Monday, June 30, 2008

Menu Plan Monday



It's Menu Plan Monday, so time for me to share what we're cooking up around here this week! Last week's menus were a success overall except we had some issues in the middle of the week and didn't end up making Wednesday or Thursday's meal. Wednesday we got a craving for pizza from our local pizza place so we had that, and on Thursday Jamie and I were out all day so we ended up just stopping for Wendy's on the way home.

This week is somewhat of an abbreviated plan because we have a number of special things going on.

Monday: spaghetti with garlic bread/salad
Tuesday: Chicken Karaage with rice (and french fries for Jamie)
Wednesday: Shepherd's Pie. Jamie probably won't eat this, but we have plenty of leftover Chicken Cacciatore he can have.
Thursday: DIY/C.O.R.N. night (we will be out all day again)
Friday: no menu plan, we'll be at the beach!
Saturday: going out for Jamie's birthday! Not sure where yet.
Sunday: Rachael Ray's Parmesan Crusted Chicken.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Chicken Cacciatore

Well, I made Giada's Chicken Cacciatore tonight and I think the verdict was a thumbs up from everyone. I was expecting Jamie not to eat it at all but he came into the kitchen while I was cooking it and really surprised me by agreeing to try the chicken without the veggies. So I served him chicken with plain pasta with butter and cheese. I was happy because I didn't have to cook anything extra. ;)

Anyway, I made just one change to the recipe--well actually two. I left out the capers because no one here likes them and I substituted yellow bell pepper for the red bell pepper. I thought that came out really well. :)

I'm excited about the recipes I've chosen for this week. Since we're taking the week off school I will hopefully be a little less stressed and have plenty of time to cook. :) I'm really starting to get into the swing of the menu planning thing and it does make things much less stressful to know exactly what we're going to have on each night. :)

Tomorrow I think that we are going to Target in the morning, and then maybe the pool in the afternoon. We need to get a few beach/sand toys for our trip to the beach on Friday. :)

Friday, June 27, 2008

Homeschool wrapup, 6/23-6/27

Reading: James Herriot's Treasury for Children. We've really enjoyed the stories in this book this week, even though some of them are a little sad.

Language Arts: Finished up Little Bear.

History: Hero Tales. Neither Jamie nor I like the book at all, so we're not reading it anymore when it is scheduled. This week was David Livingstone and Harriet Tubman, both of whom he found interesting, but the ones scheduled in two weeks are John Wesley and someone else and I just....don't think so. I don't think that will hold his attention at all.

Math: Continuing in Horizons 1. Subtraction maybe getting a little easier this week. Next week while we're off school, we are going to work on subtraction flash cards and workbooks, hopefully that will help.

Science: This week we learned how telephones and televisions work, as well as something else I'm completely forgetting.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Tagged!

Ok Angela, I'll bite. :)

What was I doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago in 1998, I was living in Winston-Salem, NC having just finished my first year of graduate school. My dad had died in March followed by my (maternal) grandmother in May, so yes, kind of a rough year. Little did I know that just one year later I would have completely uprooted my life and be living in Delaware. :)

Five snacks I enjoy:

1. Strawberry ice cream
2. Guacamole and chips
3. Popcorn
4. Peanut butter M&Ms
5. Cheese and crackers (to be more specific, Colby-Jack cheese and Toasteds wheat crackers!)

Five Things on My To-Do list today:

Cheating a little on this one, going with tomorrow's to-do list. It's almost tomorrow!

1. Make grocery list/meal plan for next week
2. Go to library
3. Go to the grocery store
4. Pick up my prescription
5. Make Greek Pasta Salad with Feta and Chicken for the party I'm going to on Saturday.

Five Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

1. Pay off all my debt.
2. Buy a house.
3. Buy S. a new car.
4. Adopt a child.
5. Put away lots of money for Jamie's college.

Five jobs I have had:

1. Cashier at KMart
2. Preschool teacher
3. McCallie bookstore worker
4. Working at a cross-stitch shop
5. Part-time proofreader

Five of my bad habits:

1. Procrastination
2. Starting things and not finishing them
3. Ordering takeout/doing drivethrough/eating out way too much
4. Texting while driving (me too Angela!)
5. Being lazy about cleaning because I hate to do it

Five places I have lived:

1. Hixson, TN
2. Spartanburg, SC
3. Winston-Salem, NC
4. Christiana, DE
5. New Castle, DE

And actually.....those are the ONLY five!

Five people I would like to get to know better (yes, this means you are tagged!):

Um...I'm going to tag Kristin, and I'm not sure who else is reading this at this point so if you are, and you haven't done it, consider yourself tagged!

Five Random Things:

1. It's really hot in here right now for some reason.
2. I just had a Frosty from Wendy's a bit ago (see bad habits, above)
3. I hope school goes well tomorrow.
4. I need to do laundry and I'm so not looking forward to it.
5. I think it's bedtime!

Taking a break

Jamie has been increasingly frustrated with school this week and in turn of course that has made me frustrated. So we've decided that we're going to take next week off from doing schoolwork. (Or rather I decided, I haven't told him yet.) I got to thinking about it and realized he hasn't had a break from school for quite a while. So next week is it, then I am going to try and condense the rest of our schoolwork that I want to do for this year into the remaining few weeks of July and take August completely off. Then we'll be ready to jump back into things come September.

In talking to my friend E. today (the one who is going to be doing Sonlight Core 1 with us in the fall) I came to realize that I've been pushing way too hard on the expectations of "getting everything done", which is possibly (probably) to Jamie's detriment. I really wanted to finish with the Horizons 1 math book before the end of the "school year" but I have come to realize that with nearly 40 lessons to go before we're done that is just not going to happen. So we're going to get as far as we get, and pick it back up when we start Core 1 in the fall, and not worry about it. As far as our Core work is concerned, I am definitely going to read House at Pooh Corner but we are just plain dropping Hero Tales after this week, Jamie hates it so we will do something else instead. We're going to do language arts until we're done with HaPC and then call it quits on that, it's not like it's crucial to do *every* LA lesson.

I think taking a month off is going to be pretty crucial to our well-being and approaching Core 1 with an open mind and heart for getting everything we can out of it. So I'm excited about getting finished up. We're going to finish memorizing "Trees" which we're about halfway through. I'm going to spend the month off finding some good poems for us to memorize for next year because I'm not crazy about doing Bible verses for his memory work just yet.

As for next week, we're planning to spend some time at the pool and seeing some friends, and then on the 4th we're going down to the beach and spend the day. I was thinking of getting a hotel room down there and spending the night but at this late date we probably can't. The 5th is Jamie's birthday, so we will probably do our celebration with S's family that night. We usually go out to eat some place that he picks. :)

Monday, June 23, 2008

Monday, Monday

Good morning!

A couple of things to note. First, I was really sad to hear that George Carlin had died. He was a brilliant comedian and he will definitely be missed. I feel like watching that very first episode of Saturday Night Live just because he hosted it. As awkward as that episode was overall, Carlin's standup made it shine.

Second: Ok so I don't normally do this sort of thing, but this is for a good cause because this little munchkin is my cousin. :) If you feel so inclined, can you please go to http://www.parents.com/app/sharemy/photoDetails.jsp?photoId=214701243 and rate the picture of the cute little baby there? That's my cousin John's son Mitchell, he'll be 2 in July. I happen to think he's pretty darn cute even without being biased. ;) They've entered him in the Parents Cover Model Search contest and the top 5 finishers get a free trip to NYC. No pressure but you know, if you feel like it, go check out his picture. :)

Third: It's Menu Plan Monday! :)



My menu plan for the weekend got a little altered because we decided to go out and get pizza on Saturday. So we have basically pushed everything back a day. Here's what this week looks like:

Monday: chicken tenders with sweet potato fries (and regular fries for the boys probably) and salad.
Tuesday: pork chops with broccoli and brown rice
Wednesday: Parmesan Crusted Chicken a la Rachael Ray with green beans and mac and cheese (at least for Jamie, the grownups may have some sort of potatoes)
Thursday: spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and salad
Friday: burgers and fries (hoping to talk S into cooking because he does awesome burgers) with raw veggies
Saturday/Sunday: we're having Giada's Chicken Cacciatore at least one night. We'll either do a C.O.R.N. (Clean Out Refrigerator Night) or order in the other night.

Trying to be more organized and maybe succeeding! :) Anyway, it's school time, so I've got to run! Bye for now!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Messing Around

Ok, I think I'm finally done messing around with the website--at least for tonight! I have added a couple of things and I think I'm going to leave it alone for a while, because tweaking it is a lot of work. ;)

Tonight's dinner was Pioneer Woman's Linguine with Chicken Thighs. That link is going to break but she doesn't have it on her recipe index yet. I'll try to remember to fix it when she does. I am a total Pioneer Woman devotee and I can't say enough good things about her food. This recipe was great as always. And best of all we had some leftovers that we can use for lunches over the weekend probably. Tomorrow night is fajita quesadillas, and since I have already cut up the green pepper and onion (while I was cooking something a couple of days ago) and I'm using the frozen grilled chicken breast strips, they will be a snap to put together. Then Sunday night's dinner will be chicken tenders (homemade, I found some in the back of the freezer that we need to use up!) and fries. I'm making sweet potato fries, which I love, but I doubt Jamie will eat them so I'll be cooking up some regular fries as well, and making a salad. Check back on Monday for our menu plan for the rest of next week. :)

Jamie recycling


Jamie recycling
Originally uploaded by bafleyanne
This was part of our errands today; dropping off the recycling. Not quite as convenient as curbside, but still easy enough to do it. We also had to go to the library and the grocery store--getting our menu together for next week!

Homeschooling Wrap-up 6/16-6/20

Here's what we did for schoolwork this week.

Reading: finished up "Green Eggs and Ham", started "Little Bear" (grammar worksheets go with these) Yes, these are way below his reading level--the point is more the grammar really.

Read-Alouds: finished up "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (my favorite book this year!)

History/Geography: Wild Places: Deserts continues; this week we learned about nomadic people and how they live.

Science: Everyday Things, we learned how cameras work and how bread, milk, and cheese are made. Science experiment for this week is making play dough and bread dough, which we'll do tomorrow. After we make the play dough we might also make a volcano.

Math: Horizons 1; we continue to work on subtraction to 18, also 3 digit addition, adding 3 2 digit numbers, and time, money, measurement. Jamie struggles with subtraction. I don't know if he needs more drill or just doesn't like it. He does the problems without getting them wrong almost all the time if we can just get him to DO them, so I don't think comprehension is the problem really.

Next week we read some stories in James Herriot's Treasury for Children, and then the following week we start "The House at Pooh Corner". It's our last long book and I'm super excited to read it with him. :) Also next Friday is the day we'll get to order our schoolbooks for next year, yay! I'm going to be doing Core 1 along with a semi-local friend and our kids are going to be doing the activities together, so that should be all kinds of fun. :)

Hey guys :)

This is my official first post on this blog. You might know that I've been keeping a blog over on Livejournal for several years, but that one is more private and I decided it might be time to keep a more public blog. I'm hoping to share tidbits about my life as a homeschooling mom, my cooking, craft projects, and whatever else happens to come up.

A few things about me: I've been married to my husband S for about 8 years and we live in Delaware. We have 1 son, Jamie, who is almost 7 (his birthday is July 5th). I homeschool Jamie using Sonlight materials. We've been homeschooling for 2 years now, and we are loving it so far! I have recently gotten a lot more into cooking and doing other "domestic" type things--which is good, we need to be more frugal with our money!

Anyway, welcome to my new space! I'll probably be doing some remodeling over here in the next few days, but feel free to make yourself at home. :)