Author - Lorri

Mondays

Ah, Monday.  It’s like over the weekend, all the good behavior and positive attitudes we developed over the previous week have just disappeared.  Not to mention simple things like the correct way to hold a pencil, why one does not need to look up on the number line to see what 15 + 1 is, and the correct way to write an "f." And most importantly, unless you want to spend the morning sitting in a permanent time-out, one shouldn’t roll their eyes at their mother and say "I know."

 

Doesn’t help that Daddy is in New York for 3 days.

 

And why oh why does everything they say have to be the line from some movie?

 

OK, not all was irritating this morning.  We did get started using "Managers of Their Chores", by the same family that wrote MOTH.  It’s a great system.  Boo had all his chores done before I even came downstairs.  Only problem was, he had swiffered the floor before I had a chance to sweep it. Pumpkin Girl needed some re-training on not skipping a chore card (making the bed) just because she wasn’t in the mood.  She’s only 5, though.  It’ll come.  This was our first day using the Chorepacks, so I’m sure we’ll find little things that need to be ironed out as we work through them.  Someone on the Sonlight Forum asked about this new book and it was kind of cool to be the first one to have read it.  I gave it a glowing review and now several people have ordered it too!   Too bad I don’t get a commission, LOL!

 

And speaking of the Sonlight Forums, two people I "know" from there are moving here soon.  How fun!  We’ve got a huge homeschooling community on base, but it’s nice to have other Sonlighters here.  I’m sure there are others, I just haven’t found them yet.

Getting Portraits Done

We took the children to get portraits done at Sears yesterday. Bip went first to prevent him from getting bored and crabby.  He did pretty well until he got tired of being on his belly.  The photographer was trying to get him to laugh, but everytime he would, he’d just wiggle with happiness and then lay his head down on the pillow so we couldn’t get a good picture.  Then I had him positioned so sweetly, hands in front, head up, looking right at the camera and she wouldn’t take the picture.  She kept trying to get him to laugh.  I told her twice just to take the picture.  Finally he just laid his head down and cried.  I could have cried, too.  So he went off to be distracted by Phil and next up was Pumpkin Girl.

 

She wanted to pick her own background, the blue one with a sort of pastel rainbow.  We put the big number 5 on the stage and she sat down in front of it.  She looked so grown up!  She smiled so pretty and we only had to take one picture.

 

Then Boo.  He stood up next to the number 7.  He looked stiff and unnatural.  He kept raising his eyebrows and facing the camera, but looking with just his eyes off to the side.  He does this at home when I’m trying to take his picture, too.  Not sure what that’s all about.  FINALLY got a good picture of him.

 

Then the children all together.  We brought a framed picture of Becca to include in the portrait.  I have seen this done a couple of times and I really needed to include her.  The end result is just wonderful, all four of our sweet children in one picture.  It was a bear to get though. Bip kept tipping over, Boo kept looking at Bip or off to the side, Pumpkin Girl kept frowing and tilting the picture.  We got a keeper, though.

 

And now the long process of choosing which pictures to buy in what sizes.  Then the other photographer who was there did an amazing thing.  She had made a collage out of the group picture and close up head shots of each child.  Each child’s face was placed in an oval and they formed a quarter of a circle surrounding the group shot.  She offered to scan Becca’s picture and include her little face in with the close ups of the others around the main picture.  It turned out so beautifully and it just brings tears to my eyes to see it.  Our sweet baby, right with her brothers and sister, right where she belongs.

 

And at the end, I had 5 more points to spend on my package and I just couldn’t get it to work out, so I said don’t worry about it.  Then they offered me a print of the scan of Becca, in an oval, a rose printed on the "mat"  and "A special place in my heart" written on it.

 

The children were wonderfully behaved the whole time.  Blessings all around.

Makes Me smile

I recently found my favorite bookmark of all time. I got it free from the library when I was a kid. I loved it so much that I eventually had to protect it by covering it with clear contact paper. The poem on it is:

favorite-bookmark.JPG

Books

I got
Books on the bunk bed
Books on the chair
Books on the couch
And every old where

But I want more books
I just can’t get enough
I want more books about
All kinds of stuff, like

Jackie’s troubles
Raymond’s joys
Rabbits, kangaroos
Girls and boys
Mountains, valleys
Winter, spring
Campfires, vampires
Every old thing

I want to
Lie down on my bunk bed
Lean back in my chair
Curl up on the couch
And every old where

And read

more

books.

by Eloise Greenfield. It has a little picture by Rosemary Wells. If my daughter keeps up her love of books, and bringing them all over the house, I may have to pass the bookmark on to her. Maybe not. Every time we move I think I’ve lost the bookmark, but I find it eventually. Right now it’s on the computer table.

What’s Cooking?

Mmmmm…you should smell my house! I’m cooking up a batch of crockpot granola using a recipe from one of my online Sonlight friends. Here’s the recipe from her blog.

I tried another new recipe today for lunch: pizza muffins. They were a BIG hit with the children. One thing I have found that helps my sanity and cuts down on the lunchtime complaints is to have specific lunches every day.

Monday: sandwiches

Tuesday: noodles

Wednesday: nachos

Thursday: corndogs

Friday: sandwiches

Now everyone knows what we’re having and when so there are no complaints. Last Wednesday, though, Boo reminded me that he had given up chips for Lent. I told him that was really chips as a snack, and since they are what nachos were made of, it was OK. I do want to encourage him in the practice of our faith, so I went in search of another lunch. I found the pizza muffins in my “someday I’ll make this” recipe file. So for now, pizza muffins on Wednesday. After Lent, they may make it onto the menu on Fridays. They were very easy to make since they use biscuit mix. I happened to use my own homemade biscuit mix and was very pleased with the results. Next time I make the muffins, I’m going to double the recipe and freeze the leftovers. (They were a hit with Phil, too. He took two back to work.)

I’ve used a similar system for dinner meal planning. I finally have 5 weeks of menus pre-planned out. In this season of my life I need to stick to meals that only take 30 minutes of prep time. The actually cooking time can be longer, I just can’t devote more than 30 minutes of my time to a meal. For now, some of our favorites will have to wait until my mom comes for a visit. She is always willing to make our favorites while she’s here. We can always count on her for Boo’s favorite lasagna and Nana’s Buttermilk Pancakes.

Tonight (Wed as I actually write this) we are trying yet another new recipe, this one for skillet mac and beef. It looks very easy. I’ve already got half of it done.

Aha!

  Mystery solved!  Bip, VFB*,  popped out his first tooth today!  He’s been such a crabby crab lately, not sleeping well, wanting to nurse all night.  He responded very well to the "happy pills" (Hylands chamomilla tablets) which helped him settle down enough to get to sleep.   Phil thought it could be a growth spurt.  I didn’t think it was. Well, now we know what was wrong.  I let Boo and Pumpkin Girl feel his new tooth.  They hugged him and told him congratulations. Pumpkin said, "Maybe we can give him a pickle."

 

Boo is growing up so fast, too.  Today he heated up his own corndog in the microwave.  I was nursing the baby so I just told him what to do and off he went.  It’s a big deal to me since I didn’t learn to use the microwave until I was at least 16.  He’s at a fun age.  He is able to do so many things and he yet still has his sense of wonder.  He saw the Donald Duck DVD that came from Netflix the other day and said, "Oh! Donald Duck!  He’s my buddy.  I need to go visit him at Disneyland."

 

Pumpkin Girl is busy being 5.  She so wants to do everything Boo does.  She was complaining that I don’t let her do the same school work as Boo.  Sorry, sweetheart, but you need to learn to print before you can have a spelling test, LOL!  She sure wasn’t complaining though, when she said she didn’t want to do math and was done with school for the day.  Because she is only 5 years and 2 1/2 months, I don’t require her to have school.  She always listens in anyway and has her own workbooks.  But when she gets tired, I let her be "dismissed" and she can stay in the room as long as she’s quiet and not a distraction.

 

On a side note – we made shamrock cookies today.  I really hate making cut-out cookies.  My recipe is good, but I hate rolling the dough, cutting the cookies, having them fall apart on the way to the cookie sheet, then those that survived breaking on the way to the cooling rack.  (Yes, mom, you gave me the shamrock cookie cutter.)  I did get a chance to try out my brand new silicone rolling pin. Pumpkin Girl said, "ooo, I like it.  It’s pink!"  It rolls the dough like a dream.  No more sticking! And fast! So now all I have to worry about is the cookies breaking apart.

 

After all that cooking I did yesterday and the cookies today, I’m not in a mood to cook dinner.  Guess it’ll be leftovers.

 

  *Very Fat Baby

Adventures in the Army Part 3

So then it was Korea.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone said.  If you don’t count the brown, er, rusty water, mosquitoes in the house and PT being held within feet of our bedroom window, every morning at 5 am. It wasn’t bad at all! We had the absolute best neighbors ever.  Our whole corner of the cul-de-sac emptied out every Sunday morning.  We went to different services, but we all went to church.  The children played well together and the moms all got along.  I wish I could pack up that neighborhood and take it with me forever.

The hub of social life was the Dragon Hill Lodge (that’s another must-clink link, and make sure you take the virtual tour).  It’s a resort hotel right on Yongsan Garrison.  Multiple nice, kid-friendly restaurants, a deli, ice cream store, huge playground for the kids – complete with a ride-on train and waterfalls set to music.  There was even a hair salon and spa.  That’s where I got my hair cut like in my avatar picture.  I have to tell the story of that haircut some day.

 

When our time in Korea was over, it was back to DC.  Phil is working in the same building where he attended PGIP.  We’re living right on Bolling AFB, about 2 blocks from the Potomac.  Phil has a 5 minute commute.  He says it takes him longer to walk from the parking lot than it takes him to drive there.  We have no complaints.

 

Oh wait!  I forgot about our TDY en route assignment.  After Korea, we spent 10 weeks in Norfolk, VA where Phil was in school again. Our newest baby joined our family there!  Then we came to DC when he was 2 weeks old.

 

And here we are.  The Air Force kindly offered all of us in this old style housing the chance to move into the new homes that are about to be completed.  The catch is, once we accept a house, we have 5 working days to be out of the old house and into the new, and the entire expense is on us.  And the new houses aren’t any bigger than what we’ve got.  So we, and most of our neighbors are staying put.  Rumor has it that they are going to require us to move in a year anyway, in which case, all the expense and trouble would be on them.  In the meantime, I continue to unpack, purge and organize.

Adventures in the Army, Part 2

So where were we?  Oh yes, 1999.  This time we asked to go to Korea.  Yep, you read that right!  We figured the timing was good, it would be a one year, unaccompanied tour, but Boo and I would go along anyway.  We’d come back in 6 months for a mid-tour break, then we’d be home for good in another 6 months.  The Army actually said no.  I think Phil was the first and only person in the history of the Army to volunteer for Korea and get turned down.  Instead, he was assigned to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, CA as an assistant Professor of Military Science.  It was a dream assignment.  We were an  hour and a half from my hometown of Santa Barbara (you must check out that link, just to see the beautiful pictures), and about 4 hours away from Phil’s family in San Francisco.  We found a small 3 bedroom apartment in Grover Beach.  I thought it would be fun to live in nearby Los Osos, where my good friend Jennifer grew up.  It’s just fun to spell:  L-O-S-O-S-O-S!  It was fun to see our longtime friends from Civil Air Patrol and even participate in some of their activities.  They were attempting to make Phil the next encampment commander when we got word that he would be attending the Post Graduate Intelligence Program to get his masters degree in something useful like strategic intelligence.

 

So we packed up and drove all the way across the country to Maryland.  We lived in off-base military housing leased by the Air Force, our  nicest quarters yet!  Charlotte was born, conveniently during Phil’s Christmas Break, at Andrews Air Force Base.  After graduation, Phil was assigned to the Pentagon where he worked for a year.

 

*note:  Phil didn’t actually get to work in the Pentagon.  When he was assigned there, the offices he was going to work in were being renovated, so his office was temporarily located in a building in Crystal City. Their move in date was supposed to be August 2001.  Well, work was delayed and their move in date was pushed back to October 2001.  You know of course, where this is going.  On September 11, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon destroyed the newly renovated offices that Phil was waiting to move in to.  The Lord does work in mysterious ways.

 

When that assignment was over, we packed up and moved to Ft. Leavenworth, KS.  It is important to note at this time that Philip was assigned to the Command and General Staff College, NOT the Disciplinary Barracks.  CGSC is supposed to be the best year of your life, and it really was one of them!  We had an ugly house and wonderful neighbors.  I look back at our year there with nothing but happy memories.

Adventures in the Army

  Thinking about Grover Beach yesterday made me think about all the places we’ve lived on this Great Army Adventure.

 

When we married in 1992, we were stationed at Ft. Bliss, TX.  It was a huge change after living 22 years on the California coast.  Phil was with the 3rd ACR (which has now moved to Ft. Carson).  We had a little one-bedroom apartment overlooking a field.  If you’re ever driving through El Paso and see the big, blue water tower, that’s pretty much where we lived.

 

Ballons
After that was Ft. Huachuca (wah-CHU-cah), AZ, about an hour from Tucson.  We upgraded to a 2 bedroom apartment.  We didn’t pay extra to park in the carport.  Arizona is a dry heat.  If I prefer any kind of heat, it’s the dry kind.  I still remember walking out of the mall in Tucson at 8 pm and it still being 80 degrees.  Winter was cold, and being at a high elevation, we did get snow.  It didn’t stay on the ground, though.  The cultural highlight of our time in AZ was the balloon race.  At the time, Sierra Vista was a sleepy little town with lots of wide open desert spaces.  A balloon race was held one morning and we just sat in our living room drinking our coffee and watching the balloons fill the sky.

 

From Arizona, we went to Ft. Knox, KY.  We asked to go to Germany, but I guess the German restaurants in the area made it close enough for government work.  Ft Knox was fun.  We lived in a 3 bedroom Army house.  We had a backyard with a stream running through it.  Well, not really a stream, but the cement of the drainage ditch stopped when it got to our yard, creating a stream when it rained.  We found some baby birds waiting for their mama there once after a huge storm.  We checked back later in the day and they were gone.  I like to think that mama bird was just rebuilding her nest and returned for her young ‘uns that afternoon.

 

When it was time to leave Ft. Knox, the Army told us to go to Panama.  Um, not so much.  We asked for Germany, they sent us instead to Houston, TX.  Phil was working with the Reserves there.  We actually lived in Sugar Land.  It was called Sugar Land because it started out as the company town of Imperial Sugar.  That was another good assignment.  We also had a pretty decent sized 4 bedroom house.  We used to talk about all the upgrades we would do to that house if we’d owned it.  Best of all, Boo was born while we were there.

That brings us up to 1999.  I’ll stop here for now.

Feels like Summer in CA

Wow, what a beautiful day! The children have been outside all day, playing with their fellow Jedi knights and the neighborhood princesses. Our climbing/sliding thing made a great fortress for the princesses while the Jedis protected them from the dragons. Sometimes the princesses would go out picking flowers and a Sith would capture them. They are taking time out to have lunch right now.

We’ve got all the windows open in our house and our windchimes are ringing gently. Such a mild day with a gentle breeze, hearing the chimes always reminds me of living in Grover Beach. No, we didn’t live on Sesame Street. We could see the Pacific Ocean and parts of Pismo Beach (and all the clams you can eat) from our kitchen window. If the weather would stay like this until October, it would be perfect. Of course, this is just the start of the buildup to a hot, sweltering summer. The long time local residents tell us not to get used to this spring time weather, there is still time for a spring snow storm.

“Bip”, our Very Fat Baby, is going to need toddler size diapers soon. I’ve never had to buy toddler cloth diapers before! The others were potty trained by the time they weighed 30 pounds. Nicholas makes me laugh, he’s so fat. He’s already outgrown so many of the cute clothes we have for him. I’m knitting him a sweater to wear next fall. My good friend Shanti knit him one that he wears right now. It was so cute I just had to make him another one in a bigger size. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve never knit more than a scarf before. It’s not that bad, really. I just wish I knew what I was doing. I’ve had to pull out several rows, but I’ve kept more than I’ve unraveled. Of course, now I’ve been pouring over knitting and yarn catalogs, thinking I’m just going to whip up all sorts of fun clothes for the kids. The problem is, they grow faster than I knit.

A Journey in Blogging

Ok, so I’m a blogger. Who knew? I’m a homeschooling mother of 4, the oldest 2 are my current students. We’re a military family, right now serving in our nation’s capital. We’ve been here since September and prior to this we were in Korea. It’s lunch time now and dh is home, so I’ll be back later…

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