Well, we're doing it!

Homeschooling, that is! I've always wanted to, and it just seemed to be the right time. Elijah had a wonderful Kindergarten teacher in Mountain Home last year and was so happy to go to school, but he didn't seem to be having a good time in first grade. He was excelling, but not happy. They only had one 30-minute recess in a 7.5-hour day, and he was expected to do an hour or two of homework every night in addition to his work during the school day. It was just too much for him, and he was unhappy. He didn't get enough social time, plus he is gifted and was bored being taught words he's known how to read and spell for over two years. There is no gifted program where we live, so that was out as an option. He can honestly get more social time doing homeschool with all the activities we have planned, which seems funny to say because usually that is the first argument people make against homeschooling.

We love homeschooling so far! I've been teaching subtraction, counting money, and telling time for math, he's reading a chapter book, we're working on writing and spelling several sight words, spending tons of time outside, and doing lots of Fall and Halloween projects and activities! I've also contacted several homeschool co-ops and just need to decide which to get involved with. Madelyn and Ethan are getting in on the homeschool fun with their older brother. Ethan still goes to special needs preschool from 7:45-10:45 each morning, but participates in most of the activities we do outside of that timeframe.

Today, in addition to our academic work, we made fist-painted pumpkin patches! They were super easy and fun to make because the kids (and Mama) got to put their hands in paint. These were made while Ethan was at school, which is why he didn't make one. I put some orange paint in a bowl, they dipped their fists in the paint, and kind of (gently) punched the paper. The little fist marks really capture the texture of pumpkins! After the orange paint dried, we painted stems and vines in green. Here are some pictures of the project, and a couple more of Elijah's drawing and story about Halloween/his Jango Fett (from Star Wars) costume:

Homemade Alfredo Sauce

I've had a lot of interest in my recipes on Facebook, so I thought I would start posting some of the extra yummy ones on the blog for others to try. Tonight for dinner, I made pork chops, pasta, and steamed broccoli with my homemade alfredo sauce, plus yesterday's leftover cornbread. The thing that makes my alfredo special is cream cheese, so you know it must be good! Plus it is super easy! I would encourage all of you who buy sauce in jars at the grocery store to give this a shot. You won't be sorry! It's so much better than the store-bought kind, plus less costly to prepare.


Cream Cheese Alfredo Sauce

1/2 cup butter
1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese
1 cup half and half
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon garlic powder (optional)
pepper, to taste

In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.
Once butter is almost melted, add the package of cream cheese. It's easiest to cut it into cubes so that it melts quicker.
Once butter and cream cheese are mixed well together, add the cup of half and half, Parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and shake pepper on top. Stir together.
Once it's mixed well and sauce-like, take it off the burner and set aside so it can thicken up. Stir every few moments.
And...that's it! Pour over pasta, veggies, homemade breadsticks, or anything you like, and enjoy!

I plan to do many more recipe blogs. Since I make almost everything from scratch, or try to, hopefully you can get some useful ideas for meals in your home!

Summer Reading

I've loved to read as long as I can remember. I loved reading books for school and on my own. Growing up, my parents took me to the Brentwood  library regularly in the summer so I could check out a stack of books. I'd read them all, then exchange them the next week for another stack. It was during this time that I discovered my love for Ramona Quimby, Ellen Tebbits, Betsy and her little sister Star, Laura Ingalls, Henry Huggins, the Babysitters Club, the kids from Sweet Valley, and Nancy Drew. I was drawn to fiction, and especially mysteries and series. My love of reading ultimately chose my college major and graduate degree for me - I loved studying history because I loved the stories. Plus everything has a history to study. I could read about my favorite things (music, baseball, etc.) and it counted for class!

One of my goals as a parent is to pass this love of reading onto my children. Elijah and I read together a lot, and we've already read every Ramona book. We read one chapter at a time most nights. Elijah is a fantastic reader. He reads at a much higher level than most other kids his age. He is participating in the summer reading program at the local library. He's already read through all his hours, and he's doing the extra checklists of reading and activities. Though I was (and still am) drawn to fiction, Elijah can't get enough non-fiction. He picks books about weather, natural disasters, the planets, science experiments, and the like. This afternoon at the library he used the computers for the first time on his own, and successfully located a biography of Tiger Woods. (He takes golf lessons, and his daddy is a golf nut.) I enjoy reading children's literature with him so much. It has reminded me about why I began my relationship with books so many years ago.

Today I decided that I would do the adult summer reading program. It consists of reading six books. The world is divided into six regions of literature, and there are several books to choose from in each category. I've read several of them already, mostly because they were on the reading list in high school (for example, Conrad's Heart of Darkness is on the list for Africa). I'm not cheating  by re-reading or checking those regions off the list. :) I picked books from Europe (Push Not the River by James Conroyd Martin)  and North & South America (Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende) to start. I've always wanted to read Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is on the list for Europe, Eurasia, & the Balkans, so I plan to get it next week. I am so excited!

5/19/2011

I had a nice birthday. I got everything I wanted and more, my parents came to see us, and I got to go out with friends. I'll add some pictures to the end of this post.

Ethan is just doing so well. Almost everything he says is a sentence (or at least a combination of 3-4 words), he loves school, and he has begun to write his name. One of his teachers, Ms. Colleen, just adores him. Well, both of them do, but Ms. Colleen is his special buddy. To think, at first I didn't like Ms. Colleen very much. I don't know why. It was back when Ethan was starting school and I was uncomfortable with the transition and nervous about how it was all going to go. Anyway, Ms. Colleen is awesome, and she loves Ethan so much. She told me how much she enjoys working with him yesterday. Ethan talks about her at home and runs to her first thing when he goes into school every day.When he wrote his name for her today for the first time, she saved the paper to hang on the wall, made me a copy, and cried as she told me about it when I came to pick him up. She is the best. I am so glad he has another year in school with her and Ms. Linda, doing the STAR program.

Madelyn is busy lately. All day every day she begs to go to "class", which means Sunday School. She is happy to go to the park or the store, but once we get home she wants to go right back out and do something. She spends a lot of time begging -- "Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase? Pretty, pretty, pretty pleeeeeeaaaaaasssseeee??? Can we go to the park (circus, store, Papa's house, wherever)?" It wears me out. She does enjoy playing with Playdoh, her babies, the Strawberry Shortcake house and the dollhouse, and coloring. I have lots of activities planned for summer, so hopefully I can keep her busy enough to not be constantly hearing the begging and pleading. She is still my sweet baby, and I love sleeping next to her every night (yes, we're still happily co-sleeping!).

Elijah has been playing t-ball this spring. He is on Team Chili's (Travis sponsored the team). It's adorable to watch. He really is a good hitter, and he's getting better at catching the ball in the field. Last week after he got a hit and came around to score, he ran out to the stands to give me a hug and tell me he loves me. How sweet is that? He is the sweetest, most wonderful child. He also enjoys school and going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. On Wednesday nights he sings in the Kindergarten choir and plays handbells. He is very interested in reading the Bible and watching Veggie Tales for the Bible stories. He is an excellent reader. He is reading Beverly Cleary's Socks right now. He reads a chapter on his own, then I ask him questions about it to check for comprehension. He is really getting it. I am so proud of him.

I'm busy too. I'm still sewing, but I've nearly come to the end of my orders. I am looking forward to the break. I want to get the house organized this summer, work on cutting down our energy consumption, spend tons of time with the kids, and do a lot of gardening and cooking. Travis will have a week of vacation in June and another in July. It will be a great summer!

The promised pictures:

On the eve of 31.

Tonight I'm trying to enjoy being 30. That's right, tomorrow is my 31st birthday. I'm happier and more settled on this birthday than I have been on any of my previous birthdays in my adult life. I am happy. I love my husband, and I'm extra lucky because he loves me back. I love my three kids. I love having so many kids. A lot of people freaked out when we announced that we were going to have our third child, and then again when we got pregnant with #4 in November, but I couldn't be happier about having 3. (I miscarried on New Year's Eve, if you're wondering about why I'm not pregnant now.)

I am not sure why people have this cookie-cutter view about how many children a family should have. It's like you're supposed to have one boy and one girl and that's it. And if you mess up and have two of the same gender, then you're really just screwed and should call it quits. If you have three or more, no matter what, people look at you and say, "Wow, you have your hands FULL," and, "Well, you finally got your girl so now you can stop," or my very favorite, "When is Travis getting a vasectomy?"  I am tired of those people, and I am through caring what other people think. It's not that we are going to have more kids. We don't even know that if we tried we would get blessed with one. It's just that it is no one's business but our own. When I was younger, I cared what a lot of people thought about me. As I got older, I only cared what my family and close friends thought. Now I can say for certain that I only care what I think, and I will give Travis's opinions equal consideration. The number of kids one chooses to have is just like anything else, I suppose. People have this idea of how things should be: two children, one boy and one girl, house, picket fence, public school, quarterback, cheerleader, college, great career, and the cycle starts all over. And if you stray from that "ideal" at any point people will tell you that you messed up. Or worse, that you are messing your children up.

Wow. All that from a post that started with me saying how happy I am. And I am very, very happy. I sat and watched Elijah play t-ball this evening. After he crossed home plate in the first inning he came out to the stands to give me a hug and tell me he loves me. He is the sweetest, most wonderful boy. I have plans for two raised garden beds for all my fruits and veggies that are currently in containers (all the containers have taken over my front and back porches!). I really want to get the chicken coop thing figured out so we can add that to the backyard as well. I dream of the perfect backyard with several garden areas, a chicken coop and run, a compost area, and a clothesline area. Travis added a giant hammock to the backyard dream. After we get the gardens built in the next week or so, the chickens are the only thing left. Urban homesteading has become very close to my heart in the past months, and I am glad Travis feels the same way so we can give it a solid go. That, and we agreed that I would homeschool Elijah next year and see how it goes for 1st grade. I am just so happy. I feel like I am really living the life I was meant to live.

Here's to 31. May it be the best year yet.

(I thought I would end with some pictures of our day yesterday. That's Ethan's hair in the fuzzy pic with me. He was sitting on my lap but started getting up before the picture took.)

A promise to myself.

I will spend exactly zero more precious seconds of my life worrying about what other people think. I will spend exactly zero seconds living in fear of what is to come next. I will not feel guilty. I will trust myself. I will leap with a smile on my face and willingly go on adventures, planned or unplanned. I will love and be loved.

Some small goals.

It's always easier for me to accomplish things when:

a) I write them down, and
b) other people know what I'm supposed to be accomplishing.

So, I wanted to write a bit of an informal post with some small personal goals. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Give up refined sugar. Well, pretty much. Everything in moderation, right? I want to give it up except for special occasions. The next time I plan to eat refined sugar is 3 weeks from now, on my 31st birthday. No more soda. No more candy. Homemade pie? Yes, please. But only every once in a while.

2. Work out 4-5 times a week. Nothing major, just maybe some jogging. Going to the gym also serves as alone time, which for me is special and sporadic. I'd love to invest in my health and have regular 45-minute blocks of alone time. It sounds heavenly.

3. Stop taking so many dress orders. This is hard, because I hate saying no. I also enjoy the extra income. But I really need to focus on my family this summer. The kids are growing up so fast. I have my whole life to sew dresses, but only a few years to enjoy my children being little.

4. Focus on the kids more! Play with them more, take them outside more, cuddle them more (is that even possible?). Just enjoy them every second I can.

5. Stop buying things. Not everything, but most things. Stop shopping for entertainment and focus on what we need instead of what we want. We have so much. We need very little, if anything. Shop from a grocery list. Save coupons again. Buy not one piece of children's clothing until late summer for back-to-school. The kids have everything they could possibly need until then, especially if I mend the holes in Elijah's otherwise-perfect jeans.

6. Eat out once a week, maybe twice. Everything else must be cooked at home. I really enjoy cooking, so this isn't  a big deal. It's a laziness issue for me, really.

7. Cut down on energy consumption, benefits to be monetary and for the greater good. Put up the new clothesline and use the dryer as little as possible. At night the power strips behind the main entertainment center, Elijah's television, and computer area need to be unplugged. Put a bucket in the shower to collect water for plants. Start composting.

8. Continue to focus on gardening. Make the chicken plans.

9. Plan the family vacation in June. Very excited about this one!

Hmmm. That's about it for now. I feel better having written it all down!