Ah, Thursday.

My day off from work.  I love Thursdays exactly the way I used to love Monday when it was my day off.   Today I am going to putter around the house.  I also need to run at least one errand in town, one that I had to put off while I didn't have a driver's license, but that's it.  There are no kid activities tonight.  We may do some board games and have some family time.  I've moved the kid's cooking /home economics class to Thursdays so we'll be doing that today.  I need to figure out what they should cook.  The only thing I ever remember cooking in my 8th grade home economics class in school was brown sugar and cinnamon toast.  Kind of strange choices, I mean, I like them, but they don't really involve much cooking skill, measuring or anything and they're not very healthy.  I read something yesterday that said that some organization (can't remember which) was encouraging families to cook and eat at least one meal a week at home.  Well we are certainly doing better than that!  During my hiatus from cooking or cleaning or basically doing anything, when I was a zombie for several weeks after my Dad passed away in January, we still ate pretty much all of our meals at home ... the kids and my husband just prepared themselves something to eat.  I think they ate more sandwiches during that several week period than anybody should, but they were reasonably healthy sandwiches, prepared at home.


Speaking kind of, of eating out and things like that ... I read an article in an old Family Fun magazine (while at the dentist)  about a family that decided to make small sacrifices and send money to Haiti after the earthquake there.  They'd pass up eating out or getting ice cream and put that money in the Haiti fund.   We're going to do this for the month of November and give some money to World Vision.  I got the catalog from them yesterday in the mail.  We can buy a family in a third world country 2 chickens for 25 dollars and they can have eggs to eat and sell.   I made my first tiny little sacrifice last night.  I was in a store getting dish detergent and I saw those Christmas peppermint sticks I love so much, but I didn't buy them and when I came home, I put a dollar in the fund.  I'm going to put some kind of chart up on the wall to help us keep up with it.  It's not much, but it's just a little extra thing we can do to help others and I think that the month of November, when we are supposed to be thankful for what we have, is a very good month to give to others.  

Free!

I'm free to roam now.  The Commonwealth of Kentucky has generously given me back my driving privileges.   Thankfully, I did not have to pass a driving test.  To celebrate the two younger kids and I went to the library and Walmart, then stopped by Baskin Robbins for dollar scoop night.  Do we know how to celebrate or what?  I actually kind of enjoyed not chauffering them around for a couple of days but I also enjoyed getting back out there.  I guess it was like a vacation, nice to have a break, then nice to get back to normal.

My new addiction.

It's cornbread.  That cornbread I made today was so good.  I ate a bunch of it.  I ate it instead of the veggie soup for dinner. I ate it as an after dinner snack.  Every minute that I wasn't eating cornbread, I was thinking about eating cornbread.  Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little but, wow, that stuff is good. I haven't had any cornbread at all for over a year since going gluten free.  I bought the gluten free corn meal at Whole Foods a few weeks back and today used the recipe on the back of the bag to make the  cornbread.  I used masa flour and gluten free Bisquick instead of wheat flour and put in creamed corn and onions.  Yummy. 

I know what I'm going to have for breakfast.  

Still grounded.

I'm stuck home today but I'm making the most of it.  I've made vegetable soup and the best gluten free cornbread ever.  I've been doing a little cleaning on the house and working on my book.  The kids have been doing school.  The younger 2 don't have math today because they have finished the first Life of Fred book and we've got another one ordered, but it hasn't arrived yet.  I didn't feel like finding any math to assign so I assigned a few extra chores instead. They were thrilled.  :-P

Cooking.

I added a cooking class to our homeschool this year, which basically means that the kids cook on Fridays.  Sometimes they cook a meal and sometimes just a dessert.  Since I discovered the A Year of Slow Cooking blog, I've been loading the crockpots full several times a week and this Friday there wasn't much of a need for the kids to cook another meal, so they made chocolate chip cookies and since we didn't have any chocolate chips, they cut up left-over-from-Halloween fun size Snickers.  I applaud this kind of innovation.  Wow did they smell and look good!  Too gluten-y for me though, unfortunately.  Then on Saturday, we had kind of an impromptu cooking class again.  We cooked, peeled and pied our sweet potato crop.  We are very proud that we grew our own potatoes this year and made 3 pies, 2 with crust and 1 without.

My youngest does not feel that he needs cooking class. He can already make cold cereal, pancakes, waffles and toad-in-a-hole (egg mixed with ham, fried in a skillet, inside a piece of bread that you've torn a hole in).  Regarding cooking on Friday, he said "I can already cook myself breakfast and for lunch and dinner, I'll just have banquets."  To which I replied "Banquets?"  picturing fancy feasts with a lot of people.
"Yes" he said, pulling the box out of the freezer.

Banquets.

Grounded!

I have been grounded.  Didn't that term originally apply to pilots who were not allowed to fly for some reason?  Well, in its infinite wisdom, the Commonwealth of Kentucky has grounded me, in other words, they suspended my driver's license because of a "glitch" in their computer system.  I got a speeding ticket in August for going 45 in a 35 mile zone where most drivers go about 60, but I digress.  In September I completed an on-line version of traffic school.  At the end of the course my status on the on-line sign in page was changed to "complete" so, silly me, I thought I was done.  Then I got a letter yesterday saying that I had never enrolled in traffic school at all and that my license was suspended effective October 31.  So basically, I've been driving without a license for a week.  Anyway, I looked up my status on the on-line school and it said "complete" and showed that I had paid for it.  My credit card was not denied.  I was stumped, so I called the toll free number and the man on the other end said that I must not have passed the test at the end.  Then he said that I had gotten 90% and that I only needed 80% and it must be a "glitch". Then he said he was going to transfer my call to the instructor and I would have to answer a few more questions.  While on hold, I'm hoping I remember the traffic laws in case its more test questions he's going to ask, but no, he asked my birth date and my address then told me that he'd electronically send something to the driver's licensing board (the school is based in another state) and then it would be up to the licensing board to see when I would get my license back.  So what it all boils down to is the school web site had some kind of problem and the state didn't send me any kind of warning, just suspended me.  I hope  it is straightened out soon. 

Does anyone else remember me kind of whining the other day about how I feel sometimes like I live in my van? 

Irony?

Everest.

We got Everest season 2 from the Discovery Channel through Netflix and I'm watching them climb today.  It's kind of fascinating.  I mean, I want to say "why?" but I have to admire their courage and determination.  One of the climber is 71 years old and one has pretty severe asthma.   Last season, one of the climbers was a double amputee.  I'm going to finish disk 1 of this and then have to wait several days for the next installment to come from Netflix, to see if they make it.  I am determined not to Google it and see how it all turned out. 

Looming!

Does it seem to anyone else that Christmas is looming?  How did it get so close?   It seems like it wasn't even in my thoughts at all and now I see Christmas things everywhere I go.  At least they weren't yet playing Christmas music in the grocery store when I was shopping tonight!  I personally would like to see Thanksgiving get a little more attention.  I love Thanksgiving, such a simple and sweet holiday.

Since this is a homeschooling blog basically, I will share that I think the changes to the schedule have worked this week.  They were only slight tweaks and I do feel that they helped us get it all in and now I don't have to feel guilty.  That's always a good thing.