After reading about Magellan’s journey around the world, (and that he died during the trip) Banana Cream Pie said,”I guess it is hard to become famous for something.”
We finished our first 12-week term of school by the week before Thanksgiving. The kids all got a break, while I spent the week grading their exams, analyzing how the term went, and organizing everything for the next 12-week term. I think it was our best term ever. As I was planning, I realized that after four years, I’ve stumbled on solution to the January school problem. Every other year, we have finished up our term right before Christmas. Then I was supposed to plan the next term over Christmas Break and be ready to start right after New Year’s.
You will not be surprised to learn that I never plan school over Christmas Break, and beginning on schedule in January is a major stress for me.
This year, we finished first term before Thanksgiving. We will have 3 weeks of second term before Christmas, and then close our books for 2 weeks. I don’t have to plan because I’ve already done it over Thanksgiving week. January 4, 2021, I will just open the books and continue where we left off on December 18. It’s brilliant!! What a relief!
I did make time to play Monopoly with these four smarties (secret math class).
And I sewed a few masks, which was a fun day for me.
I’ve always wanted to cook a whole Thanksgiving Feast by myself. But I was never willing to skip out on fun family parties in order to do so (some “dreams” aren’t really worth the sacrifice!) However, this was the year for it, because we are all being careful and staying separate. I made turkey, potato casserole, green bean casserole, jello, and 3 pies (coconut cream, apple, and chess pie.)
I got this ham for the potato casserole. Zeke (blue shorts) begged to eat it all week. Finally on Thursday morning, he said, “NOW can I eat the biggest ham I never had?”
I didn’t really make the whole dinner.
Peach Pie made the rolls, and Cherry Pie made the stuffing, because I had to zip to the store to get cinnamon for the apple pie. I had also planned to make creamed corn and sweet potatoes, but decided to save them for another day.
Chess pie is too sweet, so you can only eat a tiny sliver at a time. it does have cream in it, which makes it better than Pecan Pie, and I needed to use up pecans.
It was the quietest Thanksgiving I’ve ever had. It was also the least stressful, because I didn’t have to be anywhere at a certain time and no one was coming over. It was a great day!
After we took naps, this kids and I played Settlers of Catan, Code Names, and several hours of Pit.
This week was busy and full with just the everyday things.
We did home school and stuck to the schedule, despite everyone feeling tired and draggy.
I realized that I have not been checking up with Peach Pie’s assignments. sigh. Must find time to do that more regularly.
Mom!Mom!Mom! What does this say?
Thursday morning was so beautiful, sunny and warm, I threw our schedule under the couch and took all the little kids to the park. We tried to fly our kites, but the wind was inconsistent, so they didn’t stay up for long. We still had a great time.
Banana Cream Pie
I’m glad we took that time to enjoy the outdoors because it has been rainy and cold for the last 2 days.
Our chickens started laying eggs. So far the Man of the House has collected four.
He has been hurrying to build a chicken coop with nesting boxes for our pretty hens, but it’s been slow going, and rain and many responsibilities have limited his time. I pray the Lord multiplies his time this week because next Sunday or Monday he has to go to 2 weeks of training for his new National Guard assignment. Besides the chicken coop, he also needs to write out 2 weeks of plans for the substitute teacher, and I know that is worrying him.
As I write, it is midnight, Saturday, and the girls and I have succeeded in removing the mountain of sweet potatoes from our dining table! I am waiting for the last batch of sweet potatoes to be done processing in the pressure canner. We have 21 quarts in glass jars. I wanted to can all the potatoes that way, but sweet potatoes take 90 minutes in the pressure canner (not counting the time to parboil, peel, and chop them and the time the canner takes to come up to pressure and cool down from pressure.) Also, the canner only holds 7 quarts at a time. So as I put the current 7 quarts in, and it was nearly midnight, I hollered “Uncle” and put the rest of the parboiled and peeled sweet potatoes in quart freezer bags. I have 13 quarts in freezer bags now in the deep freeze. Adding the sweet potatoes that looked like they would winter well in cardboard boxes in the garage, I bet we have close to 50 quarts of sweet potatoes. What a blessing.
Current Family Read-a-Loud: Adventures with Waffles by Maria Parr
Poem for this week:
The Human Touch by Spencer Michael Free
’Tis the human touch in this world that counts, The touch of your hand and mine, Which means far more to the fainting heart Than shelter and bread and wine. For shelter is gone when the night is o’er, And bread lasts only a day. But the touch of the hand And the sound of the voice Sing on in the soul always.
This week, so many things happened. It was like a month crammed into a week. Fall is definitely here, but my rose is still blooming.
I was reading a fairy tale to Banana Cream Pie for her literature class. In the fairy tale, the prince has to find a girl to marry who is the richest but also the poorest. She interrupted to ask, “how can that be? How can she be the richest and the poorest?”
I said, “Often fairy tales have riddles like that. If we keep reading, we will find out how the prince solves the riddle.” Before I could start reading again, Banana Cream Pie jumped up excitedly.
“Oh this is reminding me of something!” she said. “This is reminding me of the widow and her two coins. She paid the least, but Jesus said she also paid the most.”
I was very proud that she made such a great connection and very grateful that she shared it with me. This is what education is about.
Our folk song for the next six weeks is “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain.” We learned that the root of this song was an African American Spiritual song and it is actually referring to the second coming of Jesus Christ. It was then adopted by railroad foremen, who we learned were hired primarily for their singing ability because singing is how they kept the work crews working well together. Being excited for the second coming is a relatively recent feeling for me, and singing the song with this new knowledge was very poignant. What a glorious day that will be when Christ comes in glory, six white horses pulling his chariot. We’ll all go out to meet him. All hardship will be ended, and we’ll have the best food and gifts to offer him and celebrate his coming, and
“We’ll be singin’ hallelujah when she comes”
Princess Tooth
Tuesday, I took Banana Cream Pie to the dentist because she had a tooth that was hurting. The dentist assured her that she wouldn’t need numbing shots or anything and started drilling away. However, the decay turned out to be much deeper than he thought; and after she cried out a couple of times, he had to stop, give her gas, and several numbing shots before continuing. Once she had relaxed, Banana Cream became quite chatty and conversational. As the dentist was finishing up, she said,
“That took a lot longer than I thought it would.”
“Yes,” said the dentist, “I should have asked you if it had been hurting, it was worse than I thought at the beginning.”
To our dentist, who has been fixing teeth for so many years that he was my dentist when I was a kid, Banana Cream Pie said quite matter-of-factly, “Maybe you’ll learn from this, and next time you’ll be more careful and look more closely at the beginning.”
Doctor Stidham rocked back in his stool, laughing, and I told him he was lucky to be benefiting from the kind of helpful advice I get every day from this wise eight-year-old.
Jeopardy master
For Family Home Evening, we played our traditional family Conference Jeopardy. Cherry Pie has been in charge of this game for years now. She makes up all the questions, and sets up the board. We have to take meticulous notes to do well in the game. You might ask for “Sunday Afternoon for 100, please.” and get
“This color was the tie President Nelson wore during his closing remarks.”
or “Who provided the music for this session.”
or you might be brave and ask for “Saturday Afternoon for 500” and get a really tough one like
“Elder D. Todd Christofferson provided several ways that a society can be sustainable. Name 2”
or
“This General Authority related the firey darts of the adversary to a flaming empty microwave.”
We had a great time. I had forgotten about dessert, but one of the kids suggested apples and dip, and I have this great recipe from my sister, Katie, so I whipped it up fast.
Blueberry Pie
In a medium saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter, 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, 3/4 cup light corn syrup, and 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk.
Stir constantly until mixture comes to a light boil. Remove from heat and add 1 tsp vanilla. Serve warm.
For art, we used chalk pastels to draw apples, focusing on drawing what we see and not what our brain knows an apple looks like.
We also practiced vertical strokes for brush drawing, and had time for a free drawing session.
I drew this as a gift for a friend.
Wednesday
This is my practice/demo of our handicraft for home school co-op. Paper sloyd teaches so much more than I ever guessed. My students are learning how to follow directions, how to measure accurately with a ruler, how to cut a straight line, how to fold a straight line, and how to tie a bow. This is only lesson 7! Who knows what practical knowledge heights we will climb with this “non-core” subject? P.S. my grandmother was so beautiful. I love her face, and even more, I love the legacy of education that she passed down.
Sad thing for this week:
Little Aztec has passed on. We gave him a good two weeks, after Blueberry Pie rescued him, but Wednesday, he ran under a vehicle in our driveway as it was backing out, and that was the end of his mortal existence. None of the kids were very upset about the accident, except the one who was driving. She had a tough couple of days. I buried the little puppy under the big cedar tree in our back yard, and even though the ground was really hard, I took the time to dig his hole big enough that he could lie comfortably, as if in a little bed. Rest in peace, Aztec.
The resident Captain talked me into doing this Couch to 10K in 13 weeks running program with him. I haven’t been walking recently because it’s dark in the mornings, and it’s harder to make myself go alone. So I agreed, and he bought me some special running shoes to correct for my over-pronating feet. I don’t enjoy running, but I like spending time with the Captain, and I like how my back hurts less when I get out and move. The shoes are making a big difference: I haven’t rolled my ankles once. Also, the kind of running I am doing is called “shuffle running” and it’s not much like any running I’ve ever done before.
I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more… rather than run.
Key Lime Pie got to dissect an owl pellet Friday. It was gross and cool and took forever. She considered the bone charts carefully and determined that our particular owl had digested a mouse and a vole, at least.
Friday morning, we had our first frost. I told myself that after school we would dig the sweet potatoes. But I had to take the van to get the tires replaced, and that took so long, I forgot about the potatoes. Saturday evening, around 8:00pm (It was after dark) I suddenly remembered.
An In-the-dark Treasure dig was announced, headlamps were handed out, and we trouped out to the garden to save the potatoes. We had planted the sweet potatoes in hills of mushroom compost, so we didn’t have to dig very much. Mostly, I pulled the vines back, and the potatoes came up. Some potatoes had grown down into the hard ground though, and we had to work harder for those. It was pretty fun, and Banana Cream Pie announced that it was Family Fun Night. Wholesome Recreational Activities? check!
The dining table is now heaped with our bounteous crop of sweet potatoes, and I’m going to have to do something with them.
Sunday Morning, I discovered that someone had thoughtfully placed T-rex to guard our treasure while we slept.
First week back to home school after break went very well. I’ve begun teaching the Scooter Pies to read because they were barging into Apple Pie’s reading lessons and giving the answers before she could. They are reading pretty well, and for the first time ever, every child in the house can read a verse during family scripture reading. The Scooter Pies’ enthusiasm is good for Banana Cream and Apple Pie, my reluctant children.
For Art, we have been learning brush technique and using watercolors from tubes, but Tuesday’s lesson was free painting. Peach Pie experimented with our new watercolors, but the younger girls begged for a “fun art lesson like we used to do last year,” so we looked through the videos on Deep Space Sparkle Art’s YouTube channel, and they were inspired by a Cozy Cat . They drew and painted their own versions of cozy cats, and I didn’t even have to walk them through any steps. They know what to do with sharpies and watercolor now. I am in love with these cutie cats.
For geography, we read about island archipelagos. We found several on our globe, and then made our own archipelagos with air dry clay.
Skeeter
We built them on some cardboard from the recycling bin.
Key Lime Pie’s ArchipelagoBanana Cream Pie “These are the Hampster Wheel islands”!Apple Pie’s Island
For Composition, we watched a Writers On Writing webinar from Read-Aloud-Revial done by Jonathan Auxier (author of Sweep:The Story of A Girl and Her Monster, one of Key Lime Pie and my favorite books.) Jonathan Auxier showed many sketches and writing from his own journals and explained how his books have grown from those sketches and ideas. He talked about the hero’s journey motif, common in many books, and taught how to keep a journal that will grow into inspiration for writing. The girls began their own “Hero’s Journals,” and I was thrilled by the ideas laid before them.
I made the mistake of setting up the writing lesson by saying we were going to do something really fun. Banana Cream Pie was so upset by how un-fun she perceived her hero journal assignment to be, that she curled up in a ball and cried and refused to do anything I asked for over an hour. I’m considering prefacing lessons by saying they will be hard and boring. Maybe I’ll be more successful?
Current bedtime Read-a-loud: The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dagliesh
Random funny boy quote:
Skeeter’s Tree Pose
“Mom! Look at me while I do a tree pose. It took me awhile to master it.”
Banana Cream Pie
Random funny girl quote:
Banana Cream Pie: “Can I have one of these cupcakes?”
Me: “Do you mean the cornmeal mufins?”
Banana Cream Pie: “Oh, Never mind.”
Pretty Thing:
Blueberry Pie painted these flowers on rice paper for me for Mother’s Day this year. They’ve just been propped against the wall in my room. One day, I was at the thrift store and saw this frame and just knew it was right for something. I brought it home, ruthlessly removed the Degas print from it, and put the flowers in it. Maybe I should have ironed the rice paper, but I’m scared to ruin it. I’ve hung it in the hallway upstairs, and it is just right. I see it and feel happy multiple times a day.
The Endless Merry-Go-Round of Meals
Usually on a Saturday, I grocery shop and meal plan and a little bit of preparing to make the week’s meals go smoothly. Since I teach piano until 6pm, dinner is pretty late if I don’t begin it before or have the girls make it. Last weekend, I did none of that, and this week’s dinners were late and no fun to figure out when I was already tired from a long day. I was determined not to have that problem this week.
So I planned and shopped, and then enlisted the girls to help me. I couldn’t have accomplished all this without them.
Peach Pie
We spent over 3 hours, but we put together nearly all the dinners for this week as well as peeling and chopping many vegetables for meals and snacking.
So yummy
Peach Pie made 4 loaves of wheat bread. We also made breakfasts: frozen burritos, yogurt, and granola. That way, I get time to study my scriptures in the morning instead of having to make breakfast for everyone.
I also made 8 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. My lovely neighbor shared her recipe with me. I love it because it is lower in sugar than normal, and the cookies taste better the longer they sit in the cookie jar.
What is left of the 8 dozen cookies? Maybe 3 dozen…
Dinner Menu for this week: Sunday: Pinto Bean Soup and Cornbread muffins
Monday: Green Chicken Enchilada Casserole and Creamed Corn
Tuesday: Summer Sausage & Cabbage & Onions over Rice
My “Dollar Tree Decoration” attempt is satisfactory!
This week, October began and the cool weather came in earnest. It was “break week” for us for home school. We are trying out a schedule of 6 weeks on, 1 week off this year. So far, our schoolwork has been very productive; the new Alveary curriculum I am using makes it so easy to get our work done consistently each day. However, it’s a very full curriculum, and takes me from 8am-2pm each day to finish teaching all the lessons. Peach Pie’s (9th grade or Form 4) school day is 8-3; however, she works mostly independently. Her day includes 50 minutes of violin/piano practice, 20 minutes of playground games/Pilates, and 30 minutes Nature walk which most high schoolers wouldn’t probably get to enjoy during school hours.
Because it was break week, I was able to help my sister Mary a little as she finished up projects at the home they are selling. Tuesday, I prepped walls for painting, and Wednesday, I babysat her pre-schoolers and baby.
Wednesday, I also got a fun haircut. I’ve wanted to get a faux hawk pixie cut for years, and finally decided that it was silly to worry about what people would think and whether I would like it, and that I needed to just live my own life. I am loving my hair cut.
Wednesday night I explained to The Scooter Pies that they are big enough to go to sleep in their own bed (and don’t need to be snuggled all the way to sleep in my bed any more) and old enough to stay in their room until the sunlight comes in their window. I have reaped some precious nights of uninterrupted sleep since, and though I don’t want to rejoice too early and jinx myself, feel cautiously optimistic about this wonderful new arrangement continuing.
Blueberry Pie rescued an abandoned puppy near our home on Thursday. The kids have names him Aztec, and he is pretty cute. We are all trying to learn more about how to take care of a puppy. I’ve already explained to the kids that he has to be an outside dog because we have family who are allergic. So we have a crate to put him in at night, and the kids play with him outside when he is awake. I am eager for his vet appointment on Tuesday to clear up some obvious parasite conditions.
Key Lime Pie’s twelfth birthday was Sunday, and we let our girls get their ears pierced when they turn twelve, so Friday, I took her to get the deed done. It seems a bit barbaric to let my girls get holes punched in their ears, but they all look forward to it eagerly. Julia chose tiny birthstone studs, and my wild child looks sweet and girly. I found her watching “West Side Story” all alone, recently, and thought to myself, “She really is becoming a teenager.”
I still taught piano all week. I have 33 students this year, who I teach in 7 group classes and 11 individual lessons. I teach piano from 3-6pm each day Monday-Thursday. Group lessons are best for the students, they learn rhythm and note reading much more quickly by playing ensemble, and they have more fun in groups; but due to some families schedules, some students being at odd places in the curriculum, and some students wanting individual lessons due to COVID, I have more 1-on-1 lessons than I would have ideally scheduled. The Alveary recommended finding a teacher who uses the “Curwen Method” of teaching. So I read a teaching manual written in the 1890’s by Mary Curwen. The method books I already use are quite similar, but she adds in ear training, which is exactly the thing I have been wanting to add to my teaching. In each lesson, she has the students take “dictation.” They listen to a short sequence and have to write the music down- rhythm and pitch. I believe my students will reap multiple benefits from this practice, and I’m very excited about it.
My conference buddy, Mandy
Saturday after leading a masked ACT study group with Pumpkin Pie and 6 of her friends from school, we loaded up the van and headed up to my Brother Peter and his wife Amy’s house to watch General Conference and play with cousins. The resident Captain had Guard Drill weekend and was gone Friday-Sunday, so it was a good day to run away and play.
One of Blueberry Pie’s swim coaches was getting married up north, near Booneville, Missouri, so he drove up to that. At 6:30, he called to tell me that his car had broken down on I-70, so I began the 3-hour drive to go pick him up. He called the Highway Patrol, and they took him to the nearest truck stop so he didn’t have to wait on the side of the road. It was a good evening for him to get stuck somewhere, really. I didn’t have anything planned except watch conference with Amy, and I listened to it while I drove, plus listened to a big chunck of my fascinating audio book. (It is Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor, and I highly recommend it, though it deals with tough realities and some situations are probably PG-16ish.)
Roz the Wild Robot cake
Blueberry Pie and I got back to Peter’s house at about 12:45 and crashed on his couches with the rest of my kiddos. Yay for an unexpected sleepover! We stayed and played with cousins until the morning Sunday session of General Conference was over. Amy fed us some delicious chili, and then we drove home to shower and relax and get ready for Dad to be home from soldiering.
Sunday afternoon, my sister-in-law, Kaitlin (Johnny’s Kaitlin) messaged me that I might be able to salvage my scripture journal by putting it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Back story: I bought a Journal Edition Book of Mormon and have been making study notes all year with friXion pens. These ink pens erase with friction (heat).
A week or 2 ago, I discovered that the book had gotten hot somehow, and many of my notes through first Nephi had erased on their own. Following Kaitlin’s tip, I stuck my BOM in the freezer, and it worked! My notes came back enough that I could tell what I had written, and I went back over them with my flair pens. Lesson learned: don’t journal with erasable pen!
Ben came home from Ft. Leonardwood, happy with the news that he will get to transfer to an instructor position with the RTI. This means he will be teaching new officer candidates. It’s a position he has been actively seeking for a long time. It’s still a one-weekend-a-month gig like normal National Guard stuff, but he will have some 2-week trainings this fall to prepare. It was quite the “break week.” I’m excited to get back to school Monday morning.
Marvelous Pigs in Satin 