Monday Musings

Why is it that children who can eat about 5 slices of pizza and two glasses of soda in one meal, can only manage to eat one bite of meatloaf and two green beans before they are stuffed beyond every reasonable capacity? Or, children who can play for hours on end at the playground are too utterly exhausted to pick up a pair of dirty socks off the floor? Or children who can hear everything I say when I'm talking quietly on the phone with my back turned to a closed door, yet cannot hear me screaming across the house for someone to come take this dirty diaper to the trash?
Hmmm. Life is just full of mysteries.

Tasty Thursday

Scalloped Potatoes and Ham
6-8 slices ham
8 medium potatoes, peeled/sliced about ¼ inch thick
2 onions, peeled and sliced
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 can cream of mushroom soup
salt and pepper
Layer the potatoes, ham and onions in the crock pot. Sprinkle on a little salt and pepper and cheese. Repeat the layers and pour the can of soup over the top. Cook on low 8 hours or high for 4 hours or til potatoes are tender.

Monday Musings

Brittany's version of a Christmas favorite, Silent Night........
Silent night, holy night
all is calm, all is bright
round yon vertebrae, mother and child...............

Tasty Thursday

Cheerios Bars

5 cups Cheerios
1 10-oz. bag mini marshmallows
½ cup peanut butter (crunchy or creamy)
1 T. butter

Melt butter and marshmallows in large pan over medium heat. Add in peanut butter and mix thoroughly. Remove from heat and mix in cereal. Spread evenly in a 9 x 13 pan (no need to grease). Allow to cool for 20 minutes or so before cutting into bars.
We have this a lot for breakfast!

Monday Musings

I was nursing little Thomas this morning and then switched sides when Brooke asked, "Does one side have milk and one side have juice?"
We hosted a Fiesta de Navidad for our homeschool Spanish class this morning. It was a lot of fun. There were 15 kids and 8 adults. The kids had been learning fruits, vegetables and colors. Last week we met at Wal Mart to buy the ingredients for the soup and fruit salad we made this morning. The soup was delicious. We also had 2 pinatas and a spin off of the hispanic tradition of find the baby Jesus in the bread. (I don't know what the name of that is.) But, anyway, I made cupcakes and wrote a J underneath one of the cupcakes. Whoever ended up with the "J" cupcake found the true meaning of Christmas and won a prize. I thiink the original tradition is to put a small plastic Jesus in the bread, but I wasn't sure where to find a small plastic Jesus or how I would get it into the cupcake. This worked out better anyway. We also had fudge, chips, cookies and punch. And, plenty of candy. Somebody talk me down from this sugar high!

Tasty Thursday

Well, what you ask, do recipes have to do with Thursdays? Nothing, it's just that I wanted to do some recipes, Thursdays are available, and I can't think of another catchy title. There's Menu Monday, but Mondays are already taken. If I can think of something else, I'll change it. I'm open to suggestions! Anyone?
Beef Tips and Rice
! can cream of onion soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 package of stew meat
Add the stew meat and soups to crock pot and cook on high for about 4-6 hours or low for 8 hours. Serve over rice or noodles. *You can adjust the amount of meat and soup depending on the amount of people you need to feed.

Monday Musings

Well we have held fast to our tradition of putting the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and this year the kids had it out and were putting it up before I even knew what was going on! The tree always ends up with all the ornaments on the upper half of the tree anyway, so I just go ahead and let them decorate the whole thing.
They've already gotten all their gifts wrapped and put under the tree. They always make their gifts to each other and to us. It's very sweet. This year Brittany is crocheting winter hats for everyone. They are turning out so nice. I'll have to post pictures when she's done.
We don't do Santa. We've researched Santa and determined that there was an actual Saint Nicholas, but I felt like if I lied about Santa would they believe me about Jesus? So, we are trying to stick to Christmas traditions that relate only to Jesus, but that's so hard when so much pagan tradition has been melded in.
Anyway, about 2 years ago when Timothy was five, we were all talking about how some people did Santa, but we did not. Timothy says, "That's okay if we don't. He's just a big fat fake anyway!" That's Timothy for ya.

Mary Cassatt Lapbooks

We finished our Mary Cassatt lapbooks today. The three oldest worked on them together, I just adjusted the writing according to grade level (we had 2nd, 5th and 7th). It was a pre-made kit that I had received as a free gift for something. It came from Hands of a Child. They sell a lot of neat kits for the lapbook-challenged, but I like to just put my own together. (Call me a rebel!) The cover was actually a sample from a coloring book that I got from the Dover weekly sampler.

Black Belts!!

The three oldest kids got their black belts Friday night. They've been working on this goal for almost 2 years now. They were so excited. They had to each do three forms and 2 board breaks. There was a candle ceremony where each of the black belts get to light a small candle off of the bigger one after a reading about how they've grown in their Tae Kwon Do journey. It was really special for them. Brittany and Tyler both talked about how they wanted to be instructors and how this was such a big achievement for them. Timothy talked about how he liked having fun. That was a definate Timothy answer! He's all about having fun.

Monday Musings

Tristan my 2 year old and an avid Wiggles fan has picked up the term "cucaracha" from one of the videos, where they sing "La Cucaracha" in Spanish. He's become a bit obsessed with the word. And even more obsessed when he found out that it means "cockroach". So two days ago, Timothy accidentally smashed Tristan's finger in the door and after the pain subsided he was quit upset about it. He came to me with a mad face and said, Timothy is a cucaracha for smashing my finger!"
After I choked down the laughter I promptly told hm it was not kind to call names, and that it was an accident.