Our Week In Review

With a family of 8 to feed, each day there is usually a fair amount of cooking.  Recently a few of our teens have begun taking turns making dinner!  For son L's night to cook he chose to make french toast.  A delicious and easy choice for a beginner.  He did GREAT and the dinner was delish!

For daughter H's night she focused her efforts on a yummy sauce that she poured over chicken, and we then ate the chicken and sauce over noodles.  It was a winner!

Daughter G took a turn last week, too, but I forgot to get a picture.  Three less nights for me to cook, yippee!

Actually, when I am rested and in the right mood, I really enjoy cooking and especially baking.  Since getting my cast off I have been cooking up a storm and having fun trying new things for my family.  Believe it or not, this is one of my happy places. :)

I tried a recipe for scrambled egg "muffins" that was floating around facebook a few weeks ago.  They turned out looking and smelling great, but I made the mistake of freezing them.  They don't freeze well.  Note to self:  eat fresh or refrigerate for a few days.

But I still had fun in the kitchen!  And oh yes, we did do school last week, too. ;)

Co-op Fun

Last Friday we did our annual "baking and making" day with our co-op ~ we baked sugar cookies and made some Christmas crafts. So much fun!!

There was time for some spontaneous games!


We made foam door hangars (thanks to my mom for sending the kits!) and decorated gift bags.







Is this a fun looking table, or what??!



While Marsha and Sally were busy supervising the crafts, I supervised the baking.


So many sprinkles were used! I have swept twice since then and am still finding them on the floor. :-)











A fun time was had by all! How we love and appreciate our co-op friends!

Red Bread

Yes, you read that right!

For a couple weeks now, Little Man has been asking for red bread. He even put a sign on my mixer that asked for red bread, complete with the word "please" and lots of smiley faces. :-) So today was the day!

I mixed up a batch of bread dough, and we added red food coloring to one fourth of it.




It came out more marbled than truly red, but Little Man was happy, and that's all that mattered to me!


He had a red bread sandwich today, and declared it good!



I love doing things with my Little Man!

FIAR Co-op - How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, Part 2

We spent a second week on this fun and entertaining book! First, we read and enjoyed it together again. Then we made an apple pie! Some of the children helped mix the pie crust, and some of the children rolled it out.







While the pie was baking we did another really messy activity, we painted with apples. We used apples for the main shapes, and brushes for fine details.








No, not blood. Just paint in the hair of our littlest student! If you know my friend Sally, this was something of an emergency even though it was not blood. :-) (love you Sally!)


For our snack, we of course ate the apple pie we'd baked! The letters cut out of the top crust stand for our co-op name: Families Learning In Christ.

Special Time with C and Little Man

What did sons C and Little Man and I do during the week that the other three were doing SAT testing?

We went to the library, just the three of us, and checked out lots of books. I have used various children's book anthologies over the years to help me choose the best of the best books to read to my children, but what I have been doing recently is using the 1000 Good Books List. I printed out a copy of this list and keep it in our library book bag. By and large, these are generally considered "classic" children's books, that have continued to delight over the course of several generations (and yes, there really are 1000! ~ for all different ages).


I read to both boys, and C read to Little Man!


Three of the five days we baked something together. Son C in particular loves to bake! On this day he made brownies almost completely by himself. The whole family enjoyed them for dessert after dinner that night.


Another day we made two kinds of cookies. Son C made chocolate chip, and Little Man made peanut butter.



I had C do some peer teaching. Using this tub of magnetic pictures, he helped Little Man recognize the beginning sound of each picture and place it appropriately on the white board. Little Man is still working on all the letter sounds, and this was fun to have his older brother help practice with him.





We missed the older siblings while they were SAT testing, but I'm thankful for the fun I was able to have with just C and Little Man! (a rare treat to be with just two!)