Coconut oil

I made deodorant today.

And it stinks.

It's smelly.

I don't like it.

I have the residue of it on my hands
and I wish it would go away.

1/4 cup corn starch

1/4 cup baking soda

4-6 Tablespoons of coconut oil

Mix it together and put it in an old deodorant container.

It made enough to fill 2 containers with some left over.

Oh goody.

I got the idea and recipe from this article at Simplemom,

I was expecting the coconut oil to smell nice,

like coconuts and sun tan lotion and salty sea air.

At least like coconuts.

But instead it smells pretty awful.

I'm hoping you know something about coconut oil.

I'm wondering if mine is old and rancid,
even though I just bought it.

Anyone know?

Ears

At lunch, Peter declared his ears in pain.

This one and the other one too.

He's been unwell all week
and now with the weekend looming, 

I decided to call the doctor.

30 minutes later we were off.  

A looky in the left ear and the right and, 

hey, he has duel ear infections.

On to Kroger to get meds and a few groceries
while we were 'in town'
(and to be mistaken for the boys' sister) .

The boys are now resting and watching a movie.

Reuben's nursing his forced artificial cough to reap all the benefits of being sick.

Fish crackers, lidded drinks with straws, and movies.

Oooo.

He really wants some medicine too.

I'll have to see what I can concoct for him.

I've got pizza rolls in the works and am looking forward to doing a little relaxing myself.

Hope you have a nice weekend.

Signs of Spring

My hopes are up.

My mood is bright.

Because because

Spring is in sight!

*That's a Stacey original*

Signs that winter is ending and spring is near:

I saw, with mine own eyes, buds on a tree.

The temperature is to be above freezing
for several days.
 

Thus, the snow shall disappear.

Paul gifted me a cute new argyle shirt this morning. 

Perfect for spring's new cricket season.

Right-o.

I've got my list of 3rd grade curriculum to buy 

and have started scouting prices.

The Children's Museum is open on Mondays again
so we can go on Paul's day off.

And most significantly,

there was a lone ant on my kitchen counter today.  

His troop will never hear his report of whether or not our kitchen is worth their invasion.

It's not, oh ants.  Don't even bother.

Our Monday

Ice skating, fancy-pants library, and Korean food - but in reverse order.

 

Bulgogi, Bi Bim Bop, and Kimche Soup with assorted sides.

Bulgogi is a family fave.

Kimche Soup was a new one for us.

Bi Bim Bop reminds me of our time in Korea.

This Korean restaurant is an hour east from our house.

The boys practiced their kamsamnidas (thank you) with the waitress and surprised her.

 

We had some time before the skating rink opened so we visited a nearby library.

Wow!  We wanted to spend all afternoon here.

So big and so many programs and books.

And this statue.

Peter sat down and read her book.

Getting laced up for the grand finale of the day.

Peter showed great progress during our 2 hours.

At first, he hung on to Paul or the wall.

But after a break, he was ready to go out alone.

 

 Reuben did a whole lot of walking with skates on.

Paul or I would push him around like this and he could glide.

But on his own, he was thrilled to walk about.

His skates have 2 blades that helped him stay on his feet.

He loved it.

 

No nap + lots of excitement =

quiet ride home.

For your photo encore...

 

 My bowl-cut and I ice skating.

 

I was probably 5 and living in or near San Francisco.

Today

I am a terrible Mom.

I got the dates wrong.

TODAY is The Day in which Reuben forever joined our family.

Not yesterday.

Reuben wanted to watch 'Korea movies' so I opened up our file of photos and videos that we took while in Korea.  In one of the videos I state the date right before we get to Holt on The Day and it was Feb 22.  I know it's insignificant to you all, but I thought I should clarify.

It's Paul's day off today and we're headed west - no east - for a half-day adventure.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

(I dated 4 guys before I married Paul and 3 of them were left handed, including Paul.  I credit/blame them for my east/west and left/right confusion.  Also with teaching students and showing them things so that it looks left to them but really I have to use my right.  Anyway, we're going to head away from the Pacific Ocean today.)

Today and Tomorrow

Our Adoption Specialist (social worker) is on her way to our house as I type.  She's going to talk with the boys, make sure our house is suitable, then spend a couple hours with Paul and I finishing up what she needs to write our homestudy.

Then the glorious wait officially begins.  February 20 is a new important date for our family.  That puts us 'next in line', at the end of the line for now, for a referral - being matched with a child.

This is also the day before we became Reuben's parents.

 

February 21, 2007

From the left:  Daughter of his foster mom, Foster mother, and us.

They strapped the yellow baby carrier on Paul.

There was no choice about it.

We left the next morning to fly home.

26 hours and several missed flights...

We were a family of four.

Ready to do it all again!

The Day We Met

Tuesday, February 19, 2007 at 1 o'clock.

We were at Holt Children's Services in Seoul, Korea.

 Here we met Ju-seok for the first time.

 Waiting for his arrival.

The very first moment.

He's coming in with his foster mom.

Then he cried.  

One of those cries when he inhales and is silent for several moments and you know the huge scream is coming.  We have it on video.  His foster mom made a U turn and left the room with him.  He was not interested in us at all.   Which made us a little worried.  We'd heard the transition could be tough.

 

Despite his protests, we each held him for a short time.

Can you see his eye shut so tight as he cries?

No picture of me with him, because my face was red and splotchy as I tried not to cry.

  

This photo brings me relief every time I look at it.

Paul made him laugh.

And his foster mom is smiling.

He's getting his final physical to approve him healthy to travel.

This is his doctor that he saw each month.

We got to ask her questions and we received his medical file when we left.

Now, this is not the day we received him.  We just got to visit him for an hour this day.  In 2 days we will return and receive him from his foster mom.  She will insist on Paul receiving him, not me.  Reuben was taken from my arms, returned to the foster mom, then in a sense of finality, given to Paul.  Paul made him laugh, remember.

Our exchange student's parents were with us this day and took us to lunch before our 1 o'clock meeting with Reuben.  They treated us to...

 

...sushi.

The real deal raw fish and fish eggs sushi.

No California Rolls here.

I think the plate and presentation are beautiful.

But, I'm just minutes away from meeting my child for the first time, I'm in a foreign country trying to make sense of everything, my time zones are way off, and now before me is expensive raw animal flesh that I must MUST eat.

 

I ate it.

And I have eaten it many times since,

in honor of this memory and 

the country that has allowed me to love and care for one of their children.

Small Town Happenings

What do you do when it's 25 degrees outside?

Well, Paul and his manfriends are going camping.

In the snow.

Because they do it every year.

And they all want an excuse to try to grow manly beards. 

He's leaving after work today and will come back in a few days.

Last year he slept in a trailer.

Not a camping trailer.

Like, a trailer to haul band equipment.

Because several of the guys are in a band.

Steve Trent and Small Town.  See?

They're on the radio.

And I just checked and they have a website.

With videos even.

These are guys from our own Population 1,042.

One of them owns the hardware store.

And we've been to their houses for parties.

I think my brother Dave played poker with them one night.

Anyway, it's mid-winter and Small Town is getting out of town.

With my husband.

(What do you do when you camp in the snow and it's 25 degrees?)

Random Food

Backing up to last weekend when Paul and I went out of town with some friends...

Besides IKEA and Bass Pro Shop, we also spent many turns of the clock in Jungle Jim's.  I'd never heard of it, but some friends saw it on a travel show and it was nearby, so we went.

Really super huge international grocery store.  I excitedly beelined to their Korean section, but found it a little small.  I did pick up a few things...

 

From the top left:  Sweet potato noodles to make chopche, rice cookies, seaweed sheets to make sushi.

Laying on the counter:  Indian mango cream cookies, red lentils to make Turkish red lentil soup, pez for the boys, 'emergency' chocolate bar for me (that's what it says), sesame seeds to grind into tahini to make into hummus, lychee jellies that remind us of Vietnam, and coconut oil because I want to try to make homemade deoderant and you need this. 

We also bought a pack of sushi that we ate in the car.  Yum.

3 Years Ago

February is a sentimental month for me.  Besides the birth of my firstborn son seven years ago, this was also the month when Reuben joined our family - three years ago.

Feb 16, 2007 - today - we left for Korea.

We flew to Chicago where we had to find a pay phone at 11am and call a woman in Michigan to get the details of our trip.  

We learned the date and time we would first meet Reuben.  

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2007 at 1:00pm.

 

Obviously a little excited, we boarded Korean Air and flew for many moons.

To be continued...

Nic' cole

Reuben puts the accent on the first syllable instead of the last when he talks about his Aunt Nicole.  

And today we're talking because it's her birthday!

 

She is married to my younger brother

which makes her charming by marriage,

but on her own she is lovely and creative

and a hard-at-work

stay-at-home Mama.

She is passionate about her interests

and careful about her choices.

She's beautiful with long hair

and cute with short.

~Oh, such stunning Dodgers fans~

She writes for several blogs...

Gidget Goes Home 

Finding contentment in daily life.

It's fun, crafty, simple, yummy, and green.

Round Ball Round Bat 

Life, family, and baseball.

She and my brother write about their family baseball adventures

including their massive summer road trip to 13 games in the midwest and east coast.

The Bennettars 

The story of their lives.

Her family blog.

She, like me, is an expectant Mama

via adoption

waiting for that any-day-now phone call

that her child is ready for her.

You can visit

Her Etsy Shop

or

This Coffee Shop 

to help them raise $$$ for their adoption expenses.

See what I mean by creative?

Happy Birthday, Nicole!

Good Morning

I just thought I should tell you that I'm having a brownie for breakfast.
Wow, a really good brownie.
With chopped nuts and icing.
With a deep chocolate flavor.
A brownie worth the calories and fat.
Which is saying something because I'm not normally a brownie fan.
But we're out of typical breakfast foods
and it's currently snowing so I won't get to the store today
and I'm the only one home
so I don't have to let the kids have a brownie for breakfast
or field their questions about why I'm having a brownie in the morning hours.
They're out shoveling snow
and will be welcomed home with hot chocolate.
Liquid brownies, right?
It's all good.
Mine just tastes better.
It has nuts and icing.

Out With Friends

We're at IKEA today.

We are on a road trip with 4 other couples this weekend to Cincinnati.  

Relaxing at an inn, playing cards for quarters, 

and not taking care of our 15 children.

*Thanks Nana and Papa*

I think Paul and I are the only ones who have been to IKEA in this group.  

We're looking forward to replenishing our easel paper roll and perhaps buying our next play tent for the boys.  

 They only last so long.

Some of the guys mentioned a Bass Pro Fishing Shop

(or something like that)

so I'll get an education as we walk through there.

 

Although look at this technique here.

Totally know what I'm doing.

I wouldn't want to actually catch a fish.

Then I'd have to see it squirm in great discomfort.

This day, I think the fish were mocking me because they were swimming right up by the lake's edge and splashing about, fully confident there was no possible way I was a threat to them.

Anyway, Happy Weekend of Love.

This is the greatest commandment:

Love the Lord your God.

And the second is like it:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22:37 & 39

The Why

We have several families we're close friends with here in town.  We watch each other's kids, play Euchre, visit each other in the hospital, go on trips together...  As much as we're similar and enjoy each other's families, all of them would never consider educating their children at home.  No way!

"We don't want our kids to be all weird with no social skills!"  

Seriously?  Someone tell me that Peter is weird and has no social skills.

Is he?  Does he?  Tell me.  I don't want to raise freaky kids.  

Just well-educated, kind, interested-in-life kids who love their God, their family, and others.

Paul and I think homeschooling is the best option for educating our children.  And so we do it.  Here's why.

*When it was time for Peter to go to Kindergarten, he had already learned everything there was to learn at that level.  We did not want to put him up a grade to First for a mountain of reasons (mostly specific to our school at that time).  But, if I schooled him at home, I could teach him at his level.

*We want to be the main influencers in his life.  We want to shape his values and ideas of what is right/wrong.  We don't want his peers or public school staff laying his spiritual and moral foundation.  We want to do that.  We're not going to keep him secluded from the world.  We're just "training him in the way he should go" before we let him loose into the world.

*Our schedule is so flexible.  This is Peter's main reason for wanting to stay at home.  Paul's day off is Monday, so we do not have formal lessons on Mondays.  That's our family day.  We also like that when the weather is gorgeous, we can scoot off to Turkey Run State Park to hike and climb and explore and have a picnic.  (Science and P.E.)

Being flexible also means if Peter is super interested in a particular history or science topic, we study it more indepth.  We study in the treehouse out back, on the couch in the living room, and at the Children's Museum.  There is so much freedom.   (We can go to Chuck E. Cheese's on a weekday.  That's got to count for something.)  Part of the flexibility, too, is the curriculum we choose.  We're going the Classical route, which is pretty different from the public school's methods.

*It's personalized for Peter.  I know what he knows and what he still needs to work on.  I know his learning style and can teach to that. You know why homeschoolers always seem to have a 4.0?  Because they study and practice until they learn the concept.

Those are the main four.  There are oodles more reasons why we love it and why it works for our family.  Even so, about every 8 weeks, I seriously contemplate enrolling Peter in public school.  Homeschooling is not perfect.  I'm far from perfect.  My kids aren't perfect.  Therefore, there will be days when we struggle.

We may homeschool through high school.  But, maybe we'll stop sooner.  We have a good local school with quality teachers.  We may move overseas and put the boys in an international school.  We are flexible with life and what our family needs.

I read a blog of another homeschool Mama who wrote out her Whys of Homeschooling a while back.  She expounds on her 11 Whys at this link.

From her, I was introduced to Classical Education and have been inspired by her creativity with her 3 boys.

When doing the homeschool thing is hard, I come back to these lists of Whys.  I suck it up and thank God for this opportunity to teach and love and grow with my children.

And I pray for patience on an hourly basis.

California Trip

This morning Reuben was looking through photos of Peter from when we lived in California.

Reuben:  I want to go there.  Pointing to Peter playing at the beach.
Me:  We don't have money to fly to California right now.

We have this conversation nearly everyday.

Reuben:  How about after lunch?
Me:  I won't have enough money after lunch.
Reuben:  How about you get some money?
Me:  I can't.  I stay home with you and Peter.  I don't make any money.
Reuben:  I have money.  Where is my money jar?

He looks around for his money, convinced that Paul has it.

Paul just came home for lunch and found Reuben's money.  They counted it together and determined he has $10.08.

Paul:  That's barely enough to get to Greencastle.  Where Paul's parents live, 30 minutes from us.

Another disappointing day for Reuben.  Good thing he loves to play in the snow;  that's almost like the beach.

Maybe Tomorrow

Trying to post about homeschooling in the midst of neighbor kids visiting, but there's too much going on for me to think and prevent typos.  They proudly built a snow fort in the backyard and are now trying to decide which board game to play.  Paul's home and ready for dinner, Reuben's whining because of some great injustice, and Peter's trying to explain his version of how to play Cranium.  Someone needs to clean up the living room (lego pieces, damp snow clothes, stray balloon and streamer left over from Pete's birthday, history papers, vacuum hose) before Bible Study folks show up.  Looks like I need to be elsewhere instead of in front of this screen.

Not Today

Today would not be the day to floweringly express all the wonderful points of homeschooling.

Today would be the day when I

enroll the Pete in the public school.

Just one of those days.

His brain is not on this planet.

Math facts that he normally knows are a mystery to him.

'Write my spelling words?'  (Fiddle, fiddle with head lamp, then a nearby ball, and stare away to LaLa Land.)

'The date?'  (Looking around to see what Reuben is doing, then walks right by me to go join him.)

'I'm hungry.'  (Stalling.  We just ate lunch.)

So nothing from me today about the greatness of homeschooling.

I'm envying all those stay-at-home moms who have 'nothing to do' while their kids are away all day.

It will be better tomorrow.  It always is.


For some homeschool insight, visit www.simplehomeschool.net.  It's a new homeschool blog with a thoughtful tag line:

"Never let your schooling interrupt your education."

They are doing a big giveaway today to celebrate the launch of this site.  It's a branch from www.simplemom.net, which is one of my daily reads.  We got to visit with the author of this blog (with 20,000 readers) while on one of our recent overseas trips.  Good stuff.

And may tomorrow be nothing like today.

Different

When I taught First Grade at Holder Elementary in Buena Park, my class was 20-25 Hispanic, Asian, African, and Caucasian students.  Students from around the world.  

Today my class looks like this...

 

A Ninja from Toro Trucking Company.

Students usually sit at a desk to work...

Mine reads while standing over the heater vent or

 

lounging over a ball.

Most classes line up at the door to be dismissed for lunch.

Mine line up, too.

But they line up up-side-down.

Sometimes a class earns an ice cream party

in which they get to eat ice cream.

 

We get ice cream too - for art and history class.

Making a Phoenician ship.

My public school students were discouraged from fighting.

My current students make their own weapons and reinact historic battles.

Then we take a field trip to watch others fight.

On the first day of school at Holder Elementary,

my students came to school.

Students at The Leonard Academy started the first day of school with breakfast overlooking the Pacific Ocean...

 

and a trip to Legoland.

I loved my job teaching at Holder.  Loved it.

Cried when I mailed my letter of resignation.

But, teaching at home is so great too.

We have so many adventures

and create special memories.

Later this week, maybe tomorrow,

I'll post the why behind our family's choice to homeschool.

It's more than the fun I've shown above.

Really.

The Actual Birthday

The roads are too bad to leave town, so we stayed in.

Peter made his birthday cake

and I wondered how many more years he will want to help me with this little tradition.

Every year for the rest of his life, right?

 

He helped Paul put up decorations.

In the past I put up decorations while the birthday child is sleeping and he gets to wake up to them.

It's really fun for me.

This year Peter had his own idea of how he wanted to decorate,

So no surprising by me.

 

He built the Thornatus V9.

It's a Lego Bionicle vehicle.

Notice the cape.

He had it on first thing this morning.

We had some friends over to help us eat the cake.

Reuben was mostly interested in the icing.

A fork just gets in the way, really.

 

And then we went sledding until the sun set.

A fun day for a 7 year old and his family.

*Thanks for the fun Birthday cards, Jann and Charlene.*

He really enjoyed them.