Lessons Learned in June

My monthly reflection, looking back at the month just past with an eye toward lessons learned and challenges faced.  What did I learn in June?

• Although the process of trying to go back to work and still keep up all my home duties started in May, June kept up the relentless grind of a long long To Do list and family needing me for things at the same time I had paid employment work sitting there needing to be done.  I am learning that I need to put everything in its own place, with a designated time for each, and put on blinders to what is happening outside of the designated task at hand.  I cannot worry about my laundry to fold if it's time to do school work with the kids, or worry about the kids being bored when it's time to be focusing on my church work.  Carefully balanced compartmentalization is the skill I am trying to work on.
• Simple routines are better than fancy schedules for getting my family to help.  I overshot by making a complicated chore chart, which the kids couldn't keep track of and so I was always having to check if people had done their chores.  It wasn't working, so now I'm focusing on just one chore - the after dinner dishes.  The kids each will wash the dishes two nights a week, and their dad will wash them one night a week.  Keep it Simple is my new (old) lesson to re-learn.
• Baking cannot really only be done once a week.  I had designated Mondays as "Baking Day" because it is my day off work and it seemed like it would be good to start the week off with bread and muffins, cookies and homemade granola bars.  But really we just gorged on baked goods on Monday and Tuesday, and then whatever was left went quickly stale.  So my new idea that is working out much better was to add Baking to my daily morning chores.  I get up at 6am and do: 1.  put away the dishes from the drain racks, 2. wash any dishes still dirty, 3. make coffee, 4. bake something, 5. throw a daily load of laundry in, 6. fold laundry on the drying racks, 7. hang the new wet laundry up to dry.
• We need to create more products to show what the kids are learning, I realized when I was trying to gather up samples for our end-of-year assessment through Northwest Untest.  We learned a lot, but samples to show for it were a bit weak.  The kids and I talked about it, and one idea they want to implement is to keep a daily Learning Log journal and write down what they learned at the end of each day.  That's lovely, but I think I also need to assign more reports/report-outs of some kind.
• Screen time (specifically in the form of Disney sitcoms) was creeping up to unacceptable levels.  Although I can watch those shows with my kids and think "it's no worse than what I watched as a kid", I still don't like the disrespectful way they seem to start treating me after too much exposure to that stuff.  Those shows are undermining the values that I'm trying to instill, it seems. So I re-instated the 1 Hour Limit for television/youtube/movies (not for gaming - we decided passive vs. active applied here not just whether it involves a "screen").  The limit has been really good for the kids.  They are playing with each more.  They are building things, creating, drawing, reading.  They are also demanding more of our time and attention (play this board game with me, go on a bike ride with me, etc), and I realize part of why screen time gets out of control is because I am too busy/tired and it's always easier to just let the screen hypnotize my family than it is to stay actively engaged.

Now, onto July!

Let's Organize Our Chores

You know that saying that "A man works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done"?  Well, really the work of keeping a house IS never done, and so as long as that is primarily a woman's responsibility, then it's true that a woman could just work around the clock.  The trick with so much of this domestic labor is that you do it, but in the meantime it is being undone all around you.  The dust just settles back again on to all the horizontal surfaces.  The animals continue to shed hair and fur that covers all your furniture and rugs.  Dirt finds its way onto all your floors.  Dishes - don't get me started on dishes.

And so, if I don't want to just spend all my time as a whirling dervish with cleaning tools attached to my arms, I need some way to say when Enough is Enough.

There is an old system that many housewives used to use, with different tasks on each day of the week. What appeals to me about that idea is that if the day is set aside for baking, and you've done all your baking, but you notice that there are some shirts that could be ironed and that the floor is a bit dirty, you leave those things for another day.  You are done with today's work, and tomorrow's work can just wait while you go put your feet up and read a novel.

Would this mean my house isn't as clean?  Maybe.  But it will still be Clean Enough.

And then there is another, newer, idea for managing this housework problem, namely the other people in the house should be helping!

Last week I sat down with those two ideas and wrote out the chart pictured above.  It gives a main focus to each of six days of the week:

Monday is Baking Day
Tuesday is Ironing Day
Wednesday is Mending Day
Thursday is Shopping Day
Friday is Cleaning Day
Saturday is Gardening Day

And then it also gives my kids chores as well.  Last week I was thinking that they would rotate through all the chores, but that system proved too complicated and it gave them chores they weren't quite ready for.

So this week I've simplified their chores:  they will each make dinner one night a week, help with laundry one day a week, clean their bedrooms on one day, and wash the dinner dishes on two nights each.  They also take care of our outdoor animals on all weekdays.

I have to help with the dinner cooking still, but this way they are learning. If this works, I'll gradually add in some more chores for them.

And then my work will only be Sun to Sun, as well.  Enough has got to be Enough.

Got Eggs?

So ..... I was out of town for a little more than a month.

And this happened:



Wow, I have more than a gross of eggs in my fridge!  They ran out of egg cartons and started filling tubs, and I don't know how old some of these eggs are.

Fortunately, we are taking on a "Make It All From Scratch" change to our diet.  And, also fortunately, my son is very enthusiastic about baking right now.  He made (GF) corn bread all by himself yesterday, and it was pretty good.

Dreaming of March during the February Blahs

I get the "November Blahs", and I get the "February Blahs" too.  These two months are the worst for me, and I frequently feel pretty depressed.  But soon - soon! Dear God, please make it soon! - I will be out in the garden with the sun shining on my head.

In the meantime, I'm getting a few things organized as I prepare for that day.

National Soup Month comes to an end

I had a lot of fun with soup this month.  I even bought myself a new cookbook: Soup of the Day: 365 Recipes for Every Day of the Year.  Although it is not an explicitly "eat with the seasons" book (which my other current soup cookbook, Love Soup, is), the recipes as they are arranged on the calendar pages are pretty seasonally appropriate.   And, as meat-eaters, we appreciate the meaty goodness of many (but not all) of these recipes.

However, the unfortunate circumstance of my falling at the skating rink and spraining my wrist (the family got to go to the Emergency Room and everything) left me unable to do much cooking for two weeks out of this month.  Many of the recipes I wanted to try had to wait.

So ... I'm going to claim February as a Month of Soup as well!  Or maybe this will just be a year of soup around here.  It's such good stuff, why not?

A Day in the Life of a Working Homeschool Mom

Every now and then I like to just log what a day in my life looks like.  This is not necessarily a "typical" day. (I'm not sure I have typical days). We do not have big church dinners every night - they happen about once a month.  I do have evening meetings at church at least 4 evenings every month, sometimes more.  And this day was unusual in that we skipped the kids' extracurriculars in order to make the day work, because they conflicted with the church dinner.

But this is what our life looked like yesterday, for what that is worth.



6am, my alarm goes off, but I push the snooze button.  I hear my husband up and heading out for his day, but sleep through that.

7am, I actually wake up, and realize I've missed my husband's departure for work and that my son (whose "computer day" it is) is up and on the computer already.  I get up and make some coffee, and take care of my morning routine, etc.

7:30, my daughter gets up and begins to watch some videos, my son heads out doors to take care of all our animals, and I call my mother to chat and to discuss the last four books of the Bible that we've been reading for Mother-Daughter Bible Study.

8:00, I break off my conversation with my mother so I can call and cancel a doctor's appointment.  Then I call the kids in to go over their school planner's together and decide what needed doing today.

8:15, we begin a bit of schoolwork: my son does some piano practice, then starts trying to catch up on physics lessons (we were behind because of some sick days last week).  My daughter wanted to work on an Animal Presentation we have coming up at the end of the month.  I read her a book about her animal of choice, then she began to copy out a bit she wanted to put on her poster board.

8:45, I threw a load of laundry in the washing machine, and then made some photocopies of school work to be done, and started to pack backpacks with other school work.  My kids finished their work and each took a bit of a break (one on the computer, one with an audio book to listen to).

9:00, I call them in to do one of their Drawing Labs, this one to sketch pets.

9:20, we pack the rest of our stuff up and head off to church (for work).

9:50, we arrive at church, the kids set themselves up in a classroom (building with blocks and watching a documentary about the space race on netflix) while I get to work at my desk, mostly cleaning up from Sunday and recording attendance numbers, also calling people back who left messages and sending reminder messages to my childcare team for the evening.

11:00, an appointment arrives to talk to me.

11:40, I am done with my appointment, gather up the kids, and head out to get some lunch.

11:50, we order our sandwiches at a local shop that uses gluten-free bread.  I spend the waiting time reading Growing Souls, a book I'm reading for work, while the kids occupy themselves drawing on napkins and chatting with each other about space travel.

12:15, we get our sandwiches and leave, also picking up my husband's drycleaning from the shop next door.

12:30, it's back to work, eating my sandwich at my desk while I work on writing up a report and a lesson plan, and the kids watch a DVD on the TV in the corner of my office while they ate their sandwiches.

1:15, my kids head off to a classroom (where they do some of the homework I packed in their backpacks and also just play with some wooden blocks and plastic animals), and I have a meeting with our minister.

1:30, I get back to my desk and get to work sending emails to prep all the teaching and volunteer teams for the coming Sunday and attend to other little admin tasks.

3:00, I gather up the kids again and head back home to let my dogs out of their crates.

3:15, we stop at the library to drop off books and pick up those that have come in on hold.

3:45, back home.  Quick care of animals, then my son got on the computer (it's his computer day, we alternate).  My daughter watched a science DVD I had assigned, then did violin practice.  While she was watching the DVD, I quickly wrote my weekly email to church parents from my home desk.

4:15, I called both kids in to do a spanish lesson (on DVD) while I folded laundry off the drying rack and hung up wet laundry to dry.

5:00, I supervised the kids doing some chores: washing dishes, taking out the trash, tidying up.

5:15, we left to head back to church.  We listen to our current audiobook, The One and Only Ivan, in the car.

5:45, arrived, I did some work at my desk (writing up a Parent Info sheet for our upcoming OWL class)

6:00, a community night dinner began at church.  The kids and I got food, they headed off to the nursery to eat in there and play with their friends, while I joined a table of congregants and chatted.

7:00, the educational program for the evening begins.  The Pastoral Care team arranged for a guest speaker on Disaster Preparedness, and two volunteers have also designed a kids program about it.  My kids got to do the kids program, but I unfortunately had to head into a Program Council meeting instead of learning all the things I should be doing at home for Disaster Prep.  The kids will have to tell me what we're doing wrong.

7:50, there is a break in the meeting I am attending, which fortuitously coincides with the end of the children's program so I am able to thank the two volunteers, check in with my nursery staff, and help my kids transition to independent hanging out time in my office.  They had my laptop from home, so they watched another episode of the NASA space race documentary series.  I also take some time to help someone who popped into church hoping to figure out how to use the church laptop for a presentation she is doing on Saturday.

9:15 The meeting runs late, so it's pretty late when I can finally tell the kids to pack up.  We listen to our current audiobook, The One and Only Ivan, in the car on the way home.

9:45 We get home.  My husband has spent the evening alone as a chance to catch up some work at his computer.  The kids say they are still hungry, so we feed them some leftover soup, then they have to do their evening chores and routine.

10:15 The kids are in bed, my husband and I chat a bit, then put on an episode of Dexter.  I set up my laptop on my lap and write up the draft of my Take Home email that goes out after the Sunday lessons with extension questions and suggestions.

11:15 My husband heads to bed.  I start writing this blog post, but give up and go to sleep about midnight.

And that's a wrap!

In My Kitchen: National Soup Month

My husband and I have arrived at a way of sharing the duties of cooking dinner - he cooks the dinner twice a week, always the same thing (Taco Tuesday and Spaghetti Thursday).  It's predictable, easy, and the kids like it.

We also have a regular weekly family dinner at my in-law's, which is also predictable, tasty, and my kids like it.

So I'm left with only four dinners a week to figure out (and breakfast is when I use processed foods - cereal and toast - and lunch is usually left over dinners), which feels like a big reduction in my food planning job.  And yet, I get easily bored with the same food over and over again, so I still need to work out a varied plan of different foods.

This month I hit upon a theme, and so far having a theme is making the whole dinner thing even more fun.  January is National Soup Month, so my theme is just that - Soup! My goal is to cook a different soup recipe for each of my dinners.  So far I've done Rustic Potato Leek (from here), turkey (I made that one up and used our own turkey we raised), Squash and Apple (I had that recipe in an old magazine), and slowcooker Hungarian Beef Stew (from here).

It makes cooking dinner a project, and an experiment, and maybe we love some of the recipes and don't like some of the others, but we just move on to the next one and I don't need to stress any one dinner too much.  I like this.

But February isn't looking as easy.  National Canned Food month?  Or Cherry month?  Or Grapefruit month?  Obviously we can't eat cherries or grapefruit for dinner all month.  And Canned Food all month sounds gross.  So .... ideas for a dinner theme in February?

Some more critters for us!

Christmas came early for my kids and two lucky critters rescued from the animal shelter.  My mom knew the kids were wanting a guinea pig and a rabbit, and then she got a message from her local animal shelter that they had maxed out capacity on small animals.  Each pet came with a cage, and she delivered them as an early surprise.

Meet OMSI (named after the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) the guinea pig and Quicksand the rabbit.



We got books from the library on their care, and both kids are studying up on how to be good pet owners!

In my Kitchen this week

As we continue to eat seasonally, this week has been busy with making dehydrated apple chips from the apples I harvested (we don't really know all the varieties we have).  I was gifted a very nice dehydrator for Christmas last year, but this is really the first crop I've had enough to dry some of it.



I have about 6 of these that I grew this year, and then I was also handed a bag of already peeled and chopped sugar pumpkin that was left-over from a church dinner.  So, it's time to bake with pumpkin!



My kids requested pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling, and so I made a double batch this weekend, and then froze half of the muffins for later.  I had enough left-over pumpkin puree to end up freezing some of it too, so there is plenty more pumpkin in our dietary near future.

Going with the seasons and mostly cooking what needs using up right now. :)

In My Kitchen Right Now

Homemade yogurt from milk we got from our next door neighbor's goats.  Sadly, it turns out I am the only one in the family who likes the taste of it, so I'm eating homemade yogurt with granola and homemade strawberry syrup for breakfast every day for a while, I guess.




Pears I harvested from a tree that was completely hidden by the blackberry bramble in the back field.  I worked hard to cut back blackberries, harvest the pears, and now I'm not sure what to do with them.  The kids don't like the taste of them as a raw snack .... Thinking we might make pear cider or maybe I'll make a pear crisp.

A walk around my home and garden

Fall is definitely here, but we are still enjoying the outdoors.  My husband has been finishing up projects that have been on "the list" for a long time, such as the pergola here.  I'm ready for our northwest rain to start up again, but these crisp fall days are lovely while they last.

The Pickling

Another year's pickles!  I made 25 jars, so we can eat about two jars a month. :)

Small Victories

 Sometimes the trick is to break life down into small bites. An overstuffed linen closet is frustrating because you can never find the right sized sheets for the various beds in your household? It took me 30 minutes to pull all the sheets out and sort them and decide which to donate so the closet isn't so full. Some bags I already had lying around served to hold all the queen sheets in one bag, double sheets in another, twin in a third, and pillow cases in a fourth.

  

Or maybe it's the office at work that is dirty, cluttered, and driving you crazy?



A good use of summer slow down time at church is to clean that office all up!



They were actually small investments of energy in the big picture, but I am feeling so relieved and happy with these little victories.

Summer Days at Home

Untidy patio "Before"





 Simple reorganization and clean up, patio "After":

ack! how did it get so dirty in here? Kids - get the vacuum!

OK - I am overwhelmed.  I'm working major overtime, my husband has had to leave unexpectedly for a family emergency, and there are too many domestic responsibilities on my shoulders.

Good thing I have kids.




No, I'm being serious.  Sure, they are their own bundle of needs and responsibilities.  My life might be easier and more recreational if I hadn't had them.

But they are getting to the age of being helpful.  They can actually do chores.  They notice when I'm sad or upset and they try to do nice things for me.  They can be fun to hang out with.  They remind me to have fun.

We'll get through this.  Like my mother used to say to me: "many hands make light labor", and "you just do what you have to do".  Also, "family means helping".  Indeed it does.

A Walk Around My Home Today

In my kitchen right now, it's cherry pitting time.  My cherry tree has been pretty productive this year.  Keeping up with picking and pitting doesn't leave me any time to cook them, so I'm just freezing them for now.




The right tools really do help.




For frugal reasons, I resisted the urge to buy any hanging baskets this year, and instead took the old ones and replanted them with nasturtium seeds (left over from last year, no less).  It's finally actually looking nice.




There's just something I like about red geraniums in my window boxes.  This box may not last the season out, however - time for some TLC to that wood!




The south side of the house was planted with some nice roses, and that is where we put my hot tub when we moved in.  They are lovely to look at from the tub!







The turkeys are getting big.




The pea plants are past their prime for the year, so I wish I had taken a photo of this a couple weeks ago, but this was our funniest garden set up this year: an old tub we found out in the back field, an old bicycle wheel also from the back field, then my husband was given some old metal fencing and took it apart and rebuilt it into a trellis.  Reuse!




My experiments with straw bale gardening are seeing some small success, after a truly awful start (slugs, death, blech).




 I might actually get tomatoes this year, if the warm weather holds up.

 

And it shows signs of being another good year for our apple harvest.

A Stroll Through Home and Garden this Morning

Last night was too hot to sleep in upstairs bedrooms, so this is what the floor of my living room looked like this morning.




My church had an Art Sale yesterday, and I am loving the piece I bought from a young college student artist who is a member of my church.  This picture doesn't give you the sense of scale, but it looks really cool on the wall.  We will have to get it framed, though.

And then there is the garden: