Creating Sacred Space

The icky stomach flu bug thing has hit our house. Patrick was up all day and night vomitting. Larry didn't feel well today either. We were supposed to travel to Princeton, Massachusetts to NEADS (http://www.neads.org/) to celebrate Larry and his hearing dog Stewie's graduation. The weather forecast predicted a bad storm but mostly we got a dusting today. We didn't end up going though between Larry not feeling well and the storm and Patrick spent all day in bed anyway.

I did manage to get so much done today though. I'm loving all the organizing and it's making me feel really good to have some control over my household. Larry slept in this morning and while he did I enjoyed my coffee and made my list of things I needed to get done today.

This is the dry erase board in my office/classroom. Notice that there are only two things not crossed off. I have to make a payment for a Prairie Class that Morgan and Tae will be taking next month. It sounds really cool and I'm very excited about it. The other thing I still have to do is finalize curriculum for next year. We are buying all of our books used from Amazon this year to help save money and the money that I save will be used for classes and field trips for the kids. We missed out on a lot last year because we didn't budget well so I'm really excited to be able to finally let them join in on more classes outside the home.

So what did we do today? I baked two loaves of bread, a pan of brownies, finally cleaned out my bedroom closet (4 hours worth), cleaned and emptied two huge boxes that were in my bedroom, finished painting the bedroom (ok-Larry did that yesterday along with hanging my new Roman shades, curtain rods and curtains), updated our Monthly calendars for March, made a Roast Turkey dinner, made more laundry detergent, found some recipes for homemade bagels

( I refuse to pay $3.99 for 6 bagels anymore), and found some recipes for some homemade cleaners because I refuse to buy the chemical stuff anymore).

Yeah-I know- what's happened to me? I make my own laundry detergent, cleaners, bake bread, raise chickens for fresh eggs, and have turned into the frugal housewife. The weird thing is that I'm loving all of it. Everything we do to sustain ourselves is less impact on the environment and brings our family closer together. None of it is hard to do but it does take planning to accomplish. Today, I'm dog tired from doing so much.

This is our sacred space-fresh and newly painted. The wall color in this picture looks peasoup green but it's a nice mustardy color.





I still have some pictures and artwork to hang but am loving my space. The kids are not allowed in here. It's mom and dad's space. No toys, no playing and no hanging out.





And yes, I finally tackled my closet today. We actually have a floor in there- I was beginning to wonder. It's all organized and neat. I threw out 4 bags of garbage, packed things away, straightened, washed and ironed tons of lines and donated a ton of clothes to charity. Whew! I'm very glad to have this whole area done.



Tomorrow I tackle the main bathroom linen closet. We have a very full week with Pediatrician appointments, Dentist appointments, art and sign language class, our coop, soccer practice and I have a meeting at church. I also go back to work this coming Friday night and am not looking forward to it. Patrick will be on a field trip to a Synagogue as part of his Neighboring Faiths curriculum at church. Catch me if you can.

And here is my funny little man. He helped me to make brownies today.

Chocolate everywhere!

Simplicity

This was dinner tonight. Tortilla pizzas with whatever toppings the kids wanted. Mine had feta cheese, tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms and sausage. A delicious quick meal since Morgan has soccer practice tonight.

Too bad the steam coming off of this pizza didn't photograph.

Last night I made roast chicken. These were really small so I had to do two of them. Best of all I paid $1.00 each for them using the grocery store coupons.



Our small group ministry at church this month is talking about Simplicity. That's been my goal for many months and organizing is part of that simplifying. So is homeschool. Trying to keep track of what 3 kids are learning can be overwhelming and I did what I vowed I would never do...I bought a planner for homeschool. I was getting confused in what the kids had read and what they have done and ended up repeating a lot of stuff. I still collaborate with the kids on the work they are going to do. Rather than do lesson plans and stress myself out, I use this for recording what they have done. Kind of a backward lesson plan. But it's working really well. And while our schedules are very full-I've found that being highly organized is the key to keeping my sanity. At least it works most days.


The other organizing thing I did was whittle our homeschool down to one subject a day. It's also been really great because now we can focus our efforts on one area instead of flip flopping around. It doesn't work everyday -especially when we have field trips and doctor appointments. But we can work around that and if we have to double up one day that's fine to. My goal is to always have a plan but be flexible enough to change it.


So for now the schedule is:
Monday-Math and Art Class
Tuesday-Literature and Language Arts
Wednesday-Science and Soccer Practice
Thursday-Sign Language and Homeschool Coop
Friday-History, Geography, Civics and Home Economics.
Saturday-Soccer games
Sunday-Church (Patrick does his Neighboring Faith program which I consider a part of homeschool) Morgan and Tae have their Sunday school class.




Morgan made a whole map of the United States today and then colored it in. Great Job.

Patrick was learning about Land and Water Distribution on the Earth and made this fabulous map.

Tae...my camera ham worked on letters, numbers and matching on the computer.

We made a list to hang on the wall for Tae. He's really recognizing a lot of words. After I hung this up he added some more words and wrote them himself. He added: on, no, off, yes and Pete (our Boxer). He was so proud of himself.

He loves these little color books. Today he did Red. He colored, cut out and stapled them all by himself.

I have a lot of Tae's work. He's my camera man and loves to show off his work. My two oldest are always hiding from Mommy's obsession with capturing everything on the camera. This picture, well um... "the ambulance is leaving with the dead guy because there was a fire." In case you can't see on the back of the ambulance is a dead guy on a stretcher.

Oh but wait. Then there is this one. We have multiple things going on here. Tae wrote, "Dad's Hearing dog." The goldish stickers in the middle are all dogs and he drew a nice rug for them to sit on. See-all very innocent. But notice the Dad's Hearing Dog sign on fire. And the theme of ambulance at the bottom. Then if you look at the top, deadman makes another appearance but this time he is so dead he needs 2 guys to carry him. Uh huh. Should I be worried about him?

Yesterday we went to a play at the library called Sophie's socks. It was put on by a bunch of homeschoolers in our area. The did a fabulous job and many of our Meetinghouse kids were part of the show. Tae, Patrick and Morgan wait patiently for the play to begin. They had a great time and best of all it was free.

Tae and Morgan sit on the floor watching the play.

Tomorrow is our Sign Language class and our coop group meets here in the afternoon. Busy days.

Buried in Organizing

Where have I been for three days? I'm nesting for some reason. No I'm not pregnant (as my husband sighs with relief). More on that later.

I'm really fortunate to have very independent kids. I've been cooking with them since they were little. On Friday, Morgan asked to cook some scrambled eggs for breakfast. Sure thing! She knows how to use the stove at the age of 9 and cooked everything by herself. The peanut butter was for the bagel.....not the eggs.

On Friday afternoon my friend Sue came for a visit. She brought wine and pastries. Delightful. She brought these Sponge Bob cupcakes for the kids who were stained blue after eating them. I may have to submit these to Cake Wrecks. Shouldn't that pink Teletubbie poo next to Bob be a pineapple?

I made 4 loaves of bread-2 whole wheat and 2 artisan breads. Then we made some hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I made a yummy shrimp and pasta dish. It had fresh spinach, roasted red peppers, capers and fresh lemon juice.

No, the picture isn't upside down. Morgan reads very well upside down. Tae is just 5 and copies whatever his big sister is doing.

Ok, so to the organizing. One of the big stressors in this house is the fact that we don't have enough storage space. Actually we have really big closets and plenty of storage space but no shelving. So our income tax came and we spent some money on shelving. These are my gardening books and some curriculum that we no longer use but will again as my two youngest progress thru homeschool. These shelves were here when we moved in.

My husband went out today and bought me two black bookcases for my office/classroom. We so needed book shelf space. Morgan and Tae took the boxes and made some cool cars out of them.


Tae of course had to get out his screwdriver and help Dad assemble the bookcases.
Larry bought me two cases. One for all of the kids books and one just for me. I have tons of books that I use regularly and really needed my own space. Now each child has their own shelf and it's completely organized. Aren't their chairs that I stenciled with their names cute? I'm so pleased to have a space for our globe and microscope. The top shelf is all reference books and the third shelf is manipulatives. So exciting to be so organized.


I'm also looking at curriculum for the coming year. Morgan is almost all set as she can use most of Patrick's books from 5th grade. Big money savings there. She just needs science and history.

Larry also bought two plastic storage shelves from Home Depot. We've been storing everything in the laundry room which just drives me crazy. The boys had a huge closet/storage space in the back of their bedroom. We closed this space off last year when we redid their room. The shelves can hold over 150 pounds so I was thrilled. I spent all weekend cleaning out my cabinets in the kitchen and moving glassware downstairs.

The far shelf is for party/glassware that I seldom use. I took it all out of my cabinets and moved it downstairs. It freed up much needed space for pantry supplies. The shelf closest to us is now used for other supplies like Lysol wipes, toilet paper, saran wrap, paper towels, sponges, plastic ware for our annual reunion and napkins.

I've been looking at curriculum for the kids. Since our income tax came in we really need to order it now. Yearly I spend about $400-$500 in curriculum. This year I've had a huge savings by finding most of their books used on Amazon. It will probably reduce my spending down to about $250-$300 depending on what I can find. Tae will be starting Kindergarten in September -at home of course and I am going slowly with him I only ordered two books for him. Reading to kids is most important at this age and since he knows most of his alphabet and his numbers, I think he'll do just fine. I'll post more about curriculum at a later date when I make my final decisions and order.

I'm also going to post some money saving tips that Larry and I have been working thru. I'm really proud of all that we've have done. We have not used a credit card in over 6 months! But more tomorrow on that.