled activities, like library trips, nature hikes, and tae kwon do, DO earn tokens. So, if we go hiking for an hour, I give each child four red tokens when we get home. If we are at the library for half an hour, that's two blue tokens when we get home.

The list of pre-approved activities for each kind of token is written on an appropriate colored index card and posted in the kitchen. The kids help me brainstorm the list of activities and that really cuts out arguments and debate later.

The kids are responsible for making note of when they started and stopped each activity. I've got other things to do than be everyone's personal secretary. If they can come to me and say, "I started reading at 2:10 and now its 2:56, may I have my tokens?" They get two tokens. If they say, "I've been working on this drawing for a while." But have no idea how long a "while" is, they get just one token. (Even a child who can't tell time can write down a numbers from a digital clock face. Keep a small pad of paper by your microwave for this purpose.)

When tokens are turned in for electronic time, the kids must set a timer and abide by it. Once again, I'm not into being a personal secretary for an eight year old.

A list of free activities is written on a green note card and kept with the activity list as well. These can include the electronic games which you decide have some redeeming value. Or creative writing on the computer, or a specific educational program.

On Saturdays and Sundays, we do not use the token system....provided bedrooms are clean and other assigned tasks have been accomplished. Also, I can suspend the token system at will. (Like if I need to run an errand by myself and am leaving Sweetling as the babysitter. Free wii time, baby.)

Tokens can be lost for whining, arguing, poor behavior at a store, etc.

At the end of each day, tokens that are in the "deposit boxes" in the kitchen (ie--the ones they have redeemed for electronic time) go back to my stash. Tokens which are still in their banks in their bedrooms they may keep to use another day. I do not set a limit on how much tokens they are saving up.

Here are some of our "pre-approved" activities for each kind of token. You may use this list as a start, but I recommend sitting down and brainstorming your own list with your children. They are more likely to be on board with the program if they have had some input.

Red Tokens:

Wii Fit
Wii Outdoor Challenge
Tae Kwon Do
swimming
hiking
biking
jumping rope
gardening

Blue Tokens:

reading
art and drawing
writing stories, poems, letters
making a card
construction sets
puzzle books (like sudoku and crosswords)
research
crafts
designing (castle plans, spaceships, fashion)
cooking
sewing
chess
library or park programs

Free Activities:

Wii Big Brain Academy
Wii Music
watching TV while jogging on the trampoline
puzzles
toys
babysitting time

And that's what Works for Me! Hope you find it helpful!

Check out other ideas on We Are THAT Family.

Day 13: Old West

2011-05-08T23:59:00.001-05:00

Since we spent the evening doing laundry, we had to repack a couple of our clothing bins this morning. We didn’t get out of the hotel till 9:40. It was chillier this morning than yesterday, only 66 degrees with an expected high in the low seventies. This shot is taken from our hotel balcony this morning. See how we were suffering?

We drove just half an hour to Calico Ghost Town.

I loved all the costumed characters.

We spent a little time shopping in the stores and pressing pennies.

At one point our browsing was interrupted by a gun fight going on outside. I herded both the kids out to watch, but Sweetling quickly went back inside to escape the noise. Toa and I stayed to watch the drama. At the end of the fight, the dead men got back up and took a bow, the players introduced themselves, and then the sheriff invited all the kids to come forward and get sworn in as deputies. Toa scored a cool metal sheriff’s star.

It wasn't enough to keep him out of jail.

We also spent some time panning for gold, which was one of Toa’s wish list items for the trip.

And the kids made rope with period tools and methods.

Sadly, the real mine tour was closed,

But we did get to take a short train ride.

The tracks took us past some old miner’s shacks.

As well as a few of the many mine openings.

Under the hills around Calico there are nearly thirty miles of tunnels on fourteen levels.

The mine shafts were too small for any animals to pull carts, so the miners pushed and pulled the tiny little carts around the tunnels by hand. (I wish I had something near the cart for a scale reference. When the train went past it, I thought it was just a prop, it was too small to be taken seriously. But it was an actual recovered mine cart.)

The area is completely dry. When the town was still operating as a mining town, barrels of water had to be shipped in. Still the dessert hills were lovely in their own right.

In the fields were the round remains of when the Native Americans used the hills to collect the many colors of clay and minerals they used for their pottery.

When we got off the train, we took a few minutes to climb the hillside and explore the inside of the houses that remained.

I was surprised at how tiny they were. I didn’t take any pictures in the more intact houses, since they were so small and dark inside.

I got a glimpse of a lizard on the walk back to town, but he was much too fast for me to photograph.

Back in town, we took a moment to check out the bottle house, built in 1950 when the town was privately owned, but a popular feature despite its non-historic nature.

And I made the kids sit still for a picture. I'm so mean that way.

We ended the day having lunch in a saloon, complete with swinging wooden doors and a big mirrored mantel behind the bar. Personally, I got a giggle out of the fact that I took the kids to a saloon on Mother’s Day.

We spent a total of four hours in the ghost town, and yet, I was constantly glimpsing some other cool thing to look at.

Still, we weren’t sorry to leave the dry air and the blowing dirt behind when it was time to go. I couldn’t imagine living there in the late 1800s with no water except the barrels that were shipped in.

We stopped in Needles, California to get the oil changed on the van. We had put 3700 miles on it since leaving Cincy, so it was do. While the van was being serviced we went to the Jack in the Box next door for an early dinner. We need a Jack in the Box chain in Cincy. It beats Steak N Shake hands down.

On the road from Calico to Needles, and from Needles to Kingston, I sat in the back with the kids. We turned the middle seats around and popped the table up and spent a good 3 hours playing with and doing the activities in Cranium’s Big Book of Outrageous Fun.

A bit of our drive today took us past a few Rt 66 stops. I didn’t grab many pictures, but I nabbed a few.

Now that we’re on the return leg of our journey, the Jedi suggested we make a few notes of lessons we have learned, so “we know what to do differently in a year or two when we take another road trip.”

The sun went down around 7:30, and we popped some penguin episodes in for the last part of the drive.

Read from Day 1
Back to Day 12
On to Day 14

Day 12: The Mother Road

2011-05-07T22:30:00.001-05:00

After our awful night, we were slow getting started this morning. The breakfast area was pretty crowded. It had no hot breakfast option other than waffles. It only had one worker staffing the overcrowded, overbusy location, and she wasn’t very friendly or helpful (though, that might be due to being over worked and stressed.) And yes, I’m entitled to whine, because normally this particular hotel chain has great service, very nice rooms, and a decent hot breakfast buffet. I was really unpleasantly surprised at these lacks in this particular location.

Anyway, on the road we got, just slightly before ten instead of our intended 9am. We had to make a stop for some product to help de-odorize the van from last night’s mishap.

Our second unpleasant surprise of the morning was that though google maps put our next destination at just over four hours away, our Tom Tom was now telling us it was going to take nearly five and a half hours to get there. Since our next stop closed at 4pm, this was a concern. (And experience had proved the TomTom’s time estimations were more accurate than Google maps).

We decided to drive like the Californians did, which was to put greater priority on the flow of traffic than the posted speed limit. (Which wasn’t that hard to do, since there were very few speed limits posted.) We also skipped a lunch stop. Greasy fast food would have been asking for trouble anyway.

After our wonderful lesson on how to throw up in a paper bag, Toa laid down in the bag seat and Sweetling took the clean middle seat and we kept the windows down for a little while to give our deodorizer time to work.

We passed around the healthy snack bag a couple of times through the drive. Toa slept for a few hours and woke up his normal perky self. (He is currently throwing stuffed animals around the hotel room while the Jedi, Sweetling and I are all on laptops and netbooks.)

We hit Barstow California at ten after three and headed for the Route 66 Museum.

The museum was small, but packed full of nostalgia items.

The Jedi loved the classic Mustang,

But I preferred the Model T.

Complete with a "Horseless Carriage" license plate.

Personally, I loved that many of the items in their collection came with a narrative often told by the individual who had donated the item.

Including the old telephone switchboard. The first telephone operator said that she used to bring her knitting in to work on between calls, because there were so few phones in Barstow, she didn’t have much to do.

The Jedi talked to the couple manning the front desk. They had been from Cleveland, but had moved to California 10 years ago. As we were signing the visitors book, we noticed that someone from Norway had also signed in that day. The couple we were talking with said yes, the Norwegians sometimes had their motorcycles shipped to Chicago. Then they would fly to Chicago and ride their motorcycles down Historic 66 all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica, and then they would have their motorcycles shipped back to Norway and fly home. As we were leaving, someone from France was just coming in and going up to the counter. The Jedi thought I should practice my French and chat with him, but I went mind blank.

For dinner, we headed over to Denapoli’s Firehouse Italian Restaurant.

It was very nice. Good food, generous portions, super attentive and friendly waitress, and a bunch of old firehouse memorabilia. We stuffed ourselves to the gills. I tried to take some pictures of the big old pump on the second landing, but couldn’t get a clear shot of it.

Back at the hotel, the Jedi took Toa swimming (told you he was feeling better), Sweetling hung out in the room for some quiet time with her netbook, and I went to throw Toa’s disgusting clothes from yesterday in the coin operated machine in the hotel’s little courtesy laundry room. I went to the front desk to buy detergent, but she gave me a small box of detergent and a box of two dryer sheets and told me not to worry, the first boxes were ‘on the house’. See, this is the kind of service I’m used to.

So, now, I’m hanging out on the bed, waiting for the clothes to be dry. The Jedi is trying to cash in our point rewards for some free hotel stays, and Sweetling is chuckling over some Anime forum that she doesn’t want to share with me. Toa has gotten tired of throwing his stuffed animals from one bed to the other, and has climbed up beside me. He would like a turn to write.

Here you go Toa, knock yourself out.

I have just been handed my netbook back. He raised his hands above the keyboard to just pound on the keys. I said, “Write something real. You know how to spell.”

My netbook came back to me immediately. Writing something real and figuring out the spelling sounds suspiciously like work to the Toa. He would rather hang on my elbow and mess up my keystrokes.

Tomorrow is mother’s day gyghcgughoichi

Toa decided to write after all. Look how sneaky he was about getting in some random keystrokes. He is quite pleased with himself for this victory.

Read from Day 1
Back to Day 11
On to Day 13

R.A.M...Random Access Me-ness

Two for Tuesday: Buttermilk Cinnamon Syrup

Life Skills

Jesse Owens

Two for Tuesday: Spaghetti Pizza

Weekly Wrap-Up: In With the New!

One for Wednesday: Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

New Year's Resolutions

Traveling for Adoption

Runaway Blog

Wordless Wednesday: Ice Pirate

Contents of the Kitchen Table

Retooling the Curricula

Two for Tuesday: French Toast Casserole

Two for Tuesday: Egg and Cheese Bake

Food Pantry List

Two for Tuesday: Lemon Bars

Things I Need to Do

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

Two for Tuesday: Fluffy Pancakes

Not-Back-to-School: Meet and Greet

Weekly Wrap Up.....First Week!

Wordless Wednesday: Indoor Basketball

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

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

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

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

Two for Tuesday: Mango Salsa

M.O.B Blog Hop!

Two for Tuesday: Caramel Banana Cream Pie

Good Friends

Curriculum 2011-2012

Friday Fill-Ins

Patch Land!

Grades

Wordless Wednesday

Wifey Wednesday: Mirror, Mirror....

Two for Tuesday

More Reading Lists

Day 18: Homeward Bound

Getting Back on the Wagon

Portrait of Humiliation

Wordless Wednesday

Day 17: Come Hell or High Water

Sweetling's Portfolio 2010-2011

Toa of Boy's Portfolio 2010-2011

Sweetling's Homeschooling Goals

Toa's Homeschooling Goals

Alaska Sighting

Day 16: That Left Turn

Day 15: Impact!

Day 14: How Deep; How Wide

Think Tank

Teenager in the House

Getting Organized

Riddle me this, Batman

WFMW: Lego Quest

WFMW: Electronic Game Tokens

Day 13: Old West

Day 12: The Mother Road