What to feed the herd...?

Since a big part of successful dinner preparation is having a plan....

Sunday: Charlie's Chicken after church. No cooking. :)
Monday: Great-Grandmother Proctor's birthday party. No cooking. :) :)
Tuesday: Farfalle with Spinach, Garlic, and Grape Tomatoes, Grilled chicken, Grapes.
Wednesday: Pistachio-Crusted Catfish, Broccoli, Apples, Baguette
Thursday: Lemon Artichoke Chicken, Whole Wheat Pasta, Asparagus, Berries
Friday: Blackened Catfish Sandwiches, Sweet Potato Fries, Grapes
Saturday: Leftovers, Zucchini, Grapes and Berries

Of course, there are variations on the above to accommodate the kids, but this is what my sweet hubby and I will be eating.

Nine years

Last Wednesday, while I was at the lake with the boys and my sweet hubby was typing blisters onto his fingers, our ninth wedding anniversary passed. He called me that morning early while I was wrangling bookworms and said "Happy Anniversary!" And I said, "Sorry, I didn't know it was Wednesday." (I did know that Wednesday was our anniversary - I just thought it was Tuesday again like some sort of Groundhog Day phenomena.) We chatted a minutes and then I went back to my wrangling career and he went back to typing and on Friday we kissed and hugged and hung out together and then on Saturday afternoon (after I had slept a few hours and somewhat recovered from a week of wrangling without my strong, stable counterpart) we went on a date.

As in, HE hired his cousin K to come and wrangle #2 and #3 for a bit and we went OUT away from them. Of course, we did want K to agree to come again, so we took #4 with us - he was gracious enough to nap most of the time we were out.

We went to the mall to check out a new store that we wanted to see, but we couldn't find a parking place within 982 miles of an entrance and I got cranky about that and he suggested that we skip the mall and head over to our favorite bookstore for some browsing and beverages. The iced tea was delicious. And I fell in love with three new cookbooks but didn't buy any of them.

Then we went to a little sushi joint, which he had visited before, but I had not. It looked like a sushi bar inside - red wall, black trim, Kanji on the walls, and black lacquered tables and chairs, simple and clean and modern. And at the back was the sushi chef with his neat and symmetrical piles of pink and white fish and shellfish (some cooked, some not) and uniformly cut vegetables. We sat, the waitress came, and we ordered: seaweed salad, several pieces of nigiri and several rolled treats. And for dessert, he ordered me some green tea ice cream - and that was REALLY yummy. It was a good time had by all, including #4 who was adored by the waitresses.

Then we came home and got the little bookworms to bed and I wrote a blog post and he worked until bedtime. Romantic, huh?

It's been a fantastic nine years in spite of all that has happened. I love my man. He's just plain amazing. :)

I must complain..

I just spent 45 minutes updating my "Food for Thought" list, and then lost the changes. Grrrr....

My European city according to Blogthing

Here's what they think....

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

But they are wrong. There's this little village on the Mediterranean coast of Spain ...

To answer Comfy's question - book reviews :)

I didn't write a darn thing while we were at the lake. You see, efficient typing requires TWO hands, and I typically had only one available. However, we watched very little TV - mostly before 10am - and because I do NOT find Dora, Elmo, and Meteor and the Monster Trucks entertaining, I sat with the baby and read, except for the Cookie Monster segments - those still crack me up - especially Cookie attaching a huge chocolate chip creation to a rocket so he could fire it into space instead of consuming it - that struck home with me, as my mother and I ate an entire package of Oreos in under 24 hours. Yep, cookies are my downfall. Chocolate is a necessity, but one or two dark squares a day will do me. Cookies are dangerous things to have around.

So, here are a few very brief reviews:

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
This was a fantastic little read set in the 1660s in Holland. It is about Griet, who is a maid in the household of the artist Vermeer. The history is fascinating, as is the insight to art. Paperbackswap currently has 125 copies listed - go get one.

Sisterchicks do the Hula by Robin Jones Gunn
This was a fun book. Two women (one of them pregnant) are celebrating their 40th birthdays in Hawaii. It's 99% fluff, but it is enjoyable fluff. I complained that the first Sisterchicks book had some sudden didactic moments. This book is much improved. Again, it's available at Paperbackswap, so order it to read while you watch your kids run wild in the backyard.

The Quilter's Apprentice and Round Robin by Jennifer Chiaverini
These are both part of the Elm Creek Quilt series, and I enjoyed them immensely. I am fascinated by quilts and quilting. I hope to learn how one day. But these novels are about far more than quilting. They are about family and friendships and community. There are several more in the series, but they are not available at PBS, you'll have to go to the library. I have the third in the series on reserve and hope to pick it up today. :)

The Magic Tree House Books by Mary Pope Osborne
Charlotte Mason would turn in her grave over these twaddly little chapter books, but my son loves them. There are some fun facts in each one, they introduce concepts in history and geography, and they promote literacy. However, "Jack said" and "Annie said" and "Morgan said." Jack could "shout," Annie could "whine," and Morgan could "announce." But no, they all just "said." If I were a new reader, I'd probably find the continual use of the word "said" comforting, but as an adult reading aloud, it nearly drove me batty and I began to change the word to something more appropriate and pleasing to the ear every time I came upon it. In a year or two when #2's reading ability allows him to enjoy them for himself, he'll be surprised to find "said" over and over again. Fun reads, though, with a smattering of education to them.

HA! I finished the post before #4 awoke from his morning nap. Off to feed him and read email before I return to my desk to browse through cookbooks and make a plan for grocerying and meal preparation for the next month or two.

What I did on my Summer Vacation

I worked hard. :) So did my mom - who, by the way, will soon be nominated for Sainthood. Not many Grammas are willing to help their daughters wrangle three sweet bulls in the china shop known as Mimi's Lake House for most of a week. Let me say, we did only have to glue one thing back together this time, though a poor lamp had his life threatened more than once (that would be the lamp that I've already repaired three times). I'll not tell you what we had to glue. It wasn't expensive. And I'm hoping Mimi will never notice. It was the principle of the thing that made us try to repair it at all. It's a cute little trinket - I hope the glue holds. :)

Anyway - now I'm home and tired and I want to go lay down with a book. But I'll leave you all with some pictures.

We inspected spider webs (that was actually schoolwork, since we are finishing up a spider unit - lapbook to be posted soon.)


We ate popsicles.





We swam and then we swam and then we swam some more. As in, we spent about 4 hours a day in the pool - with appropriate sunscreen, of course. None of us are burned a bit, but I bet that pool was lonely this afternoon.

Wild.

I've been neglecting my blog, but I've been really busy.

I've been focusing on getting new routines in place and such around here. I've been making myself go to bed around 11 and get up at 5. That way, I'm still getting six hours of sleep, I'm up an hour before the boys. I get my Bible study and some prayer and reading time. And I'm working on exercising daily (swim three times a week and do Pilates with a video the other days). And it seems like I'd be tired, but it is increasing my energy level a lot. I've been avoiding the computer during the day except for occasional email checks. And working on getting a six week rotating menu set up complete with shopping lists. All of this to save my sanity. I set up a new laundry system - but that will be my next WFMW post. And we're working hard on first-time obedience and honor and respect among our family. It's been wild.

And I've been planning next year's home school. I need to do a little revamping and some serious personalizing on the schedule that I prepared while I was very pregnant. I need to plan out Math, Bible, and Language Arts. I need to schedule in some hands-on stuff and some lapbooking. I'm working on it.

And, because my mom has recently gather a bunch of her famous recipes to give as a wedding gift to some friends, I really want to take those recipes and type them up so that she can easily duplicate the project and so that I can have copies of all of them too. (See above mention of the menu project).

We also are having repairs done on our house (Termites. ew.) That would be on top of the new washing machine, repair for water damage, my father's ingenious drainage solution for our swampy yard, and general housework that has been neglected during the last few weeks of pregnancy and the postpartum brain fog. I'm determined to catch up before we actually start school at the end of August.

So, as you can see, the to-do list is much longer than the time available allows. And the blog is neglected.

But I'm about to go with my mom and the little Bookworms to the lake for a week (The King is staying here to work on some large projects of his own - and my dad will be around working on repairs.) On the last trip, I got a bunch of blog posts written and then posted them when I came back. Maybe I'll manage that again. Maybe I'll share a couple of my mother's amazing recipes, too. :)