Ahhh...the flexibility of homeschooling

We went camping this past weekend with my family (Mom, Dad, Laurie, Sean, John, Erika and kids) for our annual camping trip to Chester Woods Park. This park is only 7 minutes from our house so it's a great location for when the weather is less than wonderful. . . this weekend, for example. Several times it rained and 1 morning we had breakfast here. Of course, the morning we were supposed to pack up it was also raining. So we all hung out here for awhile, then just packed up wet.

So. . . the camping stuff had been sitting in our garage since we came home on Monday. The tents and the canopy still needed to be dried out and nothing else had been put away. Needless to say, the chaos was driving me crazy. As Dan says, A crazy wife is no good.

So about 9am this morning I decided that I couldn't effectively do school with a house that was a complete disaster. And now I am feeling much more calm. I've been fighting this nasty cold so I haven't really felt like doing much, but I decided that we had to clean today. I work this weekend too and didn't want to go to work with a messy house since it would invariably be much worse by Monday morning.

I assigned the girls to the task of cleaning their room and the family room. They also vacuumed the kitchen and the living room. I deep cleaned our bedroom and picked up Natalie and Darin's room. I have also packed up the 2 tents and the monstrosa of a canopy and then mowed the lawn. I also managed to take a 2 hour nap (much needed with this cold I have). I just have the kitchen left to do and then I can chill.

Since I haven't had much of an appetite due to a constant diet of post-nasal drip and since Dan wasn't home for supper tonight, I told the kids that I would make them smoothies if they would agree to cereal for supper. They all agreed--even Ellie who abhors cereal. I tried out a new recipe I found in a Light & Tasty magazine and it was surprisingly good. It has tofu in it so I was a bit skeptical, but it was actually quite good. (Tofu is made from soymilk which has lots of great health benefits)

Here is the recipe for any of you who may want to try it.
2 1/4 cups orange juice
3 cups frozen strawberries, unsweetened
2 bananas (I was out so I substituted plums)
12 ounces reduced fat silken tofu
1 T sugar

Put all in blender and blend. It barely fit in my blender so you may only want to make 1/2 a recipe at a time.

Well...gotta put the kids to bed and start cleaning the kitchen.