School Days, School Days

Well, now that the garden updates are done... how about a school update!?! This school year is off to a great start. We are studying earth science and astronomy which the boys LOVE. We've covered some favorites so far: volcanoes, mountains, rocks/minerals, and soil. In a few weeks we are going to be doing a weather unit, Eli is going to have a blast!When we were studying dirt we took a little field trip down by the river. We wanted to see what we could find rotting along the trail. Dirt + boys = fun! We also threw a few wheat berries in a mason jar to watch the roots grow through the dirt. I used dirt from the backyard in the hope we might get a worm or two in there but I must have missed them with the shovel. The wheat sprouted in just a day or two and grew up and out of the jar in less than a week. If you ever need a fast growing seed for a project I highly recommend wheat! It's almost like the wheat knew we weren't going to be watching for too long so it hurried up and did it's thing.We are studying Medieval history this year. Justus especially has been enjoying the story of Beowulf. I was pretty surprised. Jerry says it's full of stuff boys like: swords, heroes, monsters, and ripped off arms. I've overheard the boys discussing who is going to be Beowulf and who is going to be Grendel when they are playing. And just when Wesley learned what an Anglo-Saxon was news broke that a huge Anglo-Saxon gold stash was found! Excellent timing! Wesley really wants a metal detector now! He's sure he can find treasure if he just has the right tools.

While we were on our dirt nature walk we kept our eyes out for a good feather to turn into a quill pen. We found one and took turns writing with it after I prepared it. We used juice concentrate as the ink, which still stains by the way! We all were surprised at how easily we were able to write with it, except for Justus who is a lefty. Lefties and wet ink don't mix.
In an effort to get a little more creative with the younger boys, I bought an ebook that I've heard great things about and organized a preschool activity bag swap. Each activity bag contains a self correcting, child led learning activity for the younger kids. I put a note out on the homeschool group message board and got 11 other moms to make bags to swap. We each made two bags and went home with 24 activity bags. We hosted the actual swap here on Monday and had a great time visiting with the other moms and their kids.
The activity bags include all sorts of different learning activities. Eli really enjoys the activities that include beads for sorting or counting. I've also discovered he enjoys any math counting or sorting activities that include food. Who says you can't eat your math manipulatives?! Cheerios, chocolate chips, m&m's, marshmallows, peanuts... they're all good!

Thanks to all of you who participated in Wesley's favorite day of the week math activity! He really had a good time reading your comments. And in case any of you are wondering... Sunday won and not one person picked Wednesday!

How the Garden Grows: September

Things are winding down in the garden these days. We finally got tomatoes! I'm guessing the cool summer held the tomatoes back a bit. We were worried there for awhile that we weren't going to get any tomatoes at all, but they ended up doing okay. Who would have thought September would be warmer than August! The plants got so heavy with tomatoes the cages were bending. I turned several pounds of the tomatoes into a delicious marinara sauce and we have eaten them on salads and burgers and just sliced with salt as well.

The cucumbers are finally done. I still have several in the fridge that call out to me every time I open the door. I may have to find one last cucumber recipe to try.

Every time I pick what I think is the last of the jalapenos, I find a few more. They are the "Little Engine That Could" of the garden world. I don't think I'll have enough for another jar of pickled peppers (I've made 3 so far), but maybe another batch of poppers.

The celery is still growing. Not quite to what it looks like when you buy it in the grocery store though so I haven't cut any of it yet. I'll have to do a little research on harvesting, we might get our first frost soon and I don't know if it will survive that or not.

The onions are all harvested and braided together hanging in the garage. I was hoping to get some bigger ones, more like you see in the store. They are tasty though and actually a few times it's been nice to grab a small one and use the whole thing with no waste.

I have several of the herbs I planted harvested and hanging in the garage. Whether or not they are actually edible time will tell. I ended up letting the cilantro go to seed. My dreams of fresh salsa all summer long were lost when the tomatoes decided to take the slow road. Did you know that cilantro seeds are coriander? I didn't until this year! After the plant grew tall enough and had plenty of seeds, I cut it and let it dry a week or so before stripping the seeds off the stems. I got a nice little baggie of coriander for my efforts. Now I just need to find some recipes that call for coriander!This will be the last garden update for the year... unless the celery harvest gets really exciting. Overall, I have to say I am pretty happy with how the garden did. We got a good sized harvest out of a fairly small space. And except for the late tomatoes and the unknown outcome of the celery we didn't have any major vegetable deaths. What more could a beginning gardener ask for?

A Little Help from Our Friends (and Family)

Wesley is doing a little math project and we need your help! Could you please leave comment stating your name, what day of the week is your favorite and why? He will be graphing the answers and doing a few other things with the information. Thanks!

New Recipes

I was a little adventurous this week and made a couple new recipes. Jer had an appointment Tuesday and wasn't here for dinner. I had to get the gang fed and out the door to AWANA by 6 o'clock so I thought I'd try this fun little breakfast recipe from my friend Erica. It's kind of a tradition at our house to have breakfast for dinner when Dad's not around. Our usual standby is homemade waffles.

While the boys weren't too crazy about the apple oven pancake, I sure was! It was delicious. I made two, one with raisins and one without. I have to say I preferred the one without the raisins. I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of it for you (Erica put a picture on her blog if you want to see what it looks like). It puffed quite a bit while baking, but settled down nicely. The apples and cinnamon made the kitchen smell wonderful, that is until the bacon that I made to go along with it took over!

Then I came across a recipe for Chicken Taquitos. I made these Thursday night for dinner and they were a BIG hit with all the guys, big and little! Everyone asked for seconds except Eli who asked for thirds. We topped these with lettuce, tomato (from the garden), sour cream, and guacamole. Justus loves guacamole, even the spicy kind, but didn't want any other toppings. On the other hand, Eli wanted all the toppings except the guacamole.

Chicken Taquitos

2+ cups cooked chicken, chopped
1 cup shredded cheese
12+ corn tortillas
¾ cup sour cream
1 T. taco seasoning mix
1/2 t. garlic salt
1/2 t. onion powder
1 T. parsley
salt, a few shakes
oil

Line a baking sheet or two with foil. Mix chicken with all but the tortillas and oil. Put oil in a small skillet. Soften the tortillas by frying them in hot oil for a few seconds. Not too long or they'll get crisp. Once the tortilla is soft put a couple of tablespoons of the chicken mix in each tortilla and roll it up. Line the rolled taquitos up on the baking sheet leaving a little space between each. Bake at 350° for 15 - 20 minutes or until golden, turning once.

This recipe didn't take too long because I used some chopped chicken that I had in the freezer. Having pre-cooked chicken and ground beef in the freezer is a HUGE time saver. I haven't been making a menu the last two months and having that meat ready to go has saved us from McDonald's several times. I have to get back on track with the menu... I don't like not having a plan.

Tonight, I made the usual homemade pizza with a twist. First, I turned about 15 pounds of garden tomatoes into multi-purpose marinara sauce this morning. I used that as our pizza sauce. I plan on using some for future pizzas and the rest on pasta. It was a long process (picking, peeling, cooking, packaging) but worth it... it was very tasty!

Then when the crust rolled out a little bigger than my pan I got the bright idea to stretch it out a bit more and turn it into a stuffed crust pizza. Yum! I just laid some mozzarella there and rolled the crust edge right over it. To make it pretty (and extra tasty) I sprayed on a bit of cooking spray and sprinkled some garlic salt. It worked great!

I will definitely be making the pizza this way again. The toppings, in case you were wondering, are half pepperoni with fresh from the garden onion (for me) and half pepperoni, ground beef, and homemade pickled jalapenos (for Jerry). I would have put black olives on my side but we didn't have any. The kids didn't have the stuffed crust on their half cheese, half pepperoni pizza. They never eat the crust. Although they might have if I would have stuffed it!

Homeschool Organization: File Crate

We're now several weeks into our school year and I just had to share this little organizational tip. I came across this file crate idea on a blog I like to read. I modified it for our family and came up with this:

I really love it and I can't believe how much time it saves me! Even if you don't homeschool, it could help you organize various papers that are used on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. It would be good for items that can't really be put into your household notebook. (You do have one don't you?) Bills, birthday cards, and holiday recipes come to mind. If you don't need a file crate, you could use a accordion type file.

Since, I plan in weekly chunks, I have a folder for each week labeled with that Monday's date. I can plan ahead, up through the whole year if I want, and file things we will be using in the future. Each week, usually on Sunday night, I empty that week's folder into the daily folders. Then each morning I just need to grab the daily folder and I have all the worksheets/copies I need for the day in one spot.

I have a folder for each child (for their finished work that we want to keep), one folder for stuff that needs to be re-filed in my binders, one folder for things I need to photocopy, and one folder for me.

I think this works so well for us because of what we do each week. We study a different character trait weekly. I hang a paper with the definition of that trait and a Bible verse to go with it up in the kitchen each week. So the character printouts for the whole year are in the folders for the week we'll need them. I don't have to go track down the character binder, flip through it to find what I'm looking for, and take out the paper. It's all ready to go for the whole year right now. Multiply that by several subjects and you'll see the time it's going to save. Letter of the week printout and all the coloring pages I have to go with them... all filed! Spelling lists... all filed! I even took all the worksheets out of Wesley's math book and filed them.

If I run across something that I want to use in the future I can just print it out and stick it in that week's file. For example, I found a cool print out of the solar system to color, but we aren't going to start studying that until January. So I just filed it away and I'll be so happy to see it again when I open up that file! I won't have to remember where I put it or waste time looking for it. I'm sure I'm even filing stuff that I probably will forget I even have... it will be a little surprise for myself when I open that folder.

I keep the crate right in the kitchen where I can get to it easily each day. It's close to the computer where I print things out and close to the table where we do most of our school work.

If this sounds complicated... it's not. It only took me one evening to put it together. I think I spent more time tracking down the file crate and choosing my folder colors than I did on anything else. As you can see I chose the colorful folders. They cost a bit more, but I always loved rainbows! And yes, they are in the correct order, long live ROY G BIV (minus the orange and indigo)!

UWEC Pictures

Here are some pictures we took of the boys in their UWEC shirts to send to Roz last week:


Even our furry "son" got his picture taken! Thanks JD, for letting Buck borrow your shirt!


Jerry and I had to send a silly picture of ourselves too:

We used Picnik to edit Jerry's photo with a line from one of our favorite comedians (Brian Regan). If you aren't familiar with Picnik, it's a free site where you can edit photos. Go try it sometime... it's a lot of fun! And if you aren't familiar with Brian Regan... go put his name in on YouTube! He's hilarious! I highly recommend the ironing board bit.

We are heading back for a Parent's Weekend visit on Saturday. We're looking forward to seeing Roz... who seems to be really enjoying college life so far! We've told her her whole life not to jump off any cliffs just because her friends do. Apparently, she doesn't listen...

That's Roz on the right

Cliff jumping at the lake with friends

Before Heading Home

Right after packing up the van, and just before heading home after our grand camping adventure, we took a walk down by the bay. When I say that, who hears this: "Down by the bay. Where the watermelons grow. Back to my home. I dare not go..." Who wrote that song anyway!? It doesn't even make sense!

It was very pretty as the morning fog was slowly burning off. The boys always enjoy throwing rocks into the water and watching the boats go by. There were a lot of boats to see this time too! I'm sure the boys would have liked to go in the water but it really isn't a beach and the water here is not nearly as clean as Lake Michigan.

One of my favorite shots (above)

This is the only shot of me from the whole trip!

After walking along the shore for awhile we headed out on to the breakwater. This adventure was cut short by one nameless (Hayden) child picking up and handing Mommy a piece of seagull poop. Ewww! Nothing says "time to go home" like that!

Camping Adventure

Last year we promised the boys an overnight camping trip but never managed to squeeze it in. So we didn't want this year to pass without making good on last year's promise. At first we thought that it would just be Dad and the older boys going, but at some point we got adventurous and decided to all go. The boys have been counting down the days!

Jerry took a half day Friday so we could get an early start. We didn't have far to go since we decided to go to a campground close to home... Bayshore (aka the Pirate Ship Park!). We woke JD up from his nap a little early and were on our way before 3pm! I can't believe the amount of stuff we had to pack for a one night stay, but just six pillows take up a good bit of space! Surprisingly, it didn't take us too long to set up camp. We had a bit of a scare when we thought we forgot the hammer, but it was in the van where it had fallen out of the tent bag.

After setting up, our first stop was the playground for a few minutes while dad went to go buy a few bundles of firewood.

Eli

Hayden

Wesley

Justus

Then it was back to our campsite to start the fire. We roasted hot dogs for dinner. Well, actually Jerry roasted hot dogs for dinner since the boys decided our roasting sticks were too short and the fire was too hot. They would stand so far back that the hot dog wasn't even close to the coals and ask, "Is it done yet? How about now?".
We brought our dog, Buck. It was his first camping trip as well. He just had his tenth birthday and managed to stay in homes or hotels thus far. Our old dog, Lucky, went on many camping adventures with us. She always seem to enjoy it. Buck was a good sport but has decided he likes city life!
We thought if we waited until September it would be nice and cool. So much for that idea. Well, it wasn't really hot but it was sure a lot warmer the last two days than it was all of August! The great thing about camping later in the summer/early fall though is that it gets dark earlier. We didn't have to wait too long after dinner before we were all sitting around the campfire in the dark. If we would have gone in July we would have had to wait until almost 10pm for it to get good and dark.

We did the usual S'mores, of course! Justus and I also did a little camping research on the internet and decided to try something a little different. You hollow out an orange and put a little cake mix or gingerbread batter into it then wrap it in foil and set it on the coals to cook for ten minutes. Justus loves gingerbread so he wanted to give this a try. I mixed the batter at home and threw it in the cooler. We were surprised it worked as well as it did! The gingerbread really took on the flavor of the orange which was okay, but I guess we all prefer our gingerbread plain.

The Filthy Family

After our snacks it was time to get ready for bed. I have to admit this was the part I was most concerned about. The boys have never slept in a tent before and they generally don't sleep well if we are anywhere but home sweet home. With one little exception, it went much better than planned.

The one exception...

was JD! He wasn't too happy about sleeping in the porta-crib or tent or outside or whatever. He spent the first couple minutes crying. Then tried to talk to his brothers who were slowing dropping off to sleep. Then he started singing a little song I taught him: "Domo! Domo! Domo! Roboto! Domo!" I'm sure our camping neighbors thought our baby karaoke singer was a piece of work! When he went back to crying I got him out and held him by the fire for awhile. While he cuddled nicely, he never did fall asleep. He ended up just going to bed when Jerry and I did a little bit later. I thought I was going to be driving home with him at 11pm, but he finally fell asleep.

Jerry was really tired and thought he would sleep great. I stay on "Mom High Alert" when camping and knew I'd sleep like... well, not well. However, I slept much better than anticipated (thanks to my inflatable mattress!) and Jerry slept like... well, not well. The boys did great. They pretty much slept through the night. Wesley woke up a couple times but went right back to sleep and Hayden cried a bit when he couldn't find his pillow. JD, thankfully, didn't make a peep until morning. Both Jer and I were a little annoyed when our neighbor decided to start up their car for some unknown reason at 4am. The boys managed to sleep until well into the 6 o'clock hour so that was good. Upon awakening the boys dished out a little unintended payback... they were, despite our suggestions to keep it down, a little bit noisy!

Tent Sweet Tent

The "kitchen"
(we love the little hose/post hookup that attaches both
the lantern and stove to our big propane tank)

Dad took the boys back to the playground for a little early morning exercise while I rolled sleeping bags and started breakfast. Unfortunately, the old (cheap) frying pan that we've had in our camping box for many years decided it had had enough and the non-stick coating started to peel a bit while I was cooking our eggs. The eggs were pretty much inedible but the sausage and donuts were delicious.



The boys were really filthy at this point despite a morning washcloth wipe down. We finished breakfast, what there was of it, and broke down camp to head home for baths and lunch. We knew JD would really need his nap so we didn't want to linger too long, but we did stop and walk around down by the bay for a bit before we headed home. (Pictures of that to follow.) And for the record, JD was asleep two minutes into the ride home!

When we first got everything set up both Jerry and I looked around at our fine little campsite and wished we were going to be spending two nights instead of one, but we are both glad we'll be sleeping in our own bed tonight!!

It's that time of year again!

I can't believe I forgot! It's Click for Cans season! 18,000 cans of soup for the local food bank are on the line!! The rules are the same as last year. One click per day. Teams advance through the season to the playoffs. So add it to your daily computer routine and click every day! I put a link in the side bar... just click on the CFC picture. When (not if!) we win again this year it will be our eighth straight win!! Go Packers!!

(Home) School Pictures

At the beginning of our learning year I like to take a picture of each boy. We put them in little booklets we fill out with all sorts of information about each child... favorites, self portraits, what they want to be when they grow up, etc. I figure someday they'll be pretty fun to look through.

I also print them out for my six slot frame that holds a photo of each child. Jerry has frames in his office (and gets lots of comments) as well. I have wallets made to give out just like school pictures. And I also use them right here on the blog on the "About Us" page.

Here they are IN particular order, older to younger:




Special note to grandparents/aunt/uncles: I printed out one set of wallets for each of you. If you would like any in larger sizes (4x6, 5x7, 8x10) I can order them and have them sent to the Wal-mart closest to you and you can pick them up there. Just let me know.