A Small Adjustment

Between December 21st and January 21st, I worked for four hours, over two days.

Between January 22nd and January 26th, I worked for 15 hours, over four days. I didn't get a whole lot accomplished last week around the house.

This week will be a little easier--no day classes, for one thing. But next week, I'm supposed to start a day class that will be twice a week, 3 hours each day. It'll last 5 weeks. That puts me at 16 hours a week, occasionally more.

Those will be some nice paychecks, and we surely do need it right now. Of course, I won't know if I'm coming or going most of the time. As it is, half the time I get in the car, I have to stop and consciously think, "Where am I going again?"

Since I'm going to be missing three dinners per week (and two bedtimes, sniff), I've tried to plan out our meals for the month. This means a substantial amount of prep work for stuff to go in the freezer. I've decided that although I might not be able to freeze the entire meal, I can have the basics ready to go. I have five pounds of ground beef, waiting to be turned into taco meat, patties, sloppy joe meat, Salisbury Steak and Pasties (those last two have to wait for the addition of ground pork, so I won't open the package and do those things until tomorrow or even Tuesday). I'll go to the store for the ground pork (as well as a rutabaga, pot roast, and a few other things I can't get at Aldi) tomorrow. I also have some Italian Sausage that is destined for pasta sauce. I put four freezer bags of leftover ham into the freezer tonight, too.

Wednesday, we're going to the roller skating rink to see if it would be a good place for an 8th birthday party. Saturday, we're going to the movies. Friday, I'm going to a Creative Memories party all by myself. Hopefully, I'll be able to do more than just sit there, dazed.

Of course, we also have various library, dance, and Brownie items to attend to, and now that we really do have snow, I'm asked on a daily basis if we can please go sledding someplace with a real hill?

Can you all say "oy?" I knew you could . . .

Homeschooling: Lauren

Lauren's Schoolwork is still at a very basic stage right now.

Bob Books Very thorough, systematic process of learning to read. Strictly phonetic. Dull.

Math Workbook I got a Kindergarten Math workbook because I knew it would be systematic and thorough. It's OK, not great. I still create extra worksheets.

Poker Chips A nice manipulative for counting, and she loves playing with them. Later, I can use them to teach place value, although I'll probably use pennies and dimes, which is more natural for that. They're also good for basic patterns.

Whole Language Once we get through the Bob Books (we're about half way), I'm going to start her on some material that I wrote. Instead of a phonics approach, it's whole language. I believe that phonics does have a place in learning to read, but I don't much like it. English isn't a phonetic language. I've seen so many kids get bogged down in sounding out a word that they lose the thread of the rest of the sentence. Whole language is more about reading for meaning, and using context clues to help figure words out. "What makes sense?" is something I used to say a lot when working with kids on their reading.

I currently have six weeks' worth of material, but writing more is easy. I haven't used those materials with Sarah lately (or written more for her) because her reading is pretty good overall, and there is so much stuff available online that serves her needs sufficiently.

Clock We have a little plastic clock that we use for practice. So far, we're only doing the top of the hour and the half hour. That's slow going.

Writing Right now, I have two sites that I use to generate writing worksheets. The ESL Handwriting Practice is nice to do one set of many words. The Handwriting Worksheet Maker is good for writing the same sentence many times.

Starfall She still loves this site, although we don't use it quite as often now that she knows her individual letters and many small words.

LittleFingers More Games

Book Review

Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month

I posted a while ago that I wanted to get the freezer stocked up so that getting dinner on the table would be easier, so I checked this book out of the library. I didn't realize that it was the Lite version, and that many of the recipes would be based on tofu, eggplant, and tuna. I did make the Turkey Divan (with boneless pork chops, of course). Jeff & I thought it was ok, but neither of the girls liked it, so I won't bother to make it again.

I also made the pork stir fry. I know it's traditional to coat the meat in cornstarch, but the coating ended up being a little heavy, and the sauce had way too much cornstarch in it. Next time I make it, I'll just use my own sauce as usual, although I might dust some of the meat with cornstarch, just to see if leaving the egg wash out makes a difference. Jeff said he prefers regular stir fry anyway.

There's one more recipe I wanted to try (Lime Marinated Pork Chops), but I don't have a lot of hope for it, frankly. I still haven't given up on bulk cooking--I've got a pork loin that I had sliced into chops ready to be individually wrapped, and I made a bunch of meatballs Saturday night. Still, it would be nice to be able to add some new recipes to the mix. I'm going to keep looking at the library. I've found a lot of online recipes, but those often don't seem to match our tastes, either.

I think I've lost my mind

Part of me wants a blizzard. I've been relieved that our winter has been so mild--the roads have been easy, which is a big relief to me. But I want to take the kids sledding. I want them to go make snowmen. I want to see big fluffy drifts.

I know that when this happens (probably in March), I will freak out and have fits and not care about what I'm saying right now.

Easier Than Expected

Wow, that only took a couple hours, including drive time and stopping at the teacher's store to pick up a Language Arts book for Sarah.

The Children's Place has jammies on major discount right now--I got 6 sets for less than $50. Of course, when I walked in the door, Jeff was on the phone with my sister who said, "Let's do Christmas presents next week, when you come over for H's birthday." Heh, she wasn't ready either! But now it's done and I don't have to stress over it any more.

I'm still taking suggestions, though, because we do have the 6 year old girl birthday coming up, then the 8 year old boy. How much does Darth Tater rock? Quite a bit, I'm guessing!

Christmas Shopping

Yes, Christmas shopping, today. Tomorrow is the first time we're going to see my stepsister and stepbrother since well before Christmas (it's my nephew's dedication). I'd been hoping to make Christmas jammies for all their kids. Well, a couple problems with that. One, I never got their measurements. Two, I never got my own kids jammies finished. Even now, they're waiting for me to pull the sewing machine back out. Yeah, gotta get on that.

So today, I'm off to shop. I have no idea what to get for

• a 10½ year old boy
• an almost 8 year old boy
• a 6 year old girl
• a 2½ year old girl
• a 3 year old boy
• a baby boy under a year

Stumped, utterly. Wish me luck.

Updates

I know I haven't been writing much lately, but I haven't been reading too much lately, either. Well, online reading. I've been getting books out of the library for me to read instead of just the kids--what a concept!

Lauren is getting over a sinus infection. I almost didn't take her in to the doctor (Tuesday), but her cough Monday afternoon was so bad that I swore I was going to. Glad I did, but really, how do you decide to take them in when they don't have a fever, and the runny nose is clear?

I'm making progress on cleaning out the house. My goal is to throw out one bag of garbage per day, and I'm getting there. I cleaned out a cabinet in the living room and that's now our arts & crafts storage center. Holy crap, we had about 30 cannisters of play doh! I threw out all the ones that were getting dry, though, which was about half. You can also see the floor in the back half of the basement now, at least in a small area. There is still a lot of organization to do, but once I get rid of stuff (to garage sale/Moms2Moms sale or donate, that is the question) that will be easier, too.

(whispering, for fear of a jinx) Lauren seems to have stopped sucking her fingers, at least during the day. (shhhhhh . . .)

I got Frozen Assets, Light & Healthy from the library, and there are a few recipes I'm looking forward to trying. They look like recipes I'd make anyway, but if I can make them in advance, life would be easier. That's kind of the idea, huh?

I'm trying to eat healthier, but less success there.

Meal Planning

I'm trying to plan out easy meals again, maybe prep stuff to go in the freezer. Since I'm going to be working three nights a week, we have to have things that are easy for Jeff to finish. I spent some time looking at Once a Month Cooking sites last night. I'm thinking that if I buy a big package of hamburger, I can divvy it up into

• patties
• meatballs (spaghetti sauce, BBQ sauce, sweet & sour, brown gravy, stroganoff)
• cooked loose (spaghetti sauce, tacos, chili, lasagna, sloppy joes, mostaccioli, shepherd's pie)
  

I'd like to think of things to do with leftover ham that don't include soup or anything creamy, since I'm the only one who really likes those things. I don't want Jeff to have to stress with the girls over dinner when I'm at work.

I'm also going to try doing some "pocket pies" (as seen on Good Eats) or calzones. I'd like to find some vegetarian and fish options as well. I'm also trying to do this on a reasonable budget. Time to dig out some cookbooks and get creative!