January 1 Merry Christmas!

I am sitting at the kitchen table with a homemade chai latte and plate of cookies. I need to get all the cookies and Swedish Fish eaten by Monday, so I can get back to logging calories and nutrients.

We celebrated Christmas with my parents and brothers family yesterday. We did the same last year (different reason,though)
I think I like having Christmas spaced out like that. It's less overwhelming.
I had made sock puppets for my 2 yr old nephew. Whenever I watch him, we always wear socks on our hands and make them talk, so I thought he'd like some sock puppets.

And for his mom... A box with easy lid for storage of the puppets on his toy shelf.
In addition to hot glueing the embellishments, I tacked them in place with needle and thread. It seemed for "Toddler Friendly" that way.
Here is a quite visual guide:

I spent News Years Day (morning) charting out my revolving garden. Those parts of the garden I plant to rotate crops for a more year round harvest. I have 5 garden areas for this,  my 3 boxes to the left of the back porch, a box on the right side of the back porch, and a section in the ground I will rotate winter carrots and summer bell peppers. I have sowing dates for all 10 crops, along with dates to prep the soil between plantings. I put all pf the dates into my smartphone calendar with a reminder set for a few days before. 

I felt Quite Accomplished. Too bad I can't devote this much effort to cleaning the kitchen.

HEALTH NOTE: on the first day of the year, I took my vitamins, drank my 2L of water, and met my Fitbit goal! 

my 21 yr old son found an app for my smart phone called HABITRPG. I earn gold by meeting daily goals and tasks (that I list) and can go on quests and buy new armor and swords with my earned coins!

Foodies

The above treats I made for my friends at church. They are Peppermint Patties. Ki had asked for a big one for his birthday, s I decided to make a batch of regular ones while I was at it. I wrapped mine in foil and put heart stickers on them.

2 things-
[1] they were DE-LISH-OUS !!
[2] they were VERY VERY MINTY
the recipe calls for a mere 1/4 teaspoon of peppermint oil. That stuff is PO.TENT!

Last year I bought a little Summertime Kids cookbook.
We have never used it. I decided it was time it got some use.

I got out my Post-It flags. I have 4 colors. I marked 1 dessert and 1 main dish for each boy.

Today they drew straws tiny pompoms from fuzzy bag to decided who got to be chef on Friday.

Ki is making the main stuff (actually, he is making grilled cornbread, and he'll help with the main dish, but the cornbread was the recipe from the book)

Gavin is making Orange Torte. It is a fancy ice cream cake, I think.

I think I might make fettuccine with bolgnese sauce. I'll have Dashnyam help me.

also, on the topic of food.......
You may have noticed that a little over 2 weeks agog we got back from a 4 day gaming convention. Not healthy eating.
You may have noticed that Gavin had a birthday 2 weeks ago. cake. ice cream.
You may have noticed that last week, we went out to dinner twice for our anniversary.
You may have noticed that we had taco & cake on Friday for Ki.
You may have noticed we had pizza and a giant peppermint patty Saturday.

Soon, you may notice my hips are subsequently wider and more jiggly.

HENCE, it is Juicer Time! I want to do a 2 day Juicer Fast. This takes some pre-work. A juicer fast should be proceeded by a week of abstaining from caffeine, alcohol, dairy, and they say wheat- but I am not that crazy. I will try to limit it though.

I will post about my juicer journey, for those who are interested. Those not interested are still free to read and comment. :)

Oh, here are pictures showing how I made ONE GIANT PEPPERMINT PATTY. It was 9" in diameter.

I made a 'double broiler' with a medium sized pot and a metal bowl. I melted the chocolate chips (Ghiredelli bittersweet) with a Tablespoon of Shortening.

I used disposable foil pizza pans...

CLICK HERE for the recipe

O.D'ed on the Blog Hops

<-- Click this link to go to a PHOTO HOP. My photo of the week will be this ornament:

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Ellen Barrett is a cute & spunky fitness DVD guide , host , trainer. She is fun and I like her workouts. BUT my heart does not. My heart has a tendency to REV REALLY FAST, making me dizzy & weak. And though a good strong workout does that to people, my heart gets there in record time! (like 3-5 minutes on a treadmill or elliptical machine). I had forgotten about this fact when I went to NETFLIX to find a Yoga Workout. I chose Ellen's (Crunch:super Slim Down). The 6 minute warm-up was nice. But I then had to get my water bottle.
And, because I am a mom, I got sidetracked.
So after hiding the 3 wisemen and picking a lemon of the tree in the backyard, I filled my water bottle and returned to the CRUNCH workout- I just wanted some calming, stretching yoga. Ellen makes everything into a cardio workout. 5 minutes into it, I was done. Stick a fork in me. My heart about POPPED.

NOTE TO SELF: find a CALM yoga work out!

NOTE TO SELF: Red Bell peppers are YUMMY- just NOT in the juicer! (you don't need that story)


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Homeschool Hop #1 and Hop#2

Though some may think this is vacation from school, that is not the case. We are finishing up Chapter 1 in chemistry. We were supposed to finish it the week before the Christmas Skit, but got too busy with all the rehearsals.

It went well today. It was a short lesson. It had some math. It was multi-step math. Ki did it. He figured it out on his own each time and did not complain or seem like it is zapped every last ounce of energy. You know how some kids just don't get math and don't get math... then one day it just CLICKS and they GET it from then on out...? For Ki it all the sudden just clicks, but then seems to unclick a couple days later. I love those days that is clicks. Hooray for a CLICKy day!

Today they learned about denistiy and how to determine the density of an object. Gavin already knew of course and corrected me when I started to say a common unit was "grams per mL" It is though. G said it is measures in grams per cm3. He is correct, too, though. There are 2 common units for density.

And they already knew which liquid was more dense, of course, but they had to figure out the density for each.

Tomorrow we finish the chapter. I might have them find the percentages for density difference tomorrow.

This Entry linked to the following Blog Hop:

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Monday Madness & Mayhem

TODAY: a couple HOPS, a handful of mini-topics, and a few thoughts.

HOP #1

The above button is for a New To Me HOP. Listing things for which I am thankful. Gifts. Getting up to 1000.

Here is my list of 1,000 gifts numbers 1-10

-Facebook. Yes, facebook can be a gift and something for which to be thankful. Not just for keeping in touch with friends and family, and not just for being reunited with friends from the past, but today I am especially thankful for getting in touch with people I used to know and was not friends with back then- but becoming friends now, after all these years - and getting to see how God has been working in lives and taking the time to see how far we have all come.

-Health. A 'generic' sounding thanks, I know. But I am following it up with the particulars. Thanks that my husband's heart attack (about 6 yrs ago) was mild and there was no lasting damage. Thankful for his successful cyst removal surgery last week.

-Bracelet. My son made a bracelet for me, for Christmas. I love when the boys make things for me.

-Ninjas. The kind that cut cookies, anyway. Connor made Ninja Cookie Cutters for me.

-Future Ninjas. Ki gave me a pictorial list of different Ninja Cookie Cutter ideas from which to choose and he will make a couple cookie cutters, too

-modern transportation of groceries- so I can enjoy oranges and pears and other fruits and veggies out of season and out of local.

- Digital Camera. I love my digital camera that allows me to capture so many memories and moments. (with out the cost of buying new film and printing all 36 pictures just to get 10 good ones)

- boxes. Yes boxes. so I can pack and organize everything.

-plastic. it is fairly cheap, sturdy, colorful or clear- and allows me to be able to buy enough boxes to color code and organize things.

-Thrift Stores- A good place to get rid of our excess and a place to buy an extra pair of jeans for my boys who are growing like weeds and always seem to have outgrown everything, esp last minute.

NOW onto a few Thoughts:

Gavin has been out back shooting his new Air Soft Pellet Gun. It's a riffle of some sort. Brian and the 3 boys have been having a Magic Card Elimination Showdown. With all their new cards, between the 4 of them they had 18 decks. They made a flowchart of games and which deck won each. Winning Decks playing winning decks..... to see which decks are best. This may confuse you. That's OK. It confuses me, too. I will have to find out which deck won and let all of you know. That may clear up some of your confusion.

I played DICEcapades Sunday evening with my family. Connor can be a bit hard to handle with games. He debates everything. It's almost like a defense mechanism until he really gets nto the game and understands it. then he's all giggles and fun. He now know how to milk a cow backwards, though.

And Those Lists:

I love lists. on Sunday I made a list of all the things I wanted to talk about in my next blog. I think I'll keep the List as is and just fill it in with blogging. And, yes, I do this frequently. Make a little entry with reminders of what to blog or what links to include.

• Juicer - It is once again time to get out the juicer and juice lots of fruits and veggies. I like to do lots of juicing for a week after 'big eating'. It helps me feel better. I need to get some baby spinach and pears & grapes. I have more than enough carrots. Not sure how we got so many carrots in this house. Strawberries are good in the juicer, too! but feels like a waste of a strawberry. I like to ad a little ginger root to the berry juices, too.
• J-Term-It is almost time for J-Term to start. I have most of the CSI Class planned. I just need to review it so I can have everything needed for week 1 all gathered and in place. I need to get lesson plans for the other stuff though. Ki wants Culinary/Acting.(so probably alternating them every-other-day). Connor and Gavin will be doing computer Programming/animation.
• Pilates- and Yoga. This is the exercise portion of my entry. I really want to do Yoga daily and get my Pilates DVD out, unwrap the cellophane, and actually USE IT. Not sure if I will get started today. But I plan on it. I'll let you all know.
• 12 Days of Christmas- We did this last year (or 2 years ago), too. The boys seem to like it. We don't put up our Chrostmas Tree until Christmas Eve, but we keep it up for the 12 Days of Christmas. On those 12 days we read the Christmas Story/Wise Men (from the Bible), sometimes do gifts. This year I am hiding the 3 wisemen. each boy finds one and then gets a small gift (from the Dollar Store or Dollar Bins at other stores). Then we Have KING CAKE for Epiphany! I think we will do the Feast of the Innocents this year, too.
• Rocket launch in the yard- I'll do this one tomorrow.
• http://myadventures-in-mommyland.blogspot.com/ mommy monday hop. A New To Me Blog Hop I am doing with this entry. So click the button, join the hop, make new friends!

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One of the the 'non-organic' milk brands here is 'from cows not treated with growth hormones'

Really, that is all I want. I do not care if the milk came from a cow that ate organic corn or corn treated with whatever. I just don't want the hormones. And the Organic Milk cost SO MUCH MORE! I am fine with the 'non organic, non hormone' milk.

PS- this means the cheese/yogurt by this company is also non-hormone. another small savings. And in California, I need to save every nickel I can!

I just got back from riding my bike to the store. I love riding my bike to the store and walking to the bank. I like not needing to DRIVE everywhere.

Candy and Cheese

Candy meth

This is just disgusting!!! Meth made to look and taste like candy!


there is also some stuff called
Cheese

SCHOOL-Thursday May 3, 2007

Up and breakfast….. so far so good. The boys asked to play outside before school. So I gave them 20 minutes. They are playing badminton. Is that how it is spelled? I bought some rackets for $1 each and they came with 2 cheap birdies, at the dollar store of course. I figured the exercise would be good before school.

We did some stretches, then we had spelling. Manuel read, Ki wrote his word card and wrote more in his story. Gavin and Connor wrote their spelling words, but with different endings… so instead of writing explore and argue, they’d write exploration and argument. Then they wrote sentences. After that my boys read while I did Manuel’s care.

Manuel earned $2 cleaning in the kitchen. Ki did a few pages in his Beyond the Code and his Miquon. Connor wrote in his Language Arts book. Gavin read in a Science text about solids. he liked learning the formulas for torque and horsepower.

Connor has art class later.

YESTERDAY was an unschool day- playing at the park, bike riding, looking at things in the microscope, reading books, playing games, dad teaching about some math/science stuff, Royal Rangers......

Manuel's knee is doing AWESOME!! He rode a bike yesterday! He even spend $1 at the grocery store! He has never spent money here before- he works to earn it, but saves it all up to take home to his mom.