This looked like a fun little meme to do and I'm sure it's going around a lot of blogs but I thought I join in. So thank you Emily for giving me something to post about as I couldn't come up with many coherent thoughts of my own this morning!
Just copy my post and then paste it onto your blog. You can change my answers if you want to not be a copycat. Let me know if you do it, so I can come and gain deeper knowledge of you.
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If I were a shoe, I’d be a pair of Birkenstocks. (Soooo comfy)
If I were a city, I’d be a small town up in the mountains.
If I were a season, I'd be Spring. (cuz there's lots of new life springing up around here..hehehe)
If I were a car, I’d be a yellow VW bug.
If I were a vegetable, I’d be Squash....like in Veggie Tales, a squash can make you smile!
If I were a fruit, I’d be an apricot.
If I were a color, I’d be Yellow.
If I were furniture, I’d be a a kitchen table. (a place for all to gather around)
If I were a song, I’d be Like the Rain by Clint Black.
If I were a country, I’d be Madagascar. (It has such a cool name it's got to be a fun place, right?)
If I were a beverage, I’d be ice tea.
If I were clothing, I’d be a hooded grey sweatshirt.
If I were weather, I’d be a warm breeze.
If I were an animal, I’d be a duck. No explanation necessary there!
If I were a dessert, I’d be apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.
If I were a plant, I’d be a a yellow rose with red around the edges.
If I were a word, I’d be normal. (how's that for boring?)
I can't believe it's been a week since my last post! I'm not sure where the days went this time. Daily life just snowballs sometimes and I get busy! Between errands, grocery shopping, filing taxes, trying to keep up on housework and school for the kids I barely feel like I've gotten a minute of pause. And now today I'm off to a homeschool co-op, a trip across the ferry to see some family, pick up hubby from work and do some more shopping, maybe even dinner. Oy! Hopefully the weekend will bring a slower pace, or I may just end up looking like this:
Gayle has started a blog (The Grocery Cart Challenge) teaching and gathering information to help families be more frugal. I think that it has been a great source of info and am always waiting for more! This week she has started a frugal recipe swap so I thought I'd join in on the fun.
I don't know about you but when our family goes to the mall we all love getting those giant soft pretzels. Gayle suggested this week that we try to make things from scratch and that sent me on a recipe hunt to see what I could find. I found the following recipe at www.allrecipes.com and the kids and I had friends over for lunch today so we tried them out....I doubled the recipe and we ate every one! These are THAT good! You probably have all the ingredients on hand too, BONUS!
Mall Pretzels: Makes 12
1 (.25 oz) pkg. active dry yeast
2 TBLSP brown sugar
1 1/8 tsp salt
2 cups warm water
4 cups flour
2 cups warm water
2 TBLSP baking soda
2 TBLSP melted butter
2 Tblsp coarse kosher salt (I skipped this, I didn't have any)
Directions:
In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast, brown sugar and salt in 2 cups warm water. Stir in flour, and knead dough on a floured surface until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise one hour.
Combine 2 cups warm water and baking soda in a 8 inch square pan.
After dough has risen, cut into 12 pieces. Toll each piece into a 3 foot rope. Twist into a pretzel shape and dip into the baking soda solution. Place on parchment paper covered cookie sheets (I just sprayed mine with Pam). Let rise 15-20 minutes.
Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with coarse salt, garlic salt or cinnamon sugar. (We had ours with the butter and dipped in a nacho cheese dip)
This is probably a better recipe for lunch but it could make a fun friday night dinner. My daughter really like rolling out the long ropes and forming the pretzels so it can be a great way to add kids in the kitchen!
I think I may be becoming obsessed. I really like to have a lot of curriculum to choose from (though I usually stick to a few). I was talking to a friend the other day and was browsing through a couple of my books and realized I own all of the following...just to teach a child to read!
Evan Moor Phonics Fundamentals, Alpha Phonics, Teach your child to read in 100 easy Lessons, Hooked on Phonics, Phonics Pathways, and Learning Language Arts Through Literature (blue book)
I also have three different history programs, though that's not as bad because they each teach a different time period.
Am I the only one who gets a bunch and picks and chooses from them? There are different aspects of each book that appeal to me. For instance with Hooked on Phonics I'm not really fond of the book but the short readers are great. I also try to be frugal with my choices. Buying books that are consumable for each of my children for each subject every year could add up very quickly so some of my choices are based on the costs. I have been able to buy some of these used, at thrift stores, or on Ebay to make it a reasonable obsession...but really am I crazy?
Our local home school co-op is going to have a curriculum night where all the moms will share what they've used what they liked/disliked and also swap any unused books. So maybe then I'll get a clearer perspective on how other moms are doing.
For Christmas this year I made my daughter (7 yr old) an apron. It has turned out to be a wonderful gift! When she puts it on it's like she's transformed into this wonderful little helper! I'll give you an example.
Last night I was invited to go to a Ladies Night at our church. My husband stayed home with the kids and I expected to come home to clean up the dinner mess. What I came home to instead was nothing short of amazing!
Leftovers on the counter?
Nope. They were in the fridge wrapped in foil.
Mess on the table and counter? Nope.
They were cleared and wiped clean.
I was impressed, but it didn't end there. As I explored further she had:
picked up the living room,
emptied the dishwasher,
dried a load of clothes,
and folded another load!
I LOVE this girl!
I'm thinking I should make one for all of my kids now
Emily is having a contest for people to show off some of their baby photos....not of their baby but of themselves as a baby. I think she's seen a few of me already but I thought it would be fun to participate anyway :)
My scanner isn't the greatest so the quality on these is a little iffy (sorry).
The above one is at about 3-4 months.
Next we have one of me at about 6-7 months...
My face looks a little shiny, I wonder if I was being fussy for the camera lady?
Isn't my expression darling here? I wonder if they asked me to growl?? Or hiss?
And last but not least is a toddler shot of me playing Atari, remember that anyone?
This was fun, now I'm going to go check out the other baby photos people posted!
Since my last post my baby had a birthday. As cliche as is sounds, I really can't believe it's a year has gone by already! He had a rough couple of weeks this month while he was getting some new teeth but overall he's a very happy content little guy.
We love you Josiah!
I know I'm biased, but doesn't he just have the best blue eyes?
On a birthday you always have to have a cake shot.....
Going backwards in the day, here is a spaghetti shot (minus the sauce).
SHOVE IT IN, YUMMY!
This is a cute one but don't let it fool you, he's not walking yet just practicing ;)
and how 'bout a dogpile just for fun?
Well, there's some photos of my week. Now we are off to tour our local bakery with our homeschool group!
Now that the holidays are over I'm thinking that educating my kids needs to return as a priority. I think we did alright for the first half of this year but now I'm back to that nagging feeling that something is missing. That feeling of
'what if we aren't doing enough'
or
'what if we are doing the wrong things'??
I'm back to browsing through my Rainbow Resource catalog and searching others blogs to come up with some ideas or encouragement. Right now all I know for sure is that we are going to continue the same math books, phonics/readers, grammar, typing, adding in some Spanish and copywork/handwriting. Science is where I get stuck. I really lack motivation here, I think that it needs to be added, but does it really at their age? Oh, and we ARE going to focus more on history. This is another subject that ends up being added just when I'm inspired. My daughter has read TONS of biographies so I know she's not totally lacking but my son hasn't. Ah well, I'll keep searching. I just need to get up daily and sit them all down and enjoy the time spent learning and just try to stop worrying.
I decided that while my husband had a couple of days off for the holidays, I should take advantage and go in for an ultrasound. While I wasn't alone (my oldest daughter wanted to go) it was very nice. Well, as nice as filling your bladder to the max and having a guy push around on it can be! He said the baby looks nice and healthy and is growing right on track. We like to know the baby's gender so we always ask.....and.....
it's a boy!
My girls were slightly disappointed, as they are becoming very outnumbered! They'll get used to the idea though. I'm sure they'll want to hold him and cuddle him just the same as they would have a sister.
Then today we got to visit another doctor due to a two year old with some yucky goobery swollen eyes. A stop at the pharmacy for some antibiotics and eye drops and now we are home.
Yeah! All this running around and my laundry pile has grown, and my freshly cleaned home of last week is now....well, less than tidy
I'm really in the mood to bake something to. Maybe if I whip up a peach cobbler for dessert the kids will help me clean cheerfully...do you think it will work?
As a family we haven't established many of our own Christmas traditions. We don't really have a large extended family and the holidays are usually just my husband, the kids and I. Still a fairly large group :) Anyway we are thinking of trying to stretch Christmas morning a bit. The last few years we've crawled out of bed when the kids woke up and began opening presents.....still in our jammies .
Well, after presents we eat breakfast and then go back to examining our gifts or playing with them. That left the rest of the day to just kind of dawdle around and then we ate a nice big dinner. It just seemed like the morning was one big rush for presents and then poof...what now? Well this year we are thinking of getting up and letting the kids open their stockings then have everyone get dressed, shower and eat a nice breakfast together. After the breakfast is cleaned up then we will go into open gifts. Each one will be passed to the recipient and everyone will watch as they open it, one gift at a time. Hopefully this will extend the anticipation and prolong the morning a bit so as to give us more to enjoy further into the day. We are also going to my Aunt's house for a big turkey dinner this year, so the day should end up being pretty full. I'll let you know how it goes.
Now I just need to finish up a few presents I'm making and a couple more I still need to buy. Oh and just clean my entire house too!
Here is wishing you and your families safe travels and lots of love...
I am wife to a big stud of a man who makes me laugh and I'm a mother of six kids ages: 7, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 and another one on the way! It may be a little noisy, a bit messy, and slightly chaotic around here but we try to have fun and somehow the Lord has kept me sane :)
Going backwards in the day, here is a spaghetti shot (minus the sauce). 
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