Friday, April 5, 2013

Seven Quick Takes - Vol. V


--- 1 ---
I'm back on the 7 Quick Takes Friday schedule, and it feels good to be back in a routine with the blogging. It is so much easier to blog when I have a "menu" of what I want to blog about for the week. Like my kids now know that Friday is fish day, my brain knows that Friday is 7 Quick Takes day.
---2---
This afternoon we had our first Easter Garden Party Tea. This is one of those areas where I have to be w-a-y realistic about what I am going to be able to accomplish.  Jessica and Charlotte post incredibly inspiring Garden Party ideas both on their own blogs and over at Catholic Cuisine, but I never manage to get all those things prepared each and every week. Or I focus so much on finding or making the correct snacks and the pretty food labels that I neglect to read through the Scripture. {which is so horribly backwards, I know.} So what I learned from last year's experience is that one or two or at most three carefully prepared snacks will do for our family. I allowed Sweetpea to convince me to make one complicated snack out of her new baking book. She tells me that she wants baking to be her new project for project-based homeschooling, but I'm not sure what that will mean. In the meantime, until I figure that out, here she is working on the Lamb and gate scene for the Good Shepherd dinner...hour 1.
Tinting the coconut into green grass.

Covering milano cookies in black frosting.
 Hour 2....
Each sheep's pasture frosted, sprinkled with green grass and flowers, with fence posts.
Sweetpea building the sheepfolds and gate.
Poundcake sliced and formed into lamb bodies, awaiting frosting.
 Hour 3....
Eyes and ears and tongues.
Breadstick dough shaped into shepherd's crooks.
The sheep in the pastures with fences did make an awesome centerpiece for our 1st Easter Garden Party this spring. The little brothers loved it; Baby M kept shouting 'baa baa baa'. 

With some interruptions for taking Toto back and forth to batting practice, it took almost 4 hours to get dinner on the table and get this massively fussy lambs in the pasture with the sheepfold gate centerpiece done. I wouldn't do that again, there has got to be an easier lamb cupcake I can convince her to try next year. Everyone enjoyed the dinner, though we all agreed we needed more savory items and the sheep were just too sweet to eat one each. We shared one between two people and even then we were really, really full. We plan to give 3 sheep away to friends.

Between doing the readings and saying a few prayers, placing the stickers on our The Garden of the Good Shepherd sticker scene, and this meaningful dinner - the impression was made.
These sticker scene books often sell out before Easter but I see they have several left in stock on Amazon right now, so you still have time to buy one if you would like to incorporate this tradition into your Easter season liturgical celebrations.
Today we had a shepherd's pie (frozen dinner aisle), salad, bread stick shepherd's crooks, grapes, sheep cheese, and butterfly (resurrection) crackers. Sweetpea made the sheep and gate fold scene out of her new baking book. It is a gorgeous book to look at, we already own the other two in the series and love them all. The sheep scene took way too long to do, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as a baking book yet, but it is certainly inspirational and gives me lots of new ways to think about and look at food design.
 
We bought a Dick's Bakery Burnt Almond Cake to celebrate Gordo finishing his Kindergarden Math workbook today. We have to save it for another day - the lamb cakes were too much sugar! I'm not sure whether or not to order the first grade one yet or give him the rest of the year off. Maybe we should just focus on reading for the rest of the year.
---3---
Sweetpea has been lobbying for us to be "really Catholic" and to take off from school for all of the Easter season, all the way up until Pentecost. I explained to her that that's just not going to happen. But good try though.
---4---
I am relieved that rugby is done and that choir will be done in about 6 weeks, we all need a break from the schedule. Bill got sick again last weekend at the end-of-season rugby tournament where he got caught off guard by the cold and the drizzling rain. 
---5---
I am still trying to figure out how our culture got from "pro-choice" means I support a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy in case of rape, incest, or endangering the mother's life to "pro-choice" means I support a woman's right to kill a baby born alive after a botched late term abortion. Planned Parenthood even has a name for it now "an after-birth abortion" - for anyone looking that one up in the dictionary, you can find it under "i" for infanticide or insane. Here’s the video of the Planned Parenthood Spokeswoman testifying before the Florida Legislature:
Please stop calling yourself "pro-choice" if you are NOT for abortion at any time for any reason. Maybe what you really are is pro-life with strictly limited exceptions. Your "pro-choice" leaders have gone off a cliff and want to take you and our country with them...Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade is now pro-life,  Dr. Bernard Nathanson one of the founders of NARAL, became pro-life before he passed away last year in his 80s, Abby Johnson, a former Clinic Director of Planned Parenthood in TX, is now pro-life. These are not religious wackos out to limit a woman's "reproductive choices." These are individuals who have come from the belly of the beast and want you to hear the truth about what Planned Parenthood (and our tax dollars) are doing. Please do your own research -  the "pro-choice" movement is not what you think it is.
---6---
My copy of Project-Based Homeschooling has arrived and I've been reading through it quickly. I've been hearing about this book for a long time and reading the author's blog, and it seems like something my kids would really enjoy doing. Plus I could say "it's project time" and get them off the TV and they would still get to work on the project of their own choosing. I'll let you know how it goes once I start implementing some of the ideas. What I haven't figure out is how to keep art materials accessible for the older ones while keeping the baby safe and out of things he shouldn't get into. It does feel like a more directed and organized form of unschooling, but not as deliberate as say "strewing." I'm still trying to figure it all out.
---7---
I need to really work on conversation manners with my kids. I was horrified on Tuesday when after the speaker's presentation (during our field trip to Moffet Naval Air Base to learn about Frederick Trapnell) my son shook the man's hand (Trapnell's son no less) and said "thank you, but that speech was a little boring." :(  It is hard to teach kids how to be polite under any circumstance without lying. If they are served something to eat that they don't like or receive a gift they don't like they still need to be gracious, but I don't want to teach them to lie either. Even a white lie is a lie. It's a fine line but they're going to have to learn it. 

Head on over to Jen's Conversion Diary for the rest of the Seven Quick Takes.

Disclosure of Material Connection: The links to the Garden of the Good Shepherd Sticker Book and Cupcake Baking Book in this post are “Amazon affiliate links.” This means that if you click on the link and purchase it, I will receive an affiliate commission and be able to save up for a grande latte. I only recommend products or services I use personally and that I believe have value to other homeschooling mothers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

1 comment:

  1. I finished reading Project Based Homeschooling a little while ago and while I loved the ideas of it, implementing it has been slow going. My husband and I have made a point of sharing our projects with the kids and in trying to find potential projects for them, but setting aside project time just isn't happening yet.

    ReplyDelete

I would love to know you've stopped by and read the blog.
Me encantaria saber que estuviste leyendo el blog.