Keeping It Simple

If you look at my menus for Thanksgivings past, you will see that I am keeping it simple this year.

There has been so much going on; we have icy weather, and our three youngest have been sick with bad colds all week as well, so we decided to stay quiet this year. We will be celebrating Thanksgiving Day as a family, with no extended family or friends, for the first time ever. My menu will be simple, but full of tradition for us.

I usually try at least one new thing but I am not sure if I will this year. I am trying to be mellow. But old habits die hard so, we'll see.

We all need some time to relax and just give ourselves permission to sit around and play games, do puzzles, play Wii or whatever.

If everyone is feeling well enough, we will have some company for brunch on Friday. I will make a breakfast strata I have made for years. This Farmer’s Strata is one of my favorites. Stratas taste wonderful and are convenient because you make it the night before, so your morning is pretty easy.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and be blessed!

Homemade Cranberry Salsa over cream cheese, served with a variety of crackers

Lemon and Tarragon Turkey (this just sounded good so I am coming up with a recipe)

Cashew Swiss Salad

Scalloped Potato Casserole or Frufru Mashed Potatoes (I will take a poll of my family) with gravy (one of my sons reminded me to make PLENTY of gravy!)

Dilly Rolls

Cranberry Apple Sausage Stuffing (and some with no cranberries for a few people)

Sparkling Peach Punch

Sparkling Juice

Pumpkin Pie with homemade whipped cream

Spice Cookies and dip (one of my faves ever!)

Coffee

Salted Caramel Cocoa

The Big Switch

I thought I'd chat about the curriculum switch we made for this year. We have enjoyed our core curriculum, Sonlight, for so many years, I sure did hate to leave it. I am hoping maybe next year we can go back to it. But we’ll see.

I just had too many kids in varying places in schoolwork and was getting overwhelmed with all of the reading out loud and at different levels, needing to adjust for each individual child, plus all of the other subjects being at different levels. It was taking way too long every day and there was no possibility of getting anything else done each day. Not to mention, I want my kids to enjoy school. If the load is too heavy, and if I am stretched too thin in helping them, or learning along with them, the fun and enjoyment stretches pretty thin too.

So, for anyone who may be curious, below is what we are doing daily. Keep in mind that we started out doing something totally different and have phased out the old and, slowly, in with the new, so we are still adjusting to getting everything done. Many days we can’t get everything done, but I aim for them to get Math, Handwriting, Dictation and Spanish done every day at least. If we have to give a little, it is usually something besides those.

Science (Lyrical Life Science for 4th and 6th graders, Apologia for 10th grader)

Math (Saxon 7/6, RightStart for 4th grader and Thinkwell Pre-Calculus for 10th grader)
Dictation, Spelling, Vocabulary, Narration, Handwriting Practice (Spelling Wisdom – This is a change for us too. Previously we were using Spelling Power plus doing dictation, which took more planning to locate passages. We are able to cover narration, vocabulary, spelling, handwriting and dictation all with one exercise. Plus they get some really great quotes and passages, which we discuss.)

By the way, I also purchased Laying Down The Rails as I have felt like we need to make a more concerted effort in this area; a refresher course on habits, especially for the younger kids, since we made a concerted effort with the older ones and some things mightpossiblymaybe have gotten a little rusty. We'd possibly be up there with wild Indians if it weren't for The 21 Rules of This House having become a permanent part of our home many years ago (and that's even a little creaky!).
Handwriting (we use Italic but they requested to learn traditional cursive so we are doing that right now then will go back to Italic)
Reading for at least one hour daily, (Misc. and/or pertaining to current History studies)
History/Bible (Loosely based around the Story of the World, Child’s History of the World and Engermeier’s Bible Story Book, using this chart and this chart for assistance and adding in my own hands-on activities) and age appropriate Bible times for each
Spanish (Rosetta Stone)
Plus assignment completion from their once a week classes (including Creative Writing, Communications, Speech, Vocabulary, Shakespeare and/or Literature, depending upon the child)
Twice per week we do a Nature Walk and once per week we aim (operative term to date) to do nature journaling
Once per week we focus on a new Lyrical Life Science song. They are wordy and informative and we just added this a couple weeks ago, so we have not gotten very far yet.
Once per week the boys have a full day of classes outside the home, my daughter takes two of them. This has been a huge help!
Once per week they have a PE class
They have other activities through church and 4H, basketball starts soon, and they have chores around the house, property and for the animals plus learning cooking and other Home Ec type skills. We have put piano, guitar and voice on sabbatical. We have no extra time!
I am still streamlining and trying to figure out how to balance all of this. This is the first year in 16 years of homeschooling where I do not have any two students doing the bulk of the same work. Plus I have a 4 year old who also has his own little learning times.
I’ll post again in a month or two with a progress report because many days I still feel like there is just too much, especially with high school requirements, to get everything done!

A Cluck of A Deal!

One of my wonderful friends told me about a great deal on chicken breasts for $1.48 per pound! Zaycon Foods is new to me but, at that price, I bought a ton. Well, not literally, but 120 pounds sort of felt like a ton when I was elbow deep in raw chicken all week. Because you know there was no way I was just staying in the kitchen until it was done. There is school to teach, driving kids to and fro, dinner to forage for, blogging, LAUNDRY, appointments -- and then there is sleeping and eating somewhere in there.

But I am quite happy with the result. I bought 120 pounds of fresh, all natural, boneless, skinless chicken breast meat. Do you have any idea how much raw chicken that is??!!

I bought three 40 pound boxes

This is half of one box

I bought additional groceries at Costco and Trader Joe’s and used things I already had in my pantry (from buying in bulk and through my co-ops).

For this I got:

over 30-15+ serving casseroles,

5 dozen+ pre-made meaty burritos,

30+ individual servings of either BBQ or buffalo shredded chicken for easy-to-grab take-away meals for the boys who are in college and as needed,

over 30 seasoned and seared substantial breast pieces for the kids to use for quick protein on the George Foreman grill,

about 2 dozen additional substantial breast pieces I trimmed and froze plain for later use and 3 bags of broth mixtures to use in soups later.

That’s about $.68 per serving. And each serving should be substantial enough for a meal because I included a lot of meat in each recipe.

If I include buns and/or produce that will be needed to complete some of the meals, I am still under or right at about a dollar per meal per person, if I figure amounts, servings and figures correctly.

So yes, I am pretty happy about my stocked freezer.

And I am breathing a big sigh of relief that I have so many meals made ahead just before Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was dreading the “rush”. But now I am so looking forward to all of the fun things we are going to do for school and for holiday fun.

I’ll be sharing the recipes I used and some pictures of the process during the next couple of weeks. Mostly because I want to keep my notes for next time!

Have a great week!

Thursday. That’s Today.

My blogging has dropped off considerably the past few weeks. It’s mostly because AT&T decided to change it’s Laptop Connect package and not provide anything comparable.

Living in the country, I don’t have access to WiFi. And, well, a couple of my sons decided to watch a movie on my computer. That used up most of what was left of my October service package and I was left with DIAL-UP, people!

I could write quite alot about AT&T and it’s decision to be way behind in internet communication outside of an iPhone. It would bore you, so I won’t. But this loyal customer of 14 years is not happy.

The AT&T debacle was on the heels of my writer acting up and…oh, forget it. I’ve been having computer and program woes. I’ll leave it at that. And then I will tell you that I *think* I am back. Pending another AT&T interference. Or a teenager using up my airtime.

Another reason could be that I have been dejunking like mad. I’ve pretty much been busy 24/7, except for a little bit of sleep in between tasks. And in between carrying my elder brother on my back, uphill, in a tornado with barefeet, nah, let's say Laboutin's on. I've barely eaten and my nose is cold.

And my husband was gone for a week to Haiti, then a week to Germany, back-to-back.

And it has been gray here so I get a little sleepy anyway. Yawn. The past couple days have been unseasonably warm, so I am not complaining, just sayin’.

And I'm teething.

And I need a nap.

Excuses, excuses.

I think we FINALLY have our school schedule down. Since we changed our curriculum altogether, I have been adding additional subjects a little at a time. This week marks the first week all subjects are added in and I think it is going to be okay, other than the fact that we could use another couple of computers since we all do Spanish on my laptop and two of the kids have math lessons on DVD. But we're making do (oh, there's another reason -- I don't get my computer much these days!) I don’t think I have ruined one kid while trying to reach another in a language he/she can understand. But the jury is still out.There are days when I wonder...

Tonight I am going to watch the rest of Gone With The Wind with a couple of my kids. So maybe tomorrow I will get caught up on all of your blogs.

Happy Autumn!

(Oh Drat! Doesn't the clock "fall behind" this week?)