Hot Soup Kitchen

Ask any of my friends or family and they will tell you I'm a great cook and baker. I bake bread and sweets from scratch, I can knock out a holiday dinner for 20, I can make sweet potatoes to please a tot to grandpa. Knock on wood, I rock in the kitchen! Mind you I despise clean up. I'm not bragging it's just a fact. I've gleaned knowledge from German mommas, old school Amish, crazy big southern women, and everyone in between. But in all those years not once had anyone prepared me for what happened to my kitchen this evening!
Fast forward thru a fun day of games with the kids, washing mountains of dishes, marathon podcasts of my two favorite crazy moms Heather & Kate on Naptime Radio, and chopping veggies for tomato soup.

No real recipe but I had just seen the Neelys (Food Network Southern comfort couple) make an awesome tomato soup and the hubby wanted some. So long story short... Get to the part where you either blend with immersion blender or in a regular blender. So into the blender my boiling steaming soup went. Lid on and hit purée. Bam!!! Boiling hot liquid shoots all over the kitchen and me. What the Fudge?! You would think common sense should of hit me! Duh mommy moment! Steam needs to escape somewhere and the pressure built up would take the path of least resistant. But no, I thought "must not of had the lid on right" and yea that hot liquid was freaking hot on my shirt! So I hit the button again. Repeat explosion! Bam! okay that's it! I google "hot soup in blender" and find a YouTube clip demonstrating starting the blender dry and adding liquid slowly. Okay genius give it a try. Nope same result. Ahh! By now my kitchen floor is a slippery mess, the walls look like someone vomited soup, and every corner has tomato in it and I want to shove my arm in the freezer!
So I google again and an "ah ha" moment! Take the little circle out of the lid and cover with a towel. "ohhh." Why didn't I think of that?



This photo so doesn't do the mess any justice! Holy cow I'll be scrubbing forever.
So moral to the story... Use your head. lol! By the way I loved the soup and hubby apparently wasn't crazy about it, go figure.

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Selling our old workbox

We bought a new workbox cart and we are selling the old one. Not that old bought about 7 months ago maybe.


I know I could find a use for it somewhere but thought I'd try to recoup some of the money instead of it ending up as junk collector! Lol. Shipping may be high not sure but make me an offer and we'll see what we can do.
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Curriculum curiosity

It won't be long until curriculum fairs begin and the mad craziness of what should we use starts. I'm a firm believer that every child has a unique way of learning. That being said I get to have a blast searching and discovering new ways to introduce even the most basic skills. So what do you do with three crazy eager to learn kiddos who's learning levels range from baby to tot to preschooler? Ya have fun! Just playing with classic alphabet blocks becomes a learning experience for all three.



As much as we like to play we have our "base curriculum" that keeps me on track. Sure they are just wee ones but why not give them a firm foundation?



Math-U-See Primer Level

Who doesn't just love blocks!? This is by far one of the girls favorite subjects!




All About Spelling Level 1

This program is awesome! A perfect base to bounce our letters and word building off of.



Handwriting without tears

We were already doing something similar on our own but this saved me the extra work of making my own manipulatives!



Song school Greek

Okay so I want them to be brilliant! The key to learning languages is experience in our root languages so Greek and Latin on on our list!

Now there are some other subjects obviously we are not using set curriculum for yet. Like science, geography, history, etc.
At this age it's more about experiencing within our environment. Everyday experiences provide unending opportunities! Ice cubes melt, Nan Nan lives far away in Florida, a long time ago knights rode horses, and on and on.

Life skills are another one I feel the public school systems lack. So we push our children to master skills that will help them become strong leaders. Mind you that's another blog for another day.
So for our other favorites we use...
-Letter of the Week Curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler
-Leap Frog DVDs, tag readers, and toys
-Baby Signs Program
-Dozens of puzzles, games, manipulatives, activities, art projects, etc. It's all about hands on!

We have our calendar time, chore charts, etc.

Since I love to be organized and God knows my house hasn't been clean and organized in years, we adopted the Workbox System to keep at least schooltime organized.

I'll be doing individual reviews on some of our programs over the next few weeks. Keep in mind we're crazy chaotic here so feel free to nag me if I slack off!



Happy schooling!
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Castles, knights and baby, Oh My!

It's been a crazy month. With two weeks of a horrible bug we all caught, then some job and responsibility switching, and just one thing after another. But mark my words, with Gods grace we're gonna get back in the swing of things!
So what happens when baby meets castle?



Uh oh!



Run she's got that look!



Awe come on guys I'm harmless!



Man down!



Oh dear she has eyes on the king!



Hum?



Run for your life! Baby godzilla!



I'll get you! Come here!

He never had a chance! Happy playing!

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Off topic but funny

A bit off topic but anything with adorable baby is a must! So I needed a pic of June Bug and I to mark my birthday. It went something like this...
"okay mommy wants a picture with you for my birthday."



Smile baby girl!



And a couple more just in case!






See that wasn't so bad! I agree pumpkin we look like we could use a nap.
Happy Birthday to me!

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