Monthly Archives: January 2016

menu plan Monday

A menu plan for the Great Thaw

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We ended up getting 11 inches of snow over the weekend. Our average annual snowfall is 13 inches, so that was a pretty impressive amount to fall on us all at one time. We had great fun sledding and flopping about in the snow all weekend, and Rockford and I spent some quality time shoveling our driveway and front walk yesterday. I kind of enjoy shoveling, but it takes a good long while when you’re sharing a shovel. Which brings me to this: There are a few supplies we need to gather before the next snowstorm hits.

Things We Need to Gather Before the Next Snowstorm

Another shovel. Our nephew gave Rockford a snow shovel a few years back for Christmas after we got snowed in and realized we didn’t even own a shovel. The house we were living in then was on a private road, and it was several days before we were able to get out. The road we live on now is a secondary priority on the city’s snowplow schedule, but we still have to clear our own path to get the car out of the driveway. A second shovel would cut our escape-from-the-driveway time in half.

A second sled. We had a second sled the last time we got enough snow for sledding. It was a baby sled, though, and Pete was pretty large for it even then. We sold it in our annual yard sale over the summer, and we are now a one-sled family. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that I want a second sled primarily because I’m impatient. It takes the kids for.ev.er to trudge back up the hill after a run. Eventually it would be great to have four sleds, but we’ll take it slow. Unless I find some sleds on clearance.

Snow pants for Rockford and myself. The kids are well-equipped for the snow, but Rockford and I have been wearing jeans. Jeans aren’t great for making snow angels or for when you crash your sled and roll through the powder, even when you’re wearing two pair. Which I’ve been doing.

Snow boots for Rockford. I’ve been wearing rain boots with three pairs of socks, but I ordered some half-off clearance snow boots yesterday. They won’t be here in time to tromp around in this snow, but I’ll have them for next time. They didn’t have any in Rockford’s size, so I’m going to have to keep an eye out for a pair for him.

The weather forecast says it’ll be sunny with a high of 49 tomorrow, so the snow will probably be gone soon. Here’s what we’ll be having for dinner while it melts away.

Monday: Breakfast burritos
We’re using chorizo, scrambled eggs and cheddar this time.

Tuesday: Fish sticks & mac
Poppy doesn’t know this yet, but she’s making dinner on Tuesday.

Wednesday: Pizza
It’s Witty Kitty Book Club night. We’re supposed to meet at a pizza place, but I think I’m going to try to talk everyone into coming here and ordering pizza instead.

Thursday: Chicken tacos
I make chicken for tacos by cooking chicken breasts in the CrockPot with a jar of salsa, then shredding it in my stand mixer. Super simple.

Friday: Pizza
Again with the pizza? Yes, most likely. Maybe we’ll even be snow-less enough to get the grill out again.

Did you get to play in the snow this weekend?

More Monday Menus at OrgJunkie!

Homeschool

There’s no “snow day” in homeschooling

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The non-homeschooled kids in our town had Monday of for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Tuesday was a teacher work day. They went to school on Wednesday, but they went back home by 10am because the side roads were icy. They went to school yesterday, and last night it snowed six inches so school’s canceled again today.

My homeschool kids, meanwhile, had school every day this week. This week was one of the few times they envied the public school kids’ schedules.

It wasn’t all protractors and sentence-diagramming this week, though. They finished school by 1pm every day this week and spent their afternoons as they wished, and they’ve already had a snowball fight and a mug of hot chocolate today.

US Geography

All sugared up and ready for baking.
All sugared up and ready for baking.
This week we studied Tennessee, and today we made Dollywood cinnamon bread. The recipe calls for an unbaked, frozen loaf of bread, and Rockford grabbed pre-baked mini-loaves when he braved the pre-snow-ravaged grocery store yesterday. The bread still came out delicious, though. We also read a biography of Davy Crockett over the course of the week, and we watched a short documentary called “For the Love of Music: The Story of Nashville.” I had hoped it would focus on Nashville’s history a bit more, but it wasn’t bad.

Language Arts

Reading

We finally finished “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” this week, and the kids started the movie almost as soon as I’d closed the book. They were not pleased with the differences between page and film. We started “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” yesterday, so we’ll be reading that for the foreseeable future.

Grammar

We’re reading and working through the exercises in “The Giggly Guide to Grammar” together. This week we talked about pronounces and action verbs.

Math

Poppy is doing a lot of work with fractions these days, and she’s also examining three-dimensional shapes. I wish the McRuffy manipulatives kit came with 3D models of the shapes, because I have a hard time visualizing all of the faces and edges. A hands-on model would be helpful. She’s doing pretty well with it, though.

UPDATE: I want to draw everyone’s attention to the brilliant comment my brilliant friend Rachel left.

brilliantrachel

It’s good to have smart friends.

END UPDATE

Pete has been doing division. He wasn’t having a problem with it until this week, when he got to dividing by 8. I think we need to do some work on his multiplication tables above 7.

Do your kids get days off for bad weather? What’s your favorite snow-day memory?

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!

blessings, Diversions

So, I’ve been camping in the basement

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A few days before 2016 arrived, the venerable Angie posted a link to something called “Yoga Camp” on her Facebook page. She generally has good ideas, so I clicked to find out what it was all about. It was a 30-day at-home yogathon hosted by a cute Texan named Adriene, and it involved daily yoga and daily mantras, and the Yoga Camp page called it a “bootcamp for your mind, your body and your soul,” which sounded pretty woo-woo to me. But it was allegedly accessible to the out-of-shape and inflexible and most important of all it was free.

Hello Muddah. Hello Fadduh.
Hello Muddah. Hello Fadduh.

So I signed up.

I signed up under the assumption that I would ignore the mantras and that I wouldn’t be able to do the majority of the work and that I’d get discouraged and quit before Day 5. That’s a terrible way to start any project, isn’t it? Sometimes I have a very bad attitude. By the first day of Yoga Camp, though, I’d decided that not only was I going to do this project for my physical health, I was going to try to adjust my attitude as well. I was going to at least try to downward-dog and mantra my way through the entire 30 days.

And now here it is mid-January, and I’ve done yoga every day for the past 17 days. Even more surprising, I’m setting my alarm clock a little earlier and looking forward to getting up and greeting the day with a little yoga.

Every morning I go down to the basement, I clean up the Disney Infinity figures that Pete has inevitably left on the floor, and I move the coffee table. I crank up the TV and the Xbox and turn the dial to the Yoga with Adriene channel, and then — here’s the kicker — I do my best. I’ve fallen over a few times, and I’ve been unable to follow along once or twice. But I’m trying.

The multicolored Pottery Barn rug I picked up a few years ago for $20 at a yard sale does a serviceable job as a yoga mat, Marsha T. Cat likes to sit and groom herself in the most obtrusive place she can find, and I still can’t fold myself into a child’s pose. But every now and then I’m able to move in a way I was sure I wouldn’t be able to move, and every now and then that daily mantra business — I embrace, I create, I enjoy, I am bold, I am present, I am alive — actually clicks.

So here it is mid-January, and I’m more than half way through Yoga Camp. My body feels a little better, and my mind and my soul — woo-woo though it may be — are both feeling better as well. I don’t feel any more flexible, but I feel a lot more peaceful. I very much wish Yoga Camp could go on forever, and I’m really happy that I took a chance on it.