New Cookbook

I am loving my new cookbook- Healthy Meal Prep by Lisa Bryan. 

Every recipe is gluten, dairy, and sugar free, and everything is made from scratch with whole ingredients. 

I've already made the sheet pan eggs (shown above) and the steak and pepper stir fry. Both were delicious, enjoyed by all who tried them, and they will definitely go into my rotation. There isn't a recipe in the book that I probably won't try (except for the shrimp recipes, since I'm allergic.) 

The best part of this recipe book is there are several dessert options. Dessert is something we have just been living without, basically, since having to cut out all dairy, gluten, and sugar. So it will be nice to have some dessert options, especially for the coming holidays and special occasions. 

I have had to provide three meals a day for two decades basically, and I have to say, I am finally learning to love what must be done, but there's nothing like a new cook book to take the mundane and make it exciting again. 

 

 

Sort Your To-Do List

How do you manage all the housework and homeschool at the same time?! 

Here's a tip that's been working well for me. 

Keep a to-do list. 

When something comes to your attention and it needs to be done, write it down! 

Don't necessarily do the thing right then. 

Just write it down. 

I write everything down all day long! 

It all goes on the same list on my phone.  

That way, I don't have the burden of remembering anything/ everything that I have to do, because it's all written out. 

I can move on with my regular routine and refer to my list later when I have more time. 

Next, as I go through my day and refer to my list, I naturally sort the list, moving the things I really want or really need to do next to the top of my list, and letting the other stuff that can wait fall to the bottom. 

The sorting happens as I delete, add, and refer to my list a few times everyday. 

I can refer to this list when there's free time throughout the day and the decision about what to do next has already been sorted out. 

Today, the main goals that had risen to the top of my list included: 

Call the lab back and pay my bill

Read the next debate chapter with Avril 

Make bone broth 

Refill the soap container in the downstairs bath 

Clean the bird cage and bird perch

Now, I've done about one million other things today in addition to these half-dozen things. I'm constantly doing all the usual stuff like dishes and laundry and all the usual homeschool... 

but these were the things that came to mind, that weighed me down, that I really needed to remember to do and needed some help to deliberately focus on getting done and/ or fitting into all the in-between moments. 

As I complete an item on the list, it gets deleted, and that's an awesome feeling, watching the top of the list disappear. 

Now that I'm done with the extra stuff I decided to do today, I'm putting my feet up and enjoying the feeling of accomplishment. 

The things I decided to do today are all done! 

Obviously, there's more regular work to do today like dinner prep and clean-up and more laundry, but that's all the regular stuff. 

More items are being added to the list all the time...

But I've decided that all those items can wait until tomorrow or even the next day. 

Note: Another major benefit of keeping and constantly sorting your to-do list is that over time with more and more experience, you learn what you actually can and can't reasonably do in one day. 

I've learned to give myself a break for all the stuff that amounts to "too much" and can't be helped until tomorrow. 

So sort your to-do list. 

It's a mental and emotional game-changer. 

Artistic Daughters

Avril painted the leaves surrounding the October quote. Adele made the mosaic of fall leaves. These are currently being displayed on one of the floating shelves in our homeschool classroom. They make me so glad I live in a home where there are artistic daughters. 

Worship

Music has been an essential part of our homeschool curriculum for many years. I make it a priority to ensure that girls have time to practice piano and/or guitar every single homeschool day. They may not be doing Latin their whole life, but they'll probably be playing music and singing forever.  At this point, they are both on the church worship teams. Sometimes they are even assigned together on the same week. They often practice together, and this always brings me joy.  

Coconut Chicken Curry

Coconut Chicken Curry Recipe

(This recipe has been adapted from Sally Fallon's Coconut Chicken Curry. At this point, I make it without referring to the recipe. And as long as the chicken is thawed, it comes together in about thirty minutes.)  

Ingredients:

Olive oil

One half onion, sliced into long pieces

Two large chicken breasts, sliced in half and then sliced into pieces  (Note: This serves my family of five with some leftovers)

Two carrots, peeled and chopped

One can of diced tomatoes

Chicken broth (1/2 to 1 cup) 

One can of unsweetened coconut milk

One-two cups of frozen peas

Optional:

1 cup of fresh spinach or kale, chopped up 

Spices:

Tumeric powder

Curry powder

Coriander powder

Jalapeño powder

Onion powder

Salt

Serve over:

Cooked basmati rice 

Directions:

1. Spray or drizzle olive oil into a large pot. Saute the onions, carrots, and chicken in the oil for a few minutes, until the chicken is no longer pink. 

2. Next, add a little (1/2 cup-1 cup) of chicken broth to the pot, and then add the spices. I do not measure at this point. I just sprinkle and stir and smell. But if you need to know where to start, I suggest adding 1 Tbs. of curry and turmeric each, 1 tsp of salt and onion powder each, a sprinkle of coriander, and just a pinch of jalapeño powder. After you have made it a few times, you will know how much of each spice to add to suit yourself and your family. 

3. Then add the can 1/2 can or the whole can of coconut milk. Drain the diced tomatoes and then add those. Let this simmer on low while the rice cooks. 

4. To make the rice: I use another medium sized pot with four cups of water. I bring that to a boil. Then I add two cups of basmati rice and stir and cover and turn the rice down to simmer for approximately. 15-20 minutes. Stir the rice once or twice to see how much water is left and gauge when the rice will be done. 

5. When there is just a few minutes left before the rice is done, add the frozen carrots, stir, and turn the stove top off. Let the curry sit and thaw the frozen peas as the soup also cools a little. At this point, you can also add chopped spinach or kale to this curry, too. It will also soften as the curry sits on the stovetop. The curry can sit from up to ten minutes and still be warm/ hot. 

6. Turn off the rice when there's no more water in the bottom when you stir, and it's done. Serve the curry over the cooked rice in shallow bowls.  

Enjoy! 

The Secret Garden

I heard her laugh to herself several times today as she read The Secret Garden silently to herself. I stopped the quiet work I was doing and said prayer of thanks and snapped a picture. This is one of the primary reasons we homeschool- to provide access to great books and time to simply read them. 

How We Do Debate Without a Homeschool Community

We decided not to be a part of our beloved CC community this year, but I still wanted my teen to learn debate. So how would we do debate without a homeschool community? After all, one of the major benefits of CC community was that it kept us accountable to do all the things that we weren't naturally bent to do like debate, and Latin, and logic... This had been true for years, so would we find a way to do debate on our own?

I did some research on debate curriculums, then previewed, and finally purchased the NCFCA handbook for Value Debate and my tenth grader and are working through it together. We have chosen our own issue to debate and work through both sides of it, learning as we go. 

We definitely need to practice self-discipline and do this ourselves without the support (and compulsion) that community provided. But it's working. We work through the lessons together, reading aloud, and taking time to talk everything through. We research and discuss ideas and research some more... 

It's nice not to be rushed. In previous years, we were working on a community schedule rather than our own. Debate was always a hectic pain. So it's nice not to have my teen stressed out about debate. She used to consider my questions and advice an imposition, delay, or hinderance to getting all her work done in time for community, etc. Now that I'm my daughter's only debate partner and teacher, and now that her work doesn't have to be done by a certain day next week, we are both relaxing, embracing and even enjoying the time spent wrestling through the issue mind to mind and heart to heart. 

The NCFCA handbooks are amazing resources, and I wish I had found them years ago instead of struggling through debates in previous years with the resources we had then. I thought we all just hated debate for years, but I think we just hated being asked to do something without enough information. 

Obviously, without a community to join in debate, my daughter may never have the opportunity to debate another student live. But I'm not sure I consider that I huge loss. My major goals for doing debate are to practice seeking truth, thinking through both sides of an issue, researching, organizing thoughts, and applying what we find out to our own hearts and minds first, and all that is happening on a deeper level now. 

I trust that this authentic practice in debate will bear fruit, and when my daughter finds it necessary to stand up and speak up, she'll have what it takes.  

Now, we practice debate simply for its own sake, and we are finding it truly worthwhile. 

 

How to Manage Housework While Homeschooling (with some advice on life in general)

Lately, I've been killing it as far as my housekeeping goes. I'm just saying... 

I'm on top of things like I've never been before and my husband keeps saying things like, "I love our home," at the same time I'm thinking that I love our home, too. 

Or he says, "You have made this home so beautiful. You know that?" at the same time I'm sipping coffee with my feet up contently enjoying the work of my hands. 

This post has been two decades in the making. So here are some hard-earned tips to take your housekeeping to the next level. 

But don't keep reading if you already have no idea how someone with a brain might want to talk about cleaning or hear about cleaning. Go watch a make-up tutorial video or something. This post is not for you. 

But if you've moved to the edge of your seat and maybe even leaned in closer to your screen to hear what I have to say about housekeeping, this post is for you. 

First, you have to establish a routine for basic housework morning and evening-

I have had a morning and evening cleaning routine that I've kept for almost two decades. The basis of my morning and evening routines came from Fly Lady.  She offers suggestions for what housekeeping jobs to do and when to do them. If you don't have any cleaning routines established at all, I suggest that you begin with Fly Lady's morning and evening routines (and a few other jobs she suggests) until you establish your own morning and evening cleaning habits. 

Next, try to create a plan for ALL the other housework that needs to get done so you can do it before it gets totally out of hand-

I do not suggest following someone else's schedule for the big housework jobs-not even Fly Lady's. I have never had success trying to follow someone else's schedule, because I always found I was cleaning something that was already clean while something else that was dirty had to wait till next week if I was working according to someone else's schedule. I just couldn't do that. Also, I do not suggest making a list of everything you aspire to get done and trying to meet your own ideal goals. The list you make will probably be too big and unreasonable. Instead, simply start paying attention to when things really need to be done and then do them, but then, right then, make a note of what you did and when you did that job. I use my phone to make these notes. Do you notice the toilet is looking gross and it's time to clean it? Pull out your phone and make a note. Write something like "Clean the toilet." And if it's been at least a month since you did that, write "Once a month." Then clean the toilet. (And maybe wipe off your phone, if needed.) By taking these notes of what needs to be done and when you do it, you will eventually create a routine for ALL the housework that needs to be done at a time that really works for you. 

Give yourself lots of grace-

For almost twenty years, just the basic housework was getting done everyday with my morning and evening cleaning routines. But those other, bigger cleaning jobs, like scrubbing tubs, washing sheets and blankets and curtains, and mopping floors, etc. were getting done at random times throughout the weeks and months when something was so dirty or dusty that it could no longer be ignored and simply cried out for attention (or we were having company and we were panicking to get things presentable.) This was because I was nursing babies, working a part-time here or there, or I just really needed to start our homeschool day, so I just couldn't do as much cleaning as was actually needed. 

Consider what else might be taking time, attention, and energy-

Are you actually wasting lots of time? I used to be spend an inordinate amount of time on Facebook. I never planned to spend a lot of time on there, but without fail, I'd usually ended up staying longer than I sat down to stay. "Just five minutes..." was usually more like twenty minutes before I realized it. I justified this use of time, because I was "seeing" friends and "connecting" there. But, when I finally gave it up, I found that I actually answered the phone and talked when people called instead of letting it go to voicemail, or I called people and talked live and in real time. In my experience, those have been more meaningful connections, and I have felt much less isolated and lonely, more loved and loving towards others. Now, I usually call someone daily and text several, specific friends or relatives throughout the day. I even have more time to actually plan to go to lunch with people. So consider how something like Facebook (or something else that you might be dong to "relax") is actually stealing precious time, energy, and attention that you really desire to give to yourself, or your family, or your friends in other ways. 

Are you trying to do too much?

Are you doing too much to still manage to have the time, energy, and attention to simply clean your house? If you are type-A like me, you probably want to do it all. For many years, I was leading and teaching at our beloved co-op. I liked the job. It was way more interesting than a million other things I could or maybe should have been doing, so I didn't mind the hours it took from me away from other things (like housework). At some point, after one million small and a few really big internal shifts, I perceived that the job had become far too costly to me. Of course, I should have known that every "yes" is a "no" to something else, and I think knew that, but I wasn't really conscious of what the job was doing to my life. I realized I had been saying "no" to some of the most basic things like friendship and housework to say "yes" to something more appealing. I suppose the appealing choice could be the right thing for you, but if you can't manage your home or homeschool well, I suggest things might be way out of order. they were for me. I know that I stayed home from a career, so I could actually work in my home and homeschool my children. When I couldn't even do that (and finally realized I really wanted to), I killed the job that gave me meaning for the job that is more meaningful.  I just did not have any margin for these good, simple, human things when I was spending my time, energy, and attention on other (arguably good) things instead. 

So after all those tips, here's my recipe for housework: 

Sundays- 

I have found that Sunday afternoons are for perfect for mopping and speciality laundry. 

I only make one meal after church. It's either lunch or dinner, and it's usually on the simple side. Today, it was grilled cheese and made-from-scratch tomato soup for lunch. After that meal, we all clean up the kitchen from lunch, empty and load the dishes, and then we start picking up the chairs and (most of) the stuff on the floors. Then I set the Roomba to clean all the floors, because Dwayne bought me one as a gift. (We call our Roomba "Alice" like the housekeeper from Brady Bunch.) At that point, I also gather the bath mats, or pull some curtains down, or gather up all the dirty towels from all the bathrooms, or gather the blankets from the girls' beds and the couches, and I wash a load of something "special" that isn't in the dirty clothes baskets that we wash throughout the regular week. Then I go put my feet up or take a nap or read and enjoy the rest as I listen to the hum of the machines as they do the work. I try to limit the housework I do on Sundays to the basic morning and evening chores and these two jobs, so that I can observe a day of rest and deliberately cease the usual amount of striving that I do during the week. 

Daily in the morning and in some cases, again in the evening-

Feed and give fresh water to Arcus (our parrot)

Sweep kitchen 

Unload and load the dishwasher

Recycling/ Trash

Rotate the laundry- fold or hang what's in the dryer, put anything that's in the washer in the dryer (or hang it to dry), start a new load of dirty cloths, and put away all the clothes 

Make master bed

Every other day- (In addition to morning chores, every other day, we add some of these and so, these chores generally get done every other day)

Sweep living room, hall, downstairs bathroom, and/ or classroom

Change Arcus's (our parrot's) cage liners

Empty little trashes and replace their little trash bags

Gather hangers from the closets and bring them to laundry room so they are ready for more laundry

Once a week- (We add one or more of these chores to our morning routine and so, we get them all done at least once a week)

Empty stuff baskets (little foldable, cube-shaped containers on every floor where I throw all the stuff the girls leave laying around the house)

Wash cage or bird perch

Sweep upstairs hall and stairs

Sweep stairs going to basement and the basement living room

Water plants/ Weed garden path and/ or beds (if needed)

Deep clean one bathroom 

Vacuum all the rugs

Once a week as I cook dinner- 

While I am cooking dinner one night a week, I'll cook other foods like boiled eggs or quinoa salad or chicken salad, etc. (These are foods that are nice to have on hand for snacks and for healthy food on-the- go. Since I am already cooking, I just cook these things once a week while making dinner.) 

On Friday-

Inventory the fridge, freezers, and cabinets (So that I know what I already have and need to use up)

Plan meals for the week and make a shopping list for groceries (I usually plan at least four meals, sometimes five, knowing that some night, I'll choose to breakfast for dinner or cook egg sandwiches or something simple in place of a more formal meal.)

On Saturday- 

Clean out the fridge (as needed)

Organize the groceries into the fridge, freezer, or cabinets

Do any special loads of laundry that need to get done

Clean a special room that isn't normally cleaned 

Every two weeks on Saturday-

Wash everyone's sheets

Once a month-

Wash comforters and quilts on everyone's beds (Usually this happens on Saturday/ Sundays)

Wipe off all screens in the house

Dust everywhere

Every three months-

Wash curtains

Twice a year-

Clean out each closet or cabinet or drawer and purge old and unused stuff and reorganize 

Notice that I don't have every job here yet. So this is still a work in progress. But I am enjoying unparalleled success in my housekeeping and peace and joy in my housework, so this plan of action is really working for me. 

It has honestly been a delightful relief to work out this schedule for myself. 

This is what is working for me, but I hope sharing it will bless you. 

Aristotle's Rhetoric

My second eight week class for graduate school has begun. I get to read (and reread and reread again) Aristotle's Rhetoric and Plato's Gorgias with suggested reading that includes the Orations by Cicero. This is still pure joy! 

Images and Notes on Our Homeschool Days

Here is a random sampling of some real-to-life images of our typical homeschool days in this season. 

Note: I didn't rearrange anything to make these pictures prettier. I wanted to capture images of what our days actually look like right now. 

And I did not manage to capture images of every single part of our curriculum, but here is sampling taken as I moved through the house this week. 

In this picture, my 10th grader is reading a portion of "Classical Music for Dummies" for a short paper on a composer while she's eating her lunch. She and I had both been working on various other things at different chairs at the table, so you can see that it gets quite messy. We clean up in time for dinner. 

Since the girls are old enough to work independently and make their own lunches, we don't always eat lunch together. But when we do, we usually listen to a podcast or an audio book. We started listening to Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson the other day.

The girls are in a few art classes through Delightful Art Co., and I find that adding so much art to their lives is breathing life and meaning into all the more academic work they do. So they are constantly making new art, and naturally, it usually always applies directly or indirectly to something they are learning in another subject. I've put these floating shelves in the classroom. They serve a dual purpose- their art has a place to rest and dry, but it can also be displayed and enjoyed for a few days at a time. 

The oldest is watching a Devotional Biology video in this pic. She's actually working through two biology texts this year- Apologia with labs and Devotional Biology- reading the text and watching the lectures. 

The youngest is reading The Secret Garden and eating her lunch of choice. She'll end of practicing rhetoric with the content in this book and writing an essay using The Lost Tools of Writing. 

Here she is drawing a map step by step with the help of "How to Draw -" by Kristin Draeger on the iPad. She's learning to draw all the countries of the world by memory. 

One of the my oldest daughter's art classes is "Paint Your Way Through Biology," so this is a beautiful painting of an animal cell and its parts sitting up to dry. 

The girls practice piano and/or guitar daily. They are helping on worship teams at church, so that often means they have a lot of practice to get prepared. Music is another thing I am very consciously letting them make the time for. Interestingly, they always manage to get the more academic work done, too, eventually, no matter how long they practice music. 

More painting, following a live teacher on the laptop. Here's that painting of autumn leaves finished and on display. The mosaic is my younger daughter's art project in her online art class for this week- a mosaic of an autumn scene, too. 

 More reading

These images certainly don't represent everything they do. 

There aren't any pictures of the girls doing their Latin, Math, Logic, Writing...  but that happens almost daily, too. 

I hope these images demonstrate that school doesn't have to look anything like traditional school. 

And learning can be done anywhere for its own sake and as a way of life. 

Arcus, our sun conure, supervises all from one perch or another throughout the house. He likes to add elements of chaos to keep the girls from getting too bored, too focused, or too comfortable at any given time. 

Mount Washington

 

On our way home from the Jeep Jamboree in the Maine mountains, we stopped at Mount Washington. Dwayne and the girls took the trip up the mountain. That's a picture of our black Jeep (bottom right corner) heading up the mountain. Note: I did not go up the mountain. I stayed in the cozy visitor's center, and I shopped for stickers and socks, and I edited my paper for graduate school. 

So a great time was had by all! 

Maine Mountains Jeep Jamboree 2024

We attended the Maine Mountains Jeep Jamboree this year. It was bitterly cold at registration on Thursday, and it was raining for a time, but then a beautiful rainbow showed over the parking lot full of Jeeps.

Early Friday and Saturday morning, the mornings of the Jamboree, it is fun to see all the Jeeps lined up according to which trail they are heading out on. 

Then you head out towards your trail following your guide. 

There was a lot of mud. We all got stuck several times and needed to be wenched. 

I thought the tires looked exactly like chocolate doughnuts with all the mud caked on. 

We encountered several obstacles and had to spend quite a lot of time in the woods waiting for each Jeep to either make it through the obstacle OR be wenched out to try again. 

But the fall woods were beautiful and there were beautiful views.

We're thinking about which Jamboree to attend next year... 

 

In a hole in the ground...

One of Avril's recent works of art- 

The first lines in The Hobbit on one side and a hobbit door on the other. 

Notice the piece on the wall behind her. 

This is a beloved, reoccurring theme. 

Pieta

Adele is currently drawing Michelangelo's Pieta. 

These are the kinds of things that I walk in to the room to find my daughters doing, and it takes my breath away. 

And then I give glory to God for the beauty that fills my life. 

This image means a lot to me, personally. 

I was a high school freshman, a year older than Adele is now, when I saw a photo of the Pieta in my history textbook. 

We were studying the Middle Ages and even though the textbook called it the Dark Ages and had a decidedly negative view of that period, the age had a radiance that couldn't be suppressed, and my imagination was set aflame! 

The photo of the Pieta in the textbook was grainy, black and white, and tiny- maybe two inches wide and an inch high. 

Nevertheless...

I wept. 

Right there in history class with my head bent low over the text. 

I don't remember being embarrassed.

Interestingly, I remember that it was like I was hardly there to be seen.

I understand now why I was so affected.  

I was beauty-starved back then. 

I was a typical modern teen who spent more time at the mall than in museums.  

That masterpiece was a tiny window into the transcendent world. 

It was inches wide but large enough for God to reach through and touch my heart. 

I should say that the photo Adele has of the Pieta is large.

The figures are so sharp, they appear to be breathing.  

He fills my life with good things. 

He fills my life with Himself. 

 

Braces, Braces, Braces

 Adele got braces today! 

So since Norah's have been on far longer than planned, 

and Avril's, too, have taken slightly longer than expected, 

that's all three daughters with braces at the same time. 

Who could have predicted this triple orthodontic event? 

Not me! That's certain!  

It's like when three planets align once in a century or something... 

only it's cosmically more expensive than that! 

 

Hadestown

 I took Norah to see Hadestown for her twentieth birthday gift. for both of us, it's the third time we've seen it. Neither of us are bored of it. It's our absolute favorite. And we can and do talk about it for hours. And it just makes it more interesting to compare and contrast the differences in how one actor or pair or group plays it. She read CS Lewis's "Myth Became Fact" aloud to me on the way. Both of us see Christ in Orpheus, our own souls in Eurydice, and our love and appreciation for what Christ accomplished for our souls is deepened by watching this beautiful myth on stage. 

"'Why should women want to know about Aristotle?' The answer is NOT that all women would be better for knowing Aristotle... but simply, what women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle." -From Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers

Joy. 

That's the only way I can describe how it feels to read Aristotle for graduate school. 

It is pure joy.

The joy is a gift and a confirmation I am on the right path.  

It's also the hardest content I've ever encountered, but it is, without doubt, the most worthwhile and fulfilling (next to Scripture, of course). 

I sense the Lord urging me on. 

All truth is His. 

Through Christ, everything that's His is mine. 

God sits enthroned over all the earth- even Parnassus.