Moving to Australia...

...you know, like Alexander?

When last we met, I was embarking on a great biking adventure.  It was going to be amazing!  It also lasted, like, two weeks and ended with a whimper (rather than a bang) due to long-lasting illness, unbearable heat (related), and about six or so gigantic life decisions cast upon my shoulders.  Driving around in a car is much more conducive to long-lasting illness, unbearable heat, and gigantic life decisions rather than is trying to figure out the logistics of transporting via bicycle.  Yes, these are excuses.  And yes, if you bet on the fact that I was starting something I would never finish (yet again), you would be correct.

So, four months, a little bit of healing, and three-sixths of the gigantic life decisions later, here we are...

It's been one of those days.  You know, one of those parenting days that leaves you beaten up and broken down at the end of the day just begging God for mercy in the form of a peaceful bedtime.

Look, I even attach a photo of myself-at-this-very-moment, to show that I make no hyperbole when I use the phrases beaten up and broken down.  In the past 45 minutes alone, my little lovely has yanked out my hairdo and given me what is sure to soon be a black eye while trying to change her diaper.

That was today.  Heck, that was only the last hour of this day.

If I was still on Facebook at the moment, I would be staring at the screen and scrolling through all of y'alls status updates.  Possibly commenting, but probably too lazy for even that.  Most likely just clicking "Like" a lot.  But alas, I have been off Facebook and shall remain for the foreseeable indeterminate amount of time.

So what is left is just me talking to myself on my blog, which is better in a way because I can release my own thoughts without being distracted by everyone else's at the same time.  Somehow, that method just doesn't allow for the processing of a complete thought and my brain just needs a break from that sometimes.

ANYhoo...I was all about going to recount why this was such a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.  But at this point I am over the details.  Who needs to rehash it?

Suffice it to say: 1) I now have two preteen girls with attitudes to match the age, 2) and a two-year-old--'nuff said, 3) I have been single-parenting for the past 2-1/2 weeks and still have 2-1/2 weeks of this to go, 4) the pets are driving me nuts, 5) I swear the toddler is beating me up on purpose (though it always looks accidental), and finally 6) WHY WON'T THEY JUST GO TO BED???!!! and LISTEN! and DO THEIR CHORES! and STOP WHINING! and GET ALONG! and SHUT THE FREAKING DOOR WHEN THEY GO OUTSIDE!?

Aaaaand, that should do it.  There, I feel much better now :-)  Many thanks for sharing in my vent-of-the-day.

A New Summer Adventure

Time to dust off the cobwebs in this little corner of the internet.    *dust, dust*   There, that's better.  So I was contemplating earlier today what would happen if I tried to substitute my bicycle for my car this summer.  As most things in my life go, it didn't take long to cement itself in my mind (hello, I knew who I was going to marry before we even started dating!).  Snap decisions are my major M.O.

ANYhoo...I also started thinking that it would be awesome to do this thing and journal it for posterity.  I type faster than I write and have been missing blogging recently, so here we are.  If I say it on the worldwideweb, I have to stick with it, right?

A bunch of rules guidelines are floating around in my head pertaining to how exactly I can go about this.  I mean, I'm definitely not going to be riding my bike to South Dakota this weekend.  I probably wouldn't do it in the middle of a thunderstorm when I and/or my husband feel like we're going to die if one of us doesn't procure a pint of Ben & Jerry's at that EXACT moment, either.  Not that that ever happens.  Stay tuned as I work those little details out.

Going Public

I must confess, I have another blog on my list, officially public as of today. 


http://yesphotography.blogspot.com/


Currently offering an excellent "grand opening" special, but I'm all about affordability, so remember:  I'm willing to barter services too!

Trying Something New

Me? Trying something new? I know, unbelievable, right? I'm just dripping with sarcasm here, in case you are reading this and don't really know me. It's so big, so revolutionary, I just had to share. Ready? Here it is...

I'm planning ahead!

Woo-hoo! That's big, ain't it?

Planning ahead meal-wise, that is. Not just planning out meals for the week--that's nothing new--but actually cooking them ahead as well. See, we have this problem of eating out WAY too much in our family. Unhealthy, of course, but even bigger of a problem is that it is very quickly d-r-a-i-n-i-n-g away our (well, hubby's) hard-earned money. The number of times eating out last week=7. It may be normal for some people, but for us that is just actually unacceptable.

The draw for me is the convenience, pure and simple. You eat somewhere else, that means someone else has to take the time to cook and the time to clean up. You arrive, eat, and leave, and you don't even make a dent in your clean kitchen. It's very attractive, I must say. However, there's the $$$ thing, as I mentioned earlier. Eating out is not so convenient when it comes to balancing the checkbook...

So anyway, after I came to this realization that things needed to change, I figured there was only one of two things I could do: either buy more convenience-type foods at the grocery store or do something like OAMC. The latter was out right away; I don't like a lot of re-cooked food that's sat in a freezer for a month, and we don't have a lot of room with our 1.5 freezers after harvesting from the garden. As for the grocery convenience food, at times it is more expensive than Burger King and more often than not, just as bad for you--or worse.

But then as I was making my meal list for the week, I had a thought. What if I just took one morning a week and pre-prepared (is that a word? it is now...) what I could for the next week's menu? Then everything wouldn't have to come out of the freezer, it would still be mostly-from-scratch meals, and it would be convenient at the same time. Does everyone already do this? Is this one of those things that everyone else just knows but it takes a kick in the head for me to figure out? Don't answer that.

So here's what the oldest three and I did this morning:

-precooked two meals' worth of chicken

-browned ground beef for spaghetti

-prepared the spaghetti sauce

-made 16 waffles

-made one loaf of blueberry bread

-crockpotted (another new word for the day) two meals' worth of pork

-made 15 individual scrambled egg circles for breakfast sandwiches

-cut up an impressive amount of lettuce

So! I'm excited to see how this experiment works this week. And just to set the record straight, yes, I love writing about the mundane happenings of everyday life. Isn't everyone as excited about new tactics for the running of a household as I am? Don't answer that.

WARNING: Books Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

I have long believed that an addictive habit of reading can be toxic. Generally, though, this belief stems from allowing myself to be sucked in to a very good book. The more believable the characters are, the more exciting the plot, the more well-written the story...it all correlates to the amount of time I spend both reading the book and mulling the book over in my mind while not reading, and thus the less appealing everyday tasks seem in relation.

Which all translates into: My house gets really messy and the kids yell at me to put down the stinking book and make them some food. Can you believe these gall of these beasts, wanting to be fed every day or something?

Reading selection from last night

So anyhoo, that's not really what I want to warn you about this time. No, I'm here today to warn you of this simple fact: If you do not put the book down at night--if you decide to just finish off the last 400 or so pages of your 600- or so -page book--after turning the last page, you will look out your bedroom window and it will be light outside. Then you will sleep half the day away, thanking your lucky stars the other adult in the house is home that day. Which will probably lead to not being able to sleep again the next night, eventually giving up and deciding to blog about the sheer insanity of it all at 3:25 a.m.

Reading selection from tonight

Tomorrow night (or would that be tonight?) -- Tylenol PM.

An insomnia-inspired blast from the past can be found here.

Learning Experience

What I learned on my blogging vacation:

• My aura is blue.

• I know-a-lot about: LOST season 5, Dirty Dancing, 80s sitcoms, famous Grease quotes, songs from the 60s-90s, The Breakfast Club, my body, Spongebob, cool toys of the 70s and 80s, Disney and other animated movies, and 80s singers

• My birthday says that I dislike unnecessary things

• My mommy style is 'Patient Polly'

• The type of shoe that defines me is red ballet slippers

• I am William McKinley

• My parents should have named me Olivia

• I am also Maurice Sendak

• I rock out like Journey

• I theologize like C.S. Lewis

• I am June Cleaver

• Dr. Phil thinks I am the lively center of attention

• I was Queen Elizabeth I in a past life

• Politically I apparently am a Libertarian-Individualist

• I am represented by a sunflower

• The animal I identify most with is a penguin

• I am most like rock music

• Of all the Mr. Men characters I am Mr. Messy

• Miss Marple is the fictional detective I most strongly identify with

• Quizzes aren't necessarily indicative of my true feelings on certain subjects

• It IS possible to spend far too many hours on Facebook when you are recovering from surgery or the flu...or both...
  

• When you go through sadness in life friends and family will rally around you, pray for you, sympathize with you, offer to babysit your children, bring you meals, remember your little one, and send you towers of chocolate

• I love my friends and family

• Oh, and I should have the job of President of the United States :-D
  

Take a Look

...down a bit on the left side of the blog. Right there, underneath the heading Friends, Family, and Cool Stuff. Do you have a blog? Do you want me to list it? I'd be happy to.

Did I list you and you'd prefer I took you off? I'd be happy to.

Hello Happy-Happiyness

I've been tagged by my friend Chris for a meme about Six Things That Make Me Happy.

I'm sure there are more than six, but here goes:

It makes me happy when...
I hear my girls playing together and actually getting along. This, seriously, is priceless, and I will not interrupt them for ANYTHING. Play all day, I don't care, as long as you're not killing each other, we're golden.

It makes me happy when...
People comment on my blog ;-D

It makes me happy when...
I have a completely clean house. This is rare. Very, very rare. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Vikings won the Super Bowl the next time this happens. But it still would make me happy.

It makes me happy when...
There is that moment of complete understanding between my husband and I. You know, the kind where you don't even have to talk--just being in the same room together and knowing you are in the same moment, on the same page. Bliss.

It makes me happy when...
Any of the kids want to cuddle with their mom.

It makes me happy when...
I can be of use to someone else. I really like to feel useful; perhaps it is my utilitarian personality?


Instructed to pass this on, I now tag you, Jackie, Meghan, Blair, Mary, Tiffany, and Darcy.

Did You Miss Me?

All right, I think I've been BAWOL (bloggishly absent without leave) for about a month now. So this is one of those boring update blog entries. What have I been doing the past month?

• Number one, we moved. After a four-month-long ordeal, we finally got our house bought and moved in, with literally 20 minutes to spare.

• Because of this, I have been spending much time getting unpacked. I am not 100% finished, and probably never will be, but at least we can eat without searching for dishes, shower without searching for towels, and get our schoolwork done without falling too far behind.

• And anyway, before we moved the computer broke. Well, the power cord broke, and HONESTLY people!, this is the THIRD power cord I've had to buy for my MacBook in THREE years! Wusupwitdat? Macs are supposed to be far superior, but in this arena it is failing horribly.
  

• Cord now bought, internet now on, and this is the first day I've been able to get back into the swing of my "net routine"...three hours later and it looks like a hurricaine has passed through my living room and kitchen. I've been so good about keeping up with housework lately, and now I see that I will need to SEVERELY limit my online time right away again.

• Without being able to say much more, hubby is on an in-house interview today. Pray for him.

• Max is walking! Finally! Just shy of his 16-month birthday. I'll have video soon to deluge y'all with.

• And, hmm, that's all for now. The following picture has nothing to do with anything, but an incongruous picture of Conrad from the county fair seemed somehow to not fit at all, so here we are.

Summer Curriculum

I've started contributing to a homeschooling blog, Home Schoolin' Mamas. The following is posted over there, but my personal blog includes my homeschooling journey, so you can read it here as well. If you want to get a broader perspective of the subject, however, I recommend taking a gander over at HSM (and I don't mean High School Musical, like every other HSM-initialed entity in this household).

*****************************************************

I meant to post this quite a while ago. Like, back when Megan asked me to contribute to the blog. And back when it was actually Summer and not pre-Fall. Oh well.

So anyhoo, this is our summer curriculum. We are not finished with it yet. More on that later, but most likely we won't be finished until it literally is Fall. Thank goodness for flexible homeschooling schedules!

Curriculum-wise, Summer around here is purely for Science, History (both of which we do not do during the "school year"), catching up on other stuff, and fun subjects of the kids' choosing. Of course, we have just completed our first year (July 07 - July 08) of homeschooling, so I reserve the right to completely change my summer standards in the future ;-)

So here's what we're working on:



Science
Weather Unit Study
Plants Unit Study
Gardening
Nature Walks
Space (this came up unplanned due to looking at Jupiter in a friend's telescope one night)

History
Native Americans
Slavery (again, unplanned)*
American Girl corresponding books

Poetry
Robert Louis Stevenson
Shel Silverstein

Catching up
on other stuff and more practice:

Hannah—place value, telling time, subtraction
Emme—counting, writing letters and numbers, letter sounds

As always, plenty of reading aloud, reading on her own, (Hannah) and looking at books on their own (Emme and Max).

*A note about the slavery thing. Personally I believe it is probably too early for them to be learning about slavery. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we began reading about Addy, one of the American Girls, and they became extremely curious about the subject. I’m a firm believer in meeting them wherever and whenever their interests lie (even while it’s making me cringe inside), so on to Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, etc. we went.

New Look

So I've got a new look over here in my corner of the bloggy world. I'm still working on it, because I'm a code newbie, but I guess it's somewhat presentable for now.

Please tell me what you think!

On Hiatus

I'm not completely removed from the blog world; I'm just on hiatus until I can get this internet connection thing straightened out. Just thought I'd make note of it, oh faithful readers. All three of you ;-)

Scroll down to the end and click to subscribe and you can be notified of when I cease hiat-ing. You know you wanna.