Still Working…

It’s been a few months and we’re still working on this new program.  Overall things are going really really well for Grace.  She hasn’t passed out in almost 4 months.  This is HUGE.  The program is a BIG FAT DEAL though and takes a lot of thought, planning and tweaking.  We’re still working all that out.  They say that the first 6 months after graduating from the program is crucial.  We don’t hit the 6 month marker until August.  I’m happy that we’re still working away at this.  I’m happy that Grace hasn’t missed a day of school or an activity, due to illness, since leaving Mayo.  Amazing.

There is finally warm weather in MN and I can’t find my shorts!  Figures, right?  I’ve planted a few cool crops in the garden boxes and I am excited for the time outside.

The days are definitely busy.  We are changing so many things around our house and that is a process, but at the heart of it we still hope to just be a family making memories in a small town simple home.

Back to basics & counting our blessings.

October

This is my absolute favorite month. The cool weather, fall colors… I love it all!

Today my hubby and girl are on a deer scouting mission at Itasca State Park. They open up areas of the park for a youth hunt one weekend each October. It is a lottery system and Grace has been drawn two years in a row now. I’m glad the actual hunt is next weekend, because at 80+ degrees today it is just too hot to shoot a deer.

Back at home the boy is mowing lawn and I’m doing some housework. Hanging clothes on the line is a treat! As soon as that lawn is done we are heading out to run errands and get pizza for lunch.
Its shaping up to be a perfect weekend!

CSA Picking Events: Peas

Along with our CSA membership (full-share) we get to attend 7 picking events.  The choices include peas (unlimited), cucumbers (1 bushel), herbs, green beans (unlimited), beets, sweet corn (10 dozen ear), pumpkins (8), fall produce (50# mesh bag to fill with squash, potatoes, onions, etc), fall decoratives, and tomatoes.  I don’t think we’ll do beets.  I know we’ll do peas, green beans, cukes, tomatoes & fall produce.  The rest is up in the air yet.

Anyway, back to the pea pick!  It was scheduled for July 10th.  Our CSA farm is abut 40 minutes from our house so we had hoped to leave early and pick before we got too hot.  Unfortunately we didn’t make it out very early but we were picking by 10:30.  There were three kinds of peas to choose from: shelling, snow & sugar snap.  We picked 6 (ice cream) buckets of shelling peas & 2 of sugar snap.

Grace and I started in on picking the shelling peas while the boys picked sugar snap.  My hubby said it was like picking next to a rabbit.  Stanley ate & ate those peas!  He told me he ate 150!  I don’t think it was really that much, but he barely ate all his lunch.  At least he was filled up on good food, right?

After picking, we found a little canoe access on a nearby river and had our picnic lunch we’d packed along.  PB&J, raw kohlrabi with ranch dip, cheese sticks & fresh peas (of course).  Stanley practiced skipping rocks, while Grace tried to get a lesson in rock-skipping from her dad.  He’s our family pro.  It was a nice stop along the way to the nearest larger town to do some shopping.

Once home we all sat on the deck and spent the next hour and a half shelling peas.  That was actually fun too.

It was an all around nice day spent together.

Laundry Thoughts

Today I’ve got laundry on my mind.  Maybe because I’ve been working on the laundry since 6:30 this morning.  The end is in sight – only 2 more loads to go.

How do you do laundry?  Do you hate it?  I actually like don’t mind doing laundry.  There is a great sense of accomplishment in seeing that mountain of dirty clothes shrink.

I have gone through many laundry “schedules” over the years.  From doing a load or two per day to my current two days a week.  Nothing is set in stone, but I try to hold out for FULL loads.  I don’t usually like to do much laundry on the weekends and because I work at home I can often have it done in a work day.  The beginning of the week, usually Monday, I do a few loads and then I try to get it all caught up on Thursday or Friday so we go into the weekend with full closets.

Now that my kids are getting older I’ve been more aware of the school of thought that kids should do their own laundry.  Honestly, while I’m sure this works for some, I can’t understand it.  How can kids honestly have a full load of anything at one time?  So do jeans and sweats and T-shirts and underwear end up in the same load???  Or do they do a few really small loads?  It just doesn’t seem very efficient.

At our house, both kids know how to sort the laundry (by whites, darks, colors, jeans, etc…and further by fabric weight if the loads are big) and how to do a load of laundry to completion.  Since we all live here, we take care of each other…none of the “well it wasn’t MINE so I didn’t’ do it” stuff.

I know a common argument to our approach is that kids might ruin parents’ clothes.  I don’t have anything special for work and my husbands button down shirts are nothing that can be ruined too easily.  If we had nice/expensive work clothes we would maybe instruct the kids to leave those alone until they were older and we trusted them to be able to do those loads safely.

When we got a front-load washer a few years ago I made a chart for how each type of load gets done with all the settings spelled out. There are notes on the dryer too.  Most of the guesswork is gone with notes posted.

Another little thing…here at our house, if you find small bills and change in the laundry you may keep it. If you fished it out of a pocket we encourage returning it to the owner, but if you found it in a basket or in the washer or dryer, you get it.  Sometimes when I know a child will be doing some laundry there just might be a loose dollar or two to be found.  (I also believe in a little extra something for helpful kids…just not so often they expect it)

Boot Camp

Sometimes I get teased by friends about how much my kids help around the house.  Then I wonder if I work them too hard. I’ve decided I don’t.

My kids have no daily chores.  They empty the dishwasher when it is their turn.  They are responsible for their personal hygiene and getting their things ready for school or practice.  I expect a bed made and their room straightened up more days than not, and that they put their laundry away.

Other than that jobs are on an as-needed basis.  If I’m folding laundry and a kid isn’t doing much, they can help.  The table needs set or groceries are being carried in?  Help out.

On our Friday Night Blitz nights we all work together.  My kids know how to do a decent job of cleaning a bathroom, dusting, running the vacuum and generally straightening things up.

However, that doesn’t mean I feel too badly when my kids are working and I’m not.  They realize that sometimes I work a lot when they aren’t doing anything.  So if their job is to straighten the drawers in their dresser, mine might be to read another chapter in my current book of choice.  That’s OK because when I’m cooking dinner they just might be reading or playing video games.

Hear are a couple of things I’ve learned along the way when it comes to having children take part in household chores.

• Lower your expectations. How old are you?  When you were their age did you do the same quality job you do now?
• But still make the jobs challenging. Show the children you trust them with tough jobs and believe in them to accomplish the task at hand.
• Let go & let them do it. No one likes to be corrected at every turn.  Soon enough the job will need done again.
• Think of it as a learning experience. Over time the improvement will be worth it.
• Don’t make it a punishment. It is a fact of life that when you live with people you should share the work.
• Praise them.  And if you can’t praise much about the job they just did, maybe you can praise the attitude with which they did the job or at least that they took the time to do it & put some effort into it.

So while I may have friends that think I’m a little tough on the kids, actually making them put their clothes away or clean something, I think they secretly wish they could send their kids to my “boot camp” once in a while.  What these friends don’t see is that when my kids are having a hectic week their laundry may mysteriously hang itself up in their closets and their beds are miraculously made when they arrive home from school.  Because it is also important to cut each other some slack when it’s needed.

**One friend actually told her 12 year old daughter recently that she was going to send her to my house for a week…to which this friend’s husband quickly added “so does that mean we get her daughter for a week!”

Thursday

This week is NOT going as planned.  I am stressed out & behind on all the things I should be doing.  So, hello, thanks for helping me procrastinate!

Ever notice that when life gets busy money seems to disappear?  Happens here.  And I don’t think we’re that unique.

I like life on the quiet side as far as the day-to-day operations go.  A few activities here and there for the kids, maybe a meeting or two thrown in every so often and I am good.  So I’m on foreign ground now.  Thursday is now our crazy day.  Stanley has wrestling practice after school until 5:15.  Usually Grace has Speech practice until the same time, but today she has a practice meet until 5:45.  Stanley has piano lessons from 6:00 until 6:30 (a 10 minute drive) and then Grace has Volleyball practice from 7 – 8:30.  It is usually closer to 9:00 before we get home.  My main issue with this schedule is dinner.  When do we eat?  And what do we have?

I know many, many families have this type of schedule several nights a week.  I’m not really whining as much as trying to figure out how to make it better.  We have almost always eaten together as a family…at least with the kids and one parent.  So everyone eating at different times is tough for me.  And yes, I know it will only get worse!  When we started this schedule it was ok because Thursday is leftovers night.  With garbage day on Friday we always clear out the frig on Thursday nights.  In my efficiency lately there haven’t been leftovers.  I am cooking dinner one night and then incorporating those leftovers into the next day’s lunch.

So now what?  I want something filling, nourishing and easy for them to scoop up.  I think the crockpot is probably the way to go.  I have 6 crockpots in varying sizes so I shouldn’t have a problem there.  But what do I prepare?  It has to be able to be ready at 6:00 but keep warm, without getting mushy, until 7:00.  Here’s a list of what I’ve come up with…  Meat for sandwiches: sloppy joes, shredded chicken or pork, or lasagna hot-dish.  Other, non crockpot ideas I had include fixings for cold-meat sandwiches or chef salads.

I know you all have more great ideas!  Help me out!  PLEASE!!  Because it really crossed my mind that Dan and I could each take one kid out for a quick supper – and that’s not the kind of simple I’m looking for!

38 Ways I Save Money

1. Put shampoo & conditioner in pump containers so it doesn’t flood out into kids’ hands.
2. Use cloth napkins.
3. Use more rags than paper towels.
4. Make our bread.
5. Pack kids’ lunches.
6. Keep milk to one glass at meals, refills are water.
7. Grow lots of goodies in our gardens.
8. Advocate simple fun when kids are bored.
9. Keep a good supply of board games and puzzles.
10. Save kids’ returned homework for internal printing jobs.
11. Print online receipts and payment confirmations to my computer instead of on paper.
12. Use the heels and little bits of extra bread for crumbs or croutons.
13. Use a programmable thermostat.
14. Set the heat to chilly for the 6 overnight hours when everyone is sleeping…then cuddle under the covers.
15. Dress for the season.  No tank tops allowed in the winter!
16. Do my own manicures and pedicures.
17. Stock my pantry at low prices.
18. Eat from my pantry.
19. Keep two lists.
20. Use cash.
21. Love the library.
22. Don’t rent movies.  Watch what we have, or see #21.
23. Shop thrift stores & garage sales.
24. Know the difference between a need & a want.
25. Cook from scratch as much as possible.
26. Do some simple mending.
27. Hang laundry out whenever possible.
28. Seal up the windows with that plastic film stuff in the winter.
29. Do many home repairs & projects ourselves.
30. Teach kids to be helpers.
31. Work together towards those common goals.
32. Use what we already have on hand.
33. Use it up.
34. Wear it out.
35. Make do.
36. Do without.
37. Don’t pay attention to the Jones.
38. Have an attitude of gratitude.

So there you have it…some of the simple ways we save a little cash.  I’d love to hear your ideas!

Cookies!

Yesterday I decided that I could whine to myself about not having started my holiday baking, or I could do something about it.  So at nap time I tried to get the gingerbread cookie dough mixed up, only to find that I didn’t have enough molasses.  Determined not to let that get me down, I resolved to just pick up more on my way to pick up Stanley from the community center after work.   I got my gingerbread dough done, along with a batch of Spritz dough and out to chill while we ate dinner.  Once the supper dishes were cleaned up I hurried to get the Spritz in the oven.  Then Stanley helped me get the Gingerbread cookies made.  He loves those.  He also loves working in the kitchen.  Half an hour after his normal bedtime he was tasting one of his cookies before brushing teeth and crawling into bed.

I’ve decided to make Sunday my baking day.  After church I’ll put on my apron and get to work.  I love spending days like that…so I am truly excited to see what I can get done.  I have no doubt I’ll have plenty of help as both Grace and Stanley enjoy time in the kitchen.  Now to think up something yummy to put in the crockpot that day so I don’t have to stop baking to get dinner on the table.

Family Balancing Act

When we moved to SmallTown we decided to only travel every other year.  It was not a decision we made lightly.  We love our families and miss not being there for all the celebrations.

The first year we decided to stay home for two reasons.  First we owned two houses.  ’nuff said.  Second, we didn’t want to set the precedent that we’d be traveling every year.  And I guess we also figured that if we were going to make this place home we should experience the holidays here too.

That was Christmas 2005.  Now on even years we travel and odd years we stay home.

Dan’s family is huge.  The celebration is always Christmas Eve at his parents’ house.  The immediate family (about 30 or so) get together in the afternoon to exchange gifts and visit.  In the evening my mother-in-law’s family gathers there.  Last year there were about 70 there at once.  It has been over a hundred in the past.  Needless to say the party goes on whether the four of us are there or not.

My family is tiny.  My mom, her husband, my sister, her husband and two kids.  Ten of us in all.  If we don’t go, it doesn’t happen.  So on those odd years, my family comes here.

I’ll come out and complain for just a moment.  Folks don’t like to travel this far (4 hours) to see us.  Apparently they haven’t figured out that the trip is just as long for us.  The road goes both ways.

I feel strongly about my children feeling like our church is a comfortable place for them.  Like a second home.  I can only hope that this makes it easier to stay involved in things like youth group as they get older.  Shouldn’t that include knowing what Christmas Eve candle light service is like?  The feeling of the gold cross being brought in on Easter morning?

Someday I hope my kids think of those moments in their church with fond memories.  Every Easter I get goosebumps as I close my eyes and remember the Easter processionals that my nephew carried in the cross.  I smile when I think of the times we would sneak off at church after youth group and hang out in the kitchen eating “funeral pickles” out of big 5 gallon pails in the frig.  I want my kids to feel that kind of belonging at our church.

My friend was taken off guard last month when I told her we weren’t traveling for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  My family will come a weekend before Christmas but otherwise we’ll celebrate with just the four of us.  She told me of the elaborate plans that they have so all their family could be together.  They all live within 60 miles of each other so it works pretty well.  I remember those days fondly.  Then she gave me a look and said that she thinks time is short and she plans to spend every holiday possible with her parents while she can.  Ouch.

My dad died 13 years ago last month.  I get a little prickly when people want to explain to me how precious time is and how we may not have forever with family members.  It’s true.  My dad thought he had more than 53 years, I’m sure.  I certainly thought he’d be here longer than that.  I also wanted to ask her how she’d feel about changing that afternoon with her mom & dad to at least three days with her mom & a step-dad (who could be as different from her father as night and day).  But that was the defensive reaction in me.  Luckily I’ve squashed that before, so I smiled and nodded and waited for the subject to change.  Because you see, she just doesn’t understand.  She can’t.  And I’m glad she doesn’t have to know what the transition is like. That while life goes on, nothing is really ever the same.  I love my mom dearly and we do some things together through the year and talk at least a couple times a week.  So I don’t feel as if I’ve cut off  my family.

We are simply trying to show our kids that our little family is just as important as the extended family.  I do realize that by setting this example, someday my kids may make similar decisions.  That is why we always are open about telling everyone that they are ALWAYS welcome to come here and celebrate holidays with us.  I can only hope that means that if my kids decide not to come to me at Christmas, they will still open their arms and welcome me to their home for the holidays.

Cooking Lessons

I remember being in the kitchen a lot as a child.  Sometimes my grandma’s kitchen,  most the time at home.  My mom and dad both cooked.  My mom is a great cook…one of those people who doesn’t really have recipes, just knows how to add some of this, a little of that…that type of thing.  My dad made stuff like hamburgers, macaroni & cheese,  salmon patties  and side dishes.  He made the best Rice-A-Roni.  Absolutely the BEST.  He made other stuff too, I’m sure.  I just can’t remember what.

Anyway, back to my story.  I don’t remember anyone specifically teaching me to cook, I think I just picked up a lot of it by hanging out in the kitchen.  I was interested.  And I’m a pretty good cook now.  My sister?  Not so much.  She still has a  limited repertoire…and that’s ok.  She has mad skills in areas that I could never compete with.

I do have one kitchen failure that will always follow me…until the day my mother dies.  And my sister, but she can’t really make fun of me when it comes to the kitchen.

I was maybe 9?  Anyone remember Fudge Jumbles?  They were a box mix.  You put the crust/dough ingredients together and pressed part of it in the pan, then layered on this packet of  fudgey filling (or whatever flavor you bought, there was a variety) and sort of sprinkled/spread the rest of the doughy stuff on top.  Bake and eat.  Pretty easy.

So I really wanted to make some one day while my parents were watching TV.  My mom told me to go ahead…just read the box.  That’s exactly what I did.  Until I had the ingredients in the bowl and came to the part where it said to “stir by hand”.  hmmm.  I asked my mom if I was really supposed to stir them by hand.  She said that was right, so I went back to the kitchen.  Read it again…but I wasn’t so sure that I really should stir by hand.  Asked mom again.  Same answer…stir by hand.  Ok then.  Shortly after (probably a commercial break) my mom came in to see how it was going, only to find me with that sticky dough almost up to my elbows!  I was stirring by hand, and now most of it was smeared up my arms from trying to get it off me!  Mom laughed and laughed and cried and laughed.  She probably wet her pants a little too…but she’s never admit it.

I don’t remember how they turned out.  I’m sure they were ok…just not the usual look.  And to this day I always think twice when a recipe says to “stir by hand”!

Well, Grace now has her own kitchen story.  One  Saturday while Dan & I were scouting out rummage sales she called to see if she could make cookies.  I told her to set the butter out to soften and she could make them later.

Sometimes it is so hard to wait.  She and Stanley were so anxious to get that dough made that they went ahead and mixed up some chocolate chip cookie dough.  Or at least they tried.

Grace added all the ingredients in the order they were listed on the bag…butter (not soft), flour, salt, baking soda, sugars, vanilla.  You get the picture.  Thankfully she didn’t put in the eggs or chocolate chips right away.  Then her brother got down the mixer for her. Except it was the broken one from the back of a cabinet.  We came home to find an interesting mix in that bowl.

Grace thought she was in trouble for sure.  All I could think of was Fudge Jumbles.  I laughed and shook my head.

Then I got the mixer that worked and we got those mixed up.  By now the butter was soft and mixed much better.  We added the eggs and chips and baked some cookies.  They aren’t like any chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made, but that’s OK.  With a glass of milk, does it really matter?

She had an important cooking lesson that day.

One she won’t forget until the day I die.