Friesencold

For the letter B, Bauer helped me make Banana Ice Cream (ingredients: frozen bananas). The Champion Juicer is the b-b-b-b-b-bomb!

These next shots are from a couple nights ago at dinner. TJ was doing something across the table to crack Cash up, and of course then Bauer wanted in on the action. The ketchup on Cash’s plate was to dip homemade potato chips in (but Cash also likes to dip his cucumbers), and the pasta in Cash’s bowl is this.

Last, here’s a picture of the salad I had for lunch yesterday. It was the best salad I’ve made in a long time, thanks to the leftover roasted potato strips and green onions, which both added terrific flavor.

Here’s what’s in there: Organic mixed baby greens, organic spinach, broccoli, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, yellow pepper, celery, cucumber, green onion, avocado, sliced raw almonds, roasted potato strips, and Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard salad dressing.

Backyard Baseball from friesencold on Vimeo.

I had a great visit with my friend Gretchen who lives in Texas. We first became friends when we both lived in Orlando several years ago. I went to visit Gretchen primarily so I could talk with her about homeschooling and see her and her boys, ages 6 1/2 and 4 1/2,  in action in the classroom. Well, that and because she is one of my favorite people in the world and I wanted to see her and celebrate her birthday with her like she did with me last summer.

At Gretchen’s house, they turned one of their bedrooms into a classroom and it’s lovely!

Besides general fun and catching up, Gretchen and I spent a good deal of time going through all the details of her homeschooling experience so far, including the different curricula she has chosen, how she lesson-plans, where to find materials and resources, how to be structured yet flexible, what a typical day of school at home looks like (and what the remaining hours of the day can look like), and what kinds of things to do with the younger sibling to keep him entertained, happy, and learning at his own level. I loved learning about all of this and Gretchen was a great sharer of information. My biggest thanks!

I came home super-excited to begin some things right away with Bauer. We are starting with something Gretchen did during this past school year with her younger son Jack who is Bauer’s age. They made a “My Alphabet Book” in a 3-ring binder, filled with various activities, games, pictures, etc, all pertaining to each letter of the alphabet.

We are off to a good start here with Bauer’s ABC Book. I emptied a 3-ring binder and yesterday afternoon Bauer decorated a page to slip in the front cover.

We made a colorful page for each letter of the alphabet with some simple supplies and now we are working on the letter A.

I plan to spend 3-4 days per letter, meaning we will finish in a few months’ time (hopefully by end of summer). I won’t push us to do it every day, just a few times a week as our schedule allows, and probably anywhere from 10-30 minutes/day will be adequate.

First thing this morning I spent a few minutes reading to Bauer two “A” books I got from the library last night: I Want to Be An Astronaut by Byron Barton and There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer. Then this afternoon, I helped Bauer look through a couple of old magazines for letter A’s and words starting with A (we found apples, almonds, and angel), which he then glued onto construction paper to put in his notebook.

After that, I made a little fill-in-the-blank exercise for Bauer to do using the “A” Bible verse that he learned last year when we were learning a verse for each letter. I thought it would be a good way for him to review all the verses and would give him practice writing a few simple words. I know it would be hard for him to write out an entire verse, so I wrote most of the words and just had him write in a few of the easy words and stick on number stickers for the reference. He seemed to really enjoy doing that and adding it to the A section in his notebook.

The only other alphabet-related thing we did today was talk here and there about what sound the letter A makes. I have not previously worked on this at all with Bauer, although I do think he knows most of the letter sounds from watching some of the LeapFrog DVDs we have checked out from the library over the past year.

My goal is to go through each letter like this: doing simple activities, playing games, taking pictures of objects or finding them in magazines, reading a couple books, practicing our Bible verses, eating special snacks that start with some of the letters (for A, we’ll do an Ant Hill made from crushed graham crackers for the mound of dirt and raisins for the ants – an idea taken from PreschoolExpress), talking about each letter’s sound, and maybe even doing some memory work (maybe a poem starting with one of the letters?). It may be mostly review for Bauer as I honestly don’t know what all he knows or what he has learned at the Parents Day Out program he attends a couple times a month, but at the very least it gives us something structured, yet fun, to do together on a regular basis (sort of like when we did all those Christmas activities and crafts last December). Once we complete A-Z, then I am thinking Bauer will be nice and ready for me to begin teaching him to read, which I’m very excited about. The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise is a great resource for knowing how to teach a 4 and 5 year old (not that it stops there). I can already tell this book is going to be a new best friend.

For now, I won’t officially say I’m going to homeschool, but I am definitely leaning in that direction. Over the next few months, the alphabet book is going to be a little experiment of sorts, to see how Bauer does with it and how I do. If yesterday and today are any indication, I must say mine and Bauer’s time together seemed to have brought out the best in both of us.

Or maybe it’s the tattoo.

I got this done a week and a half ago at a great tattoo shop called Tomato Tattoo. I go back in May to get the color done. I am very happy with how it’s looking and how it’s healing.

I think it’s healing me, in fact.

This morning, Nadia Bloom was found alive! We knew her family when we lived in Orlando and had been following the story since we learned of her disappearance on Friday evening.

Bauer and I spent over an hour watching the live news coverage of her rescue online this morning. I was doing other things as we watched but Bauer was pretty intent on watching until they brought her out. He never passes up the chance to watch any kind of video. Cash was having rest time in his crib, and just as the news reporter said that the team bringing Nadia out of the dense woods was 100-200 meters away, Cash started crying. Not just a whimper, or I would have left him a bit longer. He was clearly agitated, so I went to quickly get him to bring him out with me and Bauer, only to find Cash pantless and diaperless, with a pile of poop in his crib and him holding his poopy foot up in the air like it was bothering him.

At the very same instant as I was discovering the poopy mess, and wanting to get back to the computer as soon as possible, the timer in the kitchen went off the brownies I was baking for a friend today. I already had Cash in my arms, trying not to let him touch me with the poop foot, trying to decide what to do to clean him up, trying to hear what they were saying on the news coverage about Nadia, trying to figure out how to get my brownies out of the oven. I ended up letting Cash walk around naked for a few minutes while I got everything sorted out. Yeah, that was pretty much our morning.

But I cannot complain because Nadia is alive and back with her family! I really am so thankful to God about the good ending to this story.

A few pictures from last week:

I had a Free Adult Admission and a Buy One Get One Free for the kids so we went to the children’s museum one afternoon last week for about an hour and a half. We could have stayed longer but it was almost dinnertime and I thought they closed at 5 anyway, although I found out they stay open till 8pm on Fridays. This was Bauer’s favorite thing there – building a house, of course!

Another building project for Bauer was taking this pile of Legos….

and making this little truck and trailer with boat all by himself. He did look at the directions but I didn’t help him at all. I find it pretty amazing what 4 year olds can do.

Did you notice Bauer’s smile in the above pictures? It’s still his underbite smile due to his loose tooth. This particular morning, Bauer said he couldn’t eat his cereal and toast that he first said he wanted, so I told him I’d fix him a bowl of soft fruit. I asked what kind of fruit he wanted and he said he wanted every fruit in our house. So he got bananas, oranges, apples, grapes, pineapple, and strawberries. He said he wanted the most grapes and grapes are the one thing of all the fruit that he chose not to eat. Why are kids like that?

This was from one of our several recent visits to a nearby park. Cash has a fondness for the ride-on bumblebee. And he needs a haircut. Thankfully, TJ took him yesterday morning for the haircut but I haven’t taken any pictures of him since then. I guess a picture of the poop mishap this morning would have been funny now that all the drama has passed.

2 Tablespoons of the tiniest little alfalfa seeds turned into this, a big ole’ plate of alfalfa sprouts!

The buckwheat groats didn’t bulk up quite as much, due to the seeds being larger (and hence, less of them) to begin with.

I had to dump the sunflower seeds because they weren’t sprouting the way I thought they should and I was also worried they might be spoiling due to me not being able to get all the skins removed from the soaking water (that is what my instructions said to do).

The sprouted wheat berries didn’t have enough Wow Factor to dump them on a plate and snap a picture, but here’s my line-up in the fridge. This is after being sprouted from 10pm Tuesday night to 3pm Thursday afternoon, so what’s that? Not quite 47 hours.

From left to right, it’s alfalfa sprouts, buckwheat sprouts, and wheat sprouts or sprouted wheat berries – however you say that one.

Today for lunch I fixed myself a few pita pockets filled with shredded and chopped veggies and then overflowing with sprouts. They were just great!

This was just my first plate. I ate three more halves after this!

I spread hummus inside each pita first, then added shredded carrot and zucchini, followed by chopped cucumber and red pepper, and topped with the sprouts. I felt so cool eating my work!

I am not sure I want to keep numbering the recipes I post on here anymore. I know I’ve posted a few recipes as part of posts recently and didn’t number those because they weren’t stand-alone posts. But sometimes I like to be able to tell someone to go on my blog and look for Recipe 7 or whatever.

I was actually wanting to go back and sort through my recipes on here and tag them in categories so it would be easier to find certain types. I am anal that way. I just want everything to be in order and make sense and be easy to find.

For today, though, I’m just glad to be getting these on here for you. Here are two great recipes we’ve tried recently from Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat for Health. I made a few changes to them, which I’ll note below.

Recipe 30: Pomegranate Muesli

1/2 cup pomegranate juice
1/4 cup oats, steel cut or old-fashioned, not quick or instant (I have found that it helps to use a little extra of the oats, maybe 2T or so)
1 apple, peeled and diced
4 raw cashew or hazelnuts, coarsely chopped (I used raw pecans and pumpkin seeds one time, and raw pecans and walnuts another time – so I really think any combination of raw nuts would be fine. And I also used more than 4 nuts!)
1/2 cup halved grapes
1/2 cup cubed cantaloupe
1/2 cup sliced fresh strawberries (both times I made this recipe, I did not have grapes or cantaloupe on hand, so I just used extra strawberries)
1 T currants (optional; I omitted the currants)

Soak oats in pomegranate juice overnight in refrigerator. Oats will absorb the liquid. In the morning, combine oats with remaining ingredients.

This next recipe is really quite good (well, so was the first!). It’s a quinoa bean salad that can easily serve as a main dish if you pair it with an additional side or two. I steamed some Swiss Chard which is the bomb. We also had a few pitas in the freezer which I thawed just in case we needed a little more substance. Bauer was the main one who ate a pita with his. The salad is quite filling and very flavorful.

Recipe 31: Quinoa Bean Salad

2 cups cooked quinoa
1 15-oz can white beans, rinsed and drained (I used a can of “White Beans” the first time I made this dish, but the next time I soaked and cooked a package of dry navy beans as a way to save money)
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup currants (we found that reducing this to 3/4 cup is plenty)
1/2 cup raw walnuts, chopped
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1/2 orange or yellow pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T chili powder
2 teaspoons Bragg Liquid Aminos or low sodium soy sauce (I used the soy sauce)
1/2 cup Goji berries (optional; I omitted)

Cook quinoa according to package directions. Place all other ingredients in a large bowl and mix. Add cooked quinoa and toss. The recipe states that this is even better when refrigerated overnight to blend the flavors. It’s true because we tried it both ways.

I hope somebody tries these

If you haven’t already, please take a look at my friend Rachel’s cool idea! Today’s her Virtual Grand Opening.

And today’s also 4-7 in case you didn’t notice!

Now please take a look at one of my ideas: learning how to sprout!

From left to right, there’s alfalfa, buckwheat groats, sunflower seeds, and red wheat berries.

First I printed a few different articles on sprouting from the internet. I read them over a period of time, highlighted the important parts, made a list of what to get on my freakin’ awesome iPhone (as TJ would say), and then gathered all the supplies. That whole process took me at least a month!

Finally, yesterday, Bauer helped me get started. We measured 2T of each type of seed, put them into quart jars, secured nylon tulle over the top with rubberbands, and added 1 cup of water to each jar to let the seeds soak.

Then last night, I drained the water, rinsed the seeds through the tulle, and drained them again. I found a bowl to prop each jar in upside down so any additional water can drain out.

Now I am supposed to rinse the seeds twice daily and wait for the sprouts to grow. The ones I am doing take 1-1.5 days, so it’s pretty quick. I have already begun to see little sprouts growing, so I guess I did something right.

Next thing for you to take a look at are these beautiful flowers TJ and Bauer got me for Easter. The big ones are Alstroemeria, which are the kind of flowers TJ and I had at our wedding, and the little ones are Daffodils. They are both from Trader Joe’s, which has a great selection of flowers and plants, not to mention hummus, nut butters, soups, and frozen fruit.

For Easter, TJ also got me the newest Anne Lamott novel called Imperfect Birds. It will be my first e-book to read since we now have an iPad to read it on. I heart Anne Lamott and birds. TJ hearts the iPad.

Ever since Bauer lost his first tooth a few weeks ago, he now smiles with an underbite, as shown in the above picture. I have tried to get him to smile “normally,” but he says this is normal.

What is not normal is that it took me 150 pages to get into the book I am reading. I was just about to give up on The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, which I’m sure I’ve been reading (or not reading) for at least 2 weeks. I just couldn’t get into the story for some reason. I slowly kept at it after my mom told me it was one of my aunt’s all-time favorite books (and I know she’s a reader so I didn’t take that comment lightly). Finally, last night, when I was truly considering putting it away for something else, the tide turned and I read 60 pages before bed. I won’t say just what happened in the book to really get me into the story because that would give it away, but now I am really excited to finish the book.

Last thing for today is a picture of this Pomegranate Muesli that I had for breakfast this morning. Recipe to follow tomorrow!

My friend Hannah, whom I mention frequently on here due to her being the source of many referrals of books, recipes, blogs, and tips in general, has this other friend Rachel, that I’ve met a few times. I think Rachel and I would be friends if we happened to hang out much more. She’s a very nice lady and struck me as intelligent from the get-go, just judging from some things she would bring to the discussion during a women’s study I was briefly participating in of which Rachel was a part. Well, now I’m convinced not only of her smarts, but also of her creativity and motivation.

You see, Rachel started this business not so long ago called “A Closet of Her Own.” It’s a website where she sells cute t-shirts for girls with boyish-type themes printed on them. Like fire trucks, dinosaurs, and sports balls. Rachel realized that there was a gap in this type of girls’ clothing because her daughter was always wanting to wear her older brother’s fire truck shirt or sports-themed shirt, but when Rachel wanted to purchase girls’ clothing of this type for her daughter, there was none to be found. Rachel took initiative and started “A Closet of Her Own” to remedy the situation.

She has a great website up and running now to showcase all the great shirts for sale. The “About Me” section on the website tells more of Rachel’s story and how she came to start the business, and the “Blog” page is updated regularly with various girl-themed posts that would be helpful to any mom of a girl looking for inspiration on ways to instill in her daughter confidence, self-esteem, and joy in being a girl.

The reason I’m writing about all of this today is that tomorrow, April 7th, is Rachel’s Virtual Grand Opening for her business. Here’s the blog post Rachel wrote to break the news of all the fun stuff to take place tomorrow on her grand opening day. I am definitely going to be visiting the site throughout the day tomorrow, in hopes to win a prize for answering one of 4 trivia questions that Rachel will post, or maybe even the grand prize package, which includes one of each t-shirt design featured on the site, four great children’s books, and a CD by children’s music artist Jeanie B. These are all great gift items for the young girls in your life, whether your daughter, niece, granddaughter, or your friend’s little girl. I have two cute nieces and several friends with daughters so I’m definitely happy to know about “A Closet of Her Own.”

Please take a few minutes tomorrow to visit Rachel’s site, and you may realize you want to be her friend too. Actually, if you become a fan of “A Closet of Her Own” on Facebook and you post on the Wall there that I referred you, I’ll get an extra entry in the Grand Prize drawing and if I win and you have a daughter, hmmm, well, I think I could pay you back What a great idea, and what a great person to have it, Rachel!

Here’s Cash with 2 little boys about his same age. My friend Carrie came by this afternoon for a quick visit with her son Jay and our friend Jamie’s little boy Grant. From left to right, it’s Jay, Cash, and Grant.

We had a fun time celebrating Easter with some friends yesterday. We went to church and then to the Meyers’ house for a meal together. Here are all the kids after the Easter Egg Hunt. From left to right, it’s Cash, Bauer, Branton, Adelyn, and Callie.

I did my weekly grocery shopping at Meijer today. It was quite exciting to use the Grocery Gadget App on my iPhone for the first time instead of having a paper list and having to dig in my purse for my Sharpie to mark things off with. I loaded up on some leafy greens today, including one we’ve never tried before. You guess which one. From left to right, we have Kale, Dandelion Greens, and Swiss Chard.

And last for tonight, here are a few pictures that TJ took of me and Cash during the Easter Egg Hunt.

Of course, I’d do left to right here if I could get the pictures to show that way. From top to bottom, it’s Cash with a jelly bean in his hand. I was waiting and watching to see if he’d automatically know it was food (or should we say, a foodlike substance). He thinks about putting it in his mouth, then holds it out for me to take. As soon as he sees me eat one, he knows it’s okay, and the rest is history.

First, this quote:

“Our private darkness is no great surprise. Who cares? Who cares where I am on the ladder of perfection? That’s an egocentric question. Where am I? How holy am I? become silly questions. If God can receive me, who am I to not receive myself?” (Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs)

That’s pretty helpful, wouldn’t you say?

I am thinking a lot lately about schooling options for Bauer. I am talking with a lot of different people about homeschooling. I am about to spend some time this week with a friend of a friend who “unschools” her children, and later this month, I will visit my friend Gretchen in Texas and see how she homeschools her boys. During our visit to NC last month, I talked with my aunt who has her son (my cousin) Chase in a classical Christian school. Then when we got back home, I attended an Open House at a classical Christian school in our town. One night last week, I met with a nice lady named Sheryl who heads up a local chapter of Classical Conversations, which is a resource based on the Classical Education model that allows homeschoolers and their parents to participate on a weekly basis with other homeschoolers to focus on memory work. I purchased and read a good chunk of The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, which is a book about homeschooling according to the Classical Education model. There is so much to think about and so many places to find information. I am thankful that I have some friends ahead of me in this area of life so that I can learn from them.

My friend Hannah has been a very good resource for me. She often sends me links to blogs or websites she thinks I will find helpful, and I do! Most recently, she shared with me a blogger’s post entitled “Why I’m Probably a Bad Candidate for Homeschooling” – but NOT because Hannah thinks I’m a bad candidate! If anything, she makes me feel like I can do it, even though our personalities are different. In fact, I often wish I had her laid-back personality that I feel would make me a better candidate for homeschooling.

That leads me back to Richard Rohr and Everything Belongs, in which he says:

“The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. That is everybody’s greatest cross.”

Since reading that bit earlier this week, I see that my A-(for-Anal)-Type personality is part of the mystery of my own reality and bearing it well is an act of courage. God help me.

Back to that blog post Hannah sent me. What I wanted to say about it is really about the comments to the post. The comments spoke volumes to me about the schooling debate. I printed all 12 pages of the comments, re-read them on paper, highlighted all the ones I liked, and had TJ read them last night during Arts Hour. I just wanted to share a few of the ones that are really making me think. These are just little bits and pieces of mostly longer comments, so hopefully they won’t be too pulled out of context for you to see what may have attracted me to these thoughts from others.

I want to have a homeschooling picnic for moms who watch 30 Rock, drink a little, say a bad word now and then and still love Jesus.

We all need to remember whoever spends the most time with them will have the greatest impact. Maybe that should be us, maybe not. It depends.

I’d say, forget “homeschooling” and just teach what you want, what you can, with what appeals to you at home. Or the library. Or the zoo. Or wherever. Don’t go to conferences or curriculum stores – just find books you like and read them. Just read, talk, and create the home you want for your children. That would be a marvelous education.

I don’t have boys, but if I did, I’d get him as far away from the public school as possible.

Ultimately no matter what, homeschooling or not, in any situation regarding your children you are one of their biggest flaws and you are one of their greatest assets. The question could be posed, how much can you trust the flaws and talents of someone whom you know less than yourself? a.k.a. a public school teacher….No matter what education choice you are going to have “you” factor affecting how you react! Tally all your factors together and make the choice that works best for you, and make sure to take the time to pray and listen to what God’s telling you about this. Then live happily with your decision. Constant fence sitting, and a state of perpetual indecision are, in my opinion, on of the greatest tools the tempter has against believers.

I don’t think public school is as bad as I’m always told it is (mainly from people who never sent their kids) nor is homeschooling as idyllic as it’s portrayed. Heaven’s not here after all.

One thing is for certain, Parenthood – and Mothering especially – will be the THERAPY you are looking for and the blessed result will be the outstanding adults that will someday look at you and say, “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

One of the readers who commented referred to this article, entitled “The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher,” so I printed that to read and then TJ wanted to read it too. He thought it was a little conspiracy-theory-ish in parts, but some definite food for thought and some definite truth in there.

Hmmm….I think that’s enough for today on this subject. I am excited to be exploring this part of life.