Our Adventures!

Backing up....This was from the day after the salmon

2012-01-10T05:51:00.000-08:00

I forgot to put in a recipe that worked out pretty well and was really simple. It is one that I got from Pinterest and we enjoyed it, though the kids thought it wasn't their absolute favorite. I liked it because it was so easy!

This is a really simple recipe and of course I didn't follow it exactly.

1 package of stuffing
1 cup of water
Mix and moisten.

Take 4 pieces of tin foil and lay them out on the counter. Spray with Pam. Divide the moistened stuffing between them and kind of squish it down. Then place a chicken breast over top of each blob of stuffing.

Here is where the broccoli stems that I didn't use the other night in the roasted broccoli come in. You cut off the outside tough part and then dice the stems, along with one head to get 4 cups of broccoli. Divide the 4 cups between the 4 packets.

Cook 4 pieces of bacon till crispy and break one on top of each packet.

Top with 1/4 cup shredded cheese and a drizzle of ranch dressing. Draw up the sides of the tin foil and tent it leaving just a bit of space for air to circulate before folding the sides in tightly.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until the interior temperature of the chicken is at least 165.

Unwrap - be careful that the steam doesn't burn you - and slide onto a plate to serve.

These can be made at breakfast time and stuck in the fridge until dinner but be sure your chicken is defrosted before assembling or you will have a soggy mess.

Here is the link for the real recipe from Pinterest.

http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/194728/foil-pack-chicken-and-broccoli-dinner-15

Easy lasagna-ish dinner

2012-01-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was very lucky to have a very old (or maybe I should say long-time) friend come visit with her kids. We aren't old so she cannot be an old friend right? We had a wonderful afternoon of visiting and the kids had a great time playing together. Then we had dinner together and it was a pretty easy meal that went together quickly.

Easy lasagna type thing -
2 pounds of hamburger browned
2/3 of a package of small pasta shells cooked and drained
Spaghetti sauce of your choice, enough to make it good and moist but not runny. I used about 2/3 of a large jar of Prego from Costco.

Filling - 2 cups of Ricotta cheese
3 eggs
1/4 cup of powdered Parmesan
1-2T Italian seasoning
Mix together

Put half of the meat mixture in the bottom of a 9x13 dish. Spread filling in and then top with the other half of the meat mixture. Top with Mozzarella cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until the center is baked and fairly firm. This would freeze well too. Just put it into 2 pans and eat one and put the other in the freezer before baking it. Pull it out in the morning and let it thaw on the counter all day then bake for dinner.

We served with garlic bread and salad.

Desert was my easy brownies.

Brownies
1 box of cake mix (use chocolate or white but if you use white put in about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder)
3 eggs
1/3 cup of oil
Candy pieces! I used about 1/2 bag mini M&Ms and 1/2 bag of the Kraft Caramel balls
Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes, until firm in the center but not dried out on the edge.

These are the brownies I make for convention. They are easy and they come out of the pan perfectly. Of course, with the candy they are a big hit with the kids!

I didn't take any pictures of this either because I was busy talking! :)

And the meal was made so much better with the chatter of kids and visiting with someone I have been friends with my ENTIRE life! It is so great to get together with someone and the years just fall away like they never passed! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Michelle's sisters and Jona had been there too! Then it would have really been like old times!

Stuffed chicken

2012-01-10T05:33:00.000-08:00

We liked the ginger/onion Salmon so much that I decided to give it a shot with chicken breasts. That day I basically put together all the meals for the day while I was making breakfast. I was getting ready to go to California so I had a lot to do that day and knew Kevin and the boys would be on their own.

I made our typical bacon and eggs for breakfast with some toast. At the same time I sliced some tomato, onion, lettuce for hamburgers. I pulled out a few patties from the freezer and some buns and they grilled their own burgers for lunch. Conner made some baked beans with canned Van De Kamps but fixed up the way grandma does with some ketchup, mustard and brown sugar.

Then for dinner I took 4 chicken breasts, filleted them open almost in half. Then I stuffed them with the same mixture that I had made previously for the salmon. 1/2 of a medium onion diced small, 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, 1T ginger finely chopped, 1T garlic, 2 T oil. I spread that in the chicken breasts and closed them up then put them in a shallow dish and poured the marinate over the top. The marinate is 2T honey, 2T soy sauce, 2T lime juice. They marinated all day then we grilled them. They were good but the flavors are definitely better with salmon. To accompany it I took the left over Quinoa (about 3 cups) and mixed it with 2T olive oil, 1 cup diced tomato and 1 cup diced cucumber to make a salad like the Couscous salad that mom makes. I added 2T Greek seasoning and a bit of green onion as well. We had coleslaw as well.

I didn't take any pictures of these meals though because I forgot!

BEST SALMON I HAVE EVER EATEN!

2012-01-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I had to run to Hobby Lobby (AGAIN) to get more yarn (AGAIN)...and when I left I told Keenan to look up a recipe somewhere for a delicious salmon dish since we had a huge salmon fillet out on the counter thawing. Well, he found a good idea but of course I didn't follow the recipe, it just gave me an idea....Imagine that!

Grilled Stuffed Salmon

4 salmon fillets or a whole large salmon fillet

Cut partially through

Stuff with:

1/3 of a medium onion chopped very fine

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1tsp of minced ginger paste

2T olive oil

What doesn't fit inside the salmon spread on top

Salt and pepper the tops of the salmon and place in a grill pan or fish basket

Make glaze of:

2T soy sauce

2T lime juice

2T honey

Spoon over the top, grill for 5 minutes, spoon rest of glaze over top and grill 5 more minutes

Baked Broccoli and onions

Take the rest of the onion and slice and separate

Cut up 2 heads of broccoli (save the stems for soup later on)

Sprinkle with seasoning of your choice and spray with Pam

Bake on a cookie sheet in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so

We also served this with Quinoa

4 cups of water

2 cups of Quinoa

1T chicken broth base

Boil for 15-20 minutes until water is absorbed

I won't lie, this is not an "easy" meal, but it went together quite quickly and we enjoyed it a LOT!

Hawaiian Haystacks

2012-01-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

For special meeting I got the wild idea to make some nostalgic food! And unfortunately I forgot to take pictures so here is a stock photo off the Internet. This is a really basic meal that works up great for a crowd and the leftovers are excellent!

The base is Brown Rice cooked. I did mine in the crock pot and it was great. 5 cups of water and 2 cups of rice and 1T chicken base. Low for 4 hours.

On top of that is a gravy. All I did was boil some chicken breasts with rib meat until they fell off the bone but you could use leftover chicken or turkey. Shred the meat. Put in crock pot with 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup, one can of mushrooms, and one can of water. Simmer for 3-4 hours. Thicken with cornstarch and water if it is too thin.

While this is going on then dice up bowls of the following:
Green onions
Green Peppers
Sugar Snap Peas
Celery
Tomatoes
Pineapple (canned)
Also use:
Slivered almonds
Crispy chow mien noodles
Marchino Cherries
Coconut

To serve up, this works great cafeteria style too -
A scoop or rice topped with chicken gravy. Then layer with whatever toppings you want. Put the Marchino cherries on top. :)

Then we served it with a salad with:
Romaine lettuce
Diced Tomatoes
Chopped cilantro
Green onions
Sugar snap peas
Mandarin Oranges
Topped with a sesame ginger dressing and toasted sesame seeds.

This is the dressing that we get from Costco and love on the salad.

A yummy dinner and most of the prep was done ahead of time.

The best laid plans.....

2011-12-15T06:02:00.000-08:00

I really did have EVERY intention of blogging almost every day for recipes etc....but of course life got in the way!

This weekend I didn't do much cooking. We had a birthday party on Saturday so we had a late breakfast/early lunch of scrambled egg sandwiches and fruit. Then we made black bean and corn salad to take to the party. This is always a big hit at pot lucks and recipe is similar to the one we use at Bird City for the Sunday lunch salad.

Black Bean and Corn Salad
2 cans of black beans (rinsed and drained)
1 can of corn (rinsed and drained)
1 can of green chilies (rinsed and drained)
1 bunch of cilantro chopped
1 small onion chopped fine
1 packet of salsa ranch powdered dressing
juice of 1 lime
Mix it all together, let sit for at least 1 hour (overnight is better) and serve with chips.

Saturday supper was just leftovers from the pork tacos.

Sunday was a busy day as mom didn't work enough on Saturday so we had meeting and then came home for lunch and mom worked all afternoon except for a small break to run to a holiday open house and pick up some Scentsy bars! Sunday lunch was just ham, green beans and baked potatoes. We made a lot of extra baked potatoes and will use them for something later in the week.

Monday we had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and for supper we used the rest of the leftover pork and made barbecue sandwiches again with baked beans and coleslaw, which is apparently Keenan's favorite meal...or so he said. He says that a lot though!

Tuesday was scrambled eggs for breakfast. Lunch was chicken salad sandwiches in pita bread for lunch with apples and spinach salad. At dinner time dad offered to pick up Little Cesar's Pizza while mom ran some errands and used some Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons! They only get that pizza when I am going to be out of the house because it is SOOOOOO bad for you (and in my opinion gross too!)

Wednesday I fried up some of the leftover ham for breakfast and made fried eggs to go with it. While that was cooking I browned a pound of hamburger with some onions and taco seasoning. I also pulled out some frozen turkey that was leftover a while back and chopped that up for soup. The kids washed and peeled carrots and cleaned and diced celery. Then I put together a casserole using the rest of the leftover rice and beans from the pork tacos and a soup for supper. All in all I spent about 45 minutes in the kitchen and that included cleaning up. In that time I had breakfast, lunch and supper all made!

Mexican Casserole
Leftover cilantro brown rice from the pork tacos (about 2 cups)
Leftover bean and corn mixture from the pork tacos (about 2 cups)
2/3 cup medium salsa
1 pound ground beef (browned and rinsed to get rid of grease)
1 small onion (browned with beef)
1/2 packet of taco seasoning
1 cup enchilada sauce
1/2 cup grated cheese
Brown hamburger with onion and taco seasoning and rinse in a colander to get rid of grease. Drain well. Layer rice, beans and salsa in the bottom of a square casserole dish. Put beef on top, pour enchilada sauce over it and top with grated cheese. Cover with tinfoil and put in the fridge until ready to cook. This would probably freeze well too. I cooked it at 350 for 30 minute and it was warm clear through. Serve with green salad with the rest of the cilantro lime ranch from the pork tacos and a tortilla shell. The kids wrapped their casserole in their tortilla and said it was good! We had enough for all 4 of us and probably 1 serving left over. Sorry I didn't think to take a picture of this.

Turkey Noodle Soup
8 cups of chicken broth (I use the base from Costco)
2 cups of diced turkey breast
6 large carrots diced in 1 inch pieces
1 bunch of celery diced in 1 inch pieces
1 large onion
1T dill weed
Mix and cook on low in crock pot all day long. About 1 hour before serving mix in 1/2 package of old fashioned egg noodles. You can make them homemade but I used the German ones from Wal-Mart. Quick and easy and taste almost as good as homemade!

Keenan has had a really hectic week of school as he is trying to finish up all of his semester tests. He has only got history and grammar left. The little turkey got a 97% on his vocabulary (Latin/Greek foundational vocabulary, level 7) and a 100% on literature. He must take after his mom in that way! He has 3 more lessons in Spanish before the big test in there to finish level one. Today he will do the history and grammar tests and tomorrow will do his mid year assessments in math. His program has a semester test at the 50% point in the different classes but they are not scheduled to start until January 23 so he is a bit more than a month ahead of where he needs to be.

Conner is working hard on Earth Science and Geography so he can get his finals done in there. His program works on the block system so he has 2 blocks at a time and each block is a year's worth of the class. He has 2 months to complete 2 blocks but with science and geography it looks like he will be done in about 5 weeks with both. Then he has health and Spanish next. I am really impressed with his program and he is really doing well with it on the days he applies himself....however, like every teenager, there are days where he just doesn't!

Using more Pork!

2011-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

I have to start this post off right away with an apology to my Sister-in-law Kelley. She makes these Pork Tacos the REAL way and they are amazing. I can't follow a recipe to save my life....if I could even find the recipe she gave me! So, this is just my version, the best I can remember from her amazing recipe and my own substitutions for things I couldn't remember!

Breakfast was fresh tortillas filled with scrambled eggs and Pico de Gallo. So delicious! I love that sauce, could put it on everything I eat I think!

Lunch was Taco Bell compliments of dad because I had a massage!

Dinner was Pork Tacos. This is probably one of the most time consuming meals I have made in a long time but it was well worth it and actually wasn't even that bad! It is only for the cilantro lover though! If you don't like cilantro you will be miserable eating this meal! I probably spent a total of 1 hour in the kitchen over this one.

The first part of this recipe that I put together was the sauce so the flavors could really blend well.

Cilantro Lime Jalapeno Ranch Dressing!
1 cup of buttermilk
1 cup of cilantro washed
1/2 jalapeno pepper
Juice of 1 lime
I used the magic bullet to blend this but a stick blender would work too
Add puree to:
1 cup of light mayonnaise
1 cup of light sour cream
3T ranch dressing powdered mix
Blend well

Cilantro Lime Rice with Jalapeno Peppers
2 cups of brown or white rice
1/2 cup of chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
1 small pepper diced fine
4 cups of water
Prepare according to package directions. I added the lime and cilantro before cooking so they cooked with it but next time I will add them at the very end I think.

Pico De Gallo
I made this the night before and all it has in it is finely chopped onions, Roma tomatoes, lime juice, cilantro, jalapenos and a bit of kosher salt.

Beans and Corn
1 can of black beans
1 can of corn
Rinse and drain
1/2 small sweet onion diced
1/2 cup of cilantro
Juice of one lime
Warm over low to medium heat

Pork
All I did was take about 2 cups of pork, squeeze 1 lime over it and heat until it was a little bit browned. I think there is really supposed to be more stuff on it for flavor but this was good.

Assembly:
One Taco shell
Layer meat, shredded cheese, rice, beans/corn, pico, avocado (or guacamole if you feel really ambitious), lettuce and sauce. ENJOY!

And again, my apologies to the REAL recipe, but this version was good too!

German inspired deliciousness!

2011-12-10T07:47:00.000-08:00

Around here Thursday means a top speed day always! (Notice I didn't say busy, trying to avoid that word! We are blessed to have lots of things we can do!) We have a heavy load of classes for both boys and Conner has piano lessons Thursday afternoon and my Thursdays have a heavy work load.

Thursday morning Conner made breakfast because I was working and hadn't broken away to make it yet! Good kid! He made scrambled eggs and bacon and heated up English muffins.

Thursday lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches, baked Lays chips and Apples. Simple and light but the boys don't mind that lunch once in a while. I add some turkey or ham to the sandwiches before gilling them.

When we left for piano lessons Keenan got the potatoes ready for mashed potatoes and rinsed and drained the sauerkraut. He did a great job and got the potatoes cooked without even boiling them over! He is doing better than his mom since I learned from my mom that in order to make good mashed potatoes you MUST turn them on high and walk away until you hear them boiling over and then you have to run into the kitchen saying "Oh, Oh, Oh!!!" and grab them off the burner until they stop boiling over and then turn them down to low! :) Tradition is what it is!

To put dinner together all I did was mash the potatoes with some chicken broth as the liquid. Then we make pork and kraut with gravy. This is another use of the leftover pork shoulder.

Pork and Kraut over Potatoes

2 cups of cooked leftover pork shoulder

3 cups of sauerkraut from a can, rinsed and drained

1tsp Greek seasoning or seasoning of your choice

Cook over medium heat until the moisture is gone and the Sauerkraut starts to brown a bit. Serve over mashed potatoes and top with simple chicken gravy. (My gravy was just chicken broth with a bit of cornstarch added to thicken it).

There was enough left over for at least one person to have that for a leftover meal later, so there was just about enough for 5 people here.

One other thing that I did Thursday night was make the Pico sauce for Friday. We all love Pico but it is one of the most time intensive food products that I make. So I chopped the tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro and onion and added kosher salt to it all and put it in the fridge so it would be ready to use for breakfast Friday. I don't really have a recipe for this and how hot it is just depends on how much membrane you leave in the your peppers and how hot they were to begin with!

Wednesday

2011-12-08T03:47:00.000-08:00

This always seems like a hectic day for us! We seem to rush all day and then supper time sneaks up on us before we know it and we have to be out the door to meeting by 6:40. Because of this tendency I always have leftovers for supper on Wednesday. In the past though, we have been scrounging around trying to find some leftovers for supper but today we had enough for 2 different meals of leftovers.

For breakfast I made scrambled eggs and biscuits. The biscuits take a bit of time but not too bad. I am not a biscuit recipe kind of person so I just dump and mix and sometimes they are great, other times not so much! I always make a bigger batch that I need and then cut them all out but only bake enough for the one meal. The rest go on a sheet in the freezer until they are hard and then into a bag so we can pull out frozen biscuits, pop them on a baking sheet and have hot biscuits that are much better than the canned kind!

For a quick lunch I microwaved a couple chicken sausages from the freezer (we get them at Costco) and the boys had those with the leftover baked beans (which were still not a favorite)! Conner told me he likes the kind grandma makes better...you know, open a can of generic pork and beans and add ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar? Yeah, that is what we will do in the future for Baked beans I guess! Mom and dad had the leftover orange pork and sweet potatoes from Saturday with a green salad.

For supper it was leftover soup. We still had beef stew and the Chicken Taco soup. After supper I put the rest of the leftover soup in smaller containers for the freezer since we have had each of them for a couple different meals and I don't want people getting sick of them. We can pull those out for lunches as time goes on.

Total time spent in the kitchen on Wednesday - about 40 minutes the whole day. The kids do most of the dishes and have for quite some time but yesterday we were getting snowed under so mom took a turn cleaning up the kitchen for a while.

It was much warmer here yesterday and I did get outside for a run but it was still pretty cold! It is always so beautiful though when there is snow on the mountain and snow on the foothills! I love living so close to such beauty.

Tuesday - pork shoulder roast

2011-12-07T08:25:00.001-08:00

Some humor to start the day! :) I love this picture....because it is so true!

So.....Tuesday was pulled pork day. Breakfast was very simple, just fried eggs, bacon and cinnamon toast. I threw the pork shoulder roast in the crock pot while I was making breakfast and sprinkled it with some Herbs De Provence and poured a Pepsi over the top. Turned the crock pot down to low and cooked for about 6 hours. In the early afternoon I rounded up the kids and we pulled the pork. Each of us used 2 forks to kind of slide the fat off the outside and then pull the pork apart. That took about 15 minutes with all of us working together...if I had done it alone it might have gone more quickly than that and there surely would have been less cleanup! After all the fat was removed the 5 pound roast yielded about 3.4 pounds of meat for the next few meals!

Lunch was leftover Beef Stew from Saturday and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Actually putting the meal together took about 20 minutes, including everything!

Recipes for dinner:

Barbecue Pork Sandwiches
2 cups of pulled pork
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
Heat together and put on sandwich buns.

Fake Baked Beans
3 15-ounce cans of pinto beans
1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup molasses
3T apple cider vinegar
2T spicy brown mustard
splash of Tabasco sauce
fresh ground black pepper
1t liquid smoke
dehydrated onion flakes
Put beans and their liquid in a pot and mix everything else in. Simmer for about 30 minutes or so until thickened.

Disclaimer - This recipe came from "The Wednesday Chef" and I tweaked it a bit for our tastes. We didn't LOVE this one. There was enough for dinner and enough left over for the kids to warm them up and have a Chicken Sausage from the freezer with it for lunch today.

Cole Slaw
Cabbage/dressing. That one is pretty much a "how your family likes it" thing...All I do is use the Marzetti low fat Slaw dressing on cabbage.

Blueberry Honey Greek Yogurt
1 cup Greek yogurt
Drizzle with honey, sprinkle with blueberries (I used frozen) and about a T of sliced toasted almonds.

There is enough of this pork left over to make at least 3 more meals!

Monday - It was a soup kind of day!

2011-12-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was leftover breakfast enchiladas from Sunday, and they do rewarm quite nicely.

Lunch was a quick chicken salad, which is a favorite with my kids. It takes a bit of chopping but it is very yummy and healthy!

Chicken Salad

2 cans of chicken breast drained and broken up

2 green onions sliced thin

1/2 red bell pepper diced fine

1/4 cup craisins

1/2 apple diced

1 stalk of celery diced

about 10 snow peas sliced

2T-3T light mayo

Mix it all together and serve in a pita pocket half with a sliced apple and some taro chips for a healthy lunch that doesn't make the kids fall asleep in the afternoon!

Keenan was mostly done with his school stuff in the morning and spent the afternoon cleaning off porches and walks for the older ladies in our neighborhood. He came in very red cheeked and cold but he enjoyed it and got to count it for PE!

While I was chopping things for lunch I put the boys to work opening cans since supper was an easy crock pot soup. I did find out one really great trick! Put the broth and all the fixings in the crock pot and throw in 2 frozen chicken breasts for the meat. After 3-4 hours pull the chicken out and shred it and it is done!

Taco Soup

2 frozen chicken breasts

1 large can of diced tomatoes (I think it was 24 ounces) with juice

2 of those cans full of water

1 generous scoop of chicken bullion (I use the paste)

1 can of Black beans

1 can of garbanozo beans

1 can of kidney or white beans

1 can of pinto beans

1 can of corn

1 pack of taco seasoning

1 pack of ranch dressing mix

1 can of diced green chilis (6oz)

1 small onion diced

Rinse and drain the beans and corn. Throw everything else in the crock pot on high until there is condensation on the lid, then turn to low and cook for 5-6 hours. After 4 hours shred up the chicken with a couple forks and throw back in.

We served this with these tortillas that are uncooked and you cook them 30 seconds on each side on a skillet. They are from Costco.

The best thing about this meal is that there was easily enough left for one more meal for our family of 4! My kids are also learning how to eat leftovers!

An easy breakfast

2011-12-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

Sunday was Castle Rock Special Meeting and I wanted to do an easy breakfast since I would be fixing lunches etc. and trying to get out the door. I put together a caserole the night before that turned out to be pretty good but was one of those "sort of" disasters. It took much longer to cook than the recipe indicated so we were waiting on our breakfast, but I believe I will make it again on a work morning since breakfast is the hardest part of those days.

Breakfast enchiladas
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
¼ pound chopped ham
1/3 green chilis from a can
1/3 cup chopped onions
8 small tortillas (corn or flour)
4 eggs
1 cup milk
¼ cup salsa
1 T flour
Ripe olives sliced
Combine cheese, ham, onions and peppers. Place cheese mixture into open tortillas and roll up. Place seam side down in 11x7 baking dish. Beat eggs, milk, salsa anf flour together and pour over tortillas. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until firm (It took over an hour for ours). Eggs will be inside of the tortillas!

These were really delicious and there was enough for 2 breakfasts for our family of 4. I made it a bit more healthy using low fat cheese and whole grain tortillas but it was quite good.

I am sorry that I don't have any pictures of this meal.

Saturday...some delicious food! :)

2011-12-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

I have a bit more time to spend in the kitchen on Saturday so I thought we would go a little more elaborate, except that it didn't take very long at all!

I had gotten out some pork chops for lunch but wasn't sure what I was going to do with them but then came across a delicious sounding recipe for orange pork chops. Dinner is going to be Crock Pot Beef Stew.

I got the boys in the kitchen and they started peeling potatoes and carrots for stew while I started cutting things up. Then Keenan Zested the orange while Conner made Corn Casserole for lunch and it all fell into place, including the kids loading and unloading the dishwasher, in about 45 minutes!

Recipes for Lunch

Baked Sweet Potatoes
Wash and cut spots from sweet potatoes and wrap in foil
Throw in the oven and bake at 350 for an hour.
We like to serve them with a little bit of Moooove Over Butter (a light whipped buttermilk spread) With about 1T of brown sugar and a lot of cinnamon mixed in 1/2 cup of the spread.

Corn Casserole
1 can of creamed corn
1 can of whole kernel corn drained
1 package of cornbread mix
1/2 cup of light sour cream
2 eggs
Mix it all together and bake covered at 350 for 1 hour

Seasoned Green Beans
2 cans of green beans
2T dehydrated onions
1/2 tsp pepper
1 slice raw bacon sliced over the top
Simmer on low for 1 hour

Honey Orange Pork Chops
1/3 tsp zested orange peel
1 cup orange juice
1T soy sauce
1 1/2 T honey
1/8t pepper
2 cloves of garlic
4 thick pork chops
Remove as much fat as possible from the pork chops. Mix marinate together and pour over pork chops in baking dish, bake covered at 350 for about 20 minutes, turn over and baste with pan juice. Bake covered another 20 minutes or until internal temp is 165. Then pour pan drippings into sauce pan and add 1T cornstarch to make sauce to pour over chops.

While we were working on all that I was throwing the stuff in the crock pot for Crock Pot Beef Stew for dinner. There should be plenty of leftover Corn Bread Casserole to go with that and hopefully a lot of left over stew for lunches this week!

Crock Pot Beef Stew
2 medium onions, chopped
5 stalks of celery, diced in 1/2 inch slices
6 carrots peeled and diced in 1/2 inch slices
1 red pepper diced in 1 inch pieces
5 med size white potatoes peeled and diced in 1 inch pieces
1 1/2-2 pounds of steak with fat trimmed and chopped in 1 inch pieces. (Use the cheapest steak you can buy!)
1 envelope onion soup mix
1/2 cup dry white wine (cooking sherry)
1 can tomato sauce
3 cups beef broth
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp bay leaves
1/2 tsp rosemary
Turn Crock Pot to high. Throw in all ingredients and cover. As soon as there is condensation on the lid, stir and reduce heat to low and cook 7-8 hours. 1/2 hour before eating add 16 ounces of frozen green beans that have been thawing on the counter. Serve with corn bread or biscuits.

2011-12-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

I think I can get this cooking thing figured out to where I am only in the kitchen really once a day except to tie things together! I have been researching a lot of recipes and have decided that if my kids are going to eat here they are going to help with meals!

Thursday's lunch was leftover potato soup for the kids and the last baked potato with a can of chili over the top for Dad. I got to go out for a "girls lunch" with some of my friends and have to admit that my lunch was a very small salad and a very large slice of gingerbread cake with eggnog sauce on top!

For Dinner Thursday night I left Keenan with instructions for getting the chicken in the oven when we left for piano lessons. All he had to do was take it out of the package and dump the half bottle of balsamic vinaigrette on it and put it in the oven at 300 for a couple hours. Then he peeled 5 carrots and washed 5 stalks of celery so when I got home I could make steamed veggies. Added a package of Pasta-Roni and there was dinner.

Recipes for Thursday Dinner -
Chicken
5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/2 bottle of Newman's Own Light Balsamic Vinegrette salad dressing
Bake at 300 for 2 hours

Veggies
5 carrots
5 stalks of celery
1 medium onion
1/4 head of cabbage sliced
1 head of broccoli
All veggies are sliced on the diagonal into about 1/2 inch thick slices.
1 cup chicken broth
Greek seasoning
Saute onions for a few minutes on medium in some Pam. Then layer the rest of the veggies in a large flat skillet or wok. Pour chicken broth over the top, sprinkle with seasoning and cover tightly with lid. Turn to high and steam for 3-5 minute until veggies are just warm through

We had enough chicken left over so lunch the next day was chopped up chicken and cheese and onions in tortillas, either rolled up or quesidilla style, whichever they wanted. I didn't want the fat of all that cheese so I simply had a repeat of the night before.

With about 1/2 of one chicken breast left - breakfast will be coming from that.

Dinner Friday night was just Taco Bell as mom was tired and had work to do and dad offered to buy! :)

Our life....when I have time to update! :)

2011-12-01T03:05:00.001-08:00

Lately my biggest challenge has been how to create enough hours in the day to get everything done. The one thing that seems to suffer and frustrate me the most is creating meals for everyone 3 times a day and still have time to get to the kids schooling, my work etc.

I have been working to try to create meals that have components that can be used for the next meal. One thing there is never a shortage of in our freezer is a variety of soups and chili that have been left over previously.

So....here was my first attempt at that idea, trying to spend less time in the kitchen but still have healthy meals. -

Yesterday before my run I threw 10 medium sized potatoes in the oven and made baked potatoes.

Lunch recipes:
Loaded baked potato
1 Baked potato
Cover with leftover chili or canned chili
Top with shredded cheese and diced green onions.

Baked potato soup
3 baked potatoes diced
1/2 onion diced
1 head of broccoli plus the stem (peel it to get to the tender part) diced up
6 ounces diced ham
4 cups chicken broth
Dill weed
Boil together until broccoli is tender
Add 1 cup of milk
2 ounces of velveeta cheese
Top with 1 slice of crispy bacon.

Serve with biscuits - you can make and freeze them before baking, then just pull out of the freezer and pop on a pan and bake them.

There are still 4 potatoes left so breakfast this morning is going to involve dicing a potato up and tossing it with an onion and frying it in Pam, then we will mix eggs in and scramble it all.

3 meals without too much effort, all from tossing potatoes in the oven.

In other news: School is going well this fall.

Conner is a 9th grader and using a program that uses NovaNet and has concurrent enrollment for college credit (he starts those classes next fall). He has finished Algebra I, English 9, American History I and is currently working on Geography and Earth Science. They work in modules and have to finish an entire years worth of work and take the semester test in about a month. So far he really likes this way of doing things and is doing very well. His final semester test grade for Algebra was a 92, which just blows me away considering how hard that class was for his mom!

Conner and his dad had a project this fall with an older laptop computer that the charging port quit working on. Conner found out that YouTube can teach you how to do anything and he was able to get the computer completely deconstructed and then put back together and it all worked! Sadly, the charging port was not the final problem and there was a short on the mother board so that computer is now in the graveyard! The project was surely educational though!

Keenan is in 7th grade this year and is flying through his curriculum. He loves science and is doing VERY well with that. He recently got to dissect a clam and find all the important parts of that. He has almost finished all the literature component for the year because he loves to read so much. His challenge project for this year is to write children's books explaining math concepts. He has finished one and is starting on the 2nd.

Have a wonderful Thursday everyone!

A little interruption....

2011-02-20T20:58:00.001-08:00

Then back to catching up.

Sometimes, especially on a Sunday where we don't have a lot going on in the afternoon, we will allow the kids to take turns picking out, shopping for, and making something different from our usual diet.

Today was Keenan's turn. I was a little surprised when he picked Tabbouleh salad, Roasted red pepper hummus and Naan flat bread. So...off to Google and All Recipes and I found what I needed.

Tabbouleh is a Middle Eastern salad that is made of Bulgar wheat (a kind of cracked wheat) that is boiled in chicken broth, 2 cups of broth and 1 cup of Bulgar. Then you cool it down and add a LOT of fresh parsley chopped up, a couple sprigs of fresh mint chopped up, the juice of a couple lemons, some chopped up cucumbers and tomatoes, a bit of garlic and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Toss it all together and let it marinate for a couple hours in the fridge.

The roasted red pepper hummus is just a can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, about 1/2 cup of roasted red peppers from a jar, some cumin and salt and pepper and about 2T of olive oil. Put it all in the blender and puree until soft and smooth. Then you spread that on pitas or Naan.

The Naan, well, by that time I was tired of working on new recipes and didn't have time to figure out what Ghee was (clarified butter in case you are wondering) so we bought some at the health food store. It is like a soft pita bread that is a little bit fluffier. The next time I will make it because then I could use wheat flour.

All in all, this was a delicious dinner that we all loved! Thanks Keenan for having an interesting palate!

November.....

2011-01-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

I am looking back on the month of November and trying to remember what we did, and basically it seems like it was school, Lego Robotics, School, School and School! I guess we didn't do much fun stuff in November though. We were kind of "on call" for some friends who were expecting a baby and needed us to watch the 3 year old, but that didn't happen until December.

I did spend a weekend with a friend's kids in November and had fun with that. In fact, I even took the little boy fishing, at his request. This is the first time in my life I have ever handled live fish...it was an experience to say the least! But, the fish was delicious, the pond was gorgeous, and I believe we will be going fishing with the boys this summer! I even learned, through the verbal instruction from W, how to gut and clean a fish....since he was too squeamish to actually do it! He was QUITE impressed that a mom would touch guts. (So was I)!

Here is a picture of the lake at Green Mountain Falls, where we went fishing. This is just a cell phone picture so it doesn't do justice to the gorgeous colors that were present, but it was truly a beautiful day! The reason Conner and Keenan didn't go with us to experience fishing is that they and Kevin were in Denver at a model train show with an older man that has really taken a shine to them. They got to see all kinds of model train setups, including, get this, a LEGO one! Of course they had a ball and Conner now has an idea for a hobby kicking around in his head....a hobby for when he is a grown up and has lots of space and money to spare, since it is apparently quite expensive!

On Thanksgiving, Kevin and the boys met up in La Junta with G'ma, G'pa, Aunt C and M&M. Aunt P and Uncle H were there too. They had a good day and it was pretty nice out so the kids hung out outside most of the day. I stayed home on baby watch, and had a deliriously relaxing mom day, all alone in the house!

During the month of November the Virtual Academy required each of the boys to formulate and submit a pretty extensive lab report and they did that, through much complaining! But it was good for them to have the experience....(at least that was what I told them)! It wasn't so much about the lab even, as just learning the formal, proper way to fill in a lab report. However, the grades that they got back from the teachers were less than stellar. When I contacted the teachers to see why, the answer I got was "Conner provided way more information that was necessary". Well SHAME ON HIM! I told him that for the purposes of the virtual academy we will do what is expected, but in the real world we know that doing prior research and going into an experiment with some concepts and ideas in place is NEVER a bad thing!

We are very fortunate to have the option of a virtual academy and have access to the K12 curriculum without paying for it, but sometimes the "requirements" from the school get a little tedious. We will, of course, continue to fulfill the requirements in order to have access to the education opportunity, but we definitely do a LOT of modification. Also, our expectations seem to be a LOT higher than the VA! Imagine that. For example, they expect that by May, the kids will have completed 80% of the curriculum in order to advance to the next grade level. Well, it is the end of January and they have completed 60% in everything right now! And I have told them that 80% isn't good enough and we will be completing 100% and probably still be done before May!

Virtual Academies, in states where they are permitted, are really a wonderful option, but the bottom line is that they are a public school, full of public school teachers, that must fulfill the requirements of public school...so there is still a lot of bureaucracy. However, we are grateful for the guidelines of the curriculum and we continue to modify it to fulfill our requirements and expectations of education and at least they will graduate with a high school diploma.

Lego Robotics

2011-01-10T02:54:00.000-08:00

Last August, when we signed up to do an activity called Mind Storm First Lego League, we had no idea what we were getting in for! It seemed like a fun little Lego related activity....

Well, it was Lego related, some days were fun, but there was nothing little about this! For about 2 months it seemed to completely dominate our lives, leading up to the competition. I think they learned some things about being prepared, putting all of yourself into what you do (or the results of NOT putting all of yourself into what you do!) and the cost of doing something well. They had to create a project idea and present that to judges, program their robot to do certain tasks (and actually duplicate those for judges), do a teamwork competition and answer technical questions about their robot.

Here is our scared little bunch trying to act like it was "no big deal" on competition day.

The technical interview, AKA the only time the robot did everything it was supposed to that day!

The teamwork challenge. They were "judged" based on how they interacted, how the solved the problem and how tall their paper tower was.

Waiting for scores. They made friends with another home school team of all boys, in the blue costumes behind them. That team was one of the top placers of the day.

Running up to get their medals for the day.

The boys loved the robot and are looking forward to hopefully getting one of their own someday in the future, but they are not sure that they loved the competition part of it all. Since there are college scholarships associated with this, there are some teams that are VERY dedicated. So much so that according to Keenan "they are a little scary!" I think that next year we will order the kit and do the tasks at home, without the whole competition aspect of it.

Here is the video that I actually managed to capture of the only time the program worked in all the aspects the entire day! The robots are apparently pretty notorious for being inconsistent but they got it to work through all of its tasks on the first try in the technical interview. There are several possible tasks that the robot can be programmed to do but as a rookie team they didn't go too overboard, and if the robot performed properly they managed to get 4 tasks completed. Interestingly enough, the most consistent one throughout the day was the one that the programmed on the fly the day of the competition!

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T09:11:00.000-08:00

And one of my resolutions...well, actually I only made two! One is to blog weekly, the other is to try to make school more FUN for the kids.

So, in light of the first one, blogging weekly, I am going to get started by backtracking a little bit to try to bring things up to date on this blog.

Art project from Keenan. They had to make a mask; so he made a "death mask".

The week after Bird City we went to visit mom and dad Lerwick in NE and had a great time with cousins...playing etc. We even got to see a soccer game that Kate was in and cheer her on. Then on the way home we had a field trip at the Aquarium in Denver. The kids got to take a "behind the scene's tour" that was really neat. They were able to see the tops of the tanks, what they do to keep the water healthy, where they prepare food for the animals etc. Then we even got to see the divers go in with the sharks!

Kate's Soccer Game

The Aquarium tour

Conner also had the privilege, through school, to do a WWII reenactment in the mountains near Colorado Springs. This was in October and he took his friend Alex along...they had a lot of fun but were not impressed by the MRE (actual meal ready to eat that the US Army gets fed) that they got to try out...in fact I think the term "cat food" may have been used to describe at least one of the dishes. They were "taken in" when they first got there and got their uniforms and paybooks. Then they had about 2.5 hours of education about uniforms, weapons, vehicles etc.
After that they ate their MREs and then it was off to the battlefield. They were divided into 3 groups, the Americans, Germans and Russians. About midway they all had to switch teams and play for the other side of the battle. No one was 100% sure who won these particular battles, but they got to throw smoke bombs, roll around on the ground and hide behind trees so it was all good!

Here are a few of the adults that had a lot of fun educating our kids!

After the "battle" which they thought was great fun

2010-09-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Well, last week we went to Bird City and had a wonderful time there, well until Sunday morning when Conner came down with the stomach flu bug. We stayed for the morning meeting and then took Conner, a bucket, lots of clorox wipes and headed home. We made it after only about 4 or 5 stops for sickness (and this mama doesn't do well with the whole vomiting thing!) and he slept it off, felt fine by Monday morning. So far, no one else is sick...

They are doing fine with school, making good progress. The goal is 3% a week on the curriculum. So far we have not had any trouble keeping up with that. We have started blocking by week, so an example of our week would be:
Monday: 5 math lessons and 1 history
Tuesday: 5 reading lessons and 1 history
Wednesday: 3 science lessons and 2 history
Thursday: 7 language arts lessons (includes grammar, composition and vocabulary)
Friday: 2 art, 1 music (for Keenan) and 2-3 Spanish (for Conner and that number depends on how many he fit in other days of the week).

Sometimes the kids don't block the same thing on the same day so that my attention can be one kid while the other does something more independent.

And now, just to be fair....a narrative essay by Conner. This one has been about 3 weeks in the writing as Conner absolutely does not like to be rushed!

My First Companion

As Dan Greenberg said, “Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near perfect method of writing avoidance”. I have been cat watching my whole life. This is the story of Forrest Gump, my first companion, and the many interesting things we did together. And yes, in case you were wondering, cat watching is a real distraction, from all kinds of important things. But it is such a fun activity.

Some children have an older brother or sister meet them when they come home from the hospital, but Forest Gump was waiting for me when I came home from the hospital. You may be wondering who Forest Gump is. Well, he was a Siamese cat that my parents got when they first got married. I suppose you wonder how he got the name Forest Gump. My parents got this cat about the same time they saw the movie Forest Gump. Our cat had lots of enthusiasm about everything he did but he was still petty slow about some things, like learning not to jump on the toilet seat when it was open and trying to get out from under the table when all the chairs were pushed in, since he was cross-eyed you see. When Forest was about 4 years old, everything in his world changed because my mom and dad brought home a baby.

A big brother might be disappointed to have a baby that couldn’t do anything come home from the hospital but Forest Gump and I loved to watch each other from the very beginning. My first day home I had to be under these ultraviolet lights for jaundice, or something wrong with my blood. The lights came in a little suitcase thing and my eyes had to be covered up with little glasses because the bright light would hurt my eyes. Forest was very curious and kept jumping up on the stand where I was laying in the lights but mom and dad were worried he would hurt his eyes so they had to keep chasing him away. Some cats are scared of noises but Forest was never scared about my crying. If I ever started crying, mom told me that he would come right in to check on me. One time my dad was gone for work for a few days and my mom was really tired and she didn’t hear me crying. Not to worry though, Forest was looking out for me! He jumped on my mom’s bed and kept pushing on her head until she woke up! As soon as I started moving around, Forest was always there, just a few steps behind me.

What a strange sight that must have been! A little boy and his cat sized shadow, traipsing around like they were two brothers who could not be separated. What was common between playtime and quiet time? My constant companion Forrest Gump. Whatever I did when I was playing he was always right there but unfortunately many of the things I did, he couldn’t really participate in. Well, except for messing up my Lincoln Log Houses, knocking my wooden trains off the track and mixing up piles of Legos. One time though, we had a toy we both agreed was the best, a cardboard box. You probably wonder why a cat and a 3 year old had so much fun with a box. This was a special box. For starters it was huge and my dad helped me make a 3 sided square hole for a door and another for a window. As soon as I left my little box house, Forrest would go inside and then poke his nose out the window to spy on all of us. We had the greatest time with me putting a string through the window so he could attack it. We shared quiet time too. Whenever I sat down on the couch to look at picture books, the next thing I knew, Forrest would be sitting next to me with his chin on my leg. It was almost as if he were reading along. I am sure I read a few stories out loud to him too, since cats are such great listeners!

The next stage in life was when I had to leave Forrest to go to school. We still stayed best friends though and he would sit on the fence and watch for my bus to come home, kind of like Lassie. When I raced up the hill his scratchy “meow” would greet me every day. He often wondered around the neighborhood during the day but somehow he always knew what time to be watching for me because every day, there he was, balanced on the top rail of the wooden fence around our small back yard. He loved that perch, like a hawk on an old oak branch, he could watch everything that went on in the park across the street and in our own back yard. He loved to sit there and watch my brother and I dig trenches and build construction sites in the back yard. He was probably the most patient cat that ever lived. Sometimes little boys can be pretty ornery. They get crazy ideas that there is just no explanation for. One day my brother and I thought it would be a good idea to use the orange hairspray my mom had gotten for crazy hair day at school and spray paint Forrest Gump. I am not sure what we were pretending but we were in Make Believe World. Even though Forrest got a bath out of the whole deal, he didn’t seem to have any hard feelings towards us, since he still waited for us after school, from his spot on the fence, and greeted us with a smile and “hello” in his own language. He had been there every day of my life, I just never thought of life without Forrest Gump.

The thing is, no matter how much we love them, animals get older. Somehow, I guess I didn’t understand what it meant when he started dragging his legs in the winter and couldn’t jump on things as well. My mom said things about arthritis but I didn’t have any idea what that meant. He seemed to sleep more but we could still get him to chase a string or a ball sometimes. Then he started to get ear infections all the time and didn’t feel well enough to even sit on the fence and wait for us, but when we were sitting on the couch or playing games on the floor he was always right there. Then one day when I was happily sitting at my desk at school, my mom and dad came to the door of my classroom. By the looks on their faces, I knew that it was bad news. They asked me to come with them and my brother Keenan to the car, but didn’t tell me why. Once we were in the car, they explained that we had to go to the vet’s office. Mom had taken Forrest into the vet that day for another ear infection but his ear had started to bleed. The vet couldn’t get it to stop and the only treatment was a really serious surgery that would make him deaf. Mom and dad explained that it didn’t make sense to put him through the surgery when he was almost 14 years old and he probably wouldn’t be happy if he were deaf, if he did live through the surgery. Besides that, the surgery cost way more money that we had right then. I still didn’t understand where they were going with this but then they explained that the best way to take care of an animal who was this sick would be to give him medicine to make him sleep forever. I felt sad and mad and a little sick to my stomach to think about that.

Forrest had been my best friend since I was born and to think of life without him didn’t make much sense. Who would I talk to? Who would meet me after school? Who would listen to me when I was mad or sad? Who would listen to my crazy ideas that other people laughed at? But what mom and dad said did make sense. Forrest couldn’t live with a bleeding ear and I couldn’t imagine him not being able to hear. He loved to sit on the fence but that wouldn’t be safe if he could not hear dogs or other dangerous animals coming close. He would have to be locked inside all the time and that wouldn’t make him happy. Besides, the surgery would be very dangerous and painful for him. I realized I would have to say goodbye to Forrest forever. Mom and dad took us into the room where the vet was with Forrest and they explained that they would put a needle in his leg and put some medicine in and he would just go to sleep. Mom and dad wanted us to say goodbye and then go out and let the vet take care of them. But I said “No way!” I wouldn’t let Forrest go through that alone. So we stayed in the room and hugged and kissed him while he left us. Then we cried all the way home. When we got home I just stood outside the door, by his spot on the fence, and remembered. I don’t know how long I stood there, but I couldn’t seem to move away.

After 10 years of cat watching, suddenly I found myself without any distractions. I guess I should have become the best writer around but somehow things didn’t turn out that way. It seems that easily distracted people can always find something to be distracted by. It probably wasn’t my cat that was distracting me, but something inside my own head, or maybe my little brother! It has been 3 years now and while I still miss Forrest, now I have 3 other distractions to my learning, Dexter and Ginger, our new kittens, and Keenan, my younger brother. It seems like as good of excuse as any to quote Dan Greenberg and say, “Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near perfect method of writing avoidance.”

2010-09-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

Keenan had to write an essay today, and I thought it was worth sharing! I still don't necessarily agree with the whole "format" writing thing that is taught these days, but I understand that when they are tested on it they have to all write the same. We sort of deviate from that a bit. He obviously has some things to learn about paragraphing and things like that, but he has come a long way from his first essay this year.

Enjoy his personal narrative paragraph.

Barr Trail

“Ahhhhhhgggg! Stupid game! Just when I almost win, something happens!” My mom said it sounded like we needed to plan a day tomorrow that didn’t have anything to do with computers! “We need to do something for exercise tomorrow, how about swimming?”, nagged my mom, again with that exercise thing! “All the pools are too expensive and the YMCA is a letdown”, explained Conner. “I know! Hiking!” I exclaimed. “Great idea, how about Barr Trail?” suggested mom. “Sure”, we all agreed. The next morning, after my dad left to slave away at work all day, we got our water, lunch, and snacks ready to go. We all piled in the car and took off. When we finally drove into Manitou, the place was packed with people, all kinds of people! It took forever to arrive at the trail head through all the traffic and people walking every which way. Finally, we started up the trail, up, and up, and UP! I kept stopping to rest and whine, because I thought I couldn’t do it. Then we saw a poor bedraggled little 6 year old boy who had wiped out and torn up his knee and his face after climbing all the way up the incline. He was being so tough that I started to feel a little stupid about the way I was acting! I took off and got way ahead of mom and Conner, and wouldn’t you know, I got in trouble for breaking that safety rule about staying where mom could see me. But I have to admit, it just felt great to take off and do it! It took us 2 ½ hours to arrive at the 4 mile point but it only took 40 minutes to walk and run back down. It was almost 2:30 when we got to the car and Manitou was almost deserted! We stopped and Sonic and purchased ice cream to help us cool down before we went home. We had an amazing day after all, even though I complained a lot at the beginning. I cannot wait to try it again, and this time I won’t have a negative attitude at the beginning, just focus on having fun!

August! Back to school!

2010-09-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

We had a great back to school the 2nd week of August and got a good early start on things.

First day!! Our classroom looks a little different than most but it works for us! The kids have desks in their rooms, but they seem to prefer to work in the kitchen/dining room because that is where I am most of the time.

And no, they don't do school in their jammies, at least not most days!

We have already changed our schedule a bit! Have to find what works right? Anyway, when we first started I was trying to get up and work from about 3-7am and then be available to get the boys up, feed them breakfast and start school. But with that model I was just too tired when they needed me to be on target for teaching so that wasn't working. Especially because I have a household full of night owls who didn't like for mom to go to bed at 8pm! So now we start our day around 6:30 with breakfast, bible reading and showers and are ready to start classes by 7:30. They each get a weekly schedule with all the lessons they have to accomplish on the schedule for the whole week, and they get to choose the order they do them in. This seems to work well for us and they seem to like to hit it really hard on Monday and Tuesday and have lighter days on Thursday and Friday. We finish school around 2:00 or so and then they have an hour or so of free time and then they have to help mom with chores, cleaning and fixing dinner. After dinner we all clean up and then dad gets them ready for bed while I go work until my work is done. I usually get done around midnight or so.

Our time seems to fill up really quickly! I laugh at these folks who question me about whether or not we are worried about the socialization that the kids do or don't get...I really don't think socialization is going to be a problem for them! Let's just look ahead at next week's schedule! Friday Keenan has a friend coming over. Saturday they are going hiking with dad and some other kids. Sunday we have 2 meetings. Monday we only have school, all day! Tuesday we have a library meetup with some kids from their old school. Wednesday we have meeting. Thursday they have Lego Robotics club and they have the booster buddies meeting (Moms work on planning field trips and kids play). Friday morning we have a field trip to the Olympic Training Center and in the afternoon they have a middle school meetup at the Penny Arcade in Manitou. And that doesn't even include the 3 live class sessions that each of them will be attending next week!

I may find that we are more busy doing home schooling than we were with public school! But at least I know who they are socializing with and what they are doing!

So far they are both progressing really well with classes. Conner really zipped through the first 5 units of math since it was all review and now he is getting into some new stuff. The great thing about COVA is that he has that option. As long as he passes the assessments he can go on to the next lesson. Keenan is flying through Vocabulary, which I am sure is a surprise to everyone who knows him! Of course that would be HIS favorite class! Neither of them just love history but we are working on making that more interesting.

And I am developing a much more profound sense of AWE for those teachers in my elementary country school who taught more than one grade at a time! This is HARD! Keeping track of everything, covering all this material! It would certainly be much easier if we had them sharing ANY of their classes! But nothing overlaps this year!

Oh, and Conner had his birthday August 26. We had a friend over for the weekend and they made slime...a way too much fun science experiment! The made about 400 paper airplanes and then they went swimming all day Saturday. I made his cake, and it is obvious it is an amateur job but they liked the flavor and that is what matters!

PS....when you put a straw into the center of a ball of slime and blow air into it...it makes a sound that only boys can appreciate!

July!

2010-09-07T10:49:00.001-07:00

Dad took the kids to the waterfalls, their favorite place to hike and play, to give mom a bit of a break one day.

And Keenan said that "nature was a great place to practice yoga"!

My kids proving that even big kids can have fun with Lincoln logs! Actually I told them that they had to get away from their computers and do something creative...and there was much laughing going on downstairs. When I went down there, this is what I found, with the question "Is this creative?"

Keenan wanted to learn to make meatloaf, then decided it was gross!

But he ate it anyway!

Then the school supplies arrived! They were both excited on that day...because now they are both home schooled!

Then back to Nebraska for a little break before school starts!

Cousin H had her first birthday...

Conner was educating cousin H about the gameboy..because all boys need to know how to operate one of those!

The kids found a big caterpillar and saw it make a cocoon. Apparently it was big enough that it made Uncle G nervous when he put it in the jar!

Grandpa got a new grain cart and the size was impressive to these city kids!

And then there was harvest!

We stayed long enough to pick lots of currants for jam and help can lots of peaches and pears, go swimming at the pool in Scottsbluff, see lots of friends but not for long enough! And then we had to head back home! Almost time for school to start!

Um....catching up?

2010-09-07T10:10:00.001-07:00

Since I am so far behind...here is a brief "catching up" of the past few months!

We had mother's day in NE again and everyone was home for a lovely lunch prepared by the men, with lots of good food! (oh and cousin E's first birthday that week too!)

Keenan and cousin K got a little silly and had a lot of fun!

Conner made a distiller for science class, and there was much concentration involved! The greatest thing about home school science is that instead of a bunch of kids watching one kid do the experiment, he has to do the WHOLE experiment himself!

Keenan finished 4th grade at the public school and he finished it in grand style with a "Hawaii day".

He had a field trip to Garden of the Gods

Conner stayed at Dean's house for calving and then went to preps at Antioch for a few days but I don't have pictures of that.

Laura came to visit and we hiked the Manitou Incline

We went to Antioch and had wonderful days there! Keenan made a big choice!

We went to Chugwater..and lived to tell the story! And only found 2 hail dents on the car and the windshield was still intact. We were very lucky compared to others!

We had a beautiful day to hike up Barr Trail about 4 miles each way

Coming up next? Harvest and a visit to Grandma's house!

A drawing!!!

2010-05-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

I promise, I will get some pictures and a post with some updates done soon....really, I will....but right now I just wanted to tell you about a contest....

On Ramie's Blog....

For a Longeberger basket cookbook holder!

Go leave a comment and register for the drawing!

See you all soon.

February....

2010-03-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

A busy month to be sure! Keenan turned 10, so now there is no one in this house in single digits unless you count the kitties! We had a big party for Keenan with some of his classmates. There was lots of sword fighting, eating blue cake and pizza, and NOISE!!!!! We had a group stay over night and it actually went pretty well for that many boys, they were pretty much asleep by 11:00, which was a good thing considering we were woke up with one of the boys having an asthma attack at 5:00!

Conner is doing great with school. It is his goal to go to grandma and grandpa Lerwick's for calving the first weekend of May and stay until Antioch time. We have told him he can if he is finished with school by then. It actually looks like he will be finished by the middle of April....oops, guess we will have to fill in some blanks! Actually, he did finish up math so he has the 8th grade math course arriving today and will be working on that when he finishes everything else up.

My boys love to be goofy! I told them to use some elbow grease to clean off the table. So here they go!

We were lucky and had some special visitors this month! Uncle Grant and Aunt Kelley came with their kids and then Uncle Dean and Aunt Jen and their kids came too! We LOVE having company!

I am working more again. Sometimes it just takes a leap of faith to get out of a bad situation (the old job that didn't actually want to pay me for work) and know that better things await. Now I have more time to focus on family and home and the work that I do have is gradually and steadily picking up to where I will be about 3/4 of full time,which is just perfect. The old job had me at about 1 1/2 of full time! It was getting to be too much and I am glad that I jumped when I did.

We are getting more and more settled in the new house...now if we could just get the garage cleaned out so Kevin could park in there all would be well!

Art Contest

2010-01-08T14:41:00.000-08:00

Conner spent a lot of his winter break working busily on his art contest entry. Today was the deadline, and after fighting with printers/scanners/computers etc.....mom FINALLY got the artwork submitted. So....here is his art competition entry. And coming soon we will have his sampler for school project. He is studying American Art and the point he is at right now is early 1800s and he gets to make a sampler.

LAZY BLOGGER

2009-12-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

Yep, that is me! Wow.....I have done a terrible job of it.

I will try to catch up briefly.

We got back from our trip on Labor Day weekend and got very involved in school for both boys, volunteer time at Keenan's school and just being busy in general. Kevin was working long days since it was the "shutting down" time for irrigation and I was working and teacher and "mommying".

Then in the blink of an eye it was time for Bird City convention. That in itself was an adventure in mud....I found out that somehow, sitting next to Keenan in meeting, it was possible to get mud on my scarf,which was around my neck....Now, I know he wasn't kicking me in the face so that is still a mystery!

We got home from Convention and found out that we were likely going to get to move but nothing was sure until the 16th of October. We started going through the stuff in the storage unit anyway and found out that remarkably, most of it was junk that we were paying to store...that could be thrown or given away! Lesson learned, don't keep things you don't use! On the 16th we found out that we were indeed going to be able to move and we got started with arranging painting and carpet cleaning and packing!

On the first weekend of November we moved in and then had a week to wrap things up at the old house. We were moving things quickly and just piling boxes everywhere...planning on unpacking right away. We did pretty well with all of that and were fairly well settled in when Aunt Pat and Uncle Harold came for Thanksgiving. That was a real treat and we had a nice quiet Thanksgiving in our new home. Then on Saturday of that weekend my friend from home, April, came and gave me decorating ideas (and a whole pile of wonderful goodies!!) There are no pictures on the walls yet but it is getting there. The only boxes are in one half of the 2 car garage so that is not too bad.

I actually ended up quitting one of my practices at the end of November due to some "accounting challenges" on their part (they thought it wasn't necessarily important to pay their vendors and I didn't agree!). So now for the past 2 weeks I have had only part time work. I really thought that would mean I had a lot of time for unpacking etc but it seems like life just gets busier when you don't have work to fill your time! I had a week at Keenan's school volunteering in the Holiday Shoppe, then we had lots of projects for Conner's school, a game day, some other events and field trips, special meeting and special company, and then school is out!

Now we are at Grandma and Grandpa Lerwick's house waiting for a "big storm" but it hasn't hit yet!

School is going relatively well for both kids. Conner still loves COVA and is doing well with it. I believe he is nearly at 50% or greater for all of his classes, and he is required to be at 42% by the end of the semester for advanced so he is well beyond that. He likes math a lot and science is interesting but a bit frustrating. If I have one complaint about the K12 curriculum it is that there is no text book, not online OR hard copy. The information is in each lesson and they have to take notes and then if they need to go back and find information they have to go through the lesson to find it. Conner learns very similar in style to the way I do, which means going back and looking things up several times to remember them. He is very interested in science though and overall is enjoying the class very much. Reading is definitely his challenge class as he really doesn't enjoy it that much, but he did read Tom Sawyer and enjoyed that very much.

Keenan has had some bullying issues in his school this year and I think that coupled with the long drive every day is making all of us eager for him to home school next year. Unfortunately I believe that the public school is rapidly going downhill, even the great charter that our kids have been a part of. The problem we have come up against is that it seems that the trouble makers have more of a right to misbehave than the good kids have a right to a safe environment. Currently the school is taking some measures to deal with the issue but it is frustrating to mom for sure. It is disappointing to see what was an excellent school go down in quality because of behavioral issues. I guess that maybe it has to do with more and more people removing their kids from the environment that is bad so what is left is the ones who make the environment bad!

One really good thing though is that one of Keenan's best friends has also moved north in Colorado Springs so he actually lives only about 5 minutes from our house and it will be easy to get the two of them together! Conner's good friend still lives down south but we have been able to get together regularly with him as well so they will be able to maintain those friendships.

I will attempt to get some pictures posted of the house as we get some things done to make it a home in the next week....(Laura is coming for a week so maybe between the two of us we can figure out how to hang pictures!) And maybe we will have some cousin pics this week too!

I will really attempt to get more into the nuts and bolts of schooling this semester and keep you updated on some of the things we are doing. We have some really exciting field trips coming up and are looking forward to those (I think Keenan may get self declared holidays for the ones in Denver and get to go along with us).

No pictures this time, I have to get some off of my camera and get them into this computer.

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

****Shhhhh***** Don't tell the boys, but they were in school the whole weekend!

Actually, Keenan is studying Colorado History and Conner is studying US history and the unit he just finished was on cliff dwellers, so the weekend was very educational and time appropriate! We had a wonderful time and saw lots of history.

We started off by hitting the sand dunes...where mom's camera battery died, so only a few pictures there!

Then we went on through the beautiful Pagosa Springs area to Cortez where we had a hotel. And all the way the question was "what time does the pool close? Will we make it in time to swim"....

The next day was Mesa Verde and it was beautiful!

We did the Cliff Palace tour and I strongly recommend that to anyone going to Mesa Verde. It was amazing and interesting, not too strenuous of a hike, but there are ladders to climb, pretty steep ones, so dress appropriately. I wish we would have had much more time since I think I could have hiked around that area for days, but we didn't so we just saw what we could.

Then on to 4 Corners, the kids were pretty fascinated with the whole 4 states at once thing and we spent some time there. Also got a chance to watch and visit with a man (navajo) who was making arrowheads, carving them...then the boys picked out an arrow shaft and a kind of stone and he made them arrows while they watched. So if you hit the 4 Corners area, look for the booth with Edward Begay...he is an interesting guy to visit with and does make beautiful arrows!

My boys are of course too big and too cool to bend down and put a limb in each state....oh well!

This was a really neat rock formation that we saw on the way back to Cortez. It has a really stark beauty!

And of course, the best part of any vacation!!!! The pool at the hotel.

Art experiences

2009-09-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

Art is something that I am not much help with, but fortunately Conner loves it and has a lot of fun following the step by step directions. The lesson plans are very detailed and work out well for someone with no art background (like me!) Fortunately, he has Mrs. J at Soaring Eagles still available for any assistance he may need...and as long as he goes in once in a while to help with the bulletin boards, I think that she will continue to love him!

Tuesday's lesson was to make a mask, then on Thursday he had to paint and decorate the mask. It is an Indian story telling mask, they would put their fingers through the holes on the bottom and use it to act out stories, almost like a puppet. So here are the various stages of this project.

Science days.

2009-09-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

What is worse than doing poorly on a science test?

Having mom as your "teacher" so she knows right away?

No...having mom as your "teacher" and she is MEAN and makes you repeat every lesson in the unit because you were hurrying and didn't do it well!

Oops!

Conner likes science but thought he pretty well KNEW this unit so he could rush through it in a couple days and not take notes. Well, after pretty well failing the unit test, mom made him redo the entire unit, not just hitting the high points but doing EVERY SINGLE LESSON (novel idea that!) and taking notes (even more novel idea!)....so here are some pictures of the "redo", which he has been doing at a rate of 3-4 lessons a day and actually finding it to be interesting!

And it is snail and swamp water day in science. Guess what? Snails will leave the area they are in if there is no lid, then they will slime their way across the table we eat on, leaving a shiny little trail, and then they will fall onto the floor, where the cat will watch it move along very slowly until Conner rescues it! I can tell that science is going to be quite an experience! There were also little bugs that moved like tadpoles in the water....I was ready for that one to go outside!

Hmmmmmm.....Don't you wonder what he is thinking about here? There is something going on in there! Science is so much fun, isn't it?

This is the "work space" in our home currently, doing Social Studies (which seems to be the current favorite and no wonder, the books are EXCELLENT!)

So, today's lesson learned is that you cannot neglect the lessons if you want to pass the test. That could apply in many areas of our life! Good counsel indeed for all of us from school to eternity.

FREEDOM!

2009-08-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

That is what K woke up saying this morning, after his measly 4 hours of sleep! Today was the day of his neurology follow up! We had to have an EEG done because of some strange "events" he is having so that is the reason for the 4 hours of sleep.

As you can see, sleep deprivation worked! He fell asleep before she even got all the leads attached and she had wake him up to do the "awake" portion of the test.

After the EEG we waited and waited to see the doctor and when he finally came it I didn't have a good feeling since it had taken him so long to read the EEG.

He asked if we wanted to easy part of the hard part first.

Easy part: He appears to have no sequelae from his head injury and is free to have a gradual return to activity as his body allows! YAY, that is the FREEDOM part! He can go out for recess at school, eat in the cafeteria with his friends, hang out outside the door with his classmates, even go to PE class when they are not using basketballs. That is the happy and easy part.

Hard part: He "performed really well" for them on the EEG. His EEG is grossly abnormal with lots of activity. We don't know at this point what the activity is from. It could be post traumatic or it could be something to do with the family history and he is developing a seizure disorder, or maybe it is a non seizure anomaly. There is no real way of knowing, but what he is describing and from what they see on the EEG it appears that he is having simple partial seizures (a seizure where he is aware that something is going on, but would be unable to vocalize it until it is over). The other kinds of seizures are unconscious seizures, where the person would not be aware that there was anything going on, just lost time. K describes this event as "A feeling like a static balloon on my hair but inside my head on my brain. When it happens my ears and eyes are fuzzy and I cannot move my arms or legs". This fits with the simple partial seizure. On a positive note though, no one has noticed any behavior that would indicate any other kinds of seizures. No tonic/clonic motions, no head nods, no drops, no flutters or staring spells. At this point we are "waiting and seeing" what will transpire. He just has to be careful, but most of the "be careful" precautions we were given are already in place because apparently I must be a bit paranoid!

Anyway, that was our exciting day and now I need some sleep pretty badly after that day!

Tomorrow is another day and I am reminded of something Grandpa Lerwick used to say a lot...
"This too shall pass (and we will wonder where the time went)."

And now...a birthday visit....

2009-08-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

Friday we had C's friend from Soaring Eagles come for the night and Saturday.

Imagine if you will...One child is home schooled, the other attends a 21st Century Charter School. Both LOVE what they are doing. They were talking so fast about school that neither one heard the other...then the spent the weekend making paper airplanes!

But A was interested in C's school so C saved science to do when his visitor was here. As luck would have it, that science lesson included a lab!

They had a lot of fun with the balloon and yeast lab...and yeah, if you add a LOT of yeast, sugar and water to a bottle then put a balloon over the end, the balloon will expand so much it blows off...do you want to know how I know this? But they learned and had fun and MOST of the mess was outside the door! As you can tell, he is completely thrilled that I am taking his picture here and put on his best "I am interested in what I am doing here look".

Oh, and then he and A made a stuffed crust pizza for lunch and had a lot of fun with that...and apparently, one pizza is not enough when you have 3 hungry boys to feed and a hungry dad! He will have to make 2 next time.

Meet the teacher!

2009-08-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday night we were invited to go to the zoo and meet the teacher with the other local COVA families. I cannot believe how many families have gained the sanity and are "Taking their children back"! The line to get in was all the way around the circular part at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (don't ask me to guess how far it is because I don't estimate distance very well, it was somewhere between 100 feet and half a mile!). We got in line and when we arrived at the front of the line, the line was longer than when we had joined it. I don't know for sure how many people were there but I do know that the main parking lot was full and the overflow had lots of cars in it too.

We were fortunate to get to the teacher area before it was too crowded and got a chance to meet C's teacher. This is a different teacher picture than ever before, since we don't even know how many times we will see the teacher this year but Mrs. W is our contact for everything this year.

The evening was a lot of fun and we did run into a family we had met earlier in the year who is in their first year of COVA as well for their 7th grade daughter. They also have a 4th grade son who is going to continue at a brick and morter school for a couple more years. When we first met S and I were looking at each other with fear in our eyes, wondering if home school was something we could even manage. Tonight when we saw each other we both had the same comment..."can it really be this easy"? She had met C only once, at the tail end of last school year. After being with him only about 20 minutes her comment about him was "I wouldn't have recognized C at all, he is so happy he is almost sparkly"! He even talked to their daughter and had conversations wtih virtual strangers! The change in my quiet little boy is remarkable and other people are noticing it! I couldn't be more happy with the process at this point!

Happy Birthday Conner!!!

2009-08-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

C is 12 today! Wonder how that happened? I am not old enough to have a 12 year old am I? Anyway, he worked ahead on school so he could have the day off and now he is happily playing with his birthday Lego set, one he has waited almost 7 months for, since it came out and he saw it in a magazine. If you can imagine, it is a farm set and he REALLY wanted it badly!

The other set is a camper from K. For years they have worked at creating a camper and made all kinds of varieties of them, and now they have a set that is a "real" camper with beds, chairs etc all in the vehicle.

I am delighted that at 12 he would rather play with Legos and use his imagination that play video games. I love that my kids love their toys still. I really think that brains develop so much better when they are playing with things like that than if they are just interacting with a machine.
K is wildly jealous that C gets to have his birthday off...so we may have to create a "holiday" for K when his birthday comes around so he can have the same privilege. The only class C will do today is Spanish, since he needs to do that every day, but that class is like a game. It is amazing, the program is Power Speak. It is really an interesting way to teach language but he is having fun with it so that is great.

Tuesday: Company coming!

2009-08-26T09:54:00.001-07:00

Today was a fun school day....C worked ahead so he can have his birthday off! Smart thinking huh? Don't you wish you could do that in the real world?

Science started a new unit about food and nutrition so you KNOW that mom is involved in that one! We had a stack of books all over the table, didn't take a picture of that though, of "supplemental materials" that I just happened to have around! He had to learn the different classifications of food: Protein, lipid, carbohydrate. He then had to make a collage of the different categories with pictures from magazines. That was a fun project!

For reading he read a story called "How the Cat Played Robinson Crusoe". For anyone with kids who like cats, that is a GREAT adventure story that has lots of advanced vocabulary words in it. Well worth reading. It is in "Classics for Young Readers" edition 6 but I am sure it is its own book too. The author is Charles G.D. Roberts.

Then for supper the workers came over, Cheri Fisk and Stephanie Kinney. C wanted to make something different so we did. Thanks to April for the recipe that turned out to be VERY YUMMY! and very pretty too.

It is called Peach Salsa Chicken and preparing it gave a cooking lesson and also a math lesson since the recipe was for 1 4oz serving and we were making 16 oz of chicken!

2 bell peppers (we used yellow and red for color) diced finely

16 ounces of chicken cut into chunks

All the ingredients ready.

The finished product! YUMMY.

Peach Salsa Chicken:

*2 cups of canned peaches (yes, we used our home canned ones!) diced and save the juice off of them.
*16oz boneless skinless chicken breast cut in chunks
*4tsp olive oil
*2 medium bell peppers (any color you choose)
*8T chunky salsa
*4T unsweetened orange juice

In large skillet heat oil and cook chicken till no longer pink
Remove chicken from skillet
Add bell peppers to skillet, reduce heat and saute for 2-3 minutes, stirring, until pepper is tender. Add reserved peach juice, salsa and orange juice to skillet and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Add peaches and stir until hot. Add chicken, stirring to coat with sauce.

We served this with zucchini and summer squash with tomatoes, one of our favorite summer veggie dishes.

Saute onions and garlic together and then add sliced zucchini and summer squash and cook till tender, then toss in tomatoes and warm.

Dinner was delicious and C did most of the work by himself! I might not be needed anymore!

Tomorrow is C's birthday and he is very excited to have the day off! We had cake and ice cream and sang happy birthday with the workers so that was his "party" at least the most formal one he has.

Monday: Grocery Game WINNER!

2009-08-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

We are doing a lot of discussions about finances, money, making the most of your money etc. I do the Grocery Game and normally save about 40-50% off our grocery bill. Well, this week was a much bigger winner. C helped with coupons, helped with shopping and learned that with just a little inconvenience you can save a LOT of money! General Mills was running a special, with a limit of 2 per shopping trip, where if you buy 10 of their items you got 5 dollars off. We coupled that with LOTS of coupons, and basically ended up getting 300$ of groceries for 80$! This supplies us with cereal, granola bars, fruit snacks etc for a year! And the kids get a lot of things that their cheap mother would not typically buy for them! Wanna see what we got for 80 dollars?

4 boxes of Capt'n Crunch
16 boxes of granola bars
12 boxes of fruit snacks
2 packages of bacon
1 20 roll package of toilet paper
2 (50 oz) bottles of Tide with bleach (we like to make home made laundry soap but for whites I use this)
6 rolls of dental floss
2 bottles of lysterine for kids
2 "Reach" toothbrushes
2 tubes of crest pro health tooth paste
2 packages of 10 pens
1 package of 10 mechanical pencils (an absolute must for homework!)
2 jars of pickle relish
4 boxes of Romano Macaroni Grill meals
6 boxes of Hamburger Helper
4 packages of Knorr Pasta sides
1 box of Uncle Bens long grain wild rice
2 Betty Crocker potato sides
10 bottles of Diet Mountain Dew (yes, we all drink it except for Kevin)
4 boxes of Pillsbury Toaster Pastries
6 cans of Grand's Biscuits
1 package of Sargento String cheese

Any doubters left about coupons? :) We had to do 3 different orders to get a total of 30 dollars off then on top of that there were 2 general mills coupons that printed at the checkout for 3.50 off your next order.

C had so much fun that now he wants to go grocery shopping with me each time! It is like a scavenger hunt!

We are going through the Dave Ramsey book with our kids and we talk a lot about managing money, making your money go as far as it possibly can and being not spending more than you have.

Much of that stuff we make from scratch 95% of the time, but with the sales like that, we throw a little convenience stuff into our fridge to make life a bit easier.

School was pretty standard today. All subjects covered but only "Project" was science. He had a test and had to classify living things by their 7 steps of classification by putting the little slips of paper in order and had to research on the internet to come up with the information. I really think they learn more by doing it that way than by reading in a book then regurgitating on a test.

Thanks to Mrs. R!!!!!

2009-08-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Last year C had an amazing writing teacher and she made them work VERY hard! There were times he was so frustrated he cried but he wanted her to be proud of him so he kept working, hopefully living up to her expectations. Anyway, today's literature block assignment was to write a riddle poem about an animal, at least 2, 4 line stanzas.

C literally *skipped* into the office while I was working and said "Because of Mrs. R this assignment is going to be a piece of cake!" and he went back to work, coming back with his finished poem in no time! So all her hard work paid off! And he wrote 3 stanzas, not just 2.

Here is his poem:

Who Am I?

Four legs and a tail,
Claws like a nail.
I have a triangle face,
And I often look into space.

Brown, black and tan hair,
I'm not all that rare.
I chase mice on the floor,
When I lose one I want more.

When I am mad I hiss and GRRRR,
But when I am happy I purr.
Sometimes I am shy,
Who Am I?

He loves to write and read poetry and that was something that came from last year. I am sure you can tell that I am proud of him but more than that I cannot get over how excited he is to be learning and doing well! And it is coming easily instead of with so many battles like the past.

By the way, the answer to his question?

Pickles and Pork

2009-08-19T20:03:00.000-07:00

We have been working on the cinnamon pickles for a few days now, and just tasted the almost finished product.....YUMMMMMM!

C has been helping with each step of this as we go along and today he told me that it must have been tiring to live in the "olden days" if you had to do this much work! Silly kid! I explained that in the "olden days" we would have been doing it over a fire not the stove. But I think he is having fun.

Step one for cinnamon pickles:
Peel, cut, seed and slice 7 pounds of cucumbers, bigger ones are better but not soft.
Then you take those cucumbers and put them in water with 1 cup of pickling lime for 24 hours. Weight them down with a plate to keep them under water.

Step two:
Drain off the lime water and rinse your pickles, and soak in ice water for 3 hours. Don't taste them here! They are gross!
Then you take 1 cup of vinegar
1 bottle of red food coloring
1 T of alum
enough water to cover your pickles
And simmer for 2 hours.
Drain off that liquid and put back in your "soaking bucket"

Step 3:
While the pickles are simmering in the food coloring and alum you combine:
3 cups of vinegar
2 cups of water
2-3 packages (8 ounce) of redhot candies
10 cups of sugar (I actually cut mine in half as that seemed like way too much sugar and they taste fine without that much sugar)
Cinnamon sticks
3T Cinnamon powder
Cook over medium low heat until all the red hots are dissolved.

Step 4:
Once that is all dissolved you pour that over your cucumbers in the soaking bowl or bucket and weight down with a plate again. Let sit for 24-36 hours in that mixture. The drain off the cinnamon mixture and return to stove top where you heat to boiling. Pack the pickles in jars, pour boiling liquid over them and hot process in a water bath for 15-20 minutes depending on your altitude. Let age for at least 2 weeks for best flavor after sealing, although they aren't bad straight out of the soaking bucket!

School continues to be great! C is really enjoying the new challenges each day and is really relishing the learning process. This is such a dramatic change that I feel like someone literally waved a magic wand over our house! Oh, and K is so jealous he almost cannot stand it! Every day he bursts in the door and asks C what time he got done with school and C tells him, noon or 1 most days...and K says "Man! I can't WAIT for next year!"

I seriously have no idea why all of this is underlined by the way! I really don't want it that way and cannot figure out how to turn it off!

Today's cooking adventure was an easy one since we had meeting to get ready for tonight. Pulled pork sandwiches and "grandma's" pork and beans.

This one only takes a few minutes, plus a few hours! (Oh, look, my underline is gone!) We had a pork roast for lunch on Sunday so then when it is still warm separate the fat from the meat and throw in the fridge. Then this morning C took the meat out and put it in the crock pot with enough bar-b-que sauce to coat it and it cooked all day on low. It is always tender and delicious and we have found out that it freezes really well too! The beans are just a can of Van De Camp beans with a squirt of catsup, mustard and a couple tablespoons of brown sugar, and you have "Grandma Lerwick's beans".

We are about half way done with the fruit preserving. We have 21 quarts of peaches and 7 pints of peaches. 5 quarts of pears and 3 pints of pears. 12 pints of peach jam. And one of the pears didn't seal so the kids were eating it and they like it SO much that they want to get another box of pears to put up next week so they have more to eat this winter!

I don't know if C is really going to use much that he is learning this week...he told me that he is going to cook when he grows up but he is not going to can that much stuff because it makes the floor sticky. :) Anyway, our next project, after the canning is done, is friendship bread. We are going to start the sourdough from square one and in a few weeks will have more than we could ever want! So put your orders in for starters if you want any.

2009-08-18T22:00:00.001-07:00

Wow! We had quite a storm here today. I could see dark clouds coming up as I was heading to school to get K. By the time school got out it was hailing about marble sized hail and raining like crazy. I ended up running up to the door with an umbrella because the school phones were busy and I didn't want him taking his little injured head out and getting smacked with a hail stone! The rain was up to my ankles in the parking lot and just pouring down...I was wet from waist to toe and freezing cold by the time we waited out the hail and ran back to the car...but K didn't get his head hit.

Then home to work on the cinnamon pickles. They are now marinating

Lessons learned today.....

2009-08-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

1. C is fully capable of finishing the entire day of lessons on-line alone and getting 100% on every assessment! Interesting considering that for the past 4 years I have sat down and held his hand and fought and pushed to get him through homework EVERY SINGLE NIGHT! I guess we have found our answer...

He told me today that he could have done that before at school if he hadn't had so many interruptions but when he got interrupted in the middle of writing and then had to go back and finish it later he had to "start his brain over". He even stated that he doesn't think he has any less work than before, just that he can work straight through and not have to distract himself. He is done in about 5 hours at the most without any further work, and that includes pre-reading for tomorrow.

2. Stalactites are not living things. There are 7 characteristics that must be present to be "living" and C got to study them all today, draw this cool picture about it and "teach" it to his learning coach (me)...and he was SOOOO excited about it. It was so fun to see him get excited about something to do with school!

3. The Anasazi Indians farmed on top of mesas above their cliff dwellings and had to climb 100 feet up ladders to reach their fields, that is about 10 stories! That is a long way to climb up ladders.

4. When C volunteers a hug and thanks me for letting him do school this way, it totally makes my day!!!

5. C can peel a cucumber faster than I can! And we peeled, cut and took the seeds out of 20 pounds of cucumbers, ending with about 14 pounds...which are soaking in pickling lime and will be made into cinnamon pickles.

6. Peaches must be RIPE if you plan on canning them, not a little bit green. You don't want to see the mess I made trying to "slip" the skins off of greenish peaches to put them in jars. My canned peaches are NOT pretty. But it is my first canner, only 7 jars, we will eat them and never know the difference. The next ones will be pretty. Oh, and put the syrup in each jar when you finish with them or they change color. Live and learn! That is my life story I think.

No recipe today, I didn't cook dinner and neither did C...this is why we didn't! 7 quarts of peaches, 21 pints of dill pickles, 8 jars of peach jam.

It's FRIDAY.....And there is NO HOMEWORK

2009-08-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Just a random picture of the kids having fun with a science kit we got.

In my house, we have a whole weekend ahead of us with no homework for the kids! Wonder what we will do this weekend? I believe home made ice cream is on the agenda with the old fashioned crank ice cream mixer.

We are going to spend a little time going on a "gentle" hike so we can get out of the house without overtaxing K! We all want to do the incline again but guess we need clearance from the neurosurgeon before we do that.

Looking forward to days off!!!!

And just so they don't feel left out...introducing our kitties. Ginger is from Uncle G and Aunt K's house and she is not quite a year old. She is very feisty and the kids have so much fun with her.

Dexter is a "fancy cat" purebred that we got from a neighbor who had an oopsie batch of kitties before the female got fixed. He can be quite snooty and fancy but he is also very fun to watch.
When we first brought Ginger home we thought we had made a huge mistake because they HATED each other, but they have worked things out for the most part. They still fight sometimes but they get along pretty well and play together too....all over the house and sometimes very loudly at night!

Farm market day

2009-08-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today was the day for the farmer's market and I really went overboard! We got lots of soft peaches, roasted peppers for salsa, cucumbers for pickles and much, much more. So.....Thursday I had K's back to school night and after that we hit the canning! It was a bit of a late night but C learned how to make salsa and can it and make peach jam and can it! We have 5 pints of salsa (which is a little too spicy for my taste but Dad and C loved it enough to eat it like soup when it was hot, crazy guys!), 10 pints of dill pickles, and 12 half pints of peach jam (well 11 because one is already gone!).

We are going to make cinnamon pickles next week so watch out!

Salsa:
1 quart size bag of roasted chilis (mild)
take the skin off and take out most of the seeds then chop
1 1/2 large fresh onions
Dice up finely
2 cloves of roasted garlic
Peel and roughly chop
1-2 small jalepeno peppers
Take out the seeds and dice up
2 large cans of diced tomatos
1/3 cup lime juice
1/4 cup kosher course salt

Cook until the onions are just starting to look a little cooked, then put in canning jars and water bath process for about 20 minutes (at our altitude anyway).

Peach Jam

4 cups of mushy (almost over the hill peaches)
cut them up and take off the peels, slide any really soft spots off with your fingers
Take a potato masher and slightly mash these, leaving lots of large chunks.
1/4 cup lemon juice
7 cups of sugar
fruit pectin (one package)

Cook until a hard boil, add your pectin (I used liquid for this because I wanted it to set for sure)
boil hard for one minute, pour into jars and hot process for 20 minutes (again, that is for our altitude).

STUFFED CRUST PIZZA!!!!

2009-08-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

This post has to start with a big thanks to Aunt K, who taught C how to make Pizza when he spent the night with them this summer.

C came home with a couple recipes that he couldn't wait to try out on us. Wednesday when I went to pick up K from school C asked if he could make dinner. I told him he had wait to put anything in the oven until I got home...so what was on the counter when I walked in? All ready to go in the oven? A stuffed crust pizza, and he made the crust from scratch!!!!

He had a total blast doing it, made the dough, let it raise, rolled it out and made a pizza, and it was REALLY GOOD!!!!

Stuffed Crust Pizza!

Recipe: (The credit for this goes to the Benjamin Family Cook Book, via aunt K)

Ingredients: Pizza sauce, string cheese, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, sausage (browned)
Dough:
1 cup of warm water
2 T olive oil
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp of salt
2 1/2 tsp yeast

Mix this in a mixer with a dough hook for about 5 minutes. Put this in a bowl to let the yeast work and raise the dough until it doubles in size.

Roll out on a floured surface until slightly bigger than your pizza pan, then take string cheese and divide the pieces in 1/3 and lay around the edge of your dough just at the edge of your pan. Roll the dough over the cheese and press down. Then put your sauce and toppings on your pizza, top with cheese and bake at 400 for about 10 minutes (adjust time to your oven). Enjoy!!!

Tuesday: K starts back to school

2009-08-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

Well, K's first day of school was Tuesday and he had been looking very much forward to having Miss F for his teacher so he was excited to see her for the first time...and to see Mrs H, his amazing teacher from last year.

His start to school is definitely a little different this year as we have to take all kinds of precautions with his head. And those of you who know a little about K know that his head is not usually very well protected as he goes into everything he does HEADFIRST!!

The reason for this is his unfortunate crash on a 4-wheeler on the 21st of July while we were up in Nebraska for wheat harvest. That ended up in a 2 day stay at the hospital that scared the daylights out of mom, dad, grandmas and grandpas and lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. Fortunately he came out alright with "just" and skull fracture and bleeding on the brain to show for the experience...and lots of warnings about not rough housing, breaking a sweat or being anywhere he might get knocked down or injured on his head at least until follow-up with the neurosurgeon on the 31st of August!

This is a picture of K from the first night in the hospital, in ICU, when they finally gave him some medicine that took away the headache and he fell asleep.

So school started with a list of rules as long as your arm but the school and teachers are all being great to help him protect his head...since he doesn't protect his own! At least he doesn't have to wear a helmet like the other kiddo in his school who had a head injury this summer!

He is off to a great start and loving 4th grade. He thinks his teacher "rocks" and he enjoys being with his friends again. Fortunately, he has been with pretty much the same group of kids since Kindergarten, almost like our little country school I grew up with, so they all know each other pretty well and have learned how to get along.

An explanation of our name

2009-08-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

We are starting a whole new adventure in life. Several years ago we realized that traditional public school was a complete disaster as far as education our kids. At that time we had learned of a charter school in our district that was a Gifted and Talented School and fortunately both of our kids tested to get into that school. With that began an adventure that was not all negative but certainly not all positive.

C was never happy in school. It always seemed like he came home with way too much homework. The teachers would tell us he was wasting class time on monkeying around and then had to bring the work home, plus all the homework they assigned, apparently because kids were not supposed to have free time these days. This became a real sore spot for our family because every night I would have to sit down and spend 2-3 hours going through homework with C and reviewing all the concepts taught in the day etc. It was exhausting to say the least and with working full time as a medical transcriptionist as well I didn't really have time to do anything around the house with this routine. This went on for years because I didn't think I had any options since I really didn't think I was up for home schooling, especially because every time C and I tried to interact it was very emotional and frustrating.

Towards the end of last year (6th grade) as junior high was looming, I began to panic, wondering what we were going to do! C had a really great teacher last year who I found out about midway through the year was a huge conservative (we like that kind!) and a big proponent of home schooling. She suggested that maybe the reason school was such a miserable thing for C was just all the energy he had to waste on all the "difficult" kids he had to associate with at school and that we should home school him. Again, that fear of not knowing what to do came up. She put me in contact with her sister who had home schooled all of her children through high school and after some emails exchanged I started to believe we could possibly do this. Then the teacher came up with this website that she thought I should check out. It was for a charter school for Colorado students that was online with the K12 curriculum. After looking into it we realized in short order that this was made to order for us. We got C enrolled and he started to look forward to fall.

K has remained at the Charter school as he has done well with the interaction with the kids and has not run into the problems that C did.

As the start of school was approaching I started to feel more and more nervous but just decided the only thing we could do was jump right in with both feet...so we did!

School started last Monday and I am thrilled to say that I feel like I have a different kid in my house! He is pleasant, polite, happy and thoroughly enjoying school! And this kid that used to have nervous tics during school, be emotional over homework, fight me on assignments etc is prereading things before bed for the next day, working ahead of the days lessons, completely everything quickly and efficiently and is done every day before 1 o'clock! This is the kid that used to spend 7 miserable hours at school and come home and fight me on homework for 3 hours!

We are getting our family back! The time we are spending together as a family is no longer stressed with fights about home work! C wants to learn to cook so we are doing lots of projects and planning more for the year and he is so excited to have something to do that he loves, and he loves to cook. His classes this year are Pre-algebra, Literature, grammer, life science, American History, Spanish, Art, vocabulary and Cooking. This blog is going to be basically about how we get our family back and how we spend more and more time together, getting to know our kids without the stress of the school environment on C.

And yes, he will get social interaction for those of you who worry about that kind of thing, but it won't be with a bunch of unpleasant 7th graders herded like cattle into a small building and forced to interact with each other in whatever way they happen to feel like that day. Now we can pick and choose who he socializes with! Isn't that an amazing concept?