Back to Nature--NOT!

As I have posted before, I am NOT a nature girl.  I used to tell my Girl Scout troop that my idea of roughing it was a hotel without room service.  I don't use the room service, but having it indicates a certain level of accomodation!

In addition, my favorite thing to make for dinner is...reservations!  As I said in one of my first posts, I do cook.  But it's not a passion of mine.

So you can imagine how I feel about gardening!  It's hot, sweaty (we live in Florida), dirty and well...I kill plants.  I don't mean to, but I definitely have a "black thumb"!  I can keep an animal alive forever, but I am death to plants.  We had a garden in the back yard for a while, but when you forget to water the plants...

The difficulty is that I LOVE fresh produce.  When I was a girl, we spent our summers in Delaware, we got our produce from a nearby farmer.  He sold his produce from his garage.  But Dad got to know him and was eventually permitted to go out into the fields and pick his own.   We learned how find great tomatoes, cukes and the corn was out of this world!

Naturally, a store bought tomato is just not the same.  Last summer we came up with a solution.   We leave our tomato plants in containers and put them on the front porch.   I have remembered to water them...so far!  And we have tomatoes on them...so far.  Some of you may remember that my fall tomatoes had to be put in the garage during a cold snap, and a citrus rat ate the only tomato the plants produced.  Any rat that eats my only tomato is a DEAD rat!   If this "crop" comes in decently, I may expand my porch garden in the fall!

Now to learn about container gardening and cucumbers...
Feeling blessed!  How about you?

The Waiting Game!

This week one of my co-op classes is going to be playing pick-up sticks.  I didn't know that they were either extinct or an endangered species!  I have not been able to find a single set at any of the stores I frequent!

Do people no longer understand how VERY useful "purse-sized" games are when you travel with children?  Granted, my purse looks like carry-on luggage, but still...

My massive bag fetish started when DJ was a mere five weeks old.  I took him to the dr. to double check the infection in his blocked tear duct.  That was at 1 p.m.  At 11 p.m., we were finally admitted to the hospital through the emergency room.  I had left the house with 1 bottle for an infant that ate every 2 hours...if you do the math you'll realize we had an angry baby (he was on a specialty formula that the hospital didn't have).  In addition, I had been through the baby having a spinal tap and being papoose boarded while they cultured the infection in his tear duct (staph).

From then on, I never left the house without 24 hours worth of baby duds in the diaper bag.  When I got home, I reloaded the items that I used so that the bag was always ready to go.

With Cindy, I learned the value of duplicates of "essential items".  This occurred after a 2 year coughed in his hand and then picked up her pacifier to hand it to me!

As the kids grew up, we added books and games to entertain us while we waited.  I know some people have children who sit still.  I've heard about children like that, but I never had one.  So, I packed entertainment.  Remember that my children pre-date the Gameboy! 

I had my parents read some of the kids' favorite books onto a cassette (told you this was a long time ago!)  My mother had been an elementary school teacher and she'd talk about the pictures and tell the kids when to turn the page.  She'd even ask questions (what do you think is going to happen on the next page?)   We had an inexpensive cassette player and head phones, so the kids could sit and listen to the book.  Wikki-Stix were also good (wax covered strings).  And beeswax is great for older kids because it doesn't leave a mess.
For older kids, look at travel games or a deck of cards.  For little ones, old maid or memory can be great fun.  The only downside is that in drs. offices we usually attracted the sickest of the sick who wanted to play with us.  After all, their moms were reading magazines!

My favorite tricks for restaurants were sugar packet football (we STILL play that at restaurants) and a pad and crayons.  Pick up sticks would work too, although I wouldn't do that at "Chez Snob". I packed my own crackers, in case they didn't have the "right kind".  My parents were bothered by a child eating before their dinner arrived (even though the child's usual dinner hour was over 2 hours earlier).  Soo...I would feed my kids BEFORE we picked up the parents.  By the time dinner was served, they were hungry again!  I would also ask the server to bring the kids' dinners with the salads.

If you will be waiting with several kids in an outdoor environment (waiting for a field trip to start) you can get a 3 yard length of 1/4 inch elastic, tie the ends together and you have a Chinese jump rope.  Fits right in your pocket!  Another good game is Dots---where you make squares by connecting the dots.

These games are mostly a throwback to the pre-video game generation (of which I am a card-carrying member).  But because they have gone out of fashion, they are new and interesting to today's kids.  And don't ever underestimate the power of mom reading a good book to her kids!

Feeling blessed, how about you?

What to Do When Life Throws You a Curve...

In other words...SNAFU "Situation Normal All Fouled UP"! 

In the last week, Don has had a "situation" at work.  That means working a lot of overtime to untangle the "situation".  Which would be a lot more fun if he got paid for overtime!  He is also in week four of the cough/chest congestion bug that has been going around.

Last week our homeschool had a tour of the local college that offers dual enrollment. Which of course, causes me to pursue the dual-enrollment rabbit trail.

And it was the end of sign-up for prom.  That last 24 hours of a sign -up period is always sooo much fun!  But the prom supplies are due to arrive tomorrow.  It'll be like Christmas here!

I had a blast at co-op Friday.  We covered Easter Island, a visit from the Queen to Colonial Williamsburg (actually happened in 2007) and a taste of hasty pudding, Pandora's box and Act 4 Scenes 1-3 in Romeo & Juliet.  But then, Saturday we realized that I had left the cord to my Kitchen Kettle behind at the church.  We're not sure where it went.  The Kitchen Kettle multi-cooker does not, of course, work without it's cord.   I miss it already!

Normally when life hands me lemons, I shut the door to the house and make lemonade.  And don't venture back outside until life is better.  We call it "circling the wagons".  Tomorrow morning, my Romeo & Juliet class is going to see Romeo & Juliet at Mahaffey theater.  And then, I'm driving those wagons into a circle and staying put!  It's safer that way!

Feeling blessed, how about you?

College Bound!

In Florida, homeschooled students have the option of taking college classes for free!  The classes count for high school credit AND college credit (hence the name dual enrollment).  We did this for DJ, but policies change so when I was offered this field trip for the PPEA; I jumped on it!

Oh my goodness!  I never envisioned anything as awesome as the trip we got.  Cindy & I missed part of the campus tour because we have an elderly dog who can only be left alone for a certain amount of time before she's doing the pottty dance (perhaps her name should have been "Leaky").  I know...TMI!

But Neoka set up the most amazing group of people who were there for as long as it took for us to run out of questions.  That was a veeerrryyy long time!  We had total access to both the north and south county dual enrollment offices and a college advisor who homeschooled his own kids!

We realized three things very quickly--there's a LOT of misinformation out there, we all wanted a 2nd session in a couple of weeks, for those questions we'll all think of tomorrow and we NEED a 2nd session for all the people who couldn't make it to this one!

What an awesome day!  Totally blessed, how about you?

The Best Laid Plans of Mice, Men & Moms!

As I posted a week ago, the prom dress has been difficult.  The tailoring, the gathering, the making things "poofy"; none of it has gone according to plan.  Unless increasing my stress level WAS the plan!

So this week, I was pushing forward with the sewing, and hating every minute of it.  Then I had a "brilliant idea".  To calm myself and to be prepared in the event of a dress emergency...which frankly, was looking more likely at every passing minute; I decided to take Cindy to the mall "just to look"!

The first store we went to didn't have anything in her size that she liked.  While that seems like a good thing, it is difficult to have dresses that you like but they don't have your size!  Hustling Cindy along to the next stop before she had a chance to be depressed about the selection.  One of Cindy's friends, had found an adorable (and fairly inexpensive) dress at Penney's just a few days before.  And we found dress nirvana (cue angelic choir here).  Not one dress, not 2 but 3!  Surely when she tried them on, at least one wouldn't look good on her.  No such luck!  Three dresses, one gorgeous girl and unfortunately 1 price point.  And that price point was somewhere between GASP and brain explosion!

Say Yes to the Dress always says "know the price point before you try on the dress" because any dress out of your price range will be "the dress"!  Boy have they got that right!  But at least I don't have to stress over a dress!

All Systems Go!

Last time I blogged, it was about some of the systems that my mother had in place to run her household.  Of course, Mom wasn't a homeschooler!

She was a teacher, but when she taught, you had to quit when you became pregnant enough to show (what a difference a few decades make!)

Anyway, that means I have to produce a lesson plan every week too.  For the last few years, I used a program that came with a lesson plan.  We loved it, but Cindy takes a few classes with Florida Virtual School and at CHoSEN co-op.  All of those things together were just too much!

So I needed to make a lesson plan that we could use every week.   I saved the blank copy in my computer.   Each week I type in the work she needs to do and she highlights it as she does it.  That makes it easy for me to check at a glance.  I've even put the chores on her list.

So far she is doing really well with this system.  Our work has been getting done....which is what we're really looking for AND I don't have to nag, which is always a bonus.

Feeling Blessed!  How about you?

Let's be practical, shall we?

I was raised in a world of praticality.  Clothes needed to last.  Appliances needed to last.   Food needed to be on sale!   My mother is the QUEEN of practical home management!  Those of you who know me are now wondering HOW the apple could have fallen so far from the tree!

My mother can make things happen with a freezer and a microwave that the rest of the world only dreams about.  I joke that if you stand still too long in my mother's house; she'll put you in the freezer.  She'll freeze anything.  Most are successes, although I never adapted to frozen tuna salad or frozen milk!  She can run a household on a nickel with change left over.

She also kept a planner that the average homeschool mom would die for.  We never had overdue library books, and never missed an appointment.  We went to the same beach cottage every summer, so she kept her packing list out while we were on vacation!  If we didn't use something, she crossed it off the list.  If we forgot something, she added it to the list.  Can you imagine how powerful that list was after a couple of years?

She didn't allow us to do our own laundry until we were getting set to go away to college.  I asked her once why we weren't stuck with laundry as a chore.  Her response was that she wanted the washer to last 30 years, and it wouldn't have if we used it!  BTW, the washer lasted almost 35 years! Why was my mother so frugal?  She wanted the 3 of us kids to go to private school and have dance and sports and karate.  And that was worth the sacrifice!

I will never be the planning guru my mother is.  I try, but I'm just not as single minded as she is.  But I did pick up a few tricks.  I have my menus planned for the month on the fridge.  Right below that is a family calendar.  Haven't missed an appointment in months...as long as I check my calendar every day.  If I get my act together, I have my list of menus to take with me to the grocery store.

Which I did today.  AND when I came home I put all the ingredients for the meatloaf in a gallon bag and mixed it.  Then I pressed it in the pan and stuck it in the freezer.  So we will have meatloaf this week.  You see, usually I put the meat directly into the freezer and pull it out mid-afternoon.  And with all due respect to my mother, it doesn't thaw well in the microwave for shaping into the meatloaf!  And the best parts?  Wednesday's dinner is good to go AND I don't have ground beef under my fingernails!

Feeling blessed!  How about you?

The Prom Dress...

Several of you asked if Cindy found a prom dress.  Yes, she did!  DD (dear daughter/definite diva--take your pick) wants the fabric to be a prom dress before prom. Oh joy! 

The good news is, of course, that the fabric is here...and paid for.  The bad news is that it does not currently resemble anything that can be worn to prom.

However, we now have LINING!  For those who have not been following this "serial drama" that threatens to turn me into a "serial killer"; the fabric chosen for the dress has been out of stock since November.  Therefore I can't afford to make a mistake (on second thought....)

So I sewed the lining first to check for fit.  And now that we have the lining...we start on the dress!  And the trim...  But we do have all the accessories for this dress!  I wonder if, after all of this, I will have anything to wear to prom....

A New Start!

It's a brand new day!  Not because anything stellar happened, but because I'm going to try blogging again.  I seem to stay so busy with the details of LIFE, that I never getting to blogging.  Or Weight Watchers...but that would be a different post!

Let me tell you what I'm not. 

I'm not a homesteader!  I can bake a great loaf of bread, but my kitchen is not my passion.  I cook and bake because I have an aversion to starving.  In heaven, I want to spend all my time in restaurants and have a maid!  I make things from scratch because we have egg and shellfish allergies and diabetes to deal with in the house, and frankly it's just easier to have the basic ingredients to make a dish than it is to run to the store.

I'm not a seamstress.  I can sew, but (like the Hulk) you won't like me very much when I do.  These days my sewing seems to consist of prom dresses.  And, while I have the fabric laid out on the back table  partially cut out...my husband volunteered to let us BUY a dress, rather than experiencing me sewing another dress!

I'm not a couponer.  With all of our allergies, I don't get a lot of bang for my buck with coupons.  I can't switch brands on anything.  I do however, ADORE JoAnn's coupons!

I am a scrapbooker.  Oh, I know all about the new virtual scrapbooks, but give me paper and scissors and a BIG table and I'm a happy girl!  And pictures....lots and lots of pictures!

I am a teacher.  Not only are we homeschoolers, but I teach at our local co-op.  My favorite classes are history.  I did 10 hours of research on Qin Shi Huang (the first emperor of China) for last week's classes.  This week I'll be hip-deep in King Arthur, Colonial Williamsburg and Act 3 of Romeo & Juliet.  I prefer teaching through video, so that means a little Monthy Python and the Holy Grail, and possibly some clay mation.  My Romeo & Juliet class wants to do some stop motion work...but we need more than 1 computer!

Well the family is circling, trolling for lunch.  Maybe the reason we like each other is the frequent meals!
Feeling blessed, how about you?