New Hobby

I want to learn to knit. My mother recently started knitting and a couple of my sister too. I like having things in common so I will try my hand at knitting. They say it's easier than crochet. We'll see. I want to learn how and then teach my daughters.

Where are the pictures?

I used to take more pictures. Tonight I finally got around to filling out the online yearbook forms for the online school the kids are attending. I started looking for pictures to upload. Could not find any decent pictures of my two oldest children that were taken in the last year. The younger three are always asking me to take their picture and so there are quite a few of them. Almost no pictures of my oldest two, certainly not pictures I want to submit as their yearbook portraits. Bad mom! It's on the list of to dos for tomorrow. Take a decent picture of each child.

Dear Tooth Fairy

Our tooth fairy is so unreliable. She never comes on the night of the lost tooth. Our children have been very understanding of the busy schedule a tooth fairy must have. I mean, come on, it's not like she's Santa Claus and can visit every child on the planet in one night. (All but one of our children still believe in Santa Clause and we had to break it to the one that doesn't believe because he was getting teased at school for still believing).  Years ago we started a tradition to make it easier for our tooth fairy to find teeth under the pillow. We had them tape the tooth to a piece of paper. Then one day, Calvin lost the tooth before it could be taped to a piece of paper. I told him to write a note explaining that he lost the tooth. He explained where he lost it, in Uncle Layne's car. His hand writing was not very good and the R looked like an N so it sounded like he lost his tooth in Uncle Layne's can. Yeah, in his can. Anyways, lately our tooth fairy has hit a new low. She was exceptionally bad and came over two months late. When she finally came to collect Dana's tooth, she found a letter that asked where she had been all last month. Dana was very thoughtful to wish her a happy Valentines Day though.

Moving again

No, we weren't looking or planning to move again. Our landlord is facing foreclosure. Moving sucks, but we did find a really great house. We'll be in the same ward, Calvin will get his own bedroom, Chris will have an office, and I'll get a sewing room again. It has a real pantry, which is truly rare up here.

Things have thawed here. We still have freezing low temperatures, but now the highs are back in the 60s and 70s where they belong. It's really quite nice.

So I'm almost at the end of what will hopefully be my last round of hCG. My total is 57 pounds. Yes, feel free to clap. With the weightloss, I feel so great. It actually doesn't hurt to run short distances. I've even had the crazy idea that maybe I should start running longer distances, like maybe run all the way around the track without walking. I know - crazy talk, isn't it. So you know me, I can't do anything unless I've read something about how to do it. (I didn't understand how to drive a stick shift until I read instructions on it.) So I looked up online and there are instructions on how to start running long distances. They sound totally doable. I bought some running shoes and downloaded an app for my droid to track my running. I'm planning on starting on Monday. You may be asking why not start today? I have my reasons. Monday.

Seeing that I skipped posting about a few events, I'll do that now.
My birthday was wonderful. Loved it.
Christmas was great. Dinner was awesome at my sister's house. Gained five pounds - worth it.
The New Year came. I think we were all asleep for it's arrival.
Chris and I have been married 14 year. We went to San Francisco. Had a lovely time.
Chris had a birthday too. He has more gray hairs than I do - hahaha.
And that brings you all pretty much up to date.

Oh yeah, we're moving again.

If it's going to be this cold, it should at least snow

It's cold. We have no gas, which means we have no central heating, no hot water, and no stove/oven. Did I mention it's cold? The gas has been turned off for three days now. You probably already know this, unless you live under a rock, but there's a gas shortage that's spanning multiple states. I'm sure no one thought it would ever affect southern AZ, but yes, it does get cold here. I was lucky to be able to buy propane tanks for our camping heaters and an electric blanket. All the stores sold out of electric space heaters within hours. Propane tanks sold out in a couple days. Lots of people don't even have water because pipes froze and broke. Our pipes froze yesterday morning but luckily didn't break, and they thawed by around 10 AM. One of my friends who lives near the edge of the outage area was able to get her gas turned back on last night. No real word on when those of us who live out on the edges of town will get ours back on.

We all kind of look like orphans 

with all our layers of mismatched clothing.

And we are all in need of a hot shower.

Why are you arguing?

Yesterday after schoolwork was done, I sent Bradley to clean his room. A little while later Calvin and Bradley come into the kitchen in the middle of an argument. I'm not paying close attention but it sounds like they are arguing about cleaning their room. After a few minutes it becomes semi-clear what they're arguing about. I think Calvin went in and offered to help clean the room and Bradley got mad and told him he had to help clean the room. (Pause for effect). Yes, they were arguing the same point to each other. I figured I'd let them work it out themselves. After about five minutes I got sick of listening to them and said, "That's enough, both of you go clean your room and work together!" (I may have yelled it). I'm not sure which one of them, but one said "Finally!" Which was quickly followed by "Thank you, Mom, " from both of them. It was like they were just waiting for me to solve their non-problem for them. Weird.

She's unstoppable!

The five year old is officially the family Tekken champion. She has kicked all of our butts multiple times, giggling as she does it. What's really funny is when Calvin (who is almost 13 and plays way more video games than Emma) asks her to please pick a different person so he can beat her. She giggles and says my person's stronger than yours, hehehehe.

Hooray!!

Hooray! Hooray! He comes home today!!

Not an exciting post.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my sister's house. The food was fabulous - as always - but mostly I enjoyed seeing all my sisters. I really miss how often I got to see them when we all lived within 15 minutes of each other. I even got to go shopping with some of them. Loved it!!

With Thanksgiving came some very cold weather. We all froze our fannies off. I even went a bought a new wool coat after that frosty weekend. I've not worn it yet. A warm front came through the day after I bought it. I've been wearing short sleeves ever since. It's ok though because it's only a matter of time before it gets cold here again and then I will be so happy in my new warm coat.

My days all run together lately. We get up, hopefully not too late, get the children started on school. Keep the children going on school. Feed the children. Try to stay ahead of the laundry and dishes. Remind the children to do school. Remind the children they can't do their school clubs if they have overdue lessons. Try not to let the little ones watch too much TV/video games - it's really hard when I'm trying to help the older kids with their school. Make dinner - try not to eat too much of dinner (for me eating too much has nothing to do with feeling hungry and has everything to do with just wanting to eat.) Get the children into bed. And then I'm too tired to do all the things I had planned to do once the children were in bed.

I keep thinking I want to get the children into piano lessons. I've even found a couple teachers in the area. Then I start thinking about how much we're already doing and I wonder why I would want to add something else into my schedule. I also want to get some of the kids into sports. Football and cheer were really great for Bradley and Dana but it was such a pain taking them to practice all the time. My gas bill dropped by over $200 a month when the season ended. Amazing. There are so many things out there that are really awesome for the children to be involved in and are so much fun for the children. They are all rather inconvenient and costly for me. I think there's a fine line between me being selfish and not wanting to drive the children to all their activities and my thinking honestly about what we as a family can and cannot accomplish. I need Calvin to learn to drive - oh and also age three more years. It's amazing to me how my parents managed to get all seven of us children to everywhere we needed to be.

I'm almost done Christmas shopping. We are getting our tree this weekend and I got out all the decorations today. Two weeks ago I got out my Christmas dishes and put away most of my everyday dishes. I love having Christmas dishes. I also love having paper plates. I went to Costco with my sister a couple weeks ago and stocked up on paper plates, cups, and bowls. Love it!! Especially since my dishwasher is completely unpredictable. Sometimes it takes two cycles and yes the dishes are completely rinsed before I put them in.

I need some house guests.

I think I'm done rambling for the evening.

A thing of beauty

I've been looking for a giant mixing bowl ever since the first time I made my mother's Thanksgiving rolls. The dough rose right out of my bowl. Made a huge mess. After years of searching, I found it today at Target. Isn't it beautiful?

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It's a little unsettling

We have a new super Walmart opening soon. It's very big news in this semi-small town. Rumors are rampant that Hobby Lobby is coming to fill the soon to be empty Walmart. It would be awesome to have a real craft store in town. I really miss Joanns and Michaels. Anyway, the new super Walmart opens on Wednesday. The old Walmart closes on Tuesday. They stopped stocking the old Walmart about two weeks ago. The shelves are bare. I think I understand a little of how Old Mother Hubbard must have felt.

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My sourdough bread

I was impatient. I only let it rise 10 hours instead of the recommended 20. I still think it's beautiful. And no yeast, and no overwhelming sour taste. Actually, no sour taste at all. Yummy. Ok, yes I cheated, a little, at first, then I had a sandwich. Just couldn't resist.

On a sidenote, I figured out how to rotate pictures uploaded by my phone. :-)

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It's ready

This is what my sourdough stater is supposed to look like, I think. I'm making bread today. :-)

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Cultured foods excite me.

While blog surfing the other night I came across this little gem of a blog. It's a blog all about crockpot cooking. How cool is that. But wait, it gets better. She had a post all about how to make yogurt in your crockpot. So easy!! I tried it out last night and it worked fabulously. Let's do a little math, shall we? I typically buy yogurt in the half gallon tub because that's the only brand that sells a plain whole milk yogurt. Costs me $4.99 per tub. Milk costs on average $2 per gallon. Making my own yogurt will cost $2 per gallon plus buying starter for the first batch (after the first batch you keep using your homemade yogurt as starter). I'm saving $8 per gallon of yogurt. Now when my kids ask if they can have yogurt, there is no hesitation on my part.

This blog looks awesome too. I found it tonight while looking for a way to make my own cultured buttermilk. I like to use buttermilk in a lot of my cooking.

I also found lots of websites telling how to make cultured sour cream or creme fraiche. According to FoodNetwork TV show hosts, creme fraiche is far superior to sour cream. According to all the websites I found, they're exactly the same thing. I don't really care what it's called so long as it's tangy and creamy and thick. Here's what I did, I put 1 cup of heavy cream into a pint jar. Added two tablespoons yogurt (most websites called for buttermilk - I'll try that next time and compare). Put on the lid and shook well to mix. Let it sit out for about 8 hours. It was all thick and looked like sour cream to me. So excited. I don't like sour cream with additives.

Now all I need is a cow...

Of course I couldn't taste any of my creations. I'm in the middle of an hCG round, hopefully my last round. I've lost just over 40 pounds so far. Yes, thank you, I'm rather excited about my much smaller backside. I have about three more weeks to go before I can taste any of these things - oh well. My kids are really enjoying them so they must not be that bad.

One more project of mine lately - sourdough bread. A friend of mine makes the most divine whole wheat sourdough bread. It's so yummy. She shared some of her starter with me today. I'm so excited to make bread without yeast. :-) I will keep you all posted on how the bread turns out.

This might work

So I think I found an app that lets me post to the blog from my phone.

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Wow, how time does fly

You know I never mean to let this much time go by without a blog post. Several times I have gotten on here in the last month fully intending to post something profound. Ok, I'm never profound, but at least a chatty post about our lives. I finally sit down to post something and I've got nothing in my head. What's really weird about it is usually, three or four times a day, something significant happens or the kids say something adorable and I think, "I should blog that." And then by the time the kids are all in bed and I've relaxed and let my brain stop thinking about everything I need to do, my brilliant, half-written blog posts that existed in my head have vanished. I need to figure out a way to blog from my cell phone.

Anyways, today was the primary program in our ward. The kids were so cute and not just my kids either. There was this one little girl in Emma's class who was singing really loud. Seriously, her little five year old voice was drowning out the rest of the primary. Poor Emma was standing right next to her. Emma had her hands covering her ears. What was really cute about it was that the girl didn't exactly know all the words. She knew most of them, but sometimes she got it wrong. She still sang her little heart out. Derrick chickened out and wouldn't go to the microphone to say his line, which he had memorized. I was really looking forward to hearing him say "There is safety(mispronounced) in following(mispronounced) the prophet(mispronounced)." Emma's line had Joseph Smith in it, she pronounced Smith as "Smif." Maybe it was the blue color of her dress combined with "Smif" but I couldn't get the image of smurfs out of my head for quite a while.

All the kids have been working hard this week to get caught up on lessons. In the beginning of October we took the kids to science camp. It was so much fun. But it was also three days of scheduled lessons that didn't get done. I figured we'd do the lessons the following week during fall break. I was weak and didn't make them do their lessons. We did get some done but I didn't push them to get completely caught up. So then this week we really were committed to getting caught up, until Tuesday when we had to go to park. And then on Friday we had a field trip. So next week we will be fully committed instead of just really committed to getting caught up.

What makes it really hard to catch up is that all of the kids had portfolio assignments due. A portfolio assignment is basically an essay/report that needs to be turned into the teacher. They typically count for a high percentage of the grade so they need to be done right. I check all of them before the kids turn them in to make sure the kids understood the assignment. I also typically help them redo/format so that it meets the assignment criteria. We had so many overdue lessons that each of the kids had at least one portfolio they needed my help on. One of the kids had four portfolios. I also help them study for their tests and quizzes. Which were backed up as well. I finally had to tell the kids to go ahead and turn some things in without checking them. We'll see how that plays out for their grades.

Science camp was a lot of fun to do together as a family. In most traditional schools, only one grade will go to science camp. This was a family event. Derrick was the only one who wasn't able to go because he was too young. He got to stay with his aunt though and he had a blast. The camp was three day and there were really cool activities for us. Everyone had so much fun. I'm looking forward to next year already. Maybe next year we'll actually take the camera out of it's case and snap a few photos. Maybe.

The field trip we went on last Friday was to Apple Annies. It's an orchard/farm around here. They had a corn maze that was really rather cool. Again it was a whole family event. I've never really been able to go on any field trips with the kids because chaperones are not allowed to take extra kids with them. I've always had so many doctor appointments that I was asking people to watch the kids for that I didn't feel right about asking them to watch the kids so I could go on a field trip, so I never went. It's really fun to be able to go on field trips as a family. As a HUGE bonus, Chris was able to come home from his business trip a day early and join us at the farm. Love it when that happens.

They had a market set up with pumpkins and squash and other vegetables were on sale. While we were walking through it, one of the big boxes had knobby squash in it. Derrick looked in and said, "Dad, those are freaky pumpkins." I love it when the kids start using words that I just don't expect from them, like freaky.

Mom, school is important too...

We moved + homeschooling + Chris out of town = disastrously messy house.

Disastrously messy house + visiting teachers coming over = frenzied cleaning morning.

Frenzied cleaning morning = kids doing chores instead of school work = following conversation...

Me: Dana, have you finished putting away the clothes yet?

Dana: No, not yet.

Me: Please hurry and get that done.

Dana: Mom, am I going to do school today?

Me: Yes, but later, right now we need to get chores done.

Dana: Mom, school is really important.

Me: Yes it is. So is keeping your room clean. Get to work.

Apparently Dana doesn't think I'm prioritizing properly.

First Football Games

Bradley and Dana both had their first football games yesterday. The games were scheduled four hours apart so it wasn't a problem to make it to both even though Chris was unavailable. Dana, Emma, and Derrick came to watch Bradley's game. Calvin wanted to stay home. We dropped Bradley off for his game and then went to Walmart and bought huge umbrellas. We would have baked under the sun without them and they made the whole ordeal tolerable. Sorry, I'm just not much of a football fan. Bradley won his game and then we hurried home, Dana and I changed (I can't go to a Dana's game wearing Bradley's team shirt), and we hurried off to her game. Luckily a friend of mine watched Emma and Derrick for me. Again, Calvin wanted to stay home and I left Bradley home to get some school work done. So I was at Dana's game all by my lonesome. Rather nice. We were the away team for that game and it was late afternoon which put the sun right in my eyes. But I had the giant umbrella so I just positioned it down to block the sun. It also blocked the game that way. Like I said, not much of a football fan. I read a new cookbook I bought recently. I also fell asleep briefly. Aside from the sweltering heat (ok it was only about 88 degrees) it was a rather pleasant afternoon.

I think I'm rambling...

Today was a great day. The kids were all well fed with rather nutritious food. No one was seriously injured. All required bathing took place. We made it to most of our scheduled events. The events that were missed were not really necessary anyway. Two of the kids are completely up to date with school. One of the children is only a day behind in school. And the other child is a week and a half ahead in one subject, a day behind in the rest. How exactly do you classify that? I even took the kids to the park and had a picnic dinner. Have I done any cleaning? No. Are there piles of paperwork that are waiting to be attended/filed/paid? Yes. Are my expectations for a successful day are too low? Quite possibly. Oh well. I still feel quite accomplished for the day.

Random thought - it is amazing how little motivation I have to load the dishwasher when it doesn't do a very good job. I have less motivation to have the kids load the dishes because if they're not loaded just right, they come out terrible.

I have managed to sort out most of the toys. I have a rather large donation box and have thrown away a full garbage bag. Did that two days ago. I still have yet to figure out where to put the toys that made the cut. Perhaps I need to sort again and cut deeper. Goal for tomorrow, find a place for the toys. Spread out in boxes and bins on the living room floor is unacceptable.

Another goal for tomorrow, hang the pictures. And then if there's time sort out the books and knickknacks.