Weekend recap

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In short – It stunk. 

Allen got back from his trip and that part was wonderful. We first got the buck for his annual visit to our does. That part really did stink. To high heaven!  I always forget how badly it stinks. And how badly anyone who touches him stinks. OR how badly anyone who touches anything that touched him stinks. Bleck. Gotta be there to believe it.

Anyway, Sat afternoon Tess and the others were outside with Allen while he was putzing.  As a rule the kids are glued to him when he is home.  Tess is cruising all over these days, determined to walk. She wiped out and cut her upper lip.  So we closed up shop and ran her in for stitches with me in the backseat semi-nuts. (We have had a LOT of medical procedures over the years but remarkably few injuries)  Apparently they did not feel it was as hysteria worthy as I however since they finally stitched her some 4 hours later.

: PPPP   

So our sweet girl has tiny stitches now and a mom who has been all over google for the current protocol for scar minimization. Vit E vs no Vit E (did you know there was even controversy about that??)  Essential oils. Mederma.  If you have an opinion or experience with any of the above give us a shout.

We are still playing tag with the cow too. The general opinion is that it isn’t even about other cows now since most often she doesn’t even try to get to any. She just is ‘that sort’ per my cattlemen neighbors. Allen spent hours with them rigging up an electric fence. Verdict?  She is not impressed. Stood there pushing it til she knocked it over enough to walk past. Argh.

So it is like that.  If you were waiting for a reply from me please know I didn’t forget you.  Or maybe I did hey Karen? : /  But I will try to get on top of my box in the next couple days.

Friday Funschool H

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Heart
H is for hearts and hands and home.

H Template

ASL – h, happy, house

Cover the letter template with hearts or hole punch holes into it.

No preschool program is complete without some handprint art. Our big project this week is to make this handprint calendar. I admit to being a smidge concerned about trying to pull this off with four families of children but I really hope to finish these for Christmas. They are way cute.

Montessori Practical Life – sorting clothes in hampers. Housekeeping is a major focus of Montessori practical life work. Using child sized tools is highly recommended.  The link takes you to labels for your hampers.  Even very young children can  learn to sort and  keep their laundry off the floor.  Or so I am told. I think they lose this skill later. Must be a brain chemistry issue in adolescence. Maybe my big boys will like these labels. <g>

Sensorial/Sorting:  Hot/cold game – google images of hot items such as hamburger, fireplace, candle, teapot and cold things like ice cubes, ice cream, snowman.  Glue them to cards and sort.   You can also purchase or make thermic bottles I would suggest making, unless of course you had $200 laying around you didn’t know what to do with.  Actually even if you do, don’t buy them anyway.  Call me.  I can use it. ; D

Math: A Hundreds Chart teaches and reinforces many math skills in the early elementary school years. This site suggests lots of extension activities.

The concept of 100 can be taught using the long chain manipulatives such as these from JMJ Publishing.

Shape: heart

H is for handwriting. We are using this book from Handwriting Without Tears to teach letter formation. We really love the little chalk board and then the transition to the shaded rectangles. 

PE – hopping.  Play hopscotch this week and you can reinforce numbers (counting up and back down again) and balance at once.  Hoola hoops are a great tool as well. You can use them to hoola which is a skill in itself. You can shoot bean bags through them. You can hop inside-outside-around them thereby working on positional directions. This book gives more ideas. Play Hokey Pokey.

Snacks for this week: hamburgers, hotdogs, ham and cheese, hot chocolate, hot cross buns, Ho-Ho’s (did I say that or was I just thinking it ; ) and candy hearts

Lit/art:
The House That Jack Built  etext   to go with some house and home  fun like this. You can save oatmeal and other boxes, cover them with construction paper and black window squares to make a whole village of houses.  Take a large poster and make a house of large rectangles.  Cut out pics of furniture and appliances appropriate to different rooms and laminate. Have the children match them to the rooms on the poster. They can simply glue them on for a one time project instead.

Songs/rhymes:
Hickory Dickory Dock

If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

My Hands by Aliki
Handrhymes
Ho for a Hat by William J Smith
Hop on Pop

Bible/Saints:

Discuss halos and their use in sacred art. Look through any art appreciation book and note the halos in images of holy men and women.
The Holy Family.   
As For Me and My House coloring page.  This memory verse would be nice to write on one of the box houses you make this week.
Holy Holy Holy song. 
For Catholics: Immaculate Heart of Mary and Sacred Heart of Jesus. Practice the Hail Mary and/or Hail Holy Queen prayers. This online color book has both prayers along with songs and lots of activities.

H is for Hugs. Distribute them freely this week.  : ) 

Pre-frost date night

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look who picked me up to go cruisin’ the neighborhood last month:
4_wheelin

The local chicks were so jealous

The studs around here don’t drive though. <g>

Kidding aside, consider this the first installment in the  Frugal Luxuries  category. The book of collected essays, ideas, and tips by Tracey McBride is great encouragement for those trying to live well on less. In that spirit we have been trying to carve out free or nearly free fun time to reconnect as a couple. Whether it is going for a spin on the 4-wheeler or taking a bottle of cider and the books we have been reading up to our room after the kids are in bed we have found you don’t have to be wealthy, just motivated and creative. 

This really should have come after the getting out of debt post but I need to run. Stay tuned. The long and the short of it is you don’t need to be joyless while being frugal. It’s about changing the focus from entertaining oneself to engaging in life. Being proactive about fun vs being a passive audience. You can tell there is more to say here, just not the time to say it all at once. This is an awesome book to start with however. : )

Lifting them up

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Please keep two of my favorite people in prayer if you would.  I know God has a plan but honestly I am a bit beside myself over both of them at the moment. : /   Karen has been a wonderful steadfast friend since we both moved to CO. They have been ‘whole family’ friends, a rare find where all of us- husbands, wives, and kids – get along famously. They host warm old fashioned parties for scads of locals and are the first to appear with food when there is a celebration or crisis.  Now Karen is having her own struggle and I am determined to pray her through this.

Jen and I have been friends for 13 years now. But who is counting. ; )  We have gone through lots of babies, moves, and diets together.  We have alternately inspired and consoled each other as life demanded. We have hashed out deep, vital issues like theology, nutrition, educational methods, and the ongoing bangs-versus-no bangs debate. <g>  Life has thrown her a curve ball healthwise also. She is unlikely to make much mention of it being as others-centered as she has always been. Please life them up in your prayers!

Every day a blessing

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I am so lucky.  Sara and I crossed paths the year before last when she became one of our first milk shareholders.  I let life speed up too much and when allergies forced them to sell their share back we lost touch.  Not one to leave a mistake uncorrected when it is in my power to correct it, I invited the three lovely ladies at Stories and Songs for lunch tomorrow.  So exciting!

Sara is a wonderful mother, faithful wife, and devoted Christian. Her blog entry today is proof positive.  Good reminder that God is faithful even when we aren’t paying attention.  Reminded me of that old Amy Grant song about all the disaster averted in our lives that we were not even aware of.

We might just be off…

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…our rockers?  But hey, I never wanted a sedentary life anyway. <g> We have been asking some hard questions lately.  Questions along the lines of "this is your life, are you happy with who you are?"  Would you be happy to be this in 20 years?  Is it possible there is more? How far outside the box are we willing to think to get there? 

Well, the short answer is mostly.  We have lots to be thankful for. We have a good life. It comes with a hefty price tag though in terms of time and money. (ie debt)  We suspect God does not applaud that part.  Nor are we thrilled with the part that requires Dad to be gone for most of his children’s waking hours. Thinking inside the box left few options. Happiness requires a mortgage, a computer, a car payment, and a lot of classes and lessons right? We don’t know how to do (fill in the blank) therefore we couldn’t possibly (fill in the blank) right?  It seems that there are folks out there who would disagree.

This conversation will take some time. It requires us to look at housing and lifestyle in different ways. It comes with a hefty learning curve.  Who knew simplicity could be so challenging? In this day and age, when most of us are incapable of providing our most basic needs, the idea of meeting those needs ourselves asks a lot of a person. Not more than people have given for all of time however.

I realize this post begs more questions than it answers. I have already shared my ambivalence about the screens so I will have to tackle it in small portions. Here are a few sites to get started:

Off Grid Living  asks how much of your chosen life is nourishing you as a human being? Are our choices nourishing us or simply putting food on the table.  Not that putting food on the table is a bad thing.  We have 9 people of various sizes who happen to be quite fond of food put upon their table. ; )  But our choices determine whether we are thriving or merely surviving. 

Tyra and James at innerexplorations have written an ebook called the Treasures of Simplicity. If you have looked around the ranch blog at all you could probably deduce that anything with a name like that would send a little rush through me. I printed off the whole document and we read it aloud on the way to pick up hay last wknd. Here are two people who took the challenge to make nourishing choices seriously. In the process they found out more about themselves and the world than they expected. Their reflections about institutionalized housing and non-instant gratification are worth considering. I am not as big a fan of Jungian psychology as they however. Sift, as usual.

The pictures remind me of the very first homeschool book I read some 18 years ago, Homeschooling for Excellence by the Colfaxes.  They made the news back then when their four homeschooled boys got scholarships to ivy league schools.  They, too, had stepped off the corporate merry-go-round and bought raw acreage in Northern CA. Together with the boys they carved out a homestead with their hands and built not only a home, but a life.  They have a follow-up book called Hard Times in Paradise which details the homesteading itself and the evolution of the homeschool phenomenon.  I am picking up this second title soon.

You know you are a farmer when ….

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….you see your cow has escaped again so you and your ten year old rig up a fence wall that rivals Alcatraz.

…cow cannot escape Alcatraz but pony breaks INto same (why??)

…free the pony

… go back in the house and make chicken soup because everyone is sick

…realize that now YOU are getting sick

…go to milk the goats, feed chickens, and notice aforementioned cow has escaped from Alcatraz

…fever now approaching 101

…send cow to the barn for the night/day/til dh comes home/someone makes an offer on cow (you don’t care which at this pt)

…carve pumpkins, make hot chocolate, get everyone in jammies, congratulate yourself that the herbal remedies have the children in good shape

…sink into the hottest tub you can fill, making little groaning/complaining sounds and wondering if death is soon to follow

…open eyes for a spit second and see little green flecks floating in the water?   Maybe you really ARE dying?  No, wait.  It’s teensy bits of hay. ; )

Guess I am a hayseed now.
Honey-man, I hope you find that as attractive as I find your Carhartt jacket lol!   Make that flight a snappy one or they will have erected a headstone in my honor……

Lots of interesting things happening in our world, and not all of them viral : )   Give me a day to recover and we will fill you in.

Caramel Apples

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Apples_2 We have had some great fun this month. We made caramel apples for a potluck with friends. I am not one for fancy recipes nor overly rich dishes. These made for a perfect treat. One little girl declared she was in heaven after her first bite <g>   Simple as washing and drying the apples, lining trays with waxed paper, and dipping the apples in a panful of melted caramel candies. 

Apples_4

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