It was still snowing when we woke up, so that changed my plans a little. We went to church where we had an awesome service. We’ve started a new session called’ Let it be Christmas, a story from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, George, Paul and Ringo.’ We’re using Beatles songs to get a fresh look at Christmas and maybe see it from a different perspective. So, today we talked about ‘Nothing’s gonna change my world’. About how the Jews had been waiting in captivity and hadn’t heard from God in over 400 years, about how they were scattered, a remnant and were waiting to hear about the Messiah. We talked about how Jesus coming as a baby in a ratty old manger rocked everyone’s world and boy, did it change. I hope our pastor didn’t think I wasn’t taking notes because as I thought about the waiting and the wondering of the Jews so long ago, I wrote a poem. I’ll have to post it later though, it’s in the car and James has the car.

After church and a shopping spree from Grandma at Wal-Mart we went home and played games and watched the snow fall. I had planned to go to the Fort for the farolitos lighting ceremony tonight, but it was still snowing at 4pm when we would have had to leave, so we missed it. I guess we’ll do it next year. We played scrabble and I beat my mom by 1 point, not bad. I made turkey noodle soup for dinner and some fresh bread, then after dinner we made gingerbread cookies.

This is the easiest recipe ever and they are sooooo good.

Easy gingerbread men

18 ½ oz pkg. spice cake mix
1 C flour
2 t. ginger
2 eggs
1/3 C oil
1/2 C molasses

Mix together cake mix, flour and ginger. Mix in remaining ingredients, beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Cover dough and refrigerate for 2 hours. Place dough on a floured (or powered sugar) surface, roll out to 1/4” thick. Cut out shapes and bake on a greased sheet at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes (8 minutes for chewy, 10 for crispy.)
Makes 1 ½ dz.

Tomorrow is rehearsal and recital, so wish us luck that we will dance with happy feet, hearts and souls!

Yesterday the cable guy came by to fix out internet. The modem Comcast gave us went out, he said the cable was chewed up outside too and he replaced it. I saw the cable he threw in the trash though, it had one section that Maisy had obviously put teeth marks on, but it’s not like the entire wire was chewed to a thread. Dance went very well. Our teacher is having to dance in place of a girl that can’t continue. Her Dad died a few weeks ago and she has to work 2 jobs to help her family. It’s very sad for something like that to happen right before the holidays. Pray for her mom and whole family. I got my skirt yesterday and so did Hannah, they both fit. The circle skirts are so pretty when you twirl and they flow out around you (we wear bloomers underneath.) T minus 6 day till performance!

Today we did some extra school to catch up; we’re going to be off this next week when my Mom comes to visit. After lunch I had this craving for oatmeal cranberry cookies, like the ones we had at 4 mile this weekend. So I made some, good thing for my neighbors that I always make extra. I didn’t like the first batch though (so they get those….I threw in some later batch ones too, I’m not mean!) Anyway here’s the recipe (or receipt as Grandma Carberry would call it.)

Cranberry oatmeal cookies

1 C oleo (If you don’t know what that is Google it.)
¾ C white sugar
¾ C brown sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ tsp. vanilla
2 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
2 C oats
1 C cranberries

Cream oleo, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt, soda and oats. Mix well, and then add cranberries. Drop onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes 3 dz.

They were good, craving gone!

I’m tracking my new camera on UPS.com too. I called because it was taking so long and the camera repair said that Kodak was mailing it to me directly (nice of them to notify me.) Then I called Kodak and they finally found my paperwork and said, oh it will be there today – here is a tracking number. Again, nice of you to notify me after you’ve had the camera since Nov. 11th. Hopefully this new camera will never break and I’ll never have to deal with Precision camera repair again, they suck.

We have 3 salt crystal projects going on right now. Here are the day 2 sponges.

Here is Hannah’s, she didn’t put any food coloring on it.

Here is Grace’s, she added blue coloring.

Bethany added green food coloring (hmmm…thought I took a pic of that, I’ll have to post it later.) Joel used up the last bit of yellow food coloring, which I really wanted for today.

Today we boiled 1 C water and added ½ C salt to that, stirring until it was mostly dissolved. Then we poured in into a cup and placed a paperclip tied to a string tied to a stick over that.

We’ll check back on that in 4 days. The other project was to subtract 1 ingredient from the salt crystal sponge project and see if that item was really necessary. The element symbol is what we left out of that sponge. So, the first is missing water, the 2nd is missing salt and so on.

The one missing water and the one missing ammonia are already growing some crystals; the one missing bluing and the one missing salt are not. We’ll give those a few days and see what the results are. I’ve decided we’ll lap-book this project because I have lots of cool pics to put in it!

For GS today we were doing food around the world. We did West Africa.

Here is the recipe for KiliWili (so easy): Cook 2 yams or a couple of plantains until soft. Break up into chunks and pound them until smooth. Keep pounding and add a bit of hot water until it forms a lump. Make several lumps and roll them around into balls. Done! FuFu: cut up 3 bananas (or plantains or yams) and coat with paprika. Fry in oil until done. I told you they were easy. Now we couldn’t get the KiliWili to stick together so I just ended up frying them, which tasted pretty good. Here are the other countries we visited via our palette: Middle East,

China,

Peru,

Italy

and Hawaii.

At the end each girl stood in front of our marked map and told something about the place they picked.

So, that was a lot of fun. (Last time we did this Grace had China and Bethany had Texas.) We might make FuFu for my Africa co-op on Tuesday, just so the kids have something else to choose to taste instead of a mealworm (what? I ate one, it wasn’t too bad…tasted like a corn nut.)

Joel passed three more tests today and has all his stuff ready to go for tomorrow. We have to be in Boulder at 0800 hours, so I guess we’ll wake up early and leave around 7ish to get there on time. Hopefully he’s not far in the list so we can see him fly; he might even get to do a powered flight too, cool! Pray for good weather tomorrow, the weatherman can never get his story straight!

I made cabbage soup today and some peasant bread. It’s kind of like an Italian dipping bread, nice and crusty and dense. Here are the recipes.

Peasant bread

2 C water lukewarm
1 pkg dry yeast
1 T sugar
2 t salt
4 C flour
2 T cornmeal
Melted butter

Combine water, yeast, sugar and salt and mix until dissolved. Stir in flour until blended. Place mixture without kneading in a greased bowl. Cover and let rise for 45 minutes. Grease a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Divide dough in two parts shaping into oblong loaves (or round) on sheet. Let rise for 45 minutes. Brush loaves with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, then at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.
This is a coarse bread and dense, great with dipping oils.

Spicy cabbage soup

1 lb stew meat
1 pkg garlic peppercorn marinade
1 head cabbage
½ onion
Handful carrots
3 small potatoes
Vegetable soup stock (2 of the dried ones)

Brown meat in olive oil and add ½ packet of seasoning mix. Simmer meat on low for 3 hours stirring occasionally (and adding a bit of water when it gets dry.) Cut up cabbage, potatoes and onion. Add to the pot along with carrots. Add vegetable broth tabs and water to cover the vegetables. Bring to boil and then reduce to med-low stirring until done (about 1 hour.) If you want to make it really spicy add the other half of the marinade mix to the water before it’s done.

After we did school I put Hannah down for a nap and helped Bethany with her lap book. It’s early explorers complete with an astrolabe and burned maps.

We went a little crazy with some of the maps and they were too burned up, so I had to print out more.


These will be rolled up and put on the front cover in loops of ribbon. On the inside cover you have the astrolabe and what Prince Henry instituted to help early sailors.

Info. about Henry on the right. Then the middle opens up to show bios and storied of Dias, Columbus, De Gama, Cabral, Cabot, Magellan, etc.

On the back right will be the stories in a pocket for each explorer. It’s coming along, but it’s a lot of work. I like the reinforcing fact, she has to trace the path of each explorer on the map and has the stories to read about them. We might end up doing a book after every unit. Joel started taking notes on a Greek technology. The guy he picked invented the siphon, water clock (re-invented that), water organ and air pump. He’s called the father of pneumatics, pretty cool Grace wrote her story about whales. She’s hopped off on a bunny trail about whales after watching the movie at the Imax. She has a whale figure, whale book and whale suitcase.

Tomorrow we go to Golden for the candle-light walk, always a treat.

Hannah and Sampson were trading kisses.

My kids ate this!

Chinese chicken

thawed drumsticks and thighs (amount for your family, I used 5 and 2)
1 bottle sweet and sour sauce
few Tbsp teriyaki sauce
1 can pineapple chunks
salt to taste
1 C water

Brown chicken in teriyaki sauce and salt. Throw this mix into a crockpot with the pineapple and sweet and sour sauce. Add water to cover the chicken, better too little than too much.
Cook on high for 5 hours or low all day.
Serve over rice with stir fry veggies.

Also when it was done I took out all the bones and gave it another stir.

I also made Maifun rice sticks, which is fun. You drop them in hot oil and they go Poof!