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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

A New Year...

I am hoping you all have a 


My New Year's Resolutions...

Organization

This includes finances, our home, homeschooling, meal planning, etc. I wrote about this topic in a whole post of its own!


Health

Pay more attention to my body (I'm reading Intuitive Eating for some guidelines on this)

Remember to take my supplements

Move every day. I love hiking, biking, swimming, roller skating, etc., and I want to have fun while getting healthier. I figure if I move every day, I am on the right path!


Personal

Start meditating more -- just a few minutes a day is better than none!

Work toward my personal and professional goals in 2015. Chances are strong that I will be laid off in June again, so this time I am going in prepared.

Start learning Spanish.

Expand my knitting repertoire.


Monday, December 29, 2014

Monday Musings... Done & To Do...

Outside My Window...
The rains have stopped for now, though they were record setting! Instead, it is now quite chilly, especially at night. The trees are mostly bare, but everywhere I look I see fresh green, thanks to the rain. Almost time to start dormant pruning (apple, cherry, olive)!

In Our Home and Kitchen...
We're working on creative leftover use a lot lately. Right now, we're slowly eating our way through the large ham that M baked up on Christmas Day. We've had ham in our scrambled eggs, a ham-and-potato hash, etc. Time to freeze the rest, I think! This week's soup is The Girl's favorite - potato leek.

I am prepping the house for the New Year. Some more decluttering, some good cleaning, all to get ready for the 52 Weeks To An Organized Home challenge!

What We've Been Up To...

Rainy day walks with some flooding

Solstice celebration with our park day friends (missing a few here)

Puppy petting volunteer work

A tour of the Christmas street... tons of lights, figures, music, and more!

And a Boxing Day hike on a nearby mountain

In Our Homeschooling...
I am slowly getting ready to start back up next week (Sunday actually). I have The Boy's math and writing stuff in place (simplifying once more!), and am putting together The Girl's materials. Her math is ready to go, but I need to order the writing book I decided to try with her (done!).

Reading...
We're ready to start The Hobbit at last! I decided, as we seem to have a harder time this year doing our read alouds, that we would drop all the extra ones and just focus on the books the kids actually requested, which specifically would be The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If we can work in the extra books -- ones that inspired Tolkien, etc. -- then those will be a bonus. The Boy is still reading Scorch Trials, and The Girl is set to start The Hunger Games. I am reading Intuitive Eating and The Total Money Makeover. I may start His Dark Materials soon, as I have had that trilogy for some time, and have never read it!

Doing...
I am finishing up my scarf at last - yay! The Girl got 3.75 pounds of Sculpey clay for Christmas, so she has been very busy creating. The Boy is working on a new model car, and both kids are absorbed in the Wii Lego world of Harry Potter.

On the Agenda...
No fencing until next week, and no derby until late January. I'm still on vacation, so just my side jobs -- craft sewing and typing -- this week, in addition to cleaning, getting the budget done, etc. I'd still like to go see The Hobbit, and the kids and I are going to a musical over the next weekend!

Friday, December 19, 2014

Season's Greetings...

I will preface this by saying simply saying we have had a very difficult week or so, hence my lack of recent posts. We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, but still have a way to go.

Anyhow... we are


Christmas this year is very much on the simpler side. We are not hosting it at our house for the first time in years, and I am a bit glad for the break! Instead, we will be visiting my mother-in-law, and that side of the family, at her home, on Tuesday. Christmas Eve will be at my mother's home, complete with a fabulous dinner, and Christmas Day will, as always, be at home, just for the four of us. The kids cut back on Christmas gift lists this year, quite a lot and of their own accord. And we are very glad that M is working neither Christmas Eve, nor Christmas Day. A little more traveling, but not much, and everyone seems satisfied with the plans.

What other plans do we have, and what have we been up to? Well, I had a lovely birthday yesterday. The rain stopped for a while, and we took advantage of it to head out to the coast with a picnic, and thermoses of hot tea, to watch the surf....





We ended a calm and pleasant day with Chinese food and Lord of the Rings Monopoly!

We've been reading a lot -- Kringle is very good so far -- playing a lot of card games, watching a few Christmas movies... the kids decorated the Christmas tree, and during a brief dry spell, The Boy climbed on the roof to hang up lights. I finished another semester of college, and signed up for spring classes. We haven't been homeschooling really, but The Boy has been practicing his German, and reading his physics book.

I have the next two weeks off from work. We plan to visit the cul-de-sac that is completely lit up, with music to match the light shows; maybe go see the final installment of The Hobbit; and The Boy would love to see The Maze Runner at the discount theater. The Girl and I are going to do actual volunteer work with three-week-old puppies for the first time tomorrow. I want to finish getting my home clean before the New Year. Today we are off to a Solstice celebration with our park day friends -- thankfully there is a large gazebo at the park in case of rain.

Please have a safe and happy holiday season!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Tools for Organization...

My keyword for 2015 is organization. My horoscope for the year says to continue with self improvement work I have been doing, that keeping a tight rein on finances will be beneficial, and that things will be improving over the year. After a difficult 2014, I hope even half of this is true!


So I've been looking around for tools to help me make some changes organizationally. I had tried FlyLady years ago, but the incessant emails were too much. It drove me batty (no offense meant).

Anyhow, so I've been casting about for organization tools (home, finances, menu planning, personal growth), and have found the following:

52 Weeks To An Organized Home: I like the idea of adding/doing one little thing each week (okay, so some of them are not so little). I like the idea of building those habits in over time.

Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps: Again, little and some not so little) steps that will make a big difference in the end, focusing on building a maintainable lifestyle and getting out of debt. I'm also looking at budget planning tools, such as BudgetSimple, or BudgetTracker, though I am certainly not opposed to using a printed/written version either.

For menu planning, I need to start actually looking at sales each week, make a list of staple foods to keep stocked (and then actually keep them stocked), and go from there. This article has some good tips, and then there are plenty of other menu planning resources out there.

As far as personal growth, I came across this book -- Life Makeovers: 52 Practical & Inspiring Ways to Improve Your Life One Week at a Time  -- at the library bookstore for fifty cents. Worth a try, I think!

And there you have it, my current list of tools for the new year, though I'll gladly take recommendations too!


Tuesday, December 9, 2014

A Collection of Nativity Scenes...

On Sunday, we went on a self-guided tour of a collection of Nativity scenes, hosted by the LDS Church (a Creche Festival). I was amazed at the variety, while the kids had fun with the scavenger hunt. I loved most the ones that were simple, but had emotion, much preferring them to ornate, but rather sterile versions...



















Monday, December 8, 2014

Monday Musings...Much Thinking Going On...

We're taking a bit of a break right now from the rigors of homeschooling, to focus on getting our lives more organized. Part of that is thinking over, and rethinking over, what is working in our lives and what is not.

First, an easier one: menu planning. I found a lot of inspiration in this post from Kim over at Our Enchanted Place. With many evenings dedicated to practices (fencing, roller derby), hectic work schedules, and my college class(es), planning ahead is key. We've slowly settled into a rotation that works well for us:

Saturdays: this is one of the days I really have time to cook. Sometimes I'll roast a chicken, if we want the leftovers, or we tend to do a lot of our ethnic cooking on this day, such as curries, African stews, and more. In the summer, if M is home from work, this also tends to be a grilling outdoors kind of day.

Sundays: The Girl has derby until 6:30 pm most of the year. This is a great night for pasta during the colder months, and salads (containing pasta or not) in the warmer months.

Mondays: Soup during the colder months, sandwiches or salads during the warm ones, due to a busy Monday schedule and The Boy's fencing class. We use the crockpot a lot on Monday soup nights!

Tuesdays: Another day I actually get to spend time cooking, and often, The Girl helps. I am thinking of making this our learn to cook night--I'll take turns with the kids, letting them choose what to cook, making grocery lists, budgeting, and then doing the cooking.

Wednesdays: More fencing, so this is generally a quick-cooking sort of evening. We often have things like quesadillas, or tacos on Wednesdays. Sometimes, when M is home, he'll take over cooking this evening, and then we'll have omelets or a stir-fry.

Thursdays: A cook-ahead day, so things like casseroles or crockpot dishes beyond soup, as The Girl has a later derby practice most of the year.

Fridays: Sometimes the kids will spend Friday night at their Nonna's house, and then M and I have whatever we feel like (within reason of course..no Maine lobster and caviar!). On other Fridays, we have pizza night! I make a big batch of dough for crusts and freeze some, so pizza night is never too challenging. Toppings range from regular ones like pepperoni, to leftover chicken, roasted veggies, etc., depending on what flavor we want.

Then, homeschooling. I am coming up with new goals fro January through May, so I think I'll dedicate w post to that later in the week!

Thirdly, budgeting. I have good intentions in this area, I really do. But, somehow it never gets done -- writing and sticking to the budget that is, although I can't say we're spending in excess either. I'm reading Total Money Makeover at the moment, and M and I have been discussing how we are going to put it into practice. That is one of our major goals for 2015... to implement the tools used in the book. We want to model fiscal responsibility for our children, we want to tackle debt (which we have far too much of in my mind), and we want to start getting ready for the future, since we are both in our 40s.

Do you, my loyal reader(s), budget?

Other projects: I am working on a housecleaning rotation, and having the kids take more responsibility for helping with housework. Part of this is part of their education -- housekeeping, budgeting, cooking, etc., are all like skills in which I feel they should be well versed. M and I are listing household projects that need to be done, and then ranking them in order of importance (i.e. roof work = very important, rebuilding the chicken hutch = not as important).

Hope you all have a good week!

Monday, December 1, 2014

Monday Musings...

Ahh, December is here! One more month, and we get to start a whole new year....

Outside My Window...
We are at last getting good rain. It is supposed to rain every day this week! We cleaned out all the gutters last Friday, so we should be good to go -- we've got one that clogs up easily due to a messy ash tree overhanging it, and then water runs down the side of the house! The Boy braved the heights to get it emptied of leaves and twigs for now.

Our neighbor took out an old, creaky, dying oak tree this week, which until now had shaded one side of the back yard. There is so much light now! We're talking about putting raised beds over there next spring, and leaving our previous vegetable garden area as a gathering/grilling/eating/relaxing spot.

In Our Home...
We have started our holiday cleaning, which is a deeper cleaning than the regular one. We started early this year, with the goal of doing a little each day. We plan to get lights up soon, put a wreath on the door, and all that. The tree we'll get in a couple of weeks.

In Our Kitchen...
It is official since the weather is chilly at night - Mondays are soup nights! Oh, I love this time of year. This week's soup is split pea, one of our family favorites, and I made plenty, so we can enjoy some leftovers for a couple of lunches during the week. The Girl and I have also been baking a lot more lately -- we made Irish soda bread (with rosemary, not currants), and cranberry-orange bread, both of which turned out extremely well. I was given two pounds of gorgeous, fresh, organic cranberries, so we are trying to use them up. Cranberry muffins are next on the baking agenda!

In Our Homeschooling...
Nothing new and exciting here, though we are going back to some previous tools/books! I am pondering some changes for January, such as having The Boy maybe use this writing guide, or, more likely, this program for the remainder of the year. I am looking at writing programs for The Girl as well... maybe something like this one? As for what we've gone back to, we are reading from K12's Human Odyssey again, currently about the early Middle Ages, and we want to use Mapping the World With Art for Sunday geography lessons/activities, instead of geography as we were doing it.

Reading, Watching, and Making...
We're trying to finish up The Marvellous Land of the Snergs! And I am trying to decide between The Story of Siegfried, The Hobbit, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as our next read aloud. And then there is Kringle, which would make a great pre-Christmas read aloud! Hmm, maybe Kringle first, and then I can choose one of the others.

We started watching Stargate Universe together. And we have a Cirque du Soliel video to watch (Varekai). M and I are looking forward to season 3 of American Horror Story on Netflix this month. And we (the kids and I) will probably re-watch the last season of Downton Abbey so we're ready for season 5 in January.

I finished, at long last, The Girl's scarf, so now I can concentrate on finishing mine.

On the Agenda...
I have my second to last class in adolescent development, and my final class in the lecture series I've been attending. I have tutoring to do, an interview for a 4-hour-a-week data entry/bookkeeping job, and catnip tots to deliver. There is fencing, a possible hike with the family (if the weather cooperates), and maybe a park day, again if the weather cooperates.

And a few Random Pictures...
From a recent family hiking expedition...







Have a good week!