The Momma Knows

When the School Year is Over

By Dawn on June 13, 2013 Comments { 1 }

It’s that time of year again– time to put away the school books and move on into summer activities.

This year, all I’ve got to say about that is HOORAY! Stick a fork in me.

I. Am. So. DONE.

I don’t know why this year took so much effort, but it did. We have a field trip next week to a pizza place, just for fun. The boys get to make their own mini pizzas and see how the big pizza oven works. Yes, they are 11 and nearly 13 and I don’t care. When they heard pizza was involved, they wouldn’t let me say no. Pizza at 9:30 in the morning is perfectly acceptable when you’re an adolescent male with a voracious appetite. It will be snack time by then.

We’ve got just a few grammar lessons left, one spelling lesson, two chapters in our history audio book, and that’s it. If I’ve forgotten anything, well, I’ve forgotten it. I’m too tired to be concerned at this point.

Our first day of summer vacation will begin early, with a 6:45am alarm, breakfast, and the first of many 7:30 swim team practices. We move from one mode to another; from school mode into summer. I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve got plans for this summer:

To run three mornings a week.
To order our curriculum for fall and get that planned out ahead of time.
To take my kids to the beach.
To plant a few heirloom tomato plants.
To buy two more chickens.
To go camping. Still not my favorite thing to do.
To read, a lot.
To work on a big project.
To play with these boys while they’re still not “too cool” to play with their mom.
To take extra shifts at work each week to get us caught up from our Hawaiian vacation that I haven’t written about yet.
To write about our vacation, among other things.
And to run away for a weekend in August with friends, for this…

Print ttdm_logo

Not ONLY do I get to spend a weekend with girlfriends AND no kids, but the Apologia Real Refreshment Retreat Sampler is going to be amazing. Friday night we will be blessed by the speakers that Apologia has lined up for us. I don’t know who I’m most looking forward to hearing, I just know that I need this night. Oh how I need this. And it’s not just for bloggers, ladies, it is for all homeschooling mommas!

Saturday, we get to go to curriculum heaven, all day long! The Teach Them Diligently Marketplace is going to be unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, with vendor workshops every half hour, from morning until late in the evening. My favorite thing to do at conferences is to talk to curriculum vendors. I like to hear from them particularly if they have homeschool moms working at their booths. It helps me make educated decisions for my kids, rather than blindly poking around in a catalog.

And do you know what else?

A lot of my homeschool blogging friends are going to these Sampler Retreats, including this one! I’m just going to put this out there right now: If you’re going to the Teach Them Diligently Marketplace weekend in Tacoma in August, let me know! I’d love to say hi!

As we move into summer it’s time to reflect on the year we’ve just completed, start thinking about the one in front of us, and be in the moments this summer with our kids. We’re planning on having lots of those, too.

What are your summer plans? I’d love to hear them! And are you attending one of the Apologia Real Refreshment events?

categories: Homeschooling

Tags: HSTTD, summer, weekly wrap up

Comments { 1 } :

Running Colors

By Dawn on June 12, 2013 Comments { 0 }

I enjoy running. I know it sounds weird to read that, because believe me it’s weird to SAY it. But I do. I’ve even run the Bloomsday 12K twice… although not this year.

Running Colors

I can make excuses for anything. I didn’t register for Bloomsday this year because I’ve had a sore foot for months. I have a neuroma in my foot, which is a growth around the nerve that runs from the heel to between two of my toes, along the bottom of my foot. It feels like I have a rock in between the bones in the ball of my foot. This makes my toes go numb when I put stress on my feet by running or doing Zumba.

Fun times, lemma tell ya.

The podiatrist gave me a cortisone shot through the top of my foot, into the neuroma. My foot hurt for weeks afterward, and the nerve sort of freaked out. It felt like I had an electrical shock running from my heel to my toes when ever I walked.

cortison shot for neuroma That’s been my excuse for a long time. And I’ve gained 13#.

I signed up for the Color Me Rad 5K race last winter, with some friends. Our team is called the Bridal Wave, and we’re going to wear thrifted wedding dresses for the run. They will definitely NOT be white by the time we’re done.

I’m not sure how the dress will affect the way that I run, but I’m hoping to get a decent time. For me that is 31-36 minutes. Hopefully I don’t spend all of that time fighting tulle.

colorme

But I haven’t run much in the last few weeks. I can’t even do 5k without walking, particularly if there are any hills. I’m going to do this race if it kills me. (It may.)

THIS is fun!

THIS is how I get my flabby bod in shape, because it’s really the only physical activity besides Zumba that I enjoy. Right?!

RIGHT!!!!

So this Saturday I’m going to put on a wedding dress, lace up my Brooks, and go get sprayed with paint at Color Me Rad. I’ll post pictures, I promise.

Now I just have to find a wedding dress! If you follow The Momma Knows on Facebook, you just might get to see some previews.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

categories: Home & Family

Tags: 5K, Color Me Rad, running

Comments { 0 } :

Confessions of a Label Reader: 10 Healthy Foods in My Fridge

By Dawn on June 10, 2013 Comments { 4 }

Everyone has certain foods or ingredients that they cook with on a regular basis.

I love flavorful foods with savory or spicy tones, as well as healthier alternatives when I can use them. I’m a label reader, because I’m tired of feeding my family substandard foods and things which if you really look at what they’re made from, sound more like a science experiment than food. At the top of my list of things to look for are MSG and it’s derivatives, food coloring, and high fructose corn syrup.

10 Healthy Foods in My Fridge

1. Veggies- I asked my kids the first thing that comes to mind when they think of our refrigerator, and they both said “Way too many vegetables”. I am realizing that my list makes me sound like some kind of health freak; I’m totally not. I’m overweight and have a sweet tooth that I’d love to remove, but I am working on making helping everyone in the house eat healthier. In my defense, because my husband and I like to juice, we have a large container of spinach, a 20# bag of carrots, 15# of oranges, plus kale, pears, ginger, beets, and collard greens all for juicing. You can imagine why veggies are the first thing my kids thought of.

2. Real Butter- After so many years of butter alternatives being pushed as “healthy alternatives” to the real thing, we find out that margarine is chemically produced and it’s composition is freakishly similar to plastic. Um. No thanks. We switched to butter only about four years ago and haven’t looked back.

3. Sweet Chili Sauce- I fell in love with this sweetly spicy bottled sauce when we ate dinner at HuHot Mongolian. It didn’t take me too long to find it at the grocery store later that week. I love it on eggrolls, rice, chicken, veggies, and potstickers. Yum, yum, yum! It goes well with pretty much anything that needs a little kick. I only saw a couple of brands available, and neither is made with high fructose corn syrup. Don’t let the red/orange color fool you either, that’s pure sweet red peppers there; No food coloring. Score!

4. Oranges- I wouldn’t describe myself as a die hard, but I juice veggies and fruits, and an orange is always the first thing I put in the juicer. Gotta have my oranges! They are also one of my favorite snacks.

5. Ranch dressing- Another staple that the family couldn’t survive without. My label reading goes into overdrive big time in this area, and I’ve only found one brand of salad dressing that we all like and that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup, food coloring, or preservatives in it. If you have Lighthouse Salad Dressing where you live, you can usually find it in the produce department in a refrigerated section. Good stuff!

6. Lemon Juice- I just buy it in the little yellow lemon, but we do use it often enough to mention it here. It is the one of key ingredients in my Chicken Grape Pasta Salad.

7. Strawberry Jam- The only kind the family will eat, and yes, often it’s my own homemade jam from my homegrown strawberries.

8. Milk- Just regular ol’ 1% milk. I know, not organic, not whole, not anything remotely what is considered “healthy” these days, but hey I have rapidly growing giants boys and we go through a gallon. a. day. I do make sure to buy milk labeled “No rBST” though. That’s a hormone they give cows to force them to produce gallons and gallons of milk each day, and the hormone remains in the milk. If you’ve got preadolescent aged kids who are, er, developing at the age of 8 or 9, this may be a contributing factor.

9. Fresh Eggs- What can I say? We have ~~three~~ two chickens so we don’t have a shortage of eggs. (My Queenie hen died today.) Mostly organic, relatively free-range chicken eggs. Store bought eggs can’t even compare with these.

10. Ketchup- Kids. Enough said. Well, almost. Did you know that of all the commercially available ketchup brands out there, there’s only ONE that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup? Consider your label reading job finished here. I already read every label in the stores. Hunt’s doesn’t have it, and all the other brands (including store brands) DO. And good luck finding BBQ sauce too. Just sayin’.

Attention Egg Purists: I feel the need to disclose and define a couple of things.

“Mostly Organic”- I feed them organic chicken feed, and they eat whatever they want out in the yard and garden. They get kitchen scraps of fruits, veggies, bread, left over french toast and pancakes, cooked eggs, etc. We also get free wheat berries and chicken scratch from local granaries, because my husband repairs and calibrates their scales. We don’t turn down free wheat. The girls don’t really care for scratch though, so I kind of wish he’d turned that down. I have a 35 gallon can of the stuff. I’m pretty sure that neither the wheat nor the scratch are organic or GMO free. Ah well, we try.

“Relatively free-range”- Our chickens sleep in a coop, where they can come and go to the outside world at will. Their “yard” is actually our fenced off garden area. Not that the 3’ fence slows them down very much. They just hop over and have free run of the whole back yard and our patio. We don’t use pesticides in our yard besides the bug-eating chickens.