God Bless the Library

One of the biggest assets to a homeschooling family is the LIBRARY!

I actually don't like hauling five kidlets to the library all that often, but that makes them love it all the more.  Ours has an awesome little kiddie library with toys, games, a Thomas the Tank Engine table, weekly story hour/craft time/snacks, etc.  Sometimes we get to go see Ronald McDonald or puppet shows or other neato stuff. 

My library has an awesome website; and I am forever using it to see if they have books that I am interested in (from perusing online), to check the activity calendar, and to check my account/renew books.  I declare ~ that site has saved me a ton in overdue book fees!  I don't know how many times I've checked my account and said, "Oh my goodness!  I have 37 books due tomorrow!"  CLICK.  Thank you.  $3.70 saved.

A great thing about homeschooling is that you can go to the library during school hours when all the other kidlets are in public school, and your kids can totally rule and reign over the place.  I have even been known to let mine loose at the Thomas table while I sink into a plush chair with a book and a little suckling latched to the front of me.

My other "favorite thing" about the library is that, when my boys are bouncing-off-the-walls-driving-me-insane-full-of-energy (which is typically right about the time hubby is due home from work), I can put down my spatula and butcher knife and holler, "KIDS!  Sit your rear ends on that couch RIGHT NOW and BE QUIET!  Michael, go get the library bag and read to your brothers!!!" 

The library is such a wonderful, wholesome place for families.  ☺

Homemade Pizza

One of my "favoritest" really-quick-thrown-together-meals-because-I-didn't-plan-ahead-what-to-cook-for-supper is homemade pizza.  It is super easy and super yummo, and I promise promise PROMISE I can make one completely from scratch before you can get the Domino's guy to show up on your doorstep!

The pizza on the left is barbeque chicken, and the one on the right is taco.  I'll give you the crust recipe in just a moment; but let me just say that, as far as toppings go... anything goes!

Recently 3-lb bags of boneless skinless chicken tenders were on sale for $3.99, and I bought like six bags.  At least.  At one time.  I toss one whole bag of the things on a pan, sprinkle on some salt & pepper, and drizzle a little Sweet Baby Ray's over them.  I let that bake while I mix up some pizza dough and grate the cheese.  One bag of chicken can make several pizzas.

So basically, our favorite bbq chicken "recipe" consists of Sweet Baby Ray's (have you tried that stuff? ~ It's seriously YUMMO), cooked shredded chicken (as in method above, or leftovers, or store-bought rotisserie ~ whatever), chopped or sliced onions, and cheddar or some blend of cheese.  Tweak it to your liking; but let me say that, as much as I love mushrooms, they are just not a big hit on bbq chicken pizza.

The "taco" pizza pictured above doesn't have any meat on it, though I've been known to use leftover taco meat or ground beef.  I just mashed up some leftover pinto beans and smeared them all over the nekkid crust dough.  Then I sprinkled on some chili powder and cumin and cheese, baked, and topped with shredded lettuce and homemade salsa or pico de gallo or chopped tomato, either fresh or canned.  If I have a serious bounty of cheese (like I do right now because I bought 20 bags of Kraft for $1.00 each because they were going out of date), I sprinkle more cheese over the lettuce.  Yum...MO!

The crust recipe is really easy and can honest-to-goodness be made in five minutes.  I always make *at least* a double batch to make two pizzas or freeze crusts for later.  Actually, I got this recipe from Money Saving Mom, so I'll just send you over there for the instructions!

Growing Potatoes

I read about a neat gardening method for growing potatoes that I am going to let my children try this year.  We ordered some Yukon Gold seed potatoes from Gurney's already, but last Sunday a man at our church gave us some more seed potatoes.  I am going to let the boys use those to try the "no digging, no tilling" method of growing potatoes.

You basically just spread the quartered seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with straw.  You continue to add straw periodically, and the potatoes completely grow in the darkness of their "straw cave"!  When they are ready... POOF!  You remove the straw, and there you have a big old crop of potatoes!

I read about the method in an eBook that is part of the Green Thumb Library collection.  The entire collection of gardening eBooks is on sale for $9.95 now, if anyone is interested. 

Our Married Couples' Sunday School Class

Back in October of last year, my husband and I, along with another youngish couple in our church, started a new Sunday School class for married couples with school-aged children.

We visited hard and started out with a bang; I think we had six or seven couples the first Sunday.  We are really enjoying the class and all of the activities that have brought our families closer.

When we moved to this area 4 1/2 years ago and joined my husband's home church, there were very few young couples/families.  As far as I can remember, there was one couple with two children (the couple that joined us in starting this class) and one other newlywed couple who, at that time, had no children.  Now they are expecting #2 and are in the class as well.

It was difficult not having many friends at church our age and knowing that our young children did not have a lot of potential friends either, since we homeschool.  We really developed a burden to reach young families, and our pastor was and is behind us 100%.

Before starting the class, my husband ordered some material from Dr. Jeff Owens that really helped us get off on the right foot:

We began the class with a 12 week series about marriage in general that covered love, children, a couple's relationship with God, etc.  Now my husband is teaching a detailed series about finances: tithing, debt, God's view on wealth, etc.  It has all been wonderful, and we've enjoyed many fellowship opportunities such as a Mexican luncheon, a progressive dinner, an awesome Christmas party, and several lunches after church on Sundays (we try to have one monthly). 

If you teach a couples class, belong to one, or have any ideas at all for us... we'd love for you to share!

(This is a goofy game we played one Sunday ~ the husband & wife have to quickly feed one another a banana!)

Our First House

When my hubby and I first got married, we rented a delightful little house out in the country for about eight months before we had the opportunity to buy a repo'ed doublewide trailer.

Come to think of it, this is just the type of place we are longing to buy now!  We would definitely need more than two bedrooms and one bathroom, but I must say that I do miss the escaped cows mooing outside my bedroom window.  ☺  (I do not, however, miss stepping in their 'offerings' that lay in my yard.)

Silly me didn't take a single picture of the place when we lived there, but the owners were kind enough to let us visit and take photos when we were back in Georgia for a wedding last November.

Aw, we used to make a pallet in front of that fireplace and cuddle on the floor while listening to cassette tapes of nature sounds.  (Cassette tapes ~ ha ha ha!  Our stereo didn't even play CD's!)

I miss my first little kitchen, too:

We didn't get to live in that little house long, but it houses so many sweet memories for us.  I remember telling my husband about our first pregnancy, puking from nausea with our first pregnancy (☺), chasing cows back into the fenced pasture, listening to my husband shooting snakes out in the yard...

Boy, I miss country life!  ;-)

Girls Night Out!

My hubby & 7 year old son headed out to a Men 4 Christ retreat this afternoon, and the "little boys" spent the night at Granny & Papa's to soothe their spirits after getting left behind... so I have just had two little ones to care for since 2:30 p.m.!

I've been thinking about (and laughing about!) how I used to be so flustered and frazzled at having to care for TWO children all the time, scarcely two years apart.  Today I've been enjoying my 1 year old and 2 year old and hauling them all over town, thinking it was so much easier than taking five kidlets on errands with me!  ☺

We went to the big feed & seed store and just looked at plants, garden stuff, etc.  Then we went to WalMart to actually buy garden stuff (it was much cheaper there), along with soccer pants for the boys, a few groceries, and some other odds & ends that keep getting shoved to the bottom of the list.

Then we came home and took a late afternoon nap ~ all 3 of us!  (Well, I didn't go to sleep, but I did lie down with the 2 year old for a while and rest.)  Then we ordered expensive take-outs with a B1G1Free Ruby Tuesday coupon.  We got Ruby Tue Go ~ Chicken Florentine and Chicken Bella.  YUM!  We ate at home and saved one of the entrees for hubby tomorrow (although we totally scarfed all the yummy mashed potatoes, broccoli, and snow peas), and then... THEN... we loaded everyone *back* into car seats and went to Dairy Queen for an Oreo Brownie Earthquake!!!  My husband will never believe my frivolity (and willingness to haul two babies back and forth to town that many times)!

It was so fun... but I'm really glad my little dates had a 7:30 bedtime.  ☺

Homeschooling Aggravation

Homeschooling with several small children underfoot can be very... challenging at times.  My first course of action and general plan is to teach my 7 year old (2nd grader) and 5 year old (kindergartener) while the little ones are napping.  But those boogers are getting worse and worse about staggering their naps!  The 1 year old and sometimes the 2 year old just can't hold out until the after-lunch nap, but the 2-year old has outgrown taking two naps a day.  Sometimes I can't get the 3 year old to wind down at all!  What's a woman to do?!

We just have to do our best and use our creativity to our advantage.  Today we brought Language Arts and Math into the living room and gave the toddlers a clipboard and colored pencils to "do school" while we caught up with our trickiest subjects.  All the read-aloud stuff won't be quite as challenging, so we'll do it after lunch while everyone listens:  Bible, history, missionary story, chapter book, and the boys' readers.  Then we will satisfactorily call it a day! 

My 7 year old has been interested in Roman numerals lately, so I printed him a chart this morning that he's been using to make complicated math problems.  The 5 year old likes to draw in his notebook, and we will all mess around in the garden later this afternoon, if it warms up.  So goes the life of a homeschooling family!  Some days are easier than others, but my children do have wonderful opportunities to learn much more than just readin', writin', and 'rithmetic.  They started their morning helping me with stuffed French toast, housework, and laundry; and they got to earn some money for their "zoo jar," too.

Now they are jumping all over my bed, acting like a bunch of monkeys, while I try to update my blog!  So goes the life of a homeschooling family...

The Weekend Is Over... and the Weather is Beautiful!

Not that I'm complaining about beautiful weather, mind you!  Just wish it would not have been raining/freezing cold on Saturday!  We were going to get a load of manure for the garden, but that got postponed until I-have-no-idea-when, since my hubby will be at a Men4Christ retreat this weekend.  Hopefully, since he'll be using his boss's dump truck and getting some for his garden, too, Bossy Man will nicely let him go during a week day, if things get slow at work.  ☺

We use Clyde's Garden Planner, which is the neatest little cheapo tool.  We bought ours from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company (which is where we buy all our seeds) for just $2.75.  It's a slide chart that uses your location's last frost date (or first on the autumn side of the chart) to tell you when to plant, how deep and far apart to plant, etc. several popular varieties of vegetable seed.

Last year we just planted our vegetable garden in the long, typical rows; but I'm reading Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to Gardening, trying to figure out how to lay out the garden; and now I'm wanting to go kind of fancy.  ☺  I know I'd better just hurry up and decide because, according to Clyde, we are already a little late getting some of these seeds in the ground!  I am reading the book Carrots Love Tomatoes to figure out which vegetables to place or not place next to others.  That book was really helpful last year, and my library has it.

A Big Pot of Beans

I have shared with you our dream of one day moving onto our own plot of acreage and trying our hand at a small-scale farm.  My boys are fascinated with the whole "Little House on the Prairie" lifestyle; and my Beloved and I just love fresh air, country living, outside work, and providing our family's own (healthy) food and medicine, as much as we are able to.

To give you a little background about us, we moved to my husband's hometown in Missouri 4 1/2 years ago from Georgia with about $20,000 in debt from a business-gone-under and our moving expenses (including my Beloved's inability to find a full-time job for 3 months after arriving). 

Since we've lived here in Missouri, we've "met" Dave Ramsey via his books and radio program.  My hubby has also enjoyed listening to "Money Matters" by Crown Financial Ministries while he drives around on his Sears delivery job.

We decided that we did not want to live our life in bondage to debt, feeling that we were living paycheck to paycheck and never making ends meet.  We could never afford to do anything "fun" without charging on a little piece of plastic which had become our master, so... we started babystepping our way to financial peace.

We now keep money in savings, have plenty set back for our various quarterly and annual insurance payments, homeschooling  curriculum, and other sporadic (and big!) expenses.  We have managed to pay cash for all of our seven births (actually, we still owe $800 on this one, due in August ~ no problem) before the babies arrived.  And best of all, this has all been possible on just one very modest income while I have had the privilege of staying home with our kidlets.

For those who are interested in this type of lifestyle, I will gradually share little tidbits about what has made this possible and how we live, budget, save, and plan.  Let me start with this good old basic standby:

A pot of beans!  YUM!

I feel kind of hypocritical, after posting a shrimp scampi recipe, to be singing the praises of pinto beans!  Shrimp is truly a splurge for us that doesn't happen often, and last week's recipe came from a 2-pound $7.98 bag that I bought on sale after not buying shrimp in probably a year.  However, today's treat is more in line with the common fare of our household.

Beans are super easy, tasty, and nutritional.  For some strange reason, people get overwhelmed with them and think they are difficult to cook; but they are really easy and just take a little planning ahead of time.

I always throw my beans in a pot to soak the night before.  Some people use the "quick soak method," which involves bringing the beans to a boil and then turning it off and allowing them to sit there for an hour or two before fully cooking.  My mom doesn't soak them at all.  Some folks cook them in a pressure cooker, which takes no longer to cook than any other meal.

But since this is my blog... I'll stick with my "soak them overnight" method.  ☺

I always put 2 pounds of pinto beans (or whatever kind I want to cook) in a kettle the night before and cover them with water.  The next day they have grown, the water has shrunk, and the pan is very full.

I drain and rinse them in a colander, picking out any little debris (pebbles?) that might be hiding in there.  I return them to their kettle and once again cover with fresh water.

Bring them to a boil on the stove and then reduce the heat to medium low, tilting the lid on the pot.  You can leave them alone for a couple of hours, until they begin to get tender.  (Warning:  Do not add salt or tomatoes to beans before they are tender.  The salt and acid will toughen them.  I like to add a can of diced tomatoes with green chilies to my kidney beans for "red beans & rice," and I always dump that in last.)

When they are just getting tender, but not quite ready to eat, I like to dice in an onion; and sometimes I stick some leftover meat or a ham bone or hock in there (actually, if I'm using a hock or raw meat, I put that in at the beginning with the raw beans).  The pictured pot of beans contained the previous night's pork roast remains.  They are certainly good meatless, too, though.

When they are thoroughly tender, I finally season them.  Salt and pepper are fine for a pot of beans.  Make sure that the beans stay plenty moist through the whole process.  You don't want them to dry out, and you can add more water throughout the cooking time whenever needed.  You want plenty of "pot likker" to dunk your cornbread or garlic bread in!

I try to cook a pot of beans at least once a week.  We typically have them on Monday nights with plenty leftover for bean burritos, nachos, or quesadillas.  Or, well, leftover beans.  They also freeze well ~ just spoon them into a quart-size freezer bag.  They are great accompanied with cornbread, garlic bread, or corn pudding.

Our Children's Ministry

My husband is the Children's Pastor at our church, and we are responsible for children's church every Sunday.  We actually have a children's ministry website and an adult married couples' Sunday School class as well, and I will be sharing some tidbits about our ministries here every Sunday.

We go to a somewhat-rural Baptist church, located a couple of miles on the outskirts of a town with about 10,000 folks.  Our church runs two small buses, and my Beloved drives one of them.  His bus only has a capacity of like 20-something people, so they really are *small.*

Our children's church has anywhere from 40ish to over 70 kids each week, depending on the time of year and whether we are doing some type of special promotion or anything.  I would estimate that about half of our crowd is "bus kids" and the other half is the drive-in crowd whose parents or grandparents bring them to church and attend the main service in the auditorium.

Our children's church kids are pretty well-behaved, and we really haven't had many discipline problems.  However, I wanted to share this article about children's church discipline and encourage you, if you have ever been involved in children's ministry, to scroll to the bottom of that page and share some input.

Shrimp Scampi & Sauteed Broccoli

My hubby showed up unexpectedly for lunch yesterday, so I had to quickly whip him up something to eat.  I had peeled some shrimp the day before, so I threw together my version of shrimp scampi:

I threw a stick of butter into a big 12 inch skillet.  Then I minced in two cloves of garlic with my beloved garlic press (and while I was dirtying the thing up, I minced a couple of extra cloves to mix with honey and apple cider vinegar to try to attack this nasty sinus infection that is plaguing me). 

When the butter was completely melted and garlic a bit sauteed, I splashed in some lemon juice and worcestershire sauce. 

Then I spread my shrimp (about a pound, maybe a little more) out in the butter and sprinkled some Tony's Creole Seasoning all over it.  You can use salt & pepper, if you're a wimp.  ☺

My beloved showed up at that point and tried to stir it, but I bit his head off and admonished him not to touch the beauties until they had fully cooked on one side.  This does not take long at ALL, and I can't stand overcooked shrimp.  I left them on that side for 2 minutes tops, then flipped them and minced some fresh parsley all over them with my beloved Cutco kitchen shears.  My interfering husband added more Tony's.

I put the shrimp into some cute little dishes and threw some frozen broccoli florets into the buttery goodness:

 

I wish I'd had more broccoli, but everyone agreed that this was super yummo.  Even my picky kids who don't usually touch broccoli liked it (after I pulled the "Close your eyes, open your mouth, and I'll give you one more piece of shrimp" trick).  My kidlets were already feasting on peanut butter & jelly when The Beloved arrived, but you can bet they were nipping at our ankles the whole time we were feasting on those prawns.

Ready to Get the Garden In!

Ugh, it's supposed to rain all weekend.  But my beloved husband got up early and tilled my garden this morning!   The birds are really having a feast in it now, too.  We are blessed to have wonderful soil and lots of little wormies. 

Today the boys and I are going to rake through it and pick out the rocks.  Tonight we will hopefully (in-laws willing ☺) have a date night that involves a stop at the feed store for lime and manure.  I already spread all the compost I had on the garden last week, and my hubby tilled it under.  For anyone who is interested, here is my composting technique:

I have an old laundry basket on my deck right outside the kitchen door.  I put a layer of soil from our yard into the bottom of it, and I throw all my compostable kitchen scraps right in:  fruit & veggie peels, tea bags, coffee grounds, eggshells, high chair scraps (anyone with a toddler knows what I'm saying here:  all the pieces of cooked carrot, green beans, pancake, etc. that land in the radius of kitchen floor around the high chair), etc. 

When I get a layer of "green" compost, I add another layer of dirt from the yard and continue in layers until I'm ready to dump the whole mess into a designated area of the yard/ditch near the garden.  We give it a stir with the shovel every once in a while and add all the grass clippings, mulched leaves, and ashes from the woodstove to it.  If I had access to some cow manure-caked hay, that would be even better... but we just have to make do with what we have!

We annually spread all that compost on the garden plot before tilling it under, and we also use it to mulch the plants in our garden occasionally. 

Another little tidbit:  we save our fish guts to plant beneath our corn seed.  Corn needs the nitrogen.

The Boys' Play House

My 7 year old and 5 year old got the notion the other day to begin "building" a tree house.  Their progress so far:

 

They are quite proud of their work.  I'm not really sure if this is going to be the roof or the floor.  They were discussing with Daddy last night their need to borrow some of his roofing materials.  Hmmm...

At any rate, hopefully they'll know how to manage a saw and a hammer by the time they are about 10 and 12.  We'll need all the help we can get.

We are longing for land!

Spring is nearly upon us (thank you, thank you, thank you, dear Lord!), and my boys are outside "working" on their playhouse and hopefully their building skills. Our family's dream for years has been to abandon the neighborhood and head to the hills, where we long to produce most of our food, raise a few critters, and eventually build our own house. We are intrigued by the "Little House on the Prairie" lifestyle and wish to embrace it as our own, if the Lord permits.

We are learning as we go and trying to store up skills (and money) that will one day land us on a parcel of acreage where we can tinker in nature and self-sufficiency to our heart's content. I have decided to chronicle our journey so that we can look back on it one day with amusement and so that we can hopefully meet a few friends who are on board and can share encouragement and learn the ropes with us.