Apples and More

We went apple picking a couple of weekends ago. The orchard we went to was gorgeous! Picture a hillside sprinkled with different hues of red, orange, and gold. Then imagine an apple orchard with the brightest red apples you've ever seen carved out in the middle of the hill. All around us the cozy colors of autumn oozed their warmth while the chill of the October breeze made us hug our jackets tighter to us. A truly perfect autumn day!

Little Miss among the apples

Yum!
Katie.
These faces are so mischievous!
If you squint your eyes and cock your head to one side you may be able to distinguish the house at the top of the orchard. The owners of the orchard live here. Can you even imagine what it would be like to enjoy that view everyday!?

Shop Talk: I received another rejection letter. This time from Boys' Quest. However, this time the editor wrote me a short note at the bottom of the form letter. This is not the usual way it works! Apparently my article was good but the theme it fell under (baseball) is "full at this time." So, while I was disappointed that they didn't take it I'm glad it wasn't rejected because of its lack of merit. I'll take that as a good thing. I'm still waiting to hear from Cricket about the same article. I also submitted a short (125 words)story to a writing contest. I won't find out anything about that until February, I think. I'm also waiting to hear from my instructor about the Whoopie Pie article I submitted for my final assignment. When that comes back I'll fix it up and send it out to magazines. In the meantime I need to get my writing butt in gear and get some more stuff written and ready to submit!! Honestly, I'm just not spending the time filtering through ideas and organizing my thoughts.

Becky and Allison apparently really enjoy riding the bus in the mornings. Allison announced that it's 'so fun because the kids can scream!' Wrong, Little Miss...no screaming on the bus! I'm glad it's such a fun way to start the day!

I'm trying another fish recipe tonight. This one is made with Haddock. We'll see. I'll post the recipe if it's any good. I mean, if my family thinks it's any good. I have a hard time looking at fish let alone eating it. I made a homemade pizza last night. Homemade crust and everything. I don't have a bread machine so I did the dough thing by hand. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The pizza turned out pretty good. I am going to look for a bread machine at our local thrift stores though. It would be so much easier!!

A Little Tweak

Isn't it amazing how one little tweak to the daily routine can greatly improve your attitude? I've been suffering from a bit of burn out. There were a couple of things that were setting me over the edge. 1) Getting all three girls upstairs and in bed seems to take FOREVER! I've been desperately missing those days when we'd tuck them in at 7:30 and we'd get a few hours of kid free time before bed. Obviously Katie and Becky are a bit old to go to bed at 7:30 so I've had to be flexible and accommodating while maintaining my sanity. So, without going into all the details, we've come up with a plan that I think will work. The bigger issue seemed to be number 2. I spend A LOT of time in my car making countless trips back and forth from our house to the elementary school, and then our house and the middle school EVERY DAY! That in itself is frustrating enough, but add into that ROAD CONSTRUCTION and it's pretty hard to deal with. I don't have a choice about driving Katie to school for math each day or soccer practice twice a week. But I do have a choice about driving Becky and Allison to school every morning and then driving back to work in the library and then driving back to pick them up once a week. Silly, silly, silly. So now they will ride the bus to school and home everyday. Ahhh...Eliminating one extra trip (sometimes two) a day makes me able to think and function like a normal human being instead of a resentful, irritated, grouchy louse! Driving them to school was fine when I wasn't making extra trips back and forth to Katie's school but times have changed and gas is expensive. One little tweak, I tell ya.

Katie has a soccer tournament this weekend and the weather is supposed to be beautiful! Nothing like a soccer game on a perfect fall day! Or in this case FOUR maybe SIX games!! Happy Weekend!

Fish for Dinner?

I'm still in shock over what I made for dinner and we all (me included) ate it. I made Oven Baked Salmon Fillets Dijon. Why is this so shocking, you ask? Well, because I don't like fish! Never have. But, in the name of mixing up the dinner menu and adding something healthy I decided to try a fish recipe. I actually had that "No way am I gonna get this down" feeling but I kept telling myself - "it's just like tuna. I like tuna." Becky actually went back for seconds and Allison ate all that I gave her. Ed and Katie are fishaholics anyway so of course they loved it. I liked it fine enough and I'll try another fish recipe next week but me and fish are far from being in love! Here's the recipe:

Oven Baked Salmon Fillets Dijon

4 (6 oz.) salmon fillets
2 to 3 Tbsp Dijon style mustard
1/4 c. dry bread crumbs
1/4 c. butter or margarine, melted
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Line a shallow baking pan with foil.
Place each fillet on top of foil, skin side down.
Spread top and sides of each fillet with a thin layer of mustard, using 2 tsp. for each.
Cover mustard with a layer of breadcrumbs. Drizzle butter over tops of fish. Bake until fish are opaque in center, about 15 minutes. With spatula, lift salmon to serving plates leaving skin on baking sheet. Serves 4.

Poor Ed

How come when my husband sets out to do a relatively simple household task it somehow takes FIVE TIMES as long as it should? Now I'm not blaming him really. It's a phenomenon that I simply do not understand. For instance, he went outside to mow the lawn about an hour and a half ago and has yet to actually begin to mow the lawn. I heard him weed whacking, which seemed to go smoothly enough. But for the last hour it's been silent outside. He just came in to tell me that he's going to run to Home Depot to get a new battery for the lawn tractor. Again, I'm not blaming him...as a matter of fact, it turns out that I'm the one to blame for the completely fried, totally dead, unresponsive battery. While Ed was in Mobile Alabama I thought about mowing the lawn. After coming to my senses and shoving all thoughts of lawn maintenance from my mind I apparently left the key turned in the ignition which sucked ALL of the life out of the battery. This particular battery has been finicky for some time and my negligence simply put it over the edge. Oops. Still, it always seems that something hinders Ed's ability to just do the job. I feel a little sorry for him. It's like the poor guy can't get a break. So now instead of taking an hour to do the lawn it'll be more like THREE hours by the time he's finished. He and his laid back personality just take things in stride while I want to go out and KICK that foolish tractor for giving my man a hard time!

We've come to a turning point, I believe, in Katie's homeschooling. We decided late (1 week before school started) that we were going to homeschool her for all subjects except math. I took the recommendation of some friends about a curriculum to use. So we ordered it and felt fine about our decision. However, as we began to use the curriculum and deal with the increasing frustration of the online academy it became clear that we needed to make some changes. To make a loooong story shorter I'll just say that we've revamped our curriculum choice and mixed things up a bit. I found this amazing science curriculum online and CAN NOT wait until it comes and we can begin using it! And yesterday at Barnes & Noble I was browsing through the Spark Notes which are kind of like Cliff Notes only more intelligent. I found one for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Remember that book and movie!? It was awesome! So I bought the book for Katie and the Spark Notes for me and we're going to do a study of the themes, characters, motifs, etc. in the book and she'll do a literary analysis on some part of it as well. This is what we call
'supplementing the curriculum.' It's also one of the best parts of homeschooling. The ability to take something that interests us and turn it into education! We're also mixing up the Social Studies thing a bit too as well as adding Spanish 1 to her daily lessons. All in all we'll be using a different homeschool publisher for every subject she does. What a learning process this is but when the right combination of materials is found the excitement of homeschooling really takes hold! I'm feeling more confident in our decision to keep Katie home.

Allison continues to thrive in kindergarten. I love her sweet stories about different things she's learning as well as songs and rhymes. She has an amazing memory and after hearing a story or song ONE time is able to repeat it almost word for word. She's also so pleased with herself for following the rules and earning rewards (prize box, stickers, etc.) for doing it. I'm proud of her. Becky is enjoying school as well and her teacher has all good things to say about her. One area I've noticed a bit of struggling for her is MAP READING. I'm surprised by this because reading maps is all about logic. I guess lots of people struggle with this though. I'll be talking with her teacher about some extra worksheets or something to help her along with this. I personally have never had a hard time with map reading and so I think I'll be able to offer her some help here. Other than that she's plowing through her work without any difficulties.

Soccer games and a birthday party this weekend. And maybe a couple of household projects....maybe.