Lack of blogging

I definitely don't blog much and reading some early posts don't really talk about food and or recipes much, either. What can I say? I'm a busy stay-at-home-mom and housewife and homeschool teacher. The words "free time" aren't in my vocabulary, at least right now. I admit this summer I have had some free time but I managed to spend it painting our laundry room a different color. It took longer than I'd hoped, but it's finally finished. Kevin took a week off the week of my birthday and that was nice. He was sick early on but was feeling okay by mid-week. We ate really well that week. Pizza, quiche, TX Roadhouse, Village Inn, Cracker Barrel. We went to Garden of the Gods which was fun albeit very hot. We didn't stay long but decided to go back when it's cooler. Kevin redid our patio and it looks so much better now. We do plan to paint the exterior of the house in October. It's due and we want a different color, so it works out. We start back to school on September 3rd. I need to start looking at our first month in the next couple of weeks. We plan to see the balloon lift off on the 31st and then head up to Denver for the remaining weekend. We'll head back home on Labor Day. Our last summer adventure. Avery will camp at Camp Bow Wow. :)

For now we're just enjoying the rest of summer before autumn begins and all the hectic goings on begin, Halloween, Thanksgiving etc. We're also eagerly although cautiously awaiting college football season to begin.

Here's hoping you all are enjoying the remaining part of your summer.

It is June 18th and I cannot believe I have not blogged since April! Have I/we been that busy? I'm not sure I recall May in any great detail. There was Memorial Day weekend of course, that was nice. We smoked some beef and pork and grilled some dogs and burgers and I made homemade ice cream and key lime pie.

After finally deciding on A Beka for 7th-12th grade for Jason and after doing 3ish weeks of 6th grade(from them)it crossed my mind that he needed to get on the A Beka schedule. They begin right around Labor Day and end right before Memorial Day. We certainly are not used to this as we've been taking July off, December off, plus a week for Thanksgiving and a week in March. We are taking the entire summer off. We will start back up when they do the beginning of September. We will have most of Thanksgiving week off as they have it off and two weeks for Christmas and then a week in the spring.

Speaking of summer vacation, it's been nice, really nice in most ways. I am finished putting primer in the downstairs laundry room/bathroom and am ready to start painting. Once I'm done in there I hope to tackle our front room. Not changing it's color, really, just touching up and redoing the border. I've finished a book and started another which is nice. Jason just finished book 3 of the Harry Potter series and is starting book 4. We're sleeping til 8:00ish which is wonderful! I think Avery enjoys having more attention and having me not tell her no, we're in the middle of school right now.

Pretty sure everyone knows of the fire/fires going on in our state. Thankfully one is 100% contained and the one in our back yard so to speak is at 85% containment.

Hopefully we will be going to Larkspur one weekend soon to check out the festival there. July 4th is of course coming up as well and we have tickets to a ballgame. We do plan to make it up to the Denver Zoo one Saturday as well. No plans for any major events, such as travel. Just things inside our state this year.

Now it's time for some afternoon reading. I choose to pretend that there is no laundry to be done....:)

Sore throats and cold wind....

We woke up this morning still not feeling well. Kevin actually woke up around 5:00/5:30 after being up til midnight. Yucky coughs tend to not be condusive to sleep. We've added low grade fever to the mix today as well. We decided to stay home from church today and rest and try to recover from whatever it is we have. I decided to try mixing up a few various slush recipes to get a single serving recipe that would be pts friendly and possibly help soothe a burning throat. It wasn't the best idea I've ever had, although it wasn't bad, wasn't terribly high pts and did feel alright on my throat. If I copy it down here, I'll have it in two places so that hopefully I won't lose it. :)

Strawberry-banana slush:

1/2 cup(it was actually that  plus maybe 2TBS)chopped strawberries
1/3 of a banana(I put it in the freezer for half an hour to get really cold)
1TBS Country Time Pink Lemonade powder(I really could have used 1/2TBS)
enough ice to make it slushy material. Blend in blender til well, slushy.
2TBS water

If you had frozen berries and froze the banana, you would most likely need no ice but would want the water still. I am going to try a TBS of honey, I *think* next time and also play around with the fruit. Pineapple would be great with strawberries. I plan to use watermelon and strawberries, another combo taste I like. Yes, strawberries are my all time favorite fruit. :)

Just trying out various color schemes for the blog. Not a lot going on to speak of in the CO Lidh home this evening. It is Kevin's birthday and I made him yummy cupcakes from skinnytaste.com. Pineapple bliss cupcakes and they are actually pretty good. Well, if you like pineapple that is seeing how there is a 20oz crushed can in the cake part and 1/2 cup in the icing. :) He liked them and that really is all that matters, although I will mention that both Michael & Jason appeared to like them as well. :) He wanted steak so I had purchased some bacon wrapped filets to grill. Unfortunately the day became a bit too breezy to grill so we ordered online and picked up from Outback. He got an iPad mini for his birthday.

He and I both have some sort of sore throat/cough kinda thing going on which has made us both tired and not totally feeling the whole birthday thing, but he had a good day so I'm happy about that.

I can't believe that I will be starting 6th grade officially with Jason on Monday morning. I'm pretty excited about it, not gonna lie. I'm hoping he is at least *some*what excited. :) I've been looking through all the books and seeing what we'll be covering the first month or so. I suppose he is a tad excited though because he's starting in April and his peers in public school won't start until the 2nd week of August. We'll be 3 months into it at that point(we take the month of July off).

Avery amuses me greatly with her boyfriend, Blackjack next door. Actually, he amuses me, too. If he goes out and she isn't out he'll run to the fence between our homes and bark toward our house. :) She will find us and wimper and whine and run around until we let her out back. Then they run up and down the fence growling and barking at each other. Silly puppies.

We were hoping to spend Memorial Day weekend in Boulder but it is looking like we probably aren't. The hotels with availability are either crazy, stupid expensive, or look like places you would rather not stay. It is a popular and very busy weekend there. I really should have planned earlier on going and made reservations then. Live and learn, right?

And while it is only 8:30, I didn't sleep all that great last night, neither did Kevin, so coupled with not feeling well today, it's about time to hit dreamland.

Life lately according to our life. :)

It is so hard to believe that it is March already. I truly don't know what happened to January or February and in fact I am not totally convinced they even happened! February was a fairly relaxed and easy going month for us. We celebrated Michael's 21st(WHAT!?) birthday on the 6th. Chocolate cake and Red Lobster. Kevin and I had an overnight date night on the 14th, our first since our anniversary last year. We really enjoyed dinner and walking in the cold and snow with no constant interuptions from a very talkative young man named Jason.

Now March is here and that means loads of birthdays. Uncle Pat, Papa Tom, Grandpa, Chris, and Jason. Whew. The 14th of course is a shared birthday between Chris and Jason. Still amazes people when we tell them that we had two boys born on March 14th, 14 years apart. :) Jason will be 11 this week and if Michael turning 21 wasn't enough, Chris is turning 25. 25! I will have a 25 year old son. Did I mention he's turning 25? ;)

I am spending this month reviewing mostly what we've learned in 5th grade as next month we're heading into middle school. Hard to believe Jason was in 2nd grade when we started and April 1st he begins 6th grade. Wow. Crazy wow.

Speaking of birthdays, he is getting a cake of course and wants Italian for his birthday dinner. I of course cannot complain with this. :) We are also going bowling which should be a hoot.

We'll end our month with Easter wondering how an entire year went by. Last Easter we celebrated with Miss Sable here waiting to join Chris and Michelle in HI. This year we have Miss Avery to celebrate with. Probably going to do the 7:00 Sunday morning church service. Our church will have 4 identical services Easter Sunday. Not sure yet, as we tend to never make it to early ones, but rather end up at the 11:15 one. :)

Next month will bring Kevin's birthday and looking ahead to May a possible trip to Chicago, and Mother's Day not to mention the beginning of summer and Memorial Day weekend. Kevin has mentioned wanting to do the run in Boulder that day so we might end up spending a long weekend up there. Who knows?

For now, lunch is over and it is in fact time to get back to school for the afternoon.

Daily schedule

I read an article on a homeschool site that said to actually jot down a typical day in our home. First I thought, and rightfully so, that we don't have a "typical" day. Most days are different. But, I figured it couldn't hurt and I can go back at a later date and look at this and most likely chuckle. :)

 8:00:maybe I should put the "ish" beside it, wake up
 8:05:COFFEE
 8:10:start to look at my/our day and ponder how much will actually get done
 8:30:breakfast for Jason
 8:35-9:00:listen to Jason babble about different things and smile because he gets so
               excited about everything
 9:01:decide I too, should probably eat said breakfast
 9:02:start my breakfast, check email, chat with Kevin, play with Avery, think how I 
       really should be starting laundry
 9:30:Meander upstairs and gather dirty clothes
 9:40:shower, dress
10:00: start laundry and decide if I REALLY want to do dishes
10:01:NO, so look at the days school lessons
10:30:art project of some sort, different things, not always what you might consider
          art
11:00:get laundry out and dry it
11:10:see what time it is and wonder if we can get any school in prior to lunch
11:15:decide no, and think about lunch
11:20:listen to Jason babble more and watch him play with Avery
11:30:start preparing whatever it is I've decided is lunch this day
12:00-1:00:lunch
1:00:math, whatever we're currently doing, right now, Teaching Textbooks.
1:30:spelling which includes him spelling out loud this week's words and some sort
        of activity/worksheet, sometimes fitting some good dictionary skill building into
        it
2:00:language arts/phonics, whatever we're currently doing
2:20:reading and some sort of reading comp
2:45:some days it is history, some days science, some days geography.
3:15:music most days, sometimes other things
3:45:finish up anything, any paper etc that didn't get finished earlier in the day or 
        perhaps week
4:00-4:15:done for the day with actual proper school
4:15-4:30:listen to Jason babble and play with Avery
4:30:remember the laundry that got washed and dried but not taken out and folded :)
4:45-5:00:think "OH MY GOSH" I need to look at dinner, Kevin will be home in an hour 
               or less!!
5:-6:00:make dinner, unload dishwasher that hopefully got loaded and washed earlier
6:00-6:30:dinner time, always at the table
6:30-6:45:clean kitchen and unload and load dishwasher
6:45-7:00:make sure everything has been done and I've made Kevin's lunch for the
               next day
7:00:watch and listen to Jason babbling to Kevin
7-9:30:depends, sometimes, okay,usually, that is tv time and he gets to play video
           games, age appropriate
9:30:time to get ready for bed
10:00:bed

No, not every single day is exactly like this day, but it's close. No, we don't have a "proper" "public school" day. Yes, my son is learning more than you could imagine and   yes, he is socialized. :) I'm pretty tired after all this typing and only one cup of coffee so far this morning, so it's time for this Mama to get off here and do some of the things on this daily schedule!

Life

In the past several days(couple weeks)I've read numerous homeschooling blog posts about the day/week/month-etc in the life of their home. Also about difference in opinions in what the best curriculum is and do you blank or blank with your child/children.  

First of all in relation to curriculum, I realized probably mid way through our first year doing it, which was 2nd grade for Jason that it truly was no different than the "one size fits all" public school we'd taken him out of. Kids aren't a one size fits all. I'd guess most kids aren't. We did try a different area for 3rd grade in Calvert, but it was no different, or better than A Beka we'd tried for 2nd grade. I slowly began to NOT do a year long grade(1st, 7th etc) boxed set curriculum because Jason varies. I no longer do that. I think every single subject this year is from a different company. Different curriculum. We also don't do one particular grade. We have various grades per subject, depending on his level. We only use christian based curriculum for the most part. Always for science. 

And second, when I take a glimpse into our daily and or weekly lives, there are times where I wonder how on earth the boy ever learns anything!! There are days where we never change out of our jammies. Does that mean he isn't learning? Um, NO. We do have some structure to our school, but for the most part, it isn't "you have to be dressed and sitting straight at your desk quietly" for us. There are absolutely days where after half an hour, it just isn't working that day and I announce that we are done.  But at the end of any given week, even though one day might only have been an hour, he's done the weekly work and learned the week's lessons. For us, learning isn't just about reading it or doing a worksheet, it's life period. Our everyday lives, things we do that teach him just as much as reading or writing. Not that those aren't important! :)

In reading blogs lately I realize more and more that a typical homeschool day for most families is pretty much like ours and yet a world different! I have never regretted choosing to pull my child out of public school. My hope is he will not step foot in one until college! I have no intention of bad mouthing public school and there are absolutely some wonderful teachers out there. I am friends on facebook with my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Lewis who absolutely is one of those teachers. :)

And now it's time to do a bit of schooling for our Monday. Nope, we didn't get started before lunch which is more than not the norm for us. :)

Still here!

Haven't written in a quite a while. No particular reason other than the fact that the holiday season is always so hectic. It does help quite a bit since we decided to take the month of December off from school. This taking all of July and all of December off schedule has proven to be quite nice. We do take other time off during the year, but these are our two big amounts of time off.

I probably should have looked prior to sitting down to type this, but I didn't, and therefore do not even know when I last blogged. I suppose it doesn't matter and I'll just make this a "CO Lidh 2012 update" sort of deal.

The arrival of 2012, and actually the ending of 2011 found me sick with a horrid sore throat and fever. I was not amused and it certainly was not the way I'd intended to bring in the new year. As it turned out though, it was sort of nice just being lazy and sitting around in jammies watching old movies and bowl games and the parade. It did take us til the 2nd week of January to get all the Christmas decorations taken down, but so what?

The arrival of February meant hearts and chocolates. We were supposed to spend 3 days in Denver but ended up not doing so. We had a nice and somewhat romantic weekend at home. Sometimes you just need quiet time with your spouse to be romantic.

March brought warmer weather than we'd seen in years in our part of CO. Everything started blooming and growing and we ended up having to turn our sprinkler system on! It also brought with it Chris and Michelle and Sable arriving on their stop from Biloxi and Tech School to their assignment in Hawai'i. Sable was/is a big sweetheart! We enjoyed them being here for a couple of weeks. Sable stayed with us longer until she was able to fly to be with her parents. :)

April and May really went by fast. We did spend a weekend in Denver in early May. We went to the Denver Zoo on Saturday and it was 90 degrees! There is no shade at the Denver Zoo. We ate dinner at an Italian place and fell in love with it. Sunday found us waking up to a high of only 50 and thick clouds. Of course we had tickets to the Braves/Rockies game and had no intention of missing that. Braves won! The weekend was a lot of fun only to come to a huge halt with myself and Kevin being hit with a bad, bad case of food poisoning. I don't miss that.

June found us celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary. Since I'd had major surgery a week prior to our 25th and therefore there was no celebrating, we decided to do it for the 26th. Michael watched Jason for us and we saw a movie and ate at another Italian place we love and spent the night at a hotel downtown. Kevin had ordered a cake from a bakery we love and the entire time was nothing less than perfect! It also found the Waldo Canyon fire which forever changed Colorado Springs. It was horrific and so many folks still have not recovered.

July found us adopting Miss Avery and our lives have changed for sure. We love that girl so much and we think the feeling is mutual. She is funny and sweet and playful. She is supposed to be a Lab/Shepherd mix but we are unsure of this.

August found us back to school and starting 5th grade. It also found Michael starting college and moving back into the house. It also found Kevin marking one year working at 1st Bank.

September surely happened but I surely do not remember much about it! October came around and Halloween of course. Avery wasn't sure about this deal of people ringing our doorbell constantly. :)

November came to be and found much warmer weather than one in CO should ever have. Crazy warm. Kevin was promoted into management and now has 5 or might be 6 people working for him now. I am very proud of him. He is such a hard and dedicated worker. Thanksgiving was great albeit too warm. Avey quite enjoyed having turkey. :)

December found us still warm and dry. We did end up getting snow a few times and even snow Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. We had a fabulous Christmas and loved the cold and snow. Somehow the 31st found me sick again this year and much the same as last, sore throat and fever. I'm going to start boycotting the 31st if this continues to happen. :)

Now it is indeed 2013 and a new year is upon us. Jason and I will be starting back to school on Monday and we're starting 6th grade. He is very excited about this.

For now, happy new year to everyone!