Agricultural Fair Weekend

We found ourselves at the local agricultural fair yesterday; we've gone all three years that we've been here so far.  In fact, I can remember the first time we went, only a few days, maybe a week, after the move - we were still in that first 'everything is new, everything is nerve-wracking and everyone is deeply uncomfortable' stage of moving.  No one could sleep properly because the night noises were different, no one could find anything because the boxes weren't unpacked, and each person who came to the door was a stranger.  I really dislike that stage of moving.  I especially dislike how I can't navigate the world effectively because each task needs to be re-learned to a certain extent - where do I buy milk?  Someone is sick and we don't have a doctor, what next?  Do I have to bring a quarter to the grocery store to get a cart out?

Anyway, that first time, three years ago, the fair was another uncertainty; was it a country fair as in rides, cotton candy, games for children and ponies?  This is sort of what I think of when you say the word 'fair'.  It turned out to be not quite that, but an agricultural fair, which I wasn't as familiar with.  Lots of chickens and rabbits and such, big tables of handwork (quilts, flower arranging, jars of jam, etc.) and vendors selling things that they had made along the lines of knitted dishcloths and mittens.  This sort of fair is much more popular in the rural area I live in and it's what I anticipate now in 'going to the fair'.  We have been to several of them by this point and they have a common gentle entertainment flowing through them.  The children play on a play structure or swings, or perhaps ride a small train in circles; the food available tends to be hotdogs, coffee, cotton candy, and at our fair there is a milk booth that sells nothing but ice cold milk.  You can watch a tractor pull, or working horses, and you can have a glass of milk and go look at what everyone spent the last year crocheting and see whose child won the photography contest and which chicken looks the weirdest.

It is entertainment from a different era, really.  Every year I tell myself that we will enter some of the categories, not because I think my knitting can compete with anyone else's there, or that my jalapeno jelly is the best, but to support this sort of thing, this gentle kind of event that seems to be disappearing.

Our Grade One Curriculum

It's September, and a brand new school year full of things to worry about.  I'm surprisingly calm, actually, about this year's curiculum choices, and so is the boy.

We bought Rod and Staff Grade 1 mathematics, which is supposed to be a solid grounding in early arithmetic (telling time, measurements, money, addition and subtraction, plus the usual early geometry).  Already I can see that we are beyond the scope of this program - my son knows these things.  But I am making us go through the program from the beginning anyway because I'm mean like that.

For Language Arts we're finishing up Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and also starting in on First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Volume 1.  I was concerned about the transition from the strange phonetic spelling to stardard printing in 100 Easy Lessons, but when we got to the lesson where they show you the *new* way of reading the transition went smoothly.

We are starting at the beginning of Story of the World Volume 1 for history and geography (we started reading it for pleasure last year but stopped), with the difference being that I also bought the activity book to go along with the text.  It guides you through story narrations, questions to assign (we will probably skip these with my pre-writer) maps and other activity sheets, further reading on the topic and finally a hands-on activity.

For 'science', which I'm not really doing in any formal way in grade one, we found a series called The Quark Chronicles that I was fascinated with and decided to buy the first volume.  The story follows four children who are kidnapped by space pirates and have to find their way back to earth using, in each book, a difference branch of science.  In the Botany volume, which I understand is the first book and is the one we're starting with, they begin to experience nutritional deficiencies and have to plant a garden and discover the secrets of botany.  In all honesty it's probably aimed at grades 3-5, but we're happy to putter through it anyway.  I have thoughts of doing experiments as well, from our many, many science experiment books, but who knows if that will really happen.

The whole 'curriculum', if you will, is scattered with a healthy dose of books.  The boy has received multiple interesting reads over the past few months; Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman and Terence Dickinson's two excellent books: Exploring The Night Sky and Exploring The Sky by Day (these, along with a beginner's telescope, were his birthday gift) stand out to me at the moment but there are others.  And of course we're still reading chapter books aloud.

Actually, the chapter books have begun to cause a bit of a fuss - we're running through books at a startling pace.  Last year we read Stuart Little by E.B. White, Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes, Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant, and My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.  Also some of the Thornton Burgess books - I believe we read Bob White, possibly another.  Anyway, over the course of the year we managed those (approximately) five books.  THIS year, however, we've already read three of the Melendy Quartet novel by Elizabeth Enright, Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne, and last night finished Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.  I was at the library book sale a few weeks ago and picked up a cheap copy of The Wind In The Willows and we'll start that today, but then I suppose we should try to read The House At Pooh Corner and maybe another Burgess?  Or buy the next Ransome, which is Swallowdale...I don't know.  And I don't know why I didn't plan this a bit better.

So that's grade one over here.

Learning Notes for the end of April

Here's what we're doing in school right now...

In phonics we're reading through Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons - we're on lesson 37 now and the boy is reading short, very phonetically based paragraphs.  We've also finally reached the point where we can start on early readers and we're using box 1 of the Bob Books.  TYCTRI100EL (that is not an easy acronym) also has a handwriting practice session at the end of each lesson, so we are doing letter practice.

Further to handwriting the boy has been writing a letter to his 'pen pal' and friend down south.  David took dictation for what the letter should say, and now he is carefully copying David's words in his own hand, crossing them off as he works down the sheet.

For read alouds we're enjoying The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, Every Living Thing by James Herriott, and Storyland of Stars by Mara Louise Pratt-Chadwick.  We're also reading Story of the World as a history/geography study, looking up countries and such as we go.  I never bothered to buy the activity guide that goes with the book because I know myself and I am not a 'craft person', so it seemed pointless.  Now I hear that it has other non-craft activities like map work in it and perhaps we will try it for the next SOTW volume we read.

For 'science', which is not actually a subject we're actively studying, just more of an examination through living, we are doing a lot of looking through the telescope, naming birds as they return to us in the spring, answering questions about whatever interests us (yesterday's 'I wonder' was whether coniferous trees sleep in the winter the same way as deciduous trees do, since they don't lose their needles) and looking at non-fiction books that interest us.  The latest additions to the children's non-fiction bookshelf are Exploring The Sky By Day and Exploring The Night Sky, both by Terence Dickinson.

This past week we've gone to a cooking class together, which sparked an interest in 'making dinner himself', which turned into jambalaya produced by a six year old, so that's a big interest at the moment.  The 'creating' urge doesn't stop there - we've been gifted a whole bunch of wood scraps and I've been informed we are building a feeding platform for the birds out of them, so that will involve looking up patterns or designing one with the materials we have, measuring, using tools, etc.

For math we're using MEP Year One and we're on lesson 9.  We were fine learning the greater than sign, the less than sign and the equal sign, but when it came to the greater than or equal sign and the less than or equal sign, we hit a little bump.  We've used Khan Academy as reinforcement, but we're still not completely certain about it, so we might move on and cycle back again later.

And that's school right now!  We don't have any plans to change the phonics/math/history spines we're using, but we're always on the look out for new and interesting skill reinforcement and books and activities, so undoubtedly those will continue to evolve in the weeks to come.

What is there left to eat?

Since all I seem to be talking about is food now, here's a more practical post that continues what I said about going back to eating a healthier diet, and why food isn't good or bad.  I guess that leaves the question of what exactly we're eating!  Well, I should preface by saying that I am not dealing with any food allergies or sensitivities, and a very short list of things people absolutely won't eat.  Really, almost nothing is on that list.  I wish I could take credit for that, but I've always been an adventurous eater so maybe it's genetic?  I know lots of parents struggle with picky eaters and I'm fortunate that I don't have to.

Now, I mean, everyone has preferences.  If I served the children a big ole' plate of canned beans they would be less than pleased and it might take a lot of ketchup to get them down.  They also don't love stuff like liver, or raw onions, or anything really spicy.  But to be honest neither do I so it isn't really an issue - I don't make these things because I don't like them!

So here's what we eat!  At breakfast we have eggs, fruit, cereal, sometimes meat, occasionally porridge.  I don't make pancakes and such anymore because I don't have the time or the space.  Every once in a while I'll do a big, fried breakfast with eggs and bacon and sliced tomatoes, or home fries.  Not often these days.

For lunch we almost always have leftovers from the previous night's supper, or else we have a simple soup and bread or salad type meal.  Sometimes I will make a prepared food type meal, like a frozen pizza, or a box of macaroni and cheese, or something like that.

For supper we eat a lot of one-dish meals - either cooked as a casserole type dish or in the slow cooker.  We eat chicken and pork most frequently, sometimes beef if it is ground meat or occasionally beef in another form, like a brisket, and a few times a year I buy a turkey to roast.  I also make an effort to serve fish once a week, although often it is in the form of tuna salad at lunch, or fish sticks for a fast meal before a church event.  We eat pasta and rice very infrequently, usually our starch of choice is potatoes - white and sweet, and sometimes plantains, cornbread, polenta, etc.

The sorts of meals we eat at supper would be things like - chopped root vegetables roasted with chicken pieces, a sausage and potato bake with a fresh salad, something made with spaghetti squash, ground beef, a tomato based sauce (home made or more likely a jarred sauce that has been added to) and cheese, a big salad type meal with lots of vegetables, hard boiled eggs, leftover diced meat, etc., a platter of different meats and cheeses with a loaf of bread and some home made pickled vegetables, a lentil or bean dish with bread, etc.  We don't eat a lot of legumes, but they are there, usually in another dish like chili or cooked slowly with a smoked turkey leg.

It's all pretty simple.

Lines In The Sand

I want to talk about food again.

You know, food is not a moral choice, even though people love to make everything a moral choice and it is exhausting that they do this; food is just food.  It isn't comfort, it isn't moral strength, it isn't 'good' or 'bad' (I detest the idea that there is 'bad' food), it isn't in and of itself a problem.  Food is a tool.  It's a necessity for life.  At its most basic food is a calorie and nutrient delivery system and the only reason it's considered a 'healthy' or 'unhealthy' choice at all is because some food contains more or less vitamins or minerals and calories.  If you need to gain weight then a high calorie food is a healthier food.  If you need to lose weight then a lower calorie food is healthier.  If you have high iron then obviously eating more high iron foods isn't healthy, even if most of society is going along saying you 'need lots of iron because it's healthy'.  Actually, for you, that would not be a healthy choice, choosing an accepted health food.

When you're eating, again at its most basic level, your body is trying to get calories to enable it to keep working.  Most of us in north american society are not having problems with this - we're probably all getting PLENTY of calories.  Indigenous people who were eating nuts and grubs and other fat heavy foods were eating them because they were high calorie foods.  If your diet is mostly low calorie foods, those fatty, higher calorie foods are much prized luxuries.  Living as if you were an indigenous person today would mean that you were eating a large amount of low calorie foods like leafy greens, interspersed with starchy tubers, the occasional fruit, and probably whatever meat you could catch - the most likely being insects and small animals and fish.  There isn't a lot of fat on, say, a rabbit.

On top of these all important calories your body needs certain nutrients - vitamins and mineral - in order to function.  Many of these it needs at a very low level and the occasional item with that nutrient is sufficient.  In addition to this some of those nutrients are water soluble and some are fat soluble - so sometimes you need to in fact be constantly ingesting some of these nutrients for your body to have access to them in the foods you're eating and sometimes you do not - your body can store them for you to use later.  We have all heard the stories of the kid who ate only ramen noodles and died - that's the sort of story that people use in order to scare you about nutrients.  In reality, providing you aren't dealing with a health condition, and you ate a sufficient amount of ramen, I can't personally see any reason why it wouldn't keep you alive for probably a long time.

Some of those nutrients have been labelled 'bad', like sodium, which is a very important mineral that our body does in fact need to function normally, but since it's prevalent in a lot of food in great abundance we've now decided it is  'bad' and we should all avoid it as much as possible.  Calcium, also important, is also really really prevalent in an omnivorous diet these days - in all dairy products, plus an additive in a lot of foods, plus normally occurring in greens and other foods - but since we haven't linked calcium to any bad reactions yet, it's a 'good' nutrient and we're all supposed to consume as much as possible.

Except that sodium isn't bad and calcium isn't good, they're just sodium and calcium, just like a broom isn't bad because it raises dust that might bother an asthmatic.

Anyway, when I talked about cooking whole foods for my family again, and mentioned eating a lot of frozen prepared foods previously, I wasn't saying one of those things was better than the other.  Because they aren't.  There are lots of good reasons to eat a variety of foods - the fibre content is likely higher and that helps your digestion, you have a varied palate and that will make eating more pleasurable for you and make you a much nicer guest, you'll have an easier time staying in budget, you will probably not have to resort to a multi-vitamin just in case you weren't getting enough of something - but a frozen lasagna isn't a good or bad decision.  It's just a lasagna.

Spring Thoughts, Better Eating

Two weeks ago I wrote that spring was here, and then winter thumbed her bitter nose at me and there were two more weeks of cold, including snow and full on storms and awfulness.  Now, a better and more nervous person than I previously was, I'm going to say it again.  Spring is here.

*ducks*

It's chilly, but sunny, and it warms up enough in the afternoon that I can hang laundry and send the children outside and the snow is leaving us very quickly.  Plus all the other non-weather springish signs are appearing.  The red squirrels are chasing each other around and around the pine trees at the end of the street, the sandhill cranes are making an ungodly racket down by the lake...

Now that it's warmer I feel more inclined to work on being frugal and healthy again.  There's something about winter that just makes you (me) want to curl up in a ball with a warm cat on me and eat all of the food, so the warmth is definitely helping me to get away from that and back into the swing of projects.  I'm reintroducing a lot of the whole foods oriented cooking methods I used to use as a matter of course, before my husband became incredibly focused on school and our lives got a lot busier with the church.  If you have been reading my blog since the beginning you will remember that I used to make everything that could be made.  I would make bone broth weekly and soak grains and make yogurt and bake breads...I did it all.  Somehow a lot of that stopped in the past few years and I don't think there's one specific reason why - lots of things contributed.  Adding a third child to our family, working full time in ministry, all the school, a new town without a lot of connections and without a farmer's market in town, lots of elements changed our eating style.  And I'm a big proponent of Doing What You Gotta Do - no judgement here if you eat frozen lasagna every day and use disposable diapers and take antibiotics monthly.  You do what you gotta do.  And certainly this past few years we have done what we had to do to make it work with three little children and the lifestyle we found ourselves living.

But I'd be foolish not to say I missed it, because I did.  I missed the work sessions in the kitchen, making lots of healthy real food and finding ways to trim the budget and learning new recipes.  I missed the research, with friends and family and books.  I missed talking to like minded people about what we were all doing to improve our health and our knowledge.  I loved that area of life; I've always loved food and keeping house, and I wanted to be GOOD at it and I was good at it.  I was really good for a while, and then I wasn't so much anymore and I'm okay with that - seasons of life and all - but I'm excited to get back into it.

Last night I made apple, pear, cranberry sauce with cinnamon in the slow cooker, set two big jars of sliced beets to lacto-ferment on the counter into pickles, roasted another tray of beets, made a jug of iced pomegranate green tea and started an experimental batch of a lentil and barley meat replacement to extend some ground beef.  It was soothing, puttering around in my kitchen, doing the sorts of daily tasks that used to make up such a large portion of my days - it was like lapsing back into your mother tongue.

I don't want to make elaborate plans on what to do because I don't want to be disappointed if things don't move as smoothly as I'd like them to but I feel optimistic.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make some bread.

All places are the same

I've lived in four different towns or cities in the past eight years.  Some of them were a few hundred souls, some a few thousand and some a few million.  Tiny places, big places.  I've lived in a place with one, small grocery store with expensive food to shop at and I've lived somewhere where the food of the world was at your fingertips.  I've lived in a one bedroom apartment, a two story house, a bungalow.  And I was thinking about the future yesterday - where we might live in the future - would we ever live in a big city again?  I grew up in a city, would my children have that kind of childhood?  Or maybe we'd live on a farm, plants gardens, raise sheep (I like sheep, I'd be up for raising sheep...maybe not forever, but at least for a season of life) and be pastoral and quiet.  Will we have the opportunity to downsize all of our possessions and move into an apartment without a garden again, a high rise, like friends of mine are doing right now with their four children?

It's all just wondering of course - we have a ministry here, and a home (a nice home, one of the nicer we've had) and it's normal for people to wonder about the future.  But what really struck me wasn't the wondering, which is just for fun, what struck me was that all of these places have become the same.

When you live in one place for a long time, or in your childhood home or city, you feel as though it is the entire world.  And when you move from there then the next place you live, it seems like a foreign country.  Where is the grocery store, you wonder?  What, I have to pay to do laundry?  And everything, from the most mundane to the exotic, is exotic.  It's the first time you really come face to face with the daily lives of other people and try to live like them.  But as you continue to move around the fear leaves and the moves take on a different feeling.  There's a sense of confidence in your ability to navigate the world.  When you absorb the information that you'll be moving again, be it a few hours or a few days drive away, you calmly pull out the mental information What To Do When You Move, and you're off.

I can pack our house with my eyes closed.  I know which packing containers work best, what to write on a box label so you aren't crying in the new kitchen that first morning and sending your husband out to find 'any caffeine at all'.  I am confident in my ability to make a meal for five people that doesn't use a fridge or a stove or almost any kitchen tools.  I know who to ask if there is anything for the children to do in town, I have 'rules for choosing a restaurant', in short, I'm a good mover at this stage.

And the places we move don't scare me anymore.  There's still a rush of adrenaline when you walk out of the bedroom looking for the bathroom and it all comes back to you, don't get me wrong, but it passes quickly now.  I don't really concern myself much with 'fitting in', because I know it will happen.  I enjoy that first walk in the new neighbourhood - looking around, seeing what there is to see.  Oh look, there's the grocery store!  Let's take a peek inside to see what we've got to work with.

The places we have lived aren't actually all the same, of course.  There's a lot of local flavour and plenty of differences.  And I have preferences, obviously, because everyone does.  I don't like taking my laundry to the laundromat for example, and I would rather have an outdoor space, but I'm flexible and I can make anywhere a home.  What makes me happy at this season of life is that I can adapt, that the adventure of moving is an adventure and not a burden.  Going to a new place is something to look forward to and enjoy.

Recovering

So my husband, the Pastor, is on his way to becoming the Reverend, and we all had to endure another extended absence for school stuff.  Well, the children and I had to endure - he got to stay at a luxury retreat centre and phone me periodically to tell me about the deer walking across the lawn and the geese on the secluded pond.  The family who stayed home and kept the fires burning ate a lot of prepared meals from the freezer and dealt with several days of no internet, but at least we didn't have a baby with the chickenpox like the last time he went away for school.

Small mercies.

Anyway, he came back safely to us and that's the last 'away for school' trip!  Now all of his work can get done at home.

Pretty much as soon as he returned I needed a break.  There's something about not sleeping well when your partner is absent while also parenting that drains you in a way nothing else does.  I feel as if only now, a few weeks later, I'm really rested and recovered.  Now it's sort of spring.  Sort of.  There are bulbs up in my new garden bed and garlic poking through the ground in one of the raised beds.  A new chipmunk has moved in to the yard, heedless of the fate of his predecessor.  I'm sure the cats will enjoy that.  The snow is melting and showcasing all the toys children brought outside to play with over the past months.  I spend a significant amount of time picking up garbage outside the other day - as soon as the snow starts to go you see all sorts of bits of things on the lawn.

Anyway.  Yay, it's spring.  And here we are, starting to get ready for ordination.

Minimalist Homeschool

We weren't sure what to do with the boy.  Our homeschool was still technically in kindergarten and he was liking that, but he seemed ready for more.  For one thing, he was asking a lot of questions about spelling and letters and writing, and he has always been interested in science and math.  I just felt like we could give him more.  And so we jump started our grade one plans, but first we had to make them.

I thought I would go for a curriculum in a box.  I'm not a huge fan of planning out every detail because so many things look good to me and I don't know if I'm picking the BEST book.  But the curricula are expensive, so I kept looking.

What did we need to have?  I kept paring down until I developed the minimalist homeschool.  It consists of a phonics program, a math program and a history/geography program.  For phonics I chose Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons.  Simple.  Long lasting.  Can be used with more children.  Then for history and geography we picked Story of the World.  One book, don't need to do crafts.  Math is Abeka.

These three things are the core of our homeschool right now.  We decided to introduce one at a time and we started with phonics.  After a few weeks of that we added history.  We have yet to add math.  It's going really well.  The boy loves both of the books; we do phonics first and try to do a lesson a day and then we read a section of Story of the World and talk about it.  If there is an easy activity I might do that.  We probably spend about half an hour on it right now but once we add math who knows.

The Busy Parent's Guide To Bringing Up A Child In The Lord

I wanted to call this The Lazy Person's Guide, but then I got real with myself and admitted that I'm not lazy.  Overwhelmed?  Occasionally, yes.  Tired?  Sure, who isn't.  But mostly just busy.  Busy all the time.  There are probably a dozen things I should be doing right now instead of blogging and those dozen things will get done after I finish here and before I start the NEXT dozen things on the list - the list that never goes away, never ends, never even seems to shorten some days.  (That list, by the way, is called life.  I always thought other people just got their lists done - now I realize no one is done.  Just one giant cosmic hamster wheel.)

Anyway, you get the point.  But I'm also a Christian and our family is raising children and this brings up the issue of what to do in order to, as some people phrase it, 'bring up a child in the Lord'.  To train them in the Christian faith, to school them in what it all means, to rid them of false ideas they pick up like a boat picks up seaweed and replace that nonsense with truth - how can I do that, being, as I am, so busy?

Well, obviously the first step is to WANT to do it.  To prioritize doing such a thing, which we do.  If I have time to read one story and I have a choice between two books, I will try to choose the one that will start a Godly conversation, or has a good moral to it over the latest Barbie Princess whatever.  If I have some time alone with a child, say on a walk, I will turn the conversation towards God.  If someone hits someone else, I'll use the opportunity to bring up how we treat each other.  It's all about catching your chances to bring faith into the everyday.

But what else can someone do?  Well, we started by introducing grace at supper, and have progressed to grace before any meal.  It isn't always heartfelt, but it is said.  We pray before bed, as well, and I try to make certain that that time we go a little more in depth.  How?  Well, I ask a lot of questions.  'Is there any person you want to pray for?  Is there anything on your mind?  What about so-and-so - since they are sick.'  The questions are meant to be a starting off point for thinking outside of ourselves.

I also make sure the children see and hear me pray.  I know this is a challenge for a lot of people, and praying out loud was for me as well, for many years.  In fact I still don't like it.  But I do it, and I have gotten more comfortable at it.  I pray aloud for them at bedtime, listing good things they have done and thanking God for those pleasant and loving aspects of their spirits, and then asking for Christ's help in improving those areas that could use improvement.  I also pray for myself in their presence - that I would be patient and loving and kind.

Beyond those rather obvious ideas, my main technique is to constantly surround them with as much Christian good influence as I can.  Not all Christian influence is good, but I pick and choose and do my best.  We listen to Christian music in the car while we're driving, and I sing along.  We buy cds for when we aren't anywhere near a radio station (we live in the middle of nowhere).  We listen to Christian music at home as well, but it's more of a car thing for me; at home I prefer to put on the classical station.  If they ask for a movie or a show I will offer something with good morals first.  Not that they watch anything not good as a rule but instead of a junky cartoon, for example.  To this end we've bought a lot of Christian children's shows and older shows.  We love The Andy Griffith Show.  I buy them books and stickerbooks with a Christian theme.  Not all the time, but often.

We also try to talk a lot about our faith throughout the day.  "Daddy's at the church!  What's Daddy's job?"  "Do you remember when we read this passage in church?  What did it mean?"  Or if a child brings up the topic (which happens a lot) "Oh that's interesting!  Let's look in the Bible and see what it says."

So there you go.  Since the children are homeschooled I probably *should* do some sort of more formal Bible study program, but as I said - busy.  Too busy to teach the Bible, just to live it.

Let me know what you do.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Inspired by The Prudent Homemaker blog, here are the things I did last week to be frugal and save money!

I aimed for a 'zero food waste' week and managed to only throw out one bag of kale that I forgot about in the back of the fridge.

I went through the children's clothing and pulled out the stained and ripped stuff to dispose of - but first I cut squares of fabric from them for the girls' quilts.

I rooted a bunch of green onions to get a second crop from the same bunch.

I did what I could to remove some stains from a blouse my daughter wears to church and had a good deal of success.

I was diligent in keeping the heat low and the lights turned off when I could.

I bought lemons on sale for a very good price and used some sugar from the last sale to make five jars of marmalade.  Each jar cost just under a dollar, excluding the jars which I already own.

I like to keep track of the things I do to save us money and still give us a full and happy life - maybe posting these on the blog will help.

A list of things to be thankful for, plus music.

It was a day of running around after a few days of more intentional schooling.  We tried a new math program this week and I was so ridiculous, accidentally printing off all these pages I never ended up needing.  Sigh.  There was a lot of back and forth second guessing before I took the jump and actually printed them, too. Should I?  Should I try something like this?  It's a spiral learning technique - do I like that idea?  Do I want to *make* my own workbooks?  Do I want to USE workbooks?  etc. etc.  It's so easy to second guess yourself at this stage of the teaching at home game.  I've done it, albeit with a very very relaxed approach, for two years now but I've never really REALLY thought in depth about curriculum and so forth.  What am I going for?

It ended up being such a teaching moment for me.  We did the lessons on the new curriculum that I had printed (oh, the printing, I can't let it go) and I wasn't sure and I wasn't sure and the backing and forthing, and then the clouds lifted.  Everything just became quiet and simple and I realized I needed to focus on the outcome.  What am I aiming for, here, in all of this teaching?  What is the point of it all?  And things have just been so much more streamlined.

And it's funny but peace and simplicity has just gone into so many other parts of life in the past few days.  The old cloth diapers I was hanging on to - I found myself discussing them with a friend and I said "you know, the new ones are so much better.  I'm so glad I bought these when the baby was born" and I thought 'why am I holding on to the old ones, then?  Why?'  So those will be finding a new home this week.  And David and I were chatting in the car and agreed that there was no reason to keep our stroller - why are we keeping it?  It's been falling apart for years now and the baby will not sit in it next summer I guarantee you, so it should go.  Really it should, and it should take its friend the broken stroller in the garage with it.

In the car I was listening to some beautiful music and it is in my heart right where all the fuss had been.

Purging!

I woke up early this morning, way too early (thank you, small people in my life, for ensuring I never miss a sunrise) but I tried to make the best of it by purging some of the children's clothes.  A big pile gone now, mostly of baby stuff.  Clothing in this house has a tendency to get a stain and then continue to rotate through the wash-dry-put away cycle over and over again.  Anyway, a bit less of all of that after this morning.  And then since I was on a role, and up anyway, I re-organized the homeschool cupboard as well.  All the workbooks that were being stored in other places are nice and neat and in the cupboard.  I've started a list of Things I Will Need For September, but you can probably guess that I'm a fairly minimalist homeschooler.  The list will be small.

And hey, since we're purging, why not feed everyone the collection of leftovers!

Homeschool Update

Here we are, at the end of January, so I guess I might as well do some sort of an update about how homeschool is going, although it really isn't anything thrilling at this point.

Mostly what seems to be happening is we're reading aloud a lot, plus trying to incorporate a daily math lesson, and some weekly art.  On top of that we talk a lot about all sorts of things.  What the difference is between perpendicular and vertical.  Coniferous trees.  The birds at our feeders.  Oh yes, we made bird feeders! Today we did math with skittles - grouping them into piles.  We watch nature shows and read about things that interest us.  The boy got a great book for Christmas - Julia Rothman's Nature Anatomy.  Such fun and a bit hit around here.

We were doing a storytime at the library once a week, but that has ended.  We still try to go to playgroup once a week.  We practice our letters and play games.  It's pretty low key and gentle at this stage.

In the fall I'll have a first grader and a junior kindergarten student and it will be a whole 'nother ball game.  I'm already trying to decide on curriculum and writing a scope and sequence and daily schedule.  I'll share them with you once they're all done.

In the meantime we're going to go look at the birds out the window.

Sickness

We've been thinking about having a cold over here for a while now and this morning it really hit us.  Full on pajamas on the sofa and lots of sleeping.  And we had to go to the church, the children and I, to switch all the Christmas decorations around to winter ones (blue and silver, mostly).  But I think children need to get out of the house anyway, even if they're sick.  The endless energy must go somewhere.

Sick time means chicken soup and blankets.  It means hot lemon and honey and warm baths and clean sheets on all the beds.  It is comfort and sleeping.  And hopefully it means getting better quickly.

I suck at blogging

Sigh.  And again.  I just cannot seem to recover from that blogging slump that started up when I discovered I was pregnant with the baby.  Ahem; the baby is now 19 months old and not really a baby, actually.  More like a tornado of energy and destruction.  Well, bear with me anyway friends.

So we're holding on through the winter and it isn't quite as bad as it was last year because this year the really cold weather didn't even start until January, compared to last winter when it started sometime in November and was still going strong into April.  That almost killed my will to live.  This year is better - I don't mind the winter from January thing.

Right now we're in the home stretch to achieve our big ministry goal - David's ordination.  If you've been following us through the journey then you'll know this is several years in the coming and we've worked our buns off for it.  Both of us.  All of us, actually, the children included.  We've all had to deal with David's extended absences because of required classes being held far away from home.  We've had to shoulder a lot of responsibility to get work done, as well as the financial strain of paying for seven courses last year and three this year, not to mention the travel. Last November he had to drive twelve hours just to GET to class.  That's a lot of gas.  And now we're down to the final push.  If the district board of ministerial development approves him this spring then he will be ordained at district conference this summer and all of our hard work will be worth it.

I'm incredibly excited about this but also treading really cautiously because we're not there yet.  David still has to finish the three courses this year (he has just over two months to finish all three courses, one of which can take some students up to six months to finish regularly) and then there is a final week away from us, this time in Michigan state for the in class work for two of the courses, and then receiving our date for the DBMD and taking some of our precious vacation time to travel (plus praying the old car will make it) to wherever that is and hopefully the final class grades will be in by then and the meeting goes smoothly and everything is approved.  Then there's the actual ordination, which after everything we've been through the past few years feels like the easy part.

At least we have everything paid for.  So there's that.