Soooo...here I am thinking and writing and thinking and writing...and watching The Golden Girls...I love the Golden Girls!
It has been a very busy week around here and I have a lot to chat about! :) Aren't you excited!
The boys have been enjoying VBS again this week. Making memories...they love it!
Bug got to go to two this last week. In the mornings h
e went to the
Bible Church for Pandamania - he had so much fun and made some new friends. He loved the music - we got him a CD ~ so it will be Pandamania for years to come! LOL
In the evenings the boys went to FBC in Midlothian for Summer Blast. Here's a pic of the kids singing their little hearts out. They had so much fun! I have to
say that the music was awesome! Bug asked me for a CD of the music so he could play it in the car! :) Red kept asking me if it was time to go to that "fun VBS". LOL - I love it!
I have so many good memories of VBS as a kid...I am so glad my boys get to make good memories as well...summer time fun!
I have also been doing some canning this week as well. I got a great deal on peaches with an ad match last week and have really wanted to try my hand at making peach pie filling. So I took the plunge late one evening and started the peach peeling, pitting, slicing process. It was a bit of work, but I really liked seeing the finished jars on my counter! Here is my pre
tty peaches simmering in their yummy smelling broth! Oh how wonderful my kitchen did smell!
I am so thankful for the big stockpot that we found in the shed at Uncle Doug's
. It's the right size for quart jars! Yeah! It doesn't have a lid so I had to come up with my own cover...pretty "genius" huh? LOL
Here I am filling my jars...with my BRAND NEW FUNNEL! Woo-Hoo! Love it! I have to say that this was the best $1.23 that I've spent in a long time! LOL - it is soooo much easier to fill jars with a funnel! Love it!
Here is my finished jars...so pretty! I can't wait for it to get a little cooler so I can make some peach pie...or perhaps some peach tarts...hmmm...what else can I come up with???
Have I mentioned Bug's pumpkin? He planted an entire pumpkin of seeds...(from the Halloween pumpkins that sat on the back porch for months). He was quite the caretaker and diligently watered them and pulled the weeds. He was so proud when his pumpkins began to sprout and when this little one started out, he was soooooo excited! Unfortunately the heat just killed out the garden way before it's time and the pumpkins just didn't survive either. We decided to go ahead and pick his one surviving pumpkin before it literally dried up on the vine.
I figured it was the perfect pie pumpkin size anyway. Although it is WAY to hot these days for pumpkin pie...so we decided to put it up, parboil it and freeze it until the weather cools. Of course I had to dry the seeds for pumpkin planting next year. LOL
Another good ad match deal - pears. Red loves pears and I wanted to try out canning some! So here 'tis! I peeled, cored and cut them in to small cubes. Then I packed them with a light syrup and wa-lah beautiful pretty jars of fresh canned pears! I can't wait to try these out!
Hubby and I woke up today and thought...hmmm...we need to get those jalapenos and salsa canned.
I picked up jalapenos with an ad match ~ 3lbs for $1. So Hubby got busy slicing jalapenos while I worked on getting the kitchen cleaned up and ready for canning!
We decided to make some Cowboy Candy with the jalapenos!
Here is two of the finished jars. We ended up with four quarts in all. Of course that was after we "maced" ourselves with one quart that broke in the water bath. What a surprise ~ I took off the pot lid and !whew! Got an eye-full of pepper with that one! LOL - Hubby's comment. Just what I wanted to do on my day off...make home made "mace". LOL
Now onto the salsa. I picked up tomatoes 3 lbs for $1 too - woo-hoo! I was really excited about this deal because Hubby and I have been wanting to make some salsa.
Got the tomatoes in hot water for an easy peel!
Got the cold water all ready to dunk the hot maters! There are the jalapenos - no we didn't put all of those in. LOL
Here is hubby chopping the cilantro and the onions for the salsa.
He was also in charge of peeling the tomatoes and chopping them up a bit.
Bug decided to come in and help with this part...he got some lessons on knife handling and chopping without taking off a finger. ;)
Ready for the blender...
Ready for the jars!
And here is our finished jars! It was quite tasty! We are excited to see how the flavor developed after it sits for the next few weeks. So pretty!
Okay so besides canning and VBS I have been busy working on our school stuff for the upcoming year. I had seen a link on facebook for a "free" planner and I was really excited when I started looking at it. Over the past several years I haven't had much luck in finding a planner that I really liked. I usually just adapt to something I find and end up doing a lot of changing or just abandon it somewhere during the year. I am pretty old school in my planning ~ I like the whole pencil and paper kind of planner. I have tried the online stuff and it just didn't work for me. But I was able to download the pages and calendars from the New Beginning's website (http://new-bintexas.webs.com/freecurriculumplanner.htm) and put together something that I think it is going to work. I am excited about it anyway. LOL
I have been slowly working on my curriculum and plans over the last month or so and had already come up with a little something on my own. A three ring binder with the subjects divided ~ this allows me to put any worksheets in the binder as well as my own lesson plans for that particular subject. Here you can see the binder with some of the various tabs.
Here is an example of my "pencil and paper" lesson planning strategy. This particular set if for Red's science next year. I went through and planned out my lessons and my ideas for each lesson.
I also have a section for supplies.
Here you can see the actual lesson plan pages. I printed these from the web site. I like this layout because it allows me to put the boys names on the side and then their assignments in the columns. I think this will be a lot easier for me to read, than what I have using int he past. As you can see I haven't started this part yet...I just printed these today. I only printed three weeks so far...figured that would give me a good base to see if I like it or not.
I also printed the monthly calendars for the rest of 2011 and 2012 from the website. They have their own section as well.
I have a year at a glance calendar, attendance chart, cute cover page, long term planning and curriculum resources pages to include in my binder as well, but they aren't in there yet.
Hubby and I chatted this afternoon about some of the upcoming plans and things we need to do/want to do, etc. and decided to make a few changes in our "plans". LOL ~ what's new right?
Hubby and I are excited about the upcoming THSC conference. We are planning to attend a whole host of workshops. I think my favorite on the list is Teaching boys and other kids who'd rather build forts all day! What a hoot! I love it! I think it will be good for us to go. We've never attended a conference before and are quite excited about the possibilities. I am excited to attend the book fair as well. I can't wait to see all the great stuff the vendors have to offer.
We have also decided to take a month off of school. The boys are finally getting their "summer". LOL - well not completely, but I think they will love it. We are going to continue our reading program. Bug is doing so well...he is such a great reader and has been reading up a storm for the summer reading program at the library. I do hope the day of the reading club carnival is not 1000 degrees (like it's been lately) b/c we will probably have no less than 1 million tickets to get rid of. LOL ~ okay that's a bit of a stretch, but he has been reading a LOT!!! So we will continue to read during the next month, but the plan is to put aside the rest of the work and take a break for a few weeks.
I have started myself a goal list ~ things that I want to accomplish in the next month (while we are on "summer break"), not necessarily in this order.
1) Stain & hang the back screen door
2) Complete and place at least two crosses @ MP
3) Finish printing and organizing school planner
4) Finish power of a praying parent bible study
5) Finish listing books on PBS & put on shelf
6) Get shelves put up in the school room
7) Redo chore chart
8) Set up continuing reading program for school year
9) Set up work box system
10) Clean up remaining canning jars
11) Finish planning GA's curriculum
12) Plan Campcraft class for ECCHO
Oh my goodness! I had better get busy!!! LOL
I know that I will probably find more things that I want to add to my list, but it's a start. ;)
Well I had better sign off for now...it's getting late. ;) Until next time ~ love on your babies and be thankful for the little things!