A few miscellaneous pics

Here is Dan licking out the bowl after I made some almond bars:


Here are a few from Christmas.


Here is Darin clutching his new fleece footie jammies.


Here he is opening more track to go with his Thomas train set.


Here are the girls opening their MP3 players.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's been awhile since I've posted. I've been working quite a bit lately and blogging hasn't exactly been top priority. School has been continuing as normal. We had 2 days of school this week and we'll do three days of school next week before taking a few more days off.

Dan's parents came down to our house on Wednesday and we did Christmas with them Friday after I'd slept for a little while (I'd work the previous two nights--Christmas was my holiday to work this year). The kids were quite happy with their gifts. Ellie and Kara got MP3 players that Dan got on sale on Black Friday. Darin got some Thomas train tracks and Natalie got some clothes and a new blanket for her bed. She was most excited about just opening presents but it took her a little while to warm up to it. She was a little shy at first about opening presents because she knew everyone was watching her. But after the first couple of presents that she got from Ellie and Kara she kept asking when it would be her turn again.

Dan got me an interesting stocking stuffer this year. He bought me one of these. It is the "That was easy" button from Staples. You press the button and that is what is says. Now there is a story behind this gift and Dan thought it would be perfect for when I am working with Ellie. Ellie is so literal and concrete that often she makes things much harder than they are. So Dan thought it would be great for me to have and I could press the button once the light bulb went on and Ellie figured out what she was supposed to be learning! Sometimes it is pretty funny how literal Ellie can be. You can tell her a joke and she will just not get it. And then you can try to explain it to her and she just has this blank look on her face. It can be quite amusing.

While Dan's parents were here Dan's mom did my laundry!! She washed and folded all of it. It was wonderful. I absolutely hate doing laundry and she loves it so I don't mind it at all. Now my laundry is caught up again for awhile--although the pile is starting to accumulate since Kara has discovered several dirty clothes on her shelves. She vacillates between two extremes--either she throws all of her clothes in the laundry because she doesn't want to fold them or she puts them all on her shelves without bothering to check if they are dirty or not. Then when it comes time to look nice she has nothing to wear because she hasn't put anything in the laundry for awhile. We discovered this Friday night when they were packing to go to Chicago (for Dan's niece's baptism).

Turkey Barley Soup

This recipe comes from the cookbook Simply in Season. I chose the recipe because it looked delicious, but it is also incredibly cheap. I can get a pound of ground turkey at Aldi for just over $1.00 and the rest of the ingredients I usually have on hand or are very inexpensive. The soup isn't that visually appealing (it doesn't look bad, just isn't very pretty) but the flavor definitely makes up for it. All the kids liked it--even Darin (that says something).

Turkey Barley Soup
4 cups water
4 cups chicken or turkey broth (I didn't have any on hand so I just made broth with bouillon cubes)
1 1/2 cups diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup barley
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt (may need less if you use low sodium broth)
1/2 teaspoon each poultry seasoning, pepper, ground sage
Combine in large soup pot. Cover and simmer 1 hour.

1 pound ground turkey (can substitute cooked chopped chicken or turkey)
2 Tablespoons ketchup
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1/8 teaspoon each ground nutmeg, dried sage, dried thyme
Brown together in saucepan. Add to soup and serve.

Slow cooker instructions: Brown meat with seasonings as instructed. Place in slow cooker with other ingredients (use boiling water) and cook on low for 6-7 hours.

Ellie is hilarious.

I made a big batch of buns yesterday and one of Ellie's favorite things to eat is bread/buns just out of the oven. And she likes to just have butter on them. Well Monday night I had made Chicken Noodle Soup for supper--also one of her favorite meals. So here is how our conversation went yesterday:

Ellie: What's for lunch mom?
Me: Fresh buns.
Ellie: Yum!
Natalie: Can I have something with my bun?
Me: Sure. You can have some Chicken Noodle Soup.
Ellie: Aaahhh!!! (exasperated sounding) I love them both! What do I have?!?!

After some time Ellie decided she would save the soup for lunch the next day.

Ellie (after having made her decision): Ahhhhhhh! (sounding satisfied) I LOVE my taste buds!!!!

Weekly update

I started this post last week but with working and sleeping I never got around to finishing it so this will be for the last two weeks.

Here is the summary of what we did these past two weeks:

Math: Ellie and Kara are continuing to work through their mathbooks. I've since gotten Kara some reusable math fact practice placemats and she is working on those for addition at this point.

English: Ellie is working on identifying past participles. It hasn't been too difficult for her yet. I think one of the reasons English hasn't been a problem for her is that we (Dan and I) are constantly correcting our kids' grammar in everyday conversations. Ellie will even correct me when I say something incorrectly. One of the reasons for this is that one of my majors in college was English and my sister is incredibly anal about using -ly endings appropriately so I think that it has rubbed off on me too. Kara is learning about helping verbs. Darin is reading and is incredibly cute when doing so. And he LOVES to do schoolwork. He still begs to do more and is quite sad when I tell him it is time to put it away. He does his little happy dance whenever it is time for reading.

Ellie took her chapter four test and will start chapter five next week.

Latin: Ellie continues with LCII. She is still doing review from LCI and will start new content next week. This week she had a friend over (from Schaeffer) and they were talking about Latin. Her friend loves Latin and will began extra Latin lessons this week from her Latin teacher and Ellie was commenting how she didn't like Latin. It was kind of funny to hear their different points of view. Ellie says she doesn't really mind the memorization of the Latin words and forms but she doesn't like the application part--you know, the part where she actually has to think.

History: Last week we studied Christopher Columbus. Ellie wrote a one page compare/contrast paper about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Kara wrote a paragraph about Christopher Columbus. This week Ellie continued to learn about different explorers. She's not been happy about the volume of schoolwork this week so we've been working on not getting overwhelmed with the amount of work, but instead just plugging away at it so that it gets done, little by little. We also read about latitude, longitude and how to read a map.

Science: We read another couple pages in our One Small Square book about ponds. The kids learned about how the male sunfish is the one that protects the eggs at the bottom of the pond. He fans the water over the eggs to keep them clean and to deliver oxygen to them. They also learned that lily stems have air spaces in them to help them stay up in the water.

Art: We learned three more elements of design (we learned three last week). We then looked at different works of art and described them using the six elements of design. We also learned about the five principles of design.

Overheard at our house. . . .

Natalie, after spinning with me says, "Mommy, after the house stops being dizzy, can we do that again?"

There once was a mouse. . .

We recently had a little critter visitor in our house. We discovered him a few weeks ago when we had tacos planned for supper. I had everything set out on the counter--ready for taco assembly--except the tortillas. I opened the pantry door, pulled out the package of tortillas and set them on the counter. That was when I noticed the small hole in the middle of the package and what looked like a chunk of tortilla missing. I first asked the kids if they had been messing with the tortilla package.

Then I opened the package.

Something had eaten a three-inch-wide circle through about six tortillas. And there were little teeth marks all the way around the circle. That's when I knew it wasn't the kids. And I promptly through the whole package of tortillas in the garbage.

Upon further inspection of the pantry I found little mouse droppings on pretty much every shelf. So I set out a mouse trap in the pantry but it didn't catch him the first night. I sent Dan out to Target to pick up some more traps since the only trap we had was from when we lived in Lincoln and had a couple of mice in our apartment. See, our house is only 7 years old so we really don't have any holes for the mouse to get in to the house (our best guess is he snuck in the garage door) so we were not prepared for any critters. Dan picked up a package of old-fashioned mouse traps (that was what some other guy in the aisle said worked best) and a package of the sticky traps (my mom has had success with those). I set them out on both levels of the house since I had also found evidence of the mouse in the laundry room and my food pantry downstairs.

The next morning there was nothing. So I picked up the sticky traps and put them away for the day so that no children would accidentally step on them. That night I put them out again.

Sunday morning I woke up and groggily walked to the bathroom. I couldn't really see much because I didn't have my glasses on but when I looked in the spot where I had left one of the sticky traps, I couldn't see it.

That's when I heard it. A flopping on the kitchen floor and a periodic whimpering. I put my glasses on and discovered our critter visitor!! Yeah!! He had gotten stuck on the sticky trap and had been desperately trying to free himself. In the process he had managed to drag himself and the trap about six feet. He had also lost quite a bit of hair attempting to remove himself from the trap.

I grabbed a plastic bag, scooped him up and sent him to his grave outside in the bitter cold in our garbage can.

Since I was pretty sure we no longer had any mice, I cleaned out the pantry and threw away pretty much everything that wasn't in a Tupperware container. I discovered that he had partially eaten through a caramel, a bag of chocolate chips, a bag of brown sugar and a package of hot chocolate. I also took all of the linens that were in that closet and promptly threw them in the laundry.

Since I've gotten rid of all the evidence the mouse left, I haven't seen any more. So I am hopeful that he didn't have any friends come to stay and that it will be at least another seven years before I see another one.

Yep. I'm still here.

So the three of you who actually read my blog may have been wondering where I've been or if I ever planned to return to the blogging world. Well, let it be known--I am still here!!! And Kori--I hope this staves off any withdrawal symptoms you may be experiencing. :-)

Not a whole lot has been happening around here. After a two week break from school we started back up again only to have Thanksgiving come around and interrupt our schedule again. The Monday before Thanksgiving I had an all day training so the kids went out to a friend's house. Tuesday we did school and I worked that night so Wednesday was fairly unproductive concerning school. We packed and I napped. Dan left with the kids Wednesday after work and went to his parents' house for the weekend. Then I worked part of Wednesday night and all of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. By the time Sunday rolled around I was more than ready for them to come home. One of the things I really missed was having good food. Since it was just me, I didn't do any cooking. I pretty much subsisted on a few leftovers, toast and cereal. I was so desperate to make something that I made some bars and took them to work on Saturday. They were all appreciative, but Dan and the kids weren't too happy when they saw how few I had left at home. But I knew that if I didn't take them to work I would eat way, way too many. I thought about taking a picture of the bars so I could post the recipe later, but, alas, Dan had the camera with him. I may have to make them again just so I can take a picture. :-)

Sunday afternoon after I got up I went to the library. All by myself!!! It was wonderful. Now lest you think I hate taking the kids with me, I don't. It's just that when I take the kids I have to make sure that Darin and Natalie aren't disappearing and Natalie usually picks that time to behave like she hasn't been taught how to act in public. So I usually just pick up books for the kids and make my visit as short as possible. If I want any books I just reserve them online and then send Ellie in to pick them up for me while I wait in the van with the rest of the kids. This time I was actually able to do a little browsing and picked up a few non-fiction books and a few cookbooks.

The drive home for Dan and the kids was uneventful (save for a few tiffs between Darin and Natalie) until somewhere around Cannon Falls. Then the roads turned to ice and he didn't top 20 mph. There were several cars in the ditch and a few accidents too. It took him a lot longer to get home than he had planned so by the time they got home they were all very hungry. And the two younger ones really had to go to the bathroom!!! Thankfully Darin and Natalie managed to hold it and I didn't have to wash any carseat covers.

In other news Ellie has decided that she wants to be in the Scripps Spelling Bee so she has been studying words this week. The spelling bee isn't until January so she'll be studying for quite awhile. The spelling bee is open to 5th-8th graders so she will be one of the younger ones but she's not intimidated by that. This will be a regional spelling bee and those that win will advance to the state spelling bee, etc (I think anyway). A little known fact--I went to the state spelling bee when I was in junior high.