Monthly Archives: January 2008

Events, Homeschooling, Project 366

Pictures and Few Words

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It is lovely to have such supportive, understanding friends, family and bloggy readers! Thank you for encouraging me to get enough sleep and find some semblance of balance in my life.

Jobs and Roles
Mommy
Teacher
Wife
Lover
Laundress
Child of God
Mentor
Manager
Chef
Friend

Not necessarily in that order. :)

Today was the first day back at our homeschool co-op, after a long Christmas break. This semester I’m teaching two classes and assisting in a third. I’ve found it’s much more fun to be the teacher megalomaniac ruler than just a simple assistant. Assistants sit back and observe, occasionally dispensing discipline. Teachers snicker as they create lesson plans, chortle as they assign homework and give out cruel tests with wild abandon.

hannah, rachel, alex, and bethany

Some of my favorite homeschooling girls.

Several months ago I read this article in Good Housekeeping about a mom who spent a day in her son’s middle school. One part jumped out at me where the author told of how her son gave a PowerPoint presentation to start the day:

He opened with an Emily Dickinson poem. Then he went through the athletic schedules, the lunch menu, and a brief “This Day in History.” In my time, the school secretary would have read the whole thing in a bored monotone over the crackly intercom. Sam used his computer to beam special effects onto a screen and make his narration sound as if it came from different voices.

Wow, I thought to myself, I don’t even know how to use PowerPoint and here is an eighth grade student giving a presentation in front of his class. I immediately realized that this was subject matter we needed to offer at co-op. A PowerPoint class would be perfect! I suggested it to the board members and they loved it.

“I’ll teach it,” I heard myself say.

Only….I didn’t know PowerPoint. And I don’t own a copy of it. Nor do I have any real experience in public speaking.

So I had neither the software or the know-how. Perfect.

have a cracker

The five year olds played BINGO with gold fish crackers today – that’s MY kind of class.

“That’s all right,” (I said to myself, in my optimistic, confident stupid and foolhardy way) “I’ll learn it over Christmas break.”

Sigh. This is how I get myself into trouble.

Thankfully I have an awesome, capable husband and friends with talented, business-savvy husbands. This morning I was ready with my very own presentation, a laptop and projector, an hour’s worth of information to teach and homework for my students.

awesome homeschooling girls

Future students for my class – bwahahahahah!

There is nothing like a deadline to push me to achieve great things.

At lunch several of the moms were talking about computers and how much WE all need to learn more of the fundamentals. I looked over at the woman who taught a computer hardware class last semester (I was her teacher’s assistant) and she said, “Kathy, you and I should teach a class on computer basics.”

I immediately responded…

“That’s a GREAT idea! Just what the co-op needs.”

Some people do NOT learn.

Kathy
Project 366 – Day 18

Side Note: We’re using Impress – part of Open Office’s FREE Productivity Suite – and not PowerPoint in the presentation class. Tim says they’re pretty comparable. “You’ve used one presentation application, you’ve used ‘em all,” he asserted confidently. “How many have you used?” I asked, impressed with his bravado. “Er, two,” he admitted.

[Editor's note: Kathy finished this blog hours ago, but asked me to 'tweak it a little' before I went to bed. I stayed up making the Caribbean safe for colonization, sinking dozens of Spanish military convoys and hunting down vicious pirates. Kathy's a good girl, and has been in bed for hours. ]

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Musings, Project 366

No Soliciting, Please

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After more than a year of begging and pleading on my part, Rachel finally finished painting a sign for our front door. I had commissioned Joshua to make me a wood-burnt version, but something went wrong and he subcontracted to his sister on the job. The project languished, partly because I had been so foolish as to pay in advance.

Now that we live in the suburbs, we get a steady stream of door-to-door vendors, peddling everything from steaks to oil changes. Some are clean-cut, well-dressed, while others appear a little less reputable. Most of them visit at dinner time, but we’ve had a few ring the bell after 9 pm. My least-favorite is the kind who play the ‘poor kid from the ghetto’ card, trying to persuade me to buy some worthless merchandise ‘to give a disadvantaged entrepreneur a chance’. I guess the implication is that if I don’t buy anything from the young man, he’ll be forced to embark on a life of crime and it will be all my fault. For some reason, this doesn’t bring out my compassionate side.

A sign for all seasons
Will this protect me from door-to-door vendors? Only time will tell …

When Kathy and I were first married, we attended a church in Connecticut about 30 minutes away from our home, and soon became close with ten or twelve young couples from our Sunday School class. One day we got a call: “I’m a friend of Paul and Donna, and they gave me your name … ”

As it turned out, the caller was an insurance agent, and had somewhat overstated his relationship with Paul and Donna. He somehow wangled an evening invitation out of me and arrived later that week at the door of our cozy little apartment on the third floor. He stayed for more than two and a half hours, alternately flattering and shaming us, using every trick to separate us from our money. At first I was torn between my usual sales resistance and a desire to treat the insurance agent as a guest in my home. Eventually, I became angry enough to get rid of him, but not before he tried (and almost succeeded) to get a list of names from us, apparently as a condition of his departure.

From that day forward, we made a simple rule: no sales people in our home. If someone wants to sell us something, then they’ll just have to wait until we visit their storefront or website. If they don’t have a storefront (which raises an interesting question: Why don’t they have a fixed place of business?), then they will have to propose a meeting place, and persuade us that their product is worth the effort for us to join them there.

Alternate sign
If the first one doesn’t work, I’ll fall back to this sign.

It was a great rule, and we even extended it to sales and fund-raising calls: “Sorry, we won’t pledge anything over the phone. Please feel free to mail me information about your worthy cause.” We found that the telemarketers, especially pledge-drive callers, were not typically paid for mail referrals, and would quickly lose interest.

When we moved out to the country, even the Schwan’s driver only came to our house every two weeks. Nestled in the forest at the bottom of a 1/4-mile gravel driveway, 45 minutes from the nearest supermarket, we didn’t get a lot of incidental traffic. But now that we live in the suburbs again, it is another story altogether.

A couple of weeks ago, a man came by, wanting to sell me coupons good for oil changes at a local service station. He was a very smooth talker, and I almost bought the coupons, which seemed to be a good deal at the time. The only problem was that: (a) he insisted on payment up-front, (b) he was not actually affiliated with the service station (apart from his desire to sell their services), and (c) the service station was not open at the time he was selling. I asked him, “What’s to stop you from selling these coupons un-beknownst to the mechanic, and then skipping town with the money?” He countered with a thick stack of customers on my street, many of whom (he claimed) had done business with the service station before and had been well-satisfied. I guess the logic was, if my neighbors are dumb, I should be dumb, too. Who am I to set myself higher than my neighbors?

Shadows of Christmas
Kathy took down the outside Christmas lights, but they didn’t quite make it inside …

I offered to pay the mechanic later, after I got my oil changed, but he wasn’t interested in that kind of an arrangement. I suggested he sell my name to the mechanic for some kind of referral bonus, but that didn’t seem to be what he was looking for, either. I must have argued with this very persuasive man for at least 15 minutes, standing on my porch. As I came back inside, I growled, “Where’s my No Soliciting sign, Rachel?” Now that the sign is finally affixed to the front of my house, I hope the stream of pedestrian vendors will dry up.

How ’bout you? Do you have trouble with sales people coming to the door? Or, as in Secondhand Lions, are they a source of entertainment for you?

The neighbor boy was puzzled: “Why don’t you want anyone to come to your house anymore?” he asked my son Daniel. I can see I’ll be spending a lot of time on my front porch explaining what the word ‘soliciting’ means, and how it relates to the words ‘No’ and ‘Please’.

Co-op Stuff
Trivia question for the day: What do these items have in common?

Tim
Project 366, Day 17

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Daily Life, Project 366

Getting Up Early

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No one told me that I was going to be tired every night if I get up early in the morning.

Hey! That’s a dirty trick.

Give that boy a gun, will ya!

Our youngest visitor had quite the time with this little gun.

It’s only 10 pm and I am totally exhausted. It feels like midnight. I can barely keep my eyes open (much less string sentences together in a coherent fashion), but I haven’t written email to my family, caught up on my homeschool emails or read all the hundreds of blog postings in my RSS reader.

tarah, sarah and elise

These three 5 year olds are GREAT friends!

What I have done, however, is made Tim’s lunch, cleaned up the kitchen, run the dishwasher, emptied the washer, started the dryer, and put five children to bed.

brigette, hannah and bethany

As are their older sisters.

Not to mention:

- worked on my Beth Moore (Daniel) Bible study
- taught school
- exercised
- prepared meals for my family
- visited with a friend and her five children over lunch
- welcomed five additional children for the afternoon (making it a total of 15 kids here at our home)
- delivered dinner to friends from church
- created an Impress presentation for my homeschooling co-op class
- picked up kids from their church outing

And so much more (hopefully not too much more as I can barely function right now).

some Star Wars warriors

Adam and Daniel take on the bad guys in their Lego Star Wars computer game.

I’ve decided to give myself permission to be tired. Of course, with computer troubles and a stubborn determination to add a few pictures to this post, it’s now just after 10:30 pm. And I wonder where the time goes. Sigh.

What time do you wake up in the morning? Any other night owls out there who have to get up early in order to ‘get everything done’ in their day? As if it were possible to get everything done. How many hours of sleep does a mom really need?

Kathy
Project 366 – Day 16

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Project 366, Recipes/Food, Works for Me Wednesday

WFMW – Mesa Manna Bread

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wfmwThe sun was shining today – a near miracle in Washington state during the month of January – so I decided we should take advantage of the good weather.

…by baking bread and taking pictures.

Yes, that’s actually what I thought. Not, go to the park, take a walk or get some fresh air.

Nope, it was more like, “Hey kids, the sun is out which means we could take some good pictures inside (without the flash, of course) for the blog. Let’s make bread!”

assistant chef

Apprentice baker and photogenic blog hog.

Some people are sort of pathetic.
I am one of those people.

But I do have a delicious bread recipe to share.

Years ago (for an exact date I’ll have to ask my mom or one of her sisters) my beloved Nana wanted to create a recipe for bread that would be delicious, simple, require few ingredients, and be low in fat. She devised this recipe, named it Mesa Manna (after her home which was nicknamed, The Mesa) and shared it with the family.

I have made all sorts of different bread recipes over the years, but I continually come back to Mesa Manna. It is just what Nana desired: simple to prepare, delicious and low in fat.

I use my Kitchen Aid but this could also be made by hand. If you are a baker extraordinaire, please excuse my long (rather redundant) explanations. Also, I’m afraid I NEVER measure anything but the water for this recipe so you might have to experiment a little bit here and there on the exact amount of the ingredients. Thankfully this recipe is incredibly forgiving.

Mesa Manna

Ingredients

3 c. warm water
1 tbs yeast
1 tbs sugar

1 tbs salt
1/3 to 1/2 c. sugar
7 cups of flour

a few simple ingredients

Directions

3 cups warmish/hot water (not burning hot or it kills the yeast)
1 tbs yeast
1 tbs sugar

some yeast

Let sit 5 minutes. Stir. If the mixture is foamy, your yeast is active. Cheer and be thankful that in several hours your home will be filled with the irresistible smell of fresh bread.

Add 1 tbs salt
1/3 to ½ cup of sugar (honey or brown sugar)

let's add some salt

sugar too

Begin to add flour. I usually stir in 3 or 4 of cups first. After a little bit I can tell my Kitchen Aid is itching to do it’s thing so I attach the dough hook, toss in another cup or two of flour and turn it on.

can I help?

Sarah scrapes the edge of the bowl. Such a big helper!

The dough probably needs one or two cups of additional flour. I let the Kitchen Aid knead a little while (there’s time to check my e-mail or put in a load of laundry but not much more). When dough forms a nice ball in the Kitchen Aid, it’s done.

not too sticky

If I were making Mesa Manna by hand (which Tim and I have done many times over the years), I would stir the flour into a large bowl until it was coming together nicely (no longer terribly wet like cake batter). Then I would put it out on a clean counter top that is floured. The dough will be sticky so you need to have additional flour on hand. Knead it, adding flour as necessary, until the dough shines and has an elastic feel to it.

Put oil (I don’t measure–probably a tablespoon or two) in bowl and add dough, turn dough so it’s all “greased”. Cover bowl (I use a clean dishtowel–you could use plastic wrap or foil) and set aside.

I usually let the dough rise in either the microwave (that has run for 30 seconds) or a warm oven. This is a tip an older woman from our previous church shared with me, and it works beautifully (especially when the temp varies in your house). Turning the oven off is KEY! Do not neglect this step. I use a metal bowl if I’m putting it in the oven or a plastic bowl for the microwave, but I’m boring that way.

It has nothing to do with a melted Tupperware bowl – baked plastic and bread dough, yum! Nope, not at all.

Let rise 1 hour or so. I don’t really pay too much attention to the time–it might need more. Check it and see how it’s rising. This dough is very forgiving so if you have less time or more time just go with it. If you won’t be cooking the bread for some time, you can easily punch it down and let it rise again.

let's make bread bowls

Bread bowl experiments.

Make into rolls on greased cookie sheet. I usually cut the tops of the rolls (with my kitchen scissors) to make them look pretty and my mom puts a dash of water on the top of each one. Let them rise (if you have time) another 20 or 30 minutes. If you don’t have time (and they look fluffy enough already) you can put them in right away. You can also cook them in a ‘cold oven.’ They rise as the temperature in the oven increases.

400 degrees for (approx) 20 minutes.

This will make 3 large pizzas or a very full pan of rolls. I’ve also used the recipe to make sweet rolls. Tim likes egg Stromboli for breakfast (basically just scrambled eggs wrapped inside the dough and then baked). The kids really love them made with all white flour (I must admit, they are VERY yummy that way). These days I immediately mix the whole wheat and white flours together in my bin so all white bread is not an option. I sometimes add additional ingredients – powdered milk, plain yogurt, oatmeal, different types of flour, or even spices (Italian Seasonings if I’m going savory or Cinnamon if we’re feeling sweet). Experiment and have fun with this very versatile recipe.

upside down rolls

Making bread bowls for soup.

Yesterday I made a delicious pork stew and thought it would be fun to bake our own bread bowls. We tried them again today, this time cooking some over top of upside down popover tins and others on top of over turned bowls. The bowls work much better because the flatter bottom. We put on a light egg wash before baking.

egg wash

We also discovered greasing the bowls is a crucial step and shouldn’t be missed. If you happen to run out of baking spray, don’t shrug and figure it will be okay, take the time to put oil or butter on the baking dishes.

Trust me on this one.

these look fabulous

Who’s up for some soup, in a freshly baked bowl? If you have a favorite bread recipe, leave a comment and share it us.

Mom, Aunt Kate, Aunt Stephanie, Thom, or Joyce did I miss any crucial steps in describing Mesa Manna? This is how I make mine but I bet your version might be slightly different. Tell all!!

Stop by Works for Me Wednesday for other tips and treats.

Kathy
Project 366 – Day 15

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Daily Life, Parenting Tips, Recipes/Food

Out of Time

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I wanted to post a clever Tips for Tuesday parenting blog today. Our new chore/house organizing is going GREAT and I know it would make an excellent blog.

After all, someone who’s been successful for a whole week at keeping her house clean should share the news with the world.

But, I was too busy doing school, breaking up fights, making delicious homemade meals (yes, that’s plural because I fixed grilled cheese sandwiches at lunch today), and participating in family fitness that I didn’t take any pictures that would accompany the post. And without pictures, our blog gets a little dull.

For example, it’s a little boring right now, isn’t it. You’re wishing I would break up the rambling with a picture.

Sorry.

Without pictures and the time needed to write a helpful blog on chores, I’m forced to ramble. Oh, I do have this one picture that I can share. It has nothing to do with parenting or chores or blogging in general but it was taken today.

soup in a bowl

I fixed a yummy stew this evening for dinner and made bread bowls in which to serve it. How cool is that! We’re practically our own Panera Bread. I made our family’s famous Mesa Manna bread recipe (created by my Nana) and then shaped the dough around over-turned (greased) glass bowls. They came out fantastic! I can’t wait to try it again.

I'll have some cheese with my bowl.

Sarah is hogging the blog photo attention these days but she’s so darn cute, it’s hard to resist taking a few extra pictures of her. Joshua is more than willing to give her his share of the photo time.

Sarah and Rachel don’t like stew so they had their bread bowls plain. Garnished with a little cheese of course. :) It’s hard to please everybody. Wouldn’t that be a great Parenting Tip post – How to Please All of Your Children without Going Crazy. Maybe next week.

Kathy
Project 366 – Day 14

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