Garden Chat

The uninvited Morning Glories.

Now that it's late August and I've cleared out some of the old crops and planted cold weather loving plants I begin to think there is not much to do in the garden.  I need to remember all of the crops that are still out there and will be harvested soon- green beans, winter squash, corn, melons, tomatoes and peppers.  I may not have to spend as much time working each day but I still need to visit the garden to keep an eye out for squash bugs and tomato horn worms.  I also need to make the most of the work I have already done by harvesting and using garden produce on time.

I can feel the cooler weather of fall and see the changing leaves and now I'm more motivated to get out in the sun to soak it up while I can.  I need to water every other day if it doesn't rain to keep the seed beds moist so we will have cabbage, lettuce, carrots, kale, beets, spinach and chard to eat in the next few months.  As soon as the corn and squash are finished producing I will plant Asian greens in the raised beds.  I'm looking forward to experimenting with them in the cooler weather. 

I have a to-do list started of things which need to be finished before the first frost.  One job will be to build a cold frame out of hay bales covered with plastic to keep the perennials I potted up a month ago.  I need to separate and pot up some pincushion flowers also.  I will have to water the pots occasionally during the winter so I will need to find a spot near the house water faucet as our garden well gets too cold to use in late December or January. 

Every day I wander through the garden looking for seedlings.  I've noticed lettuce so far.  I hope to see cabbage, kale and swiss chard next week.  There are a lot of morning glory seedlings where I planted the cabbage and I will need to pull them out soon.  I hope they don't take any baby cabbages with them when I pull them out.  I might have to just cut them off at the ground instead. 

Are you planning any fall and winter crops this year?  What's going on in your garden?

The Christian Home Magazine

Cool and Free Tools For Learning

I kept track of the computer tools I used over the last two weeks so I could share them with you.  I hope you find something new and useful!

Faith Comes By Hearing- free audio Bible in many languages.  We are trying out Latin

Bible.is- free app from Faith Comes By Hearing so we can listen to the Bible from my ipod during breakfast or lunch.

Pandora- free internet radio on which you can listen to Classical, Gregorian Chants, or any other music you can think of.  They also have a family, comedy, back to school and workout stations.

Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop-  She has a bunch of printable games you can use in your homeschool.  I'm going to try some of the Latin games on my children.  She also has games and activities for Science, Art, History, English, Math, Language Arts and French.

Khan Academy- Free math help.  I've been having my middle students work on Khan Academy in the evenings in addition to their regular work.  They enjoy working on the computer.

Have you found any new goodies lately?

A Time To Graze

There's nothing like fresh grass for a guinea pig.

They also get fresh veggies from the garden.

It's a pig's life!

Tuesday Tales- Jacob

My second son, Jacob, was born in the hospital on Camp Pendleton just 17 months after Caleb while his father, a Marine, was on his way home from a WestPac.  He came out crying and shocked everyone by being 10' 2"!  None of the doctors or midwifes I had seen before his birth thought he would be over 7 and a half pounds.  He was a very unhappy baby for the first two months of his life.  I think he had colic although his pediatrician said he was lacking an hour or two of crying a day.  My husband returned home when Jacob was 5 weeks old and got him sleeping through the night and then he became a happier baby.

Jacob and Caleb

Caleb adored his little brother from the moment he met him and they were partners in crime as soon as Jacob started crawling.  We have lots of stories about the things those two did.  The younger children love to hear about their crazy antics.

Jacob and his little brother Isaac.  We called him the baby whisperer because he could calm babies and get them to sleep.

Jacob was my youngest baby to speak at 9 months and he was using sentences of a few words just after his first birthday.  He learned to walk at 10 months but his younger sister beat his record by walking at 9.5 months.  He was always big and strong and is my tallest son(so far) at 6'3" or more.  I have to ask him to make sure and he just left for work, so...

Jacob always loved learning about animals and one of his favorite things to do was to catch bugs, snakes, and small mammals to show me.  He rescued a few animals as he grew up and lost a few too. 

Jacob's High School photo.

Jacob is one of the bravest young people I know.  He faced something a few months ago that would have sent me to bed for a month in order not to deal with it and has not let it stop him for a minute!  He inspires me and makes me appreciate just how fragile life is.  Every moment we have in this life and with our children is a gift!

Our Homeschool Day in Photos

Here is a day in our life for the summer session of school.

The children eat breakfast and hopefully I remember to turn on some Gregorian Chants during their meal.  After breakfast they get to work on everything they can do independently- math, handwriting, essay/copywork and quiet reading.  Then we take a break to work in the garden(well, I work, anyway) from 9-10.

 

After garden time they finish their independent work, I read aloud to them, and work on phonics with the little boys.  My older students have finished their writing books until September or we would add that in before lunch.  If we have extra time we get our Latin lesson finished.  Some days they have an art lesson or science lesson to work on.

Excuse his haircut.  He found the clippers in the bathroom one morning.

The girls drew pictures while I read aloud.

Then it is lunch break.  I'm try to play the Bible in Latin during lunch to help immerse us into our language study.  After lunch the children get to play outside until 1:30.  I get to sit at the table and read or catch up on the laundry or other chores.

After lunch my students practice math facts with flash cards, read quietly and listen to me read.  If we haven't finished any of our other work for the day we do it before 2:30.

Rosie spends the morning outside until her energy is used up and then she naps while we finish our work.

Our current read-alouds.  I read aloud for about 40 minutes a day.  You can read a lot in that amount of time.  The little boys have their own pile of books for read aloud time.

After school we all take a rest time from 2:30-3:30.  I do yoga and then take a nap.  The children work on crafts, play outside or watch something educational on Netflix.

Then it is chore time and free time until someone needs to start dinner.

My 9th grade student makes his own schedule and works in the living room during the day.  He does join us for meal times and comes in to harass his younger siblings a few times each day.

After dinner the children work with dad on any math problems they had in the morning and sometimes we'll have another session of quiet reading.

And that is how our day flows most of the time.

I'm linking up for the Not Back-To-School Blog Hop at iHomeschool Network.

Fit Mommy- Squash Chips Recipe for GAPS, SCD, Or Low Carb Diet and 9 Week Prego Report

As promised here is my squash chips recipe with lots of photos.  These are perfect if you are cutting carbs and looking for a potato chip replacement or just a more interesting way of eating squash. 

Summer Squash Chips

Zucchini or yellow squash
Olive oil
Sea salt or real salt
Apple cider vinegar

Tools

Food dryer
Mandolin slicer
Large bowl

Slice the squash into a bowl with the smallest setting on your mandolin.  After you have sliced about half the squash sprinkle with salt, vinegar, and olive oil.  I use up to about a tablespoon of vinegar and olive oil for the whole batch.  I just sprinkle the salt to taste.

Now comes the hard part, lay out all of the slices on the drying racks.  It reminds me of dealing cards, lots of cards.

Set the dryer at about 150 for the first hour.  If your dryer doesn't have a heat setting just turn in on and wait for the slices to dry.

After the first hour I turn the dryer down to 135.  Depending on how many racks I am drying it takes 4-8 hours for the chips to be finished.

After they are dry I store the chips in a Ziploc in the fridge.  These are great when I'm craving something crunchy.  On the Specific Carb Diet eating mushy veggies gets boring so these chips help to break up the monotony of well cooked veggies until you can eat more raw foods.

Now to the fit report.  I feel good, my tummy is staying small enough for me to wear most of my clothes and I am tolerating new foods well.  I actually lost .6 of a pound, bringing my total weight gain to 3.6 pounds for 9 weeks.

Earlier this week my tummy started to hurt and I realized that I wasn't doing my diastasis exercises(Tupler Technique) with as much focus and work as I should.  That day and the next I worked really hard when I did my exercises and now my tummy pain has gone away except for when I roll over in bed at night.  I also lost half an inch from my abs.  My focus will be on wearing my splint for part of each day and when I exercise and being very careful to hold my muscles tight when I do anything that can stress the abs.  It is worth it not to have the pain and I know my tummy will shrink faster after the baby is born.

How did you do this week?

I'm linking up at Tea Time With Annie Kate for Fit Mommy Friday.

Top 10 Reasons I Garden

Here are my Top Ten Reasons to Garden.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

1. Gardening is good exercise.

2. It helps me deal with daily stress.

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russel Baker

3. I create living art with flowers.

4. Our food budget is less during the summer and our food quality is better.

The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow. ~Author Unknown

5. My children learn about nature, responsibility and being helpful.

6. It brings God's beauty to us.

A man's children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season. ~Author Unknown

7. I have something to hope for in the winter when the world is cold and dreary.

8. I love to design new garden scenes and rework the ones I have already created.

The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days. ~Robert Leighton

9. There is a new challenge to overcome each year in the garden.

10. Gardening is a dream come true.  I watched my mom garden when I was a child and longed for the day I would have my own piece of land to take care of.

Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes. ~Author Unknown

What is your favorite reason to garden?

A Christian Home Magazine

The Craft Drawer

What do you do with your children during their free time to keep them out of trouble?  I needed an hour to exercise and rest each afternoon and my children are all too old to nap.  We occasionally have a quiet time but since I would be in my room with the door closed I knew that could quickly turn to noisy chaos.  So we turned to productive pursuits instead.  I have a variety of crafts available for the children to do on their own.

Most of our supplies are kept in a drawer in my school desk.  The girls can also choose to crochet and we have a wood burner which my 10 year old boy is learning to use.  They also like to work on puzzles or draw.  One new favorite is color pencil by number.  That keeps them busy for a  week or two.  We tried paint by number kits but they prefer the color pencil kits.

The little boys can play quietly with toys, play-dough, color, or work with their older siblings.  Right now, while the weather is still nice, they enjoy playing outside.  I'll have to come up with some more options for them when it is too cold to play outside. 

Sometimes I let them watch an educational movie from the library or netflix if they have had a good school day. 

How do you keep your youngsters busy and out of trouble?

When Life Gives You

lots of grapes, make raisins!

I gave the children directions and they made the rasins on their own. 

We have a quart of golden raisins saved to use later. The purple grapes didn't dry well so we gave up on them. Good thing they only tried one tray of purple grapes so there wasn't much waste.

A Little Backwards

This is the oldest photo I have of him on my computer.  I was not having a good time fighting the scanner so I gave up.

Jarred and I were married in May of 1992.  We were both very young, he was 19 and I was 18.  We were also expecting our first baby.  I did things a little backwards.  I got pregnant, married and then graduated from High School.  While many of my fellow classmates were heading off to college I was bringing my first baby into the world. 

How and why did this happen when I was raised in the Lutheran church and even went to a private Christian school until Jr. High?  I'm not sure.  I will say I was in rebellion from the age of 13 or 14 and each year I grew worse and more determined to have my way. 

I do not in any way regret getting married and becoming a mom at the age of 18.  I knew that was the right thing to do with the situation I found myself in.  My husband and I have been honest with our children about how we started out and I tell Caleb that he saved me from the crazy path I was on before I became pregnant with him. 

Sometimes I cannot believe the gift God gave to use through Caleb.  He is a strong, determined young man who loves God.  He's not afraid to take a stand for what is right.  I'm proud of him and I know without God in our lives things would have turned out differently. 

We did not become Christians until around 1995 and after we already had two children.  It still amazes me that God turned our lives around from the moment we were married and then waited for us to seek Him.