Ordinary Time

Considering we are in the middle of a pandemic, this was still a better holiday than last year. Last year, I was cooling my heels in a hospital room with R., waiting and waiting and waiting for the doctor to finally get around to seeing us and discharging R. It took about 12 hours of waiting from the time she was deemed stable enough to leave before we were walking out the door. For those at home, A. managed to get people into costumes so that they could trick-or-treat in the snow. Admittedly, the bar for this year was pretty low. There wasn't a lot of costumes, but G. did dress up Apollo in a pineapple costume that B. gave her. The kitten was pretty cute. J. supervised the pumpkin carving, though many people are now able to carve their own pumpkin. Here's something pretty impressive. J. had given R. a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it so she could show J. what she wanted her pumpkin's face to look like. Look at what she drew! Eyes, nose, mouth, all in the correct sp

It feels as though it has been a very full week. With the snow that arrived on Monday, I decided that perhaps it would be a good time for everyone to go through the outerwear. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh? This year it took very little time. This is a huge improvement on how long this task used to take when everyone was younger. Then, it was a full afternoon affair. This year, it took only as long as the slowest person at trying on their snow pants. And the tally for what I need to purchase this year? One decent everyday winter coat for Y. That's it. That's it despite the fact that at least three people had outgrown their snow boots. Some boots we shifted around and the final pair was found when we discovered a pair of unclaimed snow boots in the closet that no one remembers ever seeing. This is not the first time mysterious items of clothing have appeared in our closets, but I'm not going to complain. Take a look at the photograph TM took of our street.

In the movie we saw yesterday about the rescue dogs, part of the film was following the training of a puppy through to her passing her search and rescue dog test. As the puppy was being trained, her partner/trainer said (in regards to training search and rescue dogs), "They have to trust you completely. And we do everything we can to make sure they succeed." (If that's not a word for word quote, the meaning is exactly the same.) It struck me because this is pretty much what my parenting model has become; it is connected parenting in a nutshell. Now, before everyone goes and gets their pants in a knot saying that there is also a lot of operant conditioning in dog training and we shouldn't treat our children like dogs, I know that. That is not the point I am trying to make. The focus on trust and success is my point.  There is no relationship without trust, and trust first has to be earned. In a newborn-parent relationship, that trust is earned every time a baby cries a

Today was our day to visit the Museum of Science and Industry , which I had planned back in August. I was curious to see how the Covid measures would effect this museum, having had such a good experience with the Field. So how did it go? First, the museum was pretty empty, but certainly busier than the Field was . It actually felt like a really light regular school day visit. We've been at MSI when we virtually had the place to ourselves. It was a day in January after a particularly heavy snowstorm. I'm pretty sure we were the only people there other than employees. So while today wasn't busy at MSI, you still had to make an effort to avoid people. Next, while some of the Field museum exhibits were closed because of being in too close quarters, nearly everything else was open. I think it was more difficult for MSI to figure things out since so much of their exhibits are interactive. They had styluses available for people to take to push buttons with, but many of the exhibit

Another week, another meal plan. Sometimes it's best just not to think about how often I've done this nor how many more I have to do. Tuesday, Oct. 27 Frozen pizza      This is what the children had because they can fix it themselves. J. and I got take-out and pretended we were on a date. A date where there is a cat constantly trying to steal your food and two to three dogs are sitting and staring at you expectantly at any given time. There is also the occasional kibitzing comment from the 22 year old in the other room. At least we didn't have to leave a tip. Mandarin oranges      From a can Wednesday, Oct. 28 Broiled salmon      I had a large salmon filet in the freezer which needs to be eaten in preparation for the soon-to-be arriving side of beef. Red potatoes Sauteed green beans Thursday, Oct. 29 Spicy pork noodles with scallions and bok choy      This is a new recipe, but seemed like a good choice since I had pork in the freezer and green onions and bok choy in the gar

I've made many activity boxes over the years for various children, and many of them are still in use with R. I'm also discovering that R. is moving beyond needing just matching and fine motor skills for school; she is becoming more interested in the world around her and how things work. (H. is also waking up to the wider world around her and asking many more questions about these same things. It just reinforces to me how very little children retain when they are under stress. H.'s stress level is much reduced these days [compared to when she joined our family eight years ago], and she is able to be far more curious.) This means that I've been rethinking our activity box situation.  While many of our current boxes are still in use , there are some I just never use anymore because they are not needed. I am slowly going to transform them into more content-based boxes. I was inspired by seeing someone else making a fall leaf activity complete with corresponding book. This

We didn't need to go anywhere today, so I took advantage of it and did some crafts. J. helped me hang this thread holder that I found for a crazy small amount on a garage sale list. Each of those slots has at least two, if not more, spools of thread it in. This makes me happy because it gets it off the floor where cats and children like to play with the spools of thread. I've already had to go through once and reroll all the thread back on the spools. It wasn't that much fun, so am glad I won't have to do it again. I spend some time working on my quilt. I trimmed up these quilt squares so they were all the correct size, and made some of them into pinwheel squares.  J. helped me repair the new (to me) spinning wheel I brought home a while back, so with this bit replaces, it can now be treadled. And I had time to do some research and learned that it is a Scotch tension, bobbin led wheel. I was hoping that it was when I bought it. My current wheel has a different tension s

I made chicken pot pie tonight for dinner. It is one of those meals that every single person likes, and as a result there are never any leftovers. As I was sitting here wondering I should write about tonight (and coming up with absolutely nothing), I thought, hmmm... dinner was good, maybe I'll share how to make pot pie. Then I idly wondered if I had ever done that before, so decided to look. Well, it seems I did write about it eight years ago.  This is the trouble with having written this blog for so long (10+ years). I can't remember what I've written about and what I haven't. I'm sure this is not the first time I've written about (or tried to write about) the same thing; it's just the one time I thought to check first. It makes for a much shorter blog post, that's for sure. And for those of you who were thinking that a recipe for chicken pot pie sounded like a good idea, here's the link so you don't have to go searching for it. Frugal Large Fa

I'm still here. It's been a busy week, and frankly, I just didn't have anything to write about. It seemed more fun to sit and read a book instead. Some weeks are like that. We have all voted now. Some of us stood in line and voted early, others of us voted by mail and mailed the ballot, and still others used the mail-in ballot, but dropped it off at the county building. We have covered all voting bases, it seems... at least the early ones. I am suffering from my annual longing for the Twelve Days of Christmas ornament patterns ... as well as the wool felt to make them. Someday. P. has decided on which working student position she is going to take and will be heading to South Carolina in early November. This is one of those happy/sad parenting moments. I will also miss P., my resident horse whisperer. She has been working with Emmy and has made some great progress getting her (Emmy) calmer under saddle. This past week I went along with a lead rope as P. made a first attempt

I don't have any idea how we can possibly here past the midway point of October, but here we are. I also don't understand how the part of the week involving grocery shopping seems to arrive faster than any other part of the week, but yet I went to the store(s) again today.  Tuesday, Oct. 20 Mongolian beef and vegetables      P. saw this in my recipe binder when I was making the menu and wanted to have it. I still had some frozen steak in the freezer, so on the menu it went. It was good. Sesame noodles      I bought some Korean wheat noodles a while back, so we used those Dumplings      When I checked the freezer, I thought I saw a couple of bags of dumplings, so I put them on the list. When I went to get them tonight for dinner, I discovered they were bags of edamame which looked remarkably similar to the bags of dumplings I buy. We did not have dumplings. Everyone lived. Wednesday, Oct. 21 Onion and cheese strata      I save up the heels of bread in the freezer, and when they

I liked to dabble in different things even as a child. It drove my grandmother a little bonkers, I think, because a main memory if have of her is her reciting the phrase I used in the title. This always made me feel a little badly... as if I was doing something wrong or wasn't serious enough. Then M. (who shares my need to explore a lot of different interests discovered that there is a second line. The whole couplet goes: A jack of all trades is master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. Now, it was nice to here that this phrase had a more positive spin, but there was always a small part of me than still felt a little badly about not being a specialist in anything. Enter the new book I finished a couple of days ago, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. It was both fascinating and a balm to my generalist soul. The author makes a pretty decent argument that in many domains it is far better to have a broad scope of knowledge than to

We have made some new friends over the past couple of months. It is a family who signed up for one of my horse classes and our children just clicked. They all love being outside, bugs, insects, amphibians, building thing, books, Greek mythology, writing stories, etc. The mom and I agreed it is so nice when others 'get' our children. We will all miss seeing each other on a weekly basis now that the class is done, but have vowed to get together so everyone can just play.  Today was one of those times. We were invited to the Renaissance Fair they were having in their backyard today. My children (okay, some of my children), spent the weekend getting ready with appropriate costumes. K. made a Minotaur mask (which I didn't get a picture of), and G., L., and Y. made use of their cloaks that I made them a few years ago.  That's L. in the armor (also made this weekend), with G. as her squire next to her. Y. was content with her cloak, and R. and H. opted for now costumes. J. and

Remember when I took a quilting class a couple of years ago and made this? I had some fabric left over as well as some of the squares I used to make the zigzags. In the book I bought at the quilt store in Michigan, there was a cute pinwheel quilt that seemed as though I could handle. In looking through my stash, I realized that it might be fun to use the leftover fabric (because it is really nice fabric and I like it) to make another quilt. Plus, it would fulfill my cheapness in that I would be getting another quilt out of some fairly expensive fabric. I did need to buy a background color, but that was better than having to buy all the fabric.  Today, I finished doing the initial sewing, so I could start to see what the quilt will look like. I will need to do a lot of playing around with the squares to get the colors in the right place, but here is a little glimpse into what it will look like. I will be a lot of fun to play around with the colors when I get all of these blocks cut, and