Pinterest Inspired Dinner and Dessert

Let me preface this post by saying that *normally* I meal plan by the month, so that I don't have to worry about it being 3pm and I still have no idea what to make for dinner.  But I've gotten a bit off track with the pregnancy and getting ready to move, so meal planning has taken a bit of a backseat.  Every once in a while when I'm not feeling inspired, I turn to Pinterest to find something that sounds good.  I've made this recipe before and everyone loves it.  I just throw four chicken breasts, a can of corn, a can of black beans, a can of Rotel (or diced tomatoes), and a whole block of cream cheese into the Crockpot with cumin, garlic, and onion powders and let it cook for six hours on low.  I shred the chicken and let it cook for another 15-30 minutes.

 

I served it over brown rice with all the burrito fixin's:  tortillas, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, and sour cream.  Yummy and filling!

 

For dessert, I had some grapes and bananas that were getting towards the end of their useful life, so I decided to make a fruit salsa and cinnamon-sugar tortilla chips, which I also found on Pinterest.  I diced up some grapes, strawberries, bananas, and a pear and added three tbsp. of homemade strawberry jam to make the salsa.  For the tortillas, I cut the tortillas with a pizza cutter into fourths and brushed melted butter across them.  I then sprinkled cinnamon sugar across the tops and baked them at 350 for about 8 minutes.  They were delicious and the kids loved them!

 

A yummy dessert using ingredients I already had on hand.

 

Pinterest recipe link for chicken here and dessert here.

Mother's Day 2015 - Park Evening

After we left church on Mother's Day, we went out for lunch at Applebee's and then went home and the boys laid down for a nap while I finished up some homework.  Taylor and Daddy bought me some beautiful roses, a Mother's Day card, and some Twizzlers, yum! :)

It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to grab a pizza for dinner and have a picnic at the park.  We all had a blast.  Everybody got in on the action, even Daddy!

Taylor helping her brother! Proof that it does happen occasionally! :)

Mase munching on a breadstick

Daddy and Hunter racing across the lily pads.

Mason trying to figure out how to get down, lol!

Miss Paisley and I relaxing on the bench.

 

This was right before Mase decided he wanted off and almost flew into the mulch, lol.

Tay and Hunter swinging like a crab.

Whee!!

We saw this cool flower; I have no idea what kind it is, but it was beautiful!

 

We drove home with the windows down and enjoyed the sun going down.  I couldn't have asked for a better Mother's Day!  I even got a back massage, which is a little slice of heaven for this pregnant mama!  :)  

 

Mother's Day 2015 - Taylor's Baptism

Mother's Day this year was fantastic!  A few weeks ago, Taylor accepted Jesus as her Savior and the church was able to schedule her baptism for Mother's Day morning!  She was so excited. (I have to admit, I was excited too!)

I love that she was looking out into the audience to find her Daddy and brother!

 

Pastor Carl was asking her if she had asked Jesus to save her and she was saying, "Yes, sir."

 

Buried with Him through Baptism...

Raised to walk in newness of Life!

 



So proud of my little girl's decision!  My momma heart thought it was about to burst at this point and the tears started overflowing!  I helped her get her robe off and wrapped her in a towel and when we got to the changing room, I gave her the biggest hug I could muster. 

 

I pray that Marcus and I will be able to guide her in her walk with Christ and train her to be His servant and love Him with all of her being!  The weight of this responsibility is so humbling, but one that we know God has equipped us to do through Him!

Almost finished!

Monday started week five of my eight-week classes.  I have these three classes left and I will be completely finished with my Bachelor's Degree in Accounting!  It has been a loooong few years of taking two classes at a time, but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

 



Hard to believe that in a little over three weeks, I won't have any more papers to write or homework to do or forums to write and respond to.  Honestly, I am looking forward to the break.  I have missed being able to spend time with Marcus after the kids go to bed because we've both been working on our assignments or having to plan activities around who has homework due that night.  Of course, he'll still be taking classes after I finish, so maybe I'll finally get the opportunity to catch up on some reading that I've been putting off for far too long. 

 

The next question is when do I want to start working on my Master's?  I need a break, especially with a new baby and unpacking from the move and a new school year for the kids starting this fall.  I'm ambitious, but I'm not foolish!  I am leaning towards starting in January and only taking one class at a time.  If I finish before my GI Bill runs out, great.  If not, we can pay for the remaining credits out of pocket.  I can't let my brother-in-law be the only one in the family with an MBA!! :-)

 

2015-2016 Curriculum

As I said in my last post, we are going with the Classical Conversations at home method this upcoming school year.  Which means that the foundation of our school will be, ironically, the Foundations guide from CC and the audio CDs of the memory work.  

One of the biggest decisions we had to make this year was whether to formally classify Hunter as Kindergarten or whether to hold him back until next year.  His 5th birthday is ON September 1st, which is the cutoff, so we could have gone either way with him.  I leaned towards holding him back a year at first because, like most little boys, he has the hardest time sitting still and tends to fidget all. the. time.  But since we are not going to enroll them in a CC community until the 2016-17 school year and he'll be 6, I think we will be able to train him to sit still long enough for the lessons.  My other reason for going ahead with Kindergarten for him is because this child has an amazing memory.  This has really become evident with AWANA this year.  He has no problem memorizing his Scriptures and even some of his sister's!  Any song that comes on the radio he can sing the words to and we have an audio book of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas that he can recite all the words to from memory.  So since the CC memory work will be our main focus, I think that it will be perfect for him.

Our Bible study starting out will be Who Is God? And How Can I Know Him? by Apologia.  I've read several very good reviews of it and this year I want to do a family study instead of one that is segregated by grade-level.

For math, we will be sticking with Saxon.  It has worked well for us this year and so far the kids have enjoyed it.  I will be using Level 1 for Taylor and repeating the Kindergarten book for Hunter.  He sat at the table with us when we did the activities for Taylor and seemed to really enjoy them.  I want to reinforce the ideas that he picked up on this year before we move on to new material for him.

For English/Reading, we will be using First Language Lessons for The Well-Trained Mind, Level 1.  This is another one of those that I've heard good recommendations for, so we are going to try it out.  I still have Explode the Code that we used this year and I will probably have Hunter go through it again before moving on to FLL the following year. 

I debated back and forth between Story of the World and Mystery of History for a while, but I think we are going to go with Mystery of History this year.  The deciding factor for me was that it is more Biblically-centered than SOTW.  My only concern is that I've read reviews that it may be geared more towards older elementary school students.  Of course, if we try it and end up not liking it, we can always change it!

As a supplement to CC science, I am going to get Science in the Beginning by Dr. Jay Wile.  I like that this science book is geared towards younger elementary students and that there are simple experiments with household items for each lesson.  The other great thing about this book and the subsequent ones is they explore science following the timeline of history.  It helps that we are starting with Cycle 1 in CC this year, so we will be learning our history and our science starting with Creation.

If that didn't seem like enough to keep us super busy throughout the year, I would like to throw in a few lessons on fine arts and classical music.  I would love to get both kids into music lessons, but they also want to do soccer and baseball and I know I've got to draw the line somewhere!  I keep having to remind myself that we will have a newborn when school starts as well and I'll probably be running on very little sleep for a while!

To organize all this and help keep me sane, I will be using The Well-Planned Day planner again.  I have loved how it has room for everything for the kids' school (and mine!), including my dinner menu for the week and shopping lists.  It suits my Type A personality very well.  In fact, I hinted to Marcus the other night that my current planner expires in June, so I'll be needing a new one soon! :-)

I know that I am overextending myself, but honestly, I'd rather schedule too much and not get it all done than to schedule too little and then be scrounging for things to add mid-year.  So we're shooting for the stars! :-)

Our first year homeschooling

Ever since I read The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, I have been intrigued by the idea of a classical education.  I felt like this was the kind of education I wish I had when I was growing up.  Then, a couple of years ago, when we were exploring the idea of homeschooling, Taylor and I got the opportunity to visit a Classical Conversations program and observe the way that it worked.  I was amazed at the things that these kids had memorized!  They remembered more about Latin than I did after three years of AP Latin in high school!  I knew this was something that I wanted to explore in more detail and seriously consider for our family.  We didn't jump into a CC community immediately because I was still working at the time and would not be able to homeschool exclusively until the following October. 

Fast forward to the present and we are finished with Kindergarten with Taylor, which was definitely an eye-opening experience.  I, like every newcomer I'm sure, was overwhelmed with curriculum choices, and I ended up going with a few different ones that were recommended by fellow homeschooling moms.  We had success with some and others didn't fit our family very well, but I now have a little bit more knowledge about what to look for next year. 

We took a VERY relaxed approach this year because I was still working until October and then in December we found out we were expecting Paisley and then the horrid morning sickness began and I was in and out of the hospital a couple of times.  In January, we decided that we wanted to move to Boise to be near family and from that point forward, it has been a whirlwind of looking for jobs and selling our house(s) and taking care of ALL of the myriad of details that come with moving across the country.  We definitely practice reading with Tay and try and incorporate math wherever we can, but we stopped sitting around the dining room table with our workbooks a while ago.

Next year, however, Taylor will be in first grade and Hunter will be starting kindergarten, so I plan on a more focused approach.  During the school year, I actually looked forward to the days where we did our chores and then sat around the table with our lessons because it gave our days more structure.  On days we don't "do school" it seems like there is more whining, more complaining, and more asking to watch a movie or a TV show every 5 minutes., which is a surefire way to a cranky mommy by the end of the day.

So as we look forward to the upcoming year, I have decided to focus on the classical education that is offered in Classical Conversations, but we will be doing it at home.  I always tend to be overly ambitious, but I decided that trying to get to class every week with a newborn might be too much, too soon.  So we will work on the CC memory work at home and then jump in the following year with a CC community.  I am in the process of nailing down the rest of the curriculum that we'll be using next year because somehow I have a hunch that if I wait until August to get everything figured out, a certain little girl might make things a bit difficult on me! ;-)

25 Weeks and the Packing Begins

Another week down!  It seems like time is moving really fast this pregnancy.  Maybe it's just because of everything we've got going on with the move, and Marcus traveling back and forth to Boise, and everyday life raising three rambunctious kiddos!

I felt super big this week and I haven't been sleeping as well because my feet and hips have been hurting when I lay down.  We finally started packing up the stuff that we're not using between now and our move day, so we've been doing a lot more physical work than I am used to.  We got the shed cleaned out and organized on Monday and yesterday we tackled the kitchen and my craft supplies.

Today was errand day, so we didn't get anything packed up, but we took several returns back to various stores and ended up with over $100 in gift cards!  Definite score!  Those will come in very handy after we move. 

It has been wonderful not having to rush around and get everything boxed up fast.  We've been able to take our time and organize things into the rooms that they're going into when we get to the new house.  We even bought different colored tapes so we can see quickly which boxes go where.  I am trying to keep this move as low stress as possible.  It is going to be hard enough trying to unpack at 30+ weeks pregnant and getting everything ready for new baby and the kids' new school year and Marcus's new job!  We will have a lot going on within such a short period that we absolutely must simplify as much as possible!

I'm also looking forward to being able to bribe family to come over and watch the kids while Marcus and I unpack.  It's kinda hard to get things done when you have to stop and break up fights every 15 minutes! :)