Equal Parts pancakes or waffles
This is not a gourmet, fancy, time consuming pancake or waffle recipe. It's the one you want when you stumble out of bed late and ravenous after a night of overdosing on sugar while enjoying the wonders of streaming netflix, gaming, reading that page turner, or whatever activities keep you up.
For each two people, mix together
1 cup each of whole wheat flour and milk of your choice
1 egg
1 tsp each baking POWDER and salt
It's that simple- no added fat or sugars. You'll do that after anyway.
Can be used for old fashioned pancakes, waffles, or Turbo's favourite way, in his doughnut factory. Nom, nom nom!
What having more than one kid has taught me
Disclaimer: I believe family size is a very individual, private thing, and that parents who choose to have one child are not living or giving a life that is any less full. However, I have seen that there are things it takes more than one kid to learn (or unlearn, as the case may be). In no particular order, this is what raising three children has taught me.
While you do have to watch out for your kids' personal safety, they are not really made of glass.
Steps. Kids need to learn to use them sooner rather than later.
Cookie dough. Really, do you actually KNOW anyone who has gotten sick, or even worse, died from it? Hearsay doesn't count.
Forget the ten second rule. If there are no bugs crawling on it, it's still edible.
Strong boys wear pink. Especially if they have a big sister. In fact, if they have a big sister, they probably wear pink tutus.
Sometimes it's easier to codify than disallow fighting.
New clothes? You mean socks and underwear, right?
Never let pride get in the way of accepting help.
You don't have to call the doctor for everything.
If you can stand up, you are well on your way to being able to sweep, fold laundry, and wash dishes.
Try not to get to attached to your
possessions.
Someones just going to break, make off with, or stain it.
Overlook things, if no property damage or broken bones will result.
It's OK to sometimes not know where your kids are.
Playing in the rain is not bad. It means mom will stay sane.
Mom does not have to share her chocolate.
If you get
fashed about germs, you'll go hungry a lot.
Hand washing. A good idea, yes, especially if you can see dirt, but again, do you really know anyone who's gotten sick from eating without washing first?
Sustainability
If there's anything we
Americans value, it's our freedom- conditionally. One thing I have come to believe is that people from every side of the aisle want to be free to do what they want to, while disallowing those things they don't think others should do. Except for the most dedicated Libertarians, we all have things we think the government should step in on. For me, there is no issue I feel more strongly needs regulation that those regarding sustainability. I would like to think people could prevent government control in this area by CHOOSING to make more sustainable choices, but we are still far behind the curve on that, aren't we? And if we are to have regulations, I think it's much better to make them on levels as local as possible. As
of the first of this month, the city of
Seattle has required all food service establishments to serve their food in packaging that is either recyclable or
compostable. I think this is a wonderful thing and that all cities should follow suit-now, before the state of the environment gets so crisis that
federal governments have
no choice but to step in and make drastic changes in our lifestyles.
Because here's the thing- it
doesn't matter who has what rights, who is protected, if we can't breathe the air, if the water makes us ill ( that is, if we have any water). When it comes to the
environment, we truly ARE in this together. No matter what we agree or disagree on, we all have to live here.
Let's make the choices, in our lives, now. To take it beyond recycling and carrying a few bags to the store. To compost, hang our laundry, cloth diaper, use hankies, use woman cloth, buy hybrid, buy used, borrow,
freeganise and barter before buying new, walk or cycle whenever we can, to think beyond
cheap plastic crap. Let's choose it now, before the choice is taken from us.
Ch ch changes
And yes, I will never hear that song the same since The Tenth Doctor: The Musical.
A few changes as we head into our new school year.
Sincethey lead into one another I will start with dance changes. For the past two years my kids have been at Action Dance Academy. While we have had some
great teachers, and made great friends there, the drive has been a bit of a hassle from the start. At the time we started there it was the closest dance school that was a community based instructor with our charter school, so there we went. Recently, Ninth Avenue School of Dance, which is about 7 minutes away and the
school where Olivia and Andrew have done Nutcracker for several years, became a
CBI. So it is with some sadness we say Farewell to ADA and embark on a new chapter in dance.
Which leads into: Olivia has done bells with our church for three years now. Because she will be moving up to three days a week of ballet, she had to make a choice ( time conflict). She chose ballet ( somewhat to my surprise) so will be forgoing bell choir this year. I wish we could have made it all work. I still have to figure out what she will do about ballet during Lent.
Anyone in Federal way knows that for the last few years our regional library has been undergoing major renovations. These are now done, and I have officially transferred all my holds from the 320
th to Regional. While I love being able to walk/cycle to the
library I feel a bit sad and disloyal
switching from the library where my kids went to
storytime as wee ones.
Bigoted in Federal Way
I just read a letter that made my blood boil. You can read it here:
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/south_king/fwm/opinion/letters/98287124.htmlI don't often write letters to the editor, but this letter was so full of hate that I did. I don't know if it will be printed or not, but I'm sharing it with you here.
TJ Brown's letter regarding "Gay in Federal Way" is full of hate and misinformation. Moving to any particular city over another to avoid gay people is an exercise in futility. Gay people make up roughly 10% of our population and since they are born , not recruited ( which Brown was concerned about) they are being born here, there and everywhere, all the time. Even in Federal Way.Brown also confuses gays and transvestites ("and a dress too if he wants to play dress up with his steam bath buddies").I can understand wishing our city did not have to spend money on diversity awareness issues, including gay awareness. However, Brown's letter is proof that we need to.
Seriously
Andrew and I were taking a walk a few days ago when we stopped to talk to a neighbor on the way home. As we were talking I began to suspect that the logic system I thought she followed was not, in fact what I thought it was. First, she was telling me to check out a movie called "message from water". You can read more about it here :
http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm but the essence of what she told me is that if you think loving thoughts at your water before you drink it, it can heal you. She then proceeded to tell me, in all seriousness, that on December 23rd, 2012, Atlantis and Lemuria will rise out of the ocean , displacing some part of some continent, she knew not where. I said, as seriously as I could, that I have heard all my life that California's coast was going to fall into the Pacific Ocean. And Andrew in complete
seriousness said we'd better give out Christmas presents early that year.
Language, transcripts, activities, oh my!
Friday night,I decided it was time to start planning the next school year. I kicked this off my having a huge sugary
granita at about 7 PM and then sitting down with The Well Trained Mind and the new
Rainbow Resource
catalogue, paper, pen, and the thrash metal Brian was
playing on the computer.
It took me 2 1/2 hours to start feeling insane.
I will have a 3rd, a 6
th, and an 8
th grader next year. I will have to start making transcripts for Matthew this year. So, a few actual questions, dear readers. What do you use to record transcripts? Things like math, language arts, etc are pretty
straight forward but what about "squishier" subjects where it's harder to determine a percentage grade?
We have done Latin for 4 years and Greek for 3,
but I also want to start teaching a contemporary foreign language. I had
always thought to do Spanish simply because that's most likely to be needed in their everyday lives. None of the kids want to do Spanish. I could just force the issue but there are other languages that
would be good to learn. Japanese and Mandarin- both could be useful. We have a Japanese neighbour so they could have immediate reinforcement (not to mention watching
kaiju and samurai films in the original
language). Mandarin is widely spoken world wide and then they could understand *all* the
dialougue on Firefly.
Opinions, readers?
So this is what I'm looking for for the next year-
Ecce Romani, (M,O)
Koine Greek, Saxon Math ( with the DIVE compass CD for Matthew), Saxon Grammar (M,O)
First Language Lesson and Writing With Ease (A)
Science Daybooks (I want to do something more for science but I have not figured that out yet. All the comprehensive stuff seems to be written from a creationist standpoint), Story of the World (Last half of Modern History), Logic, WA State History, replaced mid year with US
Gov't, second half of
Minimus Secundus (A), art appreciation. I am adding music appreciation and lives of the composers, and looking at Classical Writing for M and O. I can't tell from the description or googling if it's secular or not, and I can;t find the unfunded list on
CVA so I just can't tell.
Then activities. We are looking at:
Every other Monday, work MOPS
Every Monday, swim at 4 (all), Olivia ballet at 6:30
Tues- Andrew tap at 4:30, Olivia and I off to knit night most weeks.
Weds: (possible)PE for Andrew at 10:30 ,swim at 4, Olivia dropped off early for ballet at 6:30 on the way to take Matthew ( and any other kid I end up carpooling) to
confirmation, also at 6:30. Pick Olivia up late.
Thurs: Drop Olivia off early for ballet on the way to work, require Brian to pick he
r up.
Friday (possible )PE for Andrew at 10:30
Sat ballet for Andrew at 11:30, if he can be talked into it
Nutcracker rehearsals every Sat/Sun Sept-Dec.
Did I miss anything?
I know I can do this. I know I can.
Enough with the useless
Beacuase that's what this summer has been.
Our summer starts after
Olivia and Andrew's annual performance, which has usually been Father's Day weekend. And I have accomplished almost nothing since then. I have hung many load of laundry ( important to me, as I drive so much. My friend Cheryl calls it my "personal carbon offset programme"). I have cooked meals, taken walks, and gone to the lake a few times, but that's about this. I wish I could at least say I had done lots of
knitting or read lots of
books, but I can';t even say that. I have barely
finished any of either.
I'm sure a lot of this is that the kids have been letting me sleep in. I know many moms would say "Good job!" but it's been making my days start insanely late. Gotta stop. I haven't been blogging, I haven't been writing
lesson plans for work, though I did do some of BOTH today ( as you can see with the blogging). I have totally failed to start planning for next
school year, except to decide I want to take a field trip to the first Starbucks (Hey, I am required to teach WA state history!) and I really need to get on it because this year I need to start writing
transcripts for Matthew.
Oy.
So, no more of the useless. Expect more from me and bug me if I slack!
