Three Years Ago

I wrote this a year ago and I really can't state it any better --- "Three years. It was three years ago today that my dad suffered a stroke that would eventually take his life. In some ways, today, April 11th, is the day we lost so much. We lost his voice, his laughter, his wisdom, is ability to bring calmness to any situation and so much more. My dad was the rock of our family and we still feel that loss greatly in so many ways. There was a great legacy left by this man, though - a church that he led and cared for throughout many years; the love, wisdom and example he left for each of his family members. It was truly a great loss on so many levels. Over the course of the weeks following his stroke, my mom, brothers and their families and I saw God work even through our difficult understanding of what was to come. Even though I would love to have my dad here - I know that he is rejoicing in heaven and it is where he longed to be - with his Jesus. "

We miss this man more than anything.  Love you Dad!

Confessions of a Homeoschooler Curriculum Ideas

If you have followed my blog for any length of time you would have heard me mention Confessions of a Homeschooler as one of my favorite homeschool blogs.

She is an amazing blogger with so many great ideas!  I started using her curriculum for preschool.

This curriculum is so easy to use especially when you follow her instructions and print the whole thing and put it in file folders :-)  You can get it HERE

Recently she started posting curriculum's by grade and this has really caught my attention.  As much as a blessing as Connections Academy has been for us the last several years, I'm not loving it as much as the boys get older.  I'm finding that constant learning online is not beneficial for both of my kids and I really miss being able to learn together.  When Erica started posting these curriculum's, well, I really liked them.  I'm still not sure whether we will do Connections this fall (most likely yes - for this last year of Elementary for Josh) but either way, I do plan on using this at the point we stop using Connections. 

You can find a link to the page with all of the options HERE.

If you visit her blog, take time to look around.  From Homeschool information to recipes to quilt patterns - she offers a lot of different things to inspire you! 

Spring Break Recap

I always find it fun to recap from a goals post so here's our recap of spring break!

Spring Break officially starts on Friday, March 29th and the plan is to take the kids to the free movie - Hotel Transylvania 3.  This works because the movie starts at 10:00 so we need to leave home by 9:00.  This would normally be way to early for us but since our friends  by 7:30 - we are all up! HA!  That's really my only goal for this day. I will admit, I struggled with wanting to go . . for no reason other than I was tired HA!  But, I'm so glad we went!  The theater has awesome reclining seats so it's super comfortable.  The popcorn was amazing and the movie made me laugh out loud.  So it was a great kick off to spring break! 

The weekend is just our weekend.  I think we will hang out around home more than anything else.  Just relax and enjoy a break!  I'm hoping to set up a scrapbooking table so I can scrapbook all weekend On Saturday we went to Mooville Ice Cream and ate "All could you eat Sundays" for dinner.  For real Ha!  Yum!  Sunday was church and just relaxing 

Monday - Monday is my day for the house.  I have some goals.  1) 20-30 minutes in the basement 2) Clean the Master Bedroom.   For the kids, I have a small craft planned. Our day started with a trip to the Laundromat with breakfast from McDonald's.  (What? We need clean clothes!) Then we did the Dollar Tree challenge where the boys had $1.00 to find only one thing they wanted.  Once we got home, I decided that I really wanted to work in the Living Room/Dining Room this week.  The boys helped me empty some things that were on the floor and I then steam cleaned the carpet.  We ended with the night with Nate and I heading to TKD while Darryl and Josh stayed home. 

Tuesday - Kids Day - This is weather dependent.  If the weather is comfortable we will head to the park.  Today is also our Co-Op's "Sponser Day" at Mooville so we will go and get Ice Cream as well.  There is an activity at the library which we may do if the weather isn't nice. Today we headed to Mooville for lunch and ice cream.  It was a beautiful day so the kids were able to play outside on the playground with their friends from our Co-Op.  Once back home, I did some more work around the house. 

Wednesday - Another "me" day!  Oh, and the boys have dental appointments for cleaning Wednesday morning!   1) 20-30 Minutes in the basement 2) Clean the Kitchen and Stairs.  For the kids, I'll pick out some fun idea off of pinterest to do in the afternoon. The day started with a trip to the dentist (which neither boy was thrilled about HA!)  We then made a stop at Walmart so Josh could get flip flops and they each picked out their Easter shirt.  After lunch the boys and I headed to the park where my mom is going to be moving to so we could take photos of her home.  We ate dinner out and took our dog, Dash, on his first walk! 

Thursday - Kids Day - We may go see another free movie (Small Foot) or see what activities the Library has locally. Plans changed and we just hung out at home. It started because kids were complaining that they didn't get to "just stay home and not do school" HA!  In the end, though, Nate wasn't feeling great so we just hung out.  By 7:00 at night, Nate had spiked a fever and I ran him to the clinic where he tested positive for Influenza A.  We aren't planning much the rest of the weekend (actually we DID have plans but they have been postponed so we can keep germs at home!) 

Friday - The last "me" day  1) 20-30 Minutes in the basement 2) Clean the living room and playroom Our spring break ended much quieter then it started.  On Friday, we spent most of our day on the couch watching TV.  Nate was not feeling well at all :-(  Because of the True Flu we spent most of Saturday and Sunday at home too.  I guess sometimes it's just nice to just slow down.  

Sunday Worship - I have this Hope

Enjoy!

Weekly Menu

We are back to the normal grind this coming week.  So there isn't anything special and we are just enjoying the slow arrival of spring.  We had originally planned to head to my mom's for the weekend and the boys planned to stay a few extra days but then . . .Influenza A hit our house :-(  Poor little Nate got hit hard on Thursday night; when he spiked a fever and was lethargic I knew I needed to run him to the clinic to find out.  I'm glad I did!  Needless to say, our plans changed and we will be hanging out at home doing not much of anything!  

Friday - Darryl's going to bring home some pizza (we were supposed to eat pizza at my mom's!)  

Since our plans are just changing - I have not planned meals for Saturday-Wednesday yet.  I know, how disappointing HA! I won't actually go to the store until Saturday so I'll spend time today coming up with a simple menu and grocery list.  

Thursday - the kids will be at my moms so Darryl and I will totally eat out.  :-) 


For awhile I've thought about doing a recap of the menu from the week before for no other reason then for my own benefit so if you don't care - just stop reading now HA!  If you want to see how well I stuck to the plan read on!  I may not do this every week but at least for this week it's fun! 

Friday - Breakfast!  English Muffins, Eggs, Hashbrowns, Sausage and bacon.  Yum! Even though we had an unexpected dog adoption on this night; I still managed to cook dinner as planned.  

Saturday - If the weather cooperates, we will have Hamburgs on the grill (to celebrate Spring!), and Fries. The weather did not cooperate which was perfectly fine because - we had ICE CREAM for dinner HA!  Mooville had all you could eat Sundays . .. we went at 4:00 and by the time we were done, we were all stuffed so we did not eat dinner. 

Sunday - Today is a banquet at church.  We are supposed to bring a main dish and then either a side dish or dessert.  So, truth be told, I don't like taking food to things - it stresses me out.  So, last year I figured out a way to not stress - I pick up fried chicken from Meijer for my main dish and a couple packages of rolls :-)  And do you know what?  I'm not the only one that does that HA! I took chicken and cookies for the potluck.  Then Darryl picked up a Little Ceasers Pizza for dinner.  

Monday - Ham Steaks and Soup with yeast rolls Nope!  I had actually bought chicken corden blue's from the meat department at Meijer for Saturday night but we didn't use them so we had those tonight along with Amish noodles.  

Tuesday - Either chicken on the grill or Amish baked chicken, Buttered Noodles, and carrots Today was our sponsor day (a fundraiser) at a local place called Mooville.  To help earn money, I bought a Lasagna from the store to have for dinner.  We had garlic bread and salad with it too. 

Wednesday - If Darryl doesn't have practice I think we will go to Pizza Hut for a mid-week spring break treat; if he does have practice, the boys and I will have Tacos Tonight we ate out like planned but Darryl picked the KFC buffet instead of pizza hut.  

Thursday - Tonight will be whatever we didn't do on Wednesday!  Either Pizza Hut or Tacos :-) And tonight was really tacos! 

A Recipe - Something New!

Butter Swim Biscuits
adapted from Instrupix

I went looking for a new recipe to try in order to have something to post (and then I forgot to type this up for it to post on Wednesday!).  I came across this homemade biscuit recipe that looked easy and, well, who doesn't love something that swims in butter?  The biscuits were just as promised - moist and buttery when they came out of the oven.  Then, I had one a day later with my lunch and it was so good.  I warmed it up in the microwave, split it in half and, yes, spread a little more butter on it and it was just tasty!  Darryl suggested that next time I make sausage gravy, I need to make these biscuits to serve with it! 

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1 stick butter
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 4 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. 
2. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. 
3. Next, add the buttermilk and mix all of the ingredients together until a moist dough is formed.
4. Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl, and then pour it into an 8x8 or 9x9 baking dish (make sure that your pan is not too small or shallow so that the butter doesn't drip out of the pan while it's baking).
5. Place the dough right on top of the melted butter and use a spatula to spread it evenly across the pan until it touches the sides.
6. Cut the unbaked dough (it should be swimming in butter at this point) into 9 evenish squares. 
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown on top. 
8. Enjoy for breakfast, lunch or dinner! These biscuits are the perfect companion to any meal. I prefer to eat them with raspberry jam. 

April Goals

I tend to lose steam on goals sometime around April.  I'm trying not to let that happen this time around! So, I'm trying to get my goals reasonable and seek out some things that I actually think I can get done.  We hit school hard in April so I have some big goals for that and when we do that, everything else takes a back seat!!

So what is my main focus for April?  I'm struggled with this because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to focus on until it kind of hit me - planning. 

1) Plan our summer - I did this last year and it helped focus on some things.  I make calendars for June-August and try to put ideas on it for each week.  We don't do everything on the plan but it helps me not miss some things we'd like to really do.
2) Make sure my Holiday binder is up to date which includes planning when to buy things like Halloween Costumes, birthday items ect. Summer flies by and then all of a sudden we need stuff - It helps to spread that stuff out.

See - keeping it simple :-)

As is always the case, I have a few other things I'd like to get done this month:

1) Get everything I need for Easter.  (Easter Outfits for the boys, Eggs for hiding in the yard, and the other things for their Easter Baskets) And, plan Easter Dinner. 
2) Put my new Shelves together and organize my scrapbooks on them.
3) Make a list of anything needed to complete those scrapbooks
4) Order March 2019 photos and 1 month of older photos (I can't think of what Month I'm on - but I have it written down)
5) Order 1 month of digital prints (there is a coupon that is good for this week so I'm hoping to get that done!)
6) Paint the dining room.  We figured if we are putting shelves together, we should paint so we don't have to move the shelves!
7) The boys have multiple projects for school that are due by June.  My goal is to get them all done this month!
8) Dare I even list the basement?  Well, I'm going to but it's not high on the list this month.  It's my birthday month so I try to avoid things I don't like HA!
9) Do something fun for my birthday!  Darryl and I have talked about it a little but I haven't formulated a plan yet :-0
10) Clean out and organize the play room. We are going to be doing some furniture rearranging in May thinks to getting some furniture from my mom when she moves.  In order to make that a smooth transition, I need to clean and organize :-)
11) Clean out my truck.  Winter was hard on it because I never cleaned it since it was so cold.  It's time to take it to the car wash and vacuum it out like crazy!
12) Clean the Master Bedroom.  It doesn't take long - just have to get rid of the piles!!

That's all that's on my list this time - yes, only 12.  Not 19.  Maybe I'm just tired HA!