Monthly Meals

This is for Andrea :)  After a conversation about dinner, she asked if I would share what we eat.  Viola!

I keep a spreadsheet of meals and try to plan a month at a time, simply to make my life a little easier.  I have a giant list of all the meals we make and then insert them into the days of the month.  However, I am not good at following the "every Tuesday we eat Mexican" plan.  Maybe I have food ADHD or something, but I get bored easy and am constantly looking for new meals to add into the rotation.  I'll also add on the spreadsheet anything on our schedule that will affect food...if Ben is out of town, I always plan breakfast for dinner.  We usually eat leftovers for lunch, so it is very rare that we are able to do that for a dinner.

How do I cook in the heat?  I cook anything and everything I can in the Insta Pot and stagger cooking things throughout the day so the house isn't completely heated up at the same time.  I've also just been a rebel this summer and quit caring.  We've grilled and had soup when it was 106.  We're sweating anyway, might as well have a tasty dinner.

What about the kids? I try to plan meals that Ben and I will enjoy, that are healthy and are budget friendly.  I also want to expose the kids to different food, the same way I expose them to a variety of literature and music.  If there is a meal that I'm pretty sure they won't like, I'll add in something they do, but they still have to eat a little of everything.  For example, they're not huge fans of salmon, so I made sure they had fried rice (which could be a meal alone) to get enough food.  I think we sell kids short when we assume they won't eat something...they will surprise you.  I made up a recipe for stuffed eggplant, based off a Gwen Jorgeson video I saw and the kids LOVED it; like asked me to make it all the time, loved it.  I giggle each time they eat it because it's so easy and completely full of veggies.

I also just think it's interesting to document what you eat because it's always changing.  I wish I would have done this 10 years ago, because I know it would look completely different than this.  I always wonder what meals the kids will remember, as I have some distinct ones I remember my mom cooking. 

*Just let me know if you want any recipes!  Some are on our blog, some are on my Pinterest board and the rest are in a couple of my favorite cook books.

	August
1	Wednesday	Pork chops, cinnamon apples, veggie rice
2	Thursday	Turkey burgers, sweet potato fries
3	Friday	Pesto Pasta w/ chicken, no knead bread
4	Saturday	Pizza
5	Sunday	Tostadas, guacamole
6	Monday	Asian salmon, fried rice
7	Tuesday	Curry chicken, roasted root veggies
8	Wednesday	Shepherd's pie
9	Thursday	Tortilla soup, quesadillas
10	Friday		Game night @ church
11	Saturday	Beef stroganoff, salad
12	Sunday	Chicken pot pie, cinnamon apples
13	Monday	Waffles, sausage	Ben out of town
14	Tuesday	Speghetti, meatballs, broccoli
15	Wednesday	Chicken kabobs, coconut rice, roasted sweet potatoes
16	Thursday	Carnitas, cabbage, quesadillas, guac,	Rentz's for dinner
17	Friday	Leftovers
18	Saturday	Burgers, hotdogs, corn salad
19	Sunday	Bbq chicken sandwiches, baked beans
20	Monday	Summer soup, no knead bread
21	Tuesday	Walnut crusted salmon, green beans, potatoes
22	Wednesday	Stuffed eggplant, sweet potatoes
23	Thursday	Chicken swarma, naan, greek salad
24	Friday	Enchiladas, guacamole
25	Saturday	Chili Peppers
26	Sunday	Chicken noodle soup, french bread
27	Monday	Pork roast, broccoli salad, roasted potatoes
28	Tuesday	Coconut lime chicken, rice, cucumber salad
29	Wednesday	Chicken potpie
30	thursday	Waffles, bacon
31	Friday	Pizza

Monday	Grill:	Soup
Lo mein	chicken kabobs	chicken and rice soup
orange chicken	flank steak	chili
Beef and broccoli	bison burgers	Minestrone (Run)
shrimp, sausage skillet, rice	Tandori chicken	potato soup
pesto shrimp with cherry tomatoes		Zuppa toscana
salmon sweet potato cakes		summer soup-good for lunch
beef and cabbage, potstickers		Tortilla soup
Walnut crusted salmon		red lentil soup
Tuesday:
blackened salmon	Tostadas
enchiladas	carnitas
Wednesday
shepherds pie	chicken fingers, potatoes, peas	porkchops, apples, veggie rice
Chicken potpie, baked apples (blog)	stuffed eggplant	beef stroganoff
baked chicken, potatoes, greenbeans	bacon wrapped stuffed chicken
Root lovers salad, turkey meatballs w/ dill sauce	Swiss chicken and rice
schnitzel, spaetzle	bbq chicken sandwhiches (CL)
Thursday:
Coconut curry chicken (blog)	Indian Lentils (blog)
coconut lime chicken (pin)	chicken curry w/ green beans (phone)
chana masala (pin)	turmeric chicken
chicken swarma	cajun chicken and rice
Friday
speghetti with ground turkey, sweet potatoes, broccoli
pasta carbinara
bruschetta pasta
baked penne with turkey (CL)
Pesto pasta

Making memories with reading

A sub goal for this year; make good memories with reading as a family.

This is the perfect year to do that too.  We are moving in 3ish months and I know that reading is something we can continue to do even when we are traveling and packing/unpacking.

I have to be more intentional about these moments though.  If I don't write them down and plan it out, it won't happen.  So, today we made indoor s'mores and built a fort.  The kids got nice and comfy inside and listened to me read.  We are currently reading Dewey the Library Cat.

This and That

There's nothing more exciting than friends coming over.

waiting for friends to arrive

And we have had a lot of them over recently!

Alison, Neveah and Kinley

Alison and Aveline

The White's and our neighbors also came over to play and we had another Chaplain's family over for dinner.  Hopefully the kids are feeling full of friends by now.

Maya has to say "good morning" to each person when they wake up.  I guess she was really missing Eli this morning:

Chicken potpie has been a favorite around here and when you make potpie in the desert, it must look like this:

Sometimes I just have to document what it's like to be a beanpole's mom.  All Colin wants to eat is veggies and hummus.  I wish I was joking.

I love it that he loves his veggies but I need to get some calories in him!  I'll offer chocolate

milk and he'll say "No thanks, I just want water." 

Okay Daniel.

So when he asked for Oreos, I quickly agreed and set them on the dinner table to give him incentive to eat the meat on his plate.

The next day Ben brought home vanilla wafers and Colin invented his own cookie-wafer topped with homemade whipped cream and you will not be sorry if you try it.

While most parents are asking how to get their kids to eat more veggies, I'm asking how to get him to eat less.

Alison and I had our own little treat and tried a bakery in town.

AND we started school!  We went to see a movie on the first day to keep things fun.  I don't think any of us were really ready to get back into routine, but going to a movie during a school week and having the place to ourselves, is a little reminder to us all why homeschooling rocks!  

First day of school!

It's a big deal...

Alison is in middle school!

6th grade, here we come.

She gets 2 pictures because this is actually my favorite.  Yes, her hair is in her face, but I still love it.

 

My sign idea was not working.  Eli helped me try to figure out the lighting, but we were not successful.

3rd grade!

And 1st grade!

Colin has always been in the classroom with us, but this year is different.  It's been a little strange to be doing spelling and grammar with him, but he is rocking it!

The kids worked together to make some of their own signs to document our first day.

Simply the best

Who says learning doesn't happen over summer?  While my brain feels fried, Eli's seems to be growing by the minute.  He built this M&M machine that we all have enjoyed (I may have picked my favorite flavor to fill it with) and he transformed the city in his room.  I asked him to make me a little video of it and this may be the best video to date on the blog:

(He let his friends build a house to add on too the village, but his commentary about it is hilarious.  Turn up the volume, because his little quotes are hilarious)

This week

Eli has been on the lizard hunt.  He spent several days trying to catch one outside, but they were just too fast for him.  Ironically, one night as Ben was closing up the house, one ran right in front of him in our living room.  He put it in a container for Eli to have in the morning.  It was like Christmas for him!  I love this clip because it shows how most of our mornings are...Ben leaves for work and Alison and Colin are still sleeping.  The house is quiet and relaxed and I love it.

It took some work, but he got it in the bug catcher and then to an empty fish tank.

He kept the lizard for 2 days and then decided it was time to release it.

Sometimes I realize how much I tune out the boys playing simply because I hear it all the time, but when you stop and really listen to their games, it's often hilarious. I hope they always play like this together.  

(P.S. it's 115 and Eli is in a fleece pj shirt and jeans that are too small...whatever they were pretending to be, this was his "costume")

 

The library had a party for the end of the reading program and Alison won a prize for being one of the top readers!  The base library is tiny, but they know how to put on programs.

Just a few more months of heat and I think we'll make it through.  For now, we are accepting that days have to involve more down time.  The kids have been watching Full House while I workout and it cracks me up how they all love it.  Oh the hours I spent watching this show as a kid.

In the evening, Ben has been showing them a nature film and they take turns sitting in his lap and huddle around the computer.

We may be going a little stir crazy....evenings have also turned into magic shows and dance parties.

Colin's dancing may leave you speechless.

Chore training

Breaks from school are the perfect time to work on habits.  They seem to click faster when we are just working on them and not trying to squeeze them in our busy day.  A year ago, we took a few weeks to work on our morning chores.  They are very simply: get dressed, put dirty clothes in the clothes basket (which is a surprisingly challenging habit for children), brush teeth, make bed and unload the dishwasher.  Now, when I say they need to have your morning chores done, they know what I expect and how to get it done.  The next break we worked on laundry and except for a few shirts that are hard for Colin to hang, they have this one down pretty good too.  

This break I took on our biggest change to date.

Now, we are not experts in habits or chores.  I have met many, many families who do a far superior job in this category, BUT we aren't those people and this is what has worked really well for us.  The chores listed are things that the kids were already capable of doing and have done before, but how I dished them out was sporatic and met with anguish.  I think most mom's would understand this...it was more of a random thought, 

"Oh, they really need to clean that bathroom!  It's SO gross!  KIDS!  You need to clean up this bathroom right this minute!" 

 The kids are caught off guard and respond with whines, which ensues the lecture 

"You better obey right away, young man!".

It's not fun for anyone.

I wanted our kids to see that we do chores to help each other out in taking care of the home we live in.  It's not a punishment.  It's not always fun, but we are a team and if we work together, the house will run so much smoother.  I wrote up this chart on the whiteboard in the schoolroom:

And I approached it this way; each day, we are going to work as a team to clean one area of the house (I have a job too, I just didn't have space to write it).  Each person has a laundry day, when they are responsible for doing their own laundry and they each have a day that they help me cook dinner.

The top right list were habits we were already doing, but I wanted to continue to do during our break. It is often easy for us to slip into complete laziness when we aren't doing school, but I wanted to stay diligent in these areas.

The bottom right list is still a work in progress.  We talked about the dinner chores one evening and decided for now Alison sweeps the floor, Eli wipes off the table, Colin clears the table and they all put their dishes in the dishwasher.  I would like to get to the point where they are helping wash dishes too, but we've at least got the ball rolling.   

The results?  This went WAY smoother than I could have every imagined.

They quickly saw that by working together, the job didn't take very long and seemed manageable.  Before when I would just randomly shout jobs, they were left overwhelmed and not sure how to execute that job.  It helped that it was consistent and predictable.  Now they know every Monday, after lunch, we're going to clean the floors.  I saw good attitudes and a confidence I haven't seen before.  Wednesday's are the biggest days when they have to clean their rooms.  This week I heard Eli tell Colin that he would clean up the whole room by himself and Colin could vacuum.  Eli clearly chose the hardest job in the house, as his room is Lego heaven, but it didn't seem like a big deal to him.

This system has also been really good for me.  I used to clean the entire house in one day and it would take up the whole day.  This system has freed up time and given more peace as I know that everything has a time that it will get cleaned.

Hopefully the system sticks as we transition into a new school year :)

Eli's creations

Mom win/mom fail.  

Fail: Eli has a game on his kindle that has something to do with "buddy" and I really should know about this game and what it entails, but I do not.  Their kindles are on kid mode without the ability to download their own stuff, so I assume all the games are safe.  Probably shouldn't.

Win:  Eli asked if he could sew his own buddy and had a vision for how it would be made.  I helped cut and sew some edges, but the rest was all him.

I should also know what this is...

I just think it's really cool and impressive.

Reviewing the school year

Each year that we homeschool, I learn new things and have to adjust.  I'll start the year, thinking I have brilliant ideas and this is the year that I'll feel confident in how things are running.  The truth is, kids and grades and schedules are always changing and you have to be able to adjust.  Plus, I'm always growing as a teacher and figuring out what works for myself.

This year, I hung a giant timeline for history.  We have a book to write down our dates in, but I loved the idea of a big visual.  I thought the kids would love adding dates that they learn about and could really make it their own.  I would say this was a fail, but may work in later years.  Right now, they just didn't care all that much about it.  I think they would get more out of hands on activities to bring alive the history we read, more than just drawing a picture on the wall.

We also started the year with a futon under the giant timeline, thinking we would sit and read on it.  We did not.  In fact, we never sat on it and did all of our reading in the living room.  Thus, we gifted the futon to a family who needed it and have loved the space it freed up.  I hung back up the maps which our kids LOVE.  They look at those things all.the.time.  I also brought back in the mini trampoline that we use often for practicing math facts.

I often refer to A Well Trained Mind, when planning our year and she always says to keep papers in a binder.  I thought I was being clever by giving each of the kids a 3 subject notebook that they could just write in, but it was also a fail.  Some subjects ran out of paper quickly and some barely have any pages filled.  Also, I do not find it necessary to keep every single piece of paper the kids do.  Hello, we move every couple of years...I cannot lug around all that paper.  And for what purpose?  I highly doubt a college is going to ask to look through every single piece of work for their entire education.  Thus, I keep a few things from the year to show their progress and what they learned in a file for the year (each kid gets one folder for every grade).  

Curriculum that continues to be a favorite:

Saxon Math

Spelling Workout

Story of the World, history

First Language Lessons

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Curriculum I'm not sure about:

Sunlight Science

Handwriting without Tears

Mind Benders (logic)

God's Gift of Language (Abeka grammar)

Curriculum that did not work:

IXL Spanish

Following the Plan (Rod & Staff grammar)

Writing Strands 3

Latina Christiana 1

Typing without Tears

I haven't found a grammar or writing curriculum for 3rd grade and up that I love.  Foreign languages is also a subject that has yet to be successful.  Maybe this year I'll find something good :)

This was the first year that I had all the kids on the same schedule and did history and science together.  Our schedule was something like this:

9-10:00 Math

10-11:00 Language

Lunch

12:00 Piano

12:30 History/Science

1:30 Chores

2-3 Reading

*Fridays we would do art, Spanish, logic and go to the library.

I think it worked well.  The kids knew what to expect and what they should be doing at a certain time.  If they were waiting for help or finished early, they could play a school game on the computer.  I regret not doing more projects in history and science, but I know they still learned from just listening to me read...kids are awesome like that.  I struggle with feeling like they're not learning enough, yet not knowing where to squeeze more into the day.  I'm trying to remind myself that a little done well is better than a lot done quickly.