Happy Birthday Leena!

 Leena is 15!

 So, how many birthday cakes can Leena have?

As many as she wants, apparently!

Not that anyone's complaining!

She had a party with extended family the day before her birthday, a party with "just" the 8 of us on the day, and a party with friends later on...

And every party was loads of fun!

15 Great Things About Leena

1. She does great music videos.
2. She's The Gerbil Whisperer.
2. She's super creative.
3. She sings beautifully!
4. She makes great baked beans.
4. She has a thriving You Tube Channel.
5. She does all sorts of voice acting.
5. She's got really eclectic tastes in music.
6. She's a sweet and loving sister.
7. She's always willing to help out anyone.
7. She loves wearing lime green.
8. She draws the cutest gerbils!
9. She does the best Temmie voice from Under Tale.
9. She can swing dance.
10. She's got style!
11. She's got a great Sound Cloud Account.
11. She can have fun with people much older than she is.
12. She can have fun with people much younger than she is.
12. She's great at audio and video editing!
13. She's a sweet and loving daughter.
14. She composes music on the piano and in FL Studio.
15. She tells great jokes!
15. She laughs at my (not so great) jokes!

Gospel Dessert: Woman at the Well

 One of our favorite Gospels and one of our favorite Gospel desserts!

Blue jello in a sort of fountainy shape for the water.

And then we build the well around it with chocolate rice crispy treats!

In the unlikely event that you've never made these, you melt half a stick of butter and a handful of chocolate chips (in a large pot), then stir in a package of marshmallows (small are easiest, but normal size is fine).  When the whole mess is melted, add 8 cups of rice crispy cereal and stir it all together.

You spread it out on foil, and cut it into bricks when cool.

One word of caution, because the bricks touch the jello, you can't assemble this in advance (the jello will make the bricks soggy).

Enjoy! We are almost half way through Lent!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy day indeed!  We love St. Patrick, and our favorite way to celebrate is to cook a big corned beef and cabbage feast for friends and family and the folks at Safe Haven.  By big, we mean 6 cuts of beef, 10 pounds of potatoes, three large cabbages and a bunch of other vegetables.

I think I have finally nailed down the best way to cook that much corned beef!

I rinsed each cut of beef in the big stock pot (half full of water).  Then I put each cut into a roasting pan with a bottle of stout, sprinkled the spice mixture on the meat, sealed it up and put it in the oven at 250 degrees for most of the day (7-8 hours).

Meanwhile, I cut up carrots, onions, celery, garlic and loads of potatoes and cooked them in the broth from rinsing the meat (plus some spices, beef bouillon cubes and a bottle of stout).  This has been going at just under a simmer all day.

About 5 hours in (2 hours before dinner) I flipped the meat and discovered it was pretty well done.  I sliced up the cabbage, put it on top of the meat, sealed it all up again, and turned the heat down to 175.
UPDATE: The cabbage was a little under done, I think next time I'll put it in with the meat in the beginning.

And Klenda made St. Patrick's Day brownies!

Meanwhile, every year we like to watch this:



And this:



And let's not forget the Veggie Tales version!  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Awesome American History: Salem, Great Awakening, French Exploration

These were pages 27-37, in The American Story, covering 1692-1743.

Honestly, these were tricky chapters to build activities from.  The Salem Witch Trials I made optional (we have some quite young kids) and an activity of "Let's Make Unfounded Accusations so We Can Take Your Stuff" just didn't seem fun anyway.

So we went with more general activities from the time period.

Our active activity was candle making - super fun!

We used two tall cans, one in simmering water and the other with ice water.

We chopped up the paraffin and put it in the warm can, along with some boiling water.  Yes, the water and wax together!  The wax floats on the water, and means you don't need to fill the entire can with wax (or make very short candles).

We used cotton string for wicks, weighted down with washers/ screws/nuts, etc.

You dip the string (briefly) into the wax, then into the cold water.  The cold sets the wax quickly so that you can dip again immediately.

The key is to make sure no water clings to the candle before you dip again (they turn into water filled blisters), and to do the wax dip quickly - otherwise the wax starts to melt off of the candle!

We let the kids do as many or as few dips as they wanted.

 The candles really were lovely!

The art activity was writing with quills in invisible ink (lemon juice).

Everyone loved this!

After they dried, I heated them over the stove to produce the words and drawings.

Our snack was popcorn - easy and a big hit- I think I made three batches!

(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday: Before and After

Two weeks ago:

 Today:

Gospel Dessert: Transfiguration

 The Gospel was the Transfiguration, as it always is the second Sunday of Lent, and I always find it tricky. 

I think a croquembouche would be perfect!

But... then I'd have to make it...

This time, I went for this "jewel" cake!




In glorious Transfiguration like colors!

With a "Glory Cloud" of whipped topping!


Ummm...  It's basically jello and cool whip.

It looked great!  It tasted like eating cool whip.

The younger you were, the more you liked it.

Oob and Choclo had seconds!

Happy Zombie Day!

As I'm sure you've noticed, the Monday after the time change that robs helpfully removes an hour of sleep is Zombie Day!

And how are we feeling this morning?

The usual celebration of Zombie Day involves walking around in a cranky stupor. Fortunately, there are three additional ways to enjoy this day, which comes but once a year!

First, watch this:



Second, watch this:



Or play it here.

Lastly, remember to cut your fellow zombies some slack.  If you should happen to meet anyone shambling around in a cranky stupor, resist the urge to eat their brains bite their head off. Get to bed early tonight, and tomorrow won't be quite as bad... Hopefully!

Wordless Wednesday: American History Museum

Gospel Dessert Week 1

The Gospel was the Temptation in the Desert, so we had a desert dessert.

Kind of looks like a sandy stretch of boring, but that's part of why we go into the desert- no distractions!

The cake itself is cinnamon butterscotch (standard cake plus cinnamon oil, butterscotch flavoring and ground up butterscotch chips).

Yes, it's an Undertale reference!

Seven Quick Takes: All the Exciting Stuff

1. Swing dancing! The Junior Ladies of Charity held a swing dance to benefit a local pregnancy center.

Dancing add helping others?  What's not to like?

Mxyl, Klenda, and Leena went, but Zorg was off camping, doing night time hikes and climbing tree houses.




 2. For Valentine's Day, the Emperor surprised me with a gas stove.  I can not tell you how over the moon happy I am about this!

He told me, "I wanted you to pick it out, but I thought you'd tell me no, it was fine, the electric stove still worked and you'd already cooked on it for 15 years."

Guilty as charged!

It wasn't just that we would need to buy a gas stove, we would need to run a whole new gas line into the kitchen... which has now been done!

And I love it!  And I can not resist saying at least once a day, "Now we're cooking with gas!" (the picture is Klenda, making pappadam)

3. With all the warm weather last week, we saw the First Turtle of Spring.

And also the First Scary Big Spider of Spring.


Followed by the First Mosquito bite(s) of Spring. (Sorry, Zorg)

 4. Choclo asked me, "Mom, when you think "Intimidating Chicken," is this what you think of?

It is now.



5. In other news, the couches arrived!  These are the couches we ordered way back in October with our inheritance from Grammy Ann.

They are beautiful!

And they are washable!

And I can sit in them for an entire evening without my back hurting!




And now I can knit on the couch with some of the yarn she gave me!

6. On the homeschooling front, my kids like to do worksheets about once a week, and I like to give them interesting reading comprehension  passages with a few questions at the end.

Oob just presented me with this one.

He told me I did very well!

7. It's LENT!  I love it! All our Lent stuff here.

It's not that I enjoy sacrifice as such (mortification, it kills!), but I'm a person who needs a new start, a second (third, umpteenth) try at being who God created me to be.

To me Lent is about new growth, second chances and becoming a new creation. 

It's about God getting a chance to work on me.

Honestly, I'm terrible at "giving things up," but I have a much easier time with giving to.


So, the way I like to look at it,  I'm not "giving up" chocolate, I'm putting chocolate in the Lord's Easter basket.


Any small opportunity to sacrifice is a chance to put something in His basket that will make Him smile come Easter. That I can do, and even do happily!

Have a great week end, and may you meet no intimidating chickens. More fum with Kelly!