Duck Derby

Last Saturday we had the annual Duck Derby to attend.  Sounds exciting, don't you think?  It's a fundraiser for the Pregnancy Resource Center.  They had a bunch of activities to do - sort of like a carnival on a real small scale.  They had bouncy houses and slides.

 They even had one of those big inflated balls you can run inside.

 The eight year old tried it all.  He loved the slide...

 And especially the bouncy house, where he learned to do a flip.

 We were in the middle of trying to take another load from the garage out to the shed, so we called on Bugga and Papa to take the eight year old over for all the fun, and then we joined them close to the launch of the Duck Derby.

 Of course the three year old found a stick that looked like a gun.  You can't really see it in the picture, but he's shooting his little stick pistol.

 So, what is a Duck Derby?  For $10 you can buy a rubber duck with a number on the bottom of it.  They dump all the ducks into Pine Creek at the highway, and you wait, anxiously hoping your duck will arrive at the finish line first.  If it does, you win $1000.  Not a bad prize, eh?  Bugga bought the eight year old a duck.  He didn't win.  (They pay $500 for second place and $250 for third).  They must have had over 800 ducks sold.  One of the winners was a high seven hundred number.  Ironically the same person won second and third place.  Wonder how many ducks she bought...

 They had a catch crew with big long nets, and a barrier net set up a little farther down stream.

From the appearance of the sides of the creek it looked like they would be picking up ducks for the next week.  There were tons of them scattered along the shoreline.

All About Food, My Diet, and A Couple Recipes

 We'll start with the little guy.  He's eating really well these days and packing on the pounds.  He wants very much to be included with every mealtime.  We now have the preschool table in the house, and he has a seat that attaches directly to the table.  He loves being right there - as opposed to at a high chair of his own.  He's eating everything he's allowed to - in this picture above he was having pork (from my crock pot recipe in the last post), peas, and cucumbers.  He's allergic to eggs, dairy, wheat and nuts, (and we now suspect melons) so there is a lot he can't have, but everything else, he loves.

 He loves mixed veggies - and anything else he can pick up by himself.  He eats anything we give him, but especially loves things he can use his fingers for.  The other day he had Kronski's (for those of you who don't know, those are polish sausages made in the town 100 miles away.) 

 How's this for a diet dinner?  Looks like a cheeseburger, right?  Not.  It's half a pound of lean ground beef grilled, with mustard and dill pickles, and two cups of grilled asparagus.  YUM.  For those of you who don't know about my diet, I'm doing Ideal Protein.  It is honestly the easiest diet I have ever been on, and it's been very successful.  So far I've lost 39 pounds (since June 25th).  That's 49 total pounds so far, because I had lost 10 before beginning the official diet.  My goal is to lose 120 pounds by Christmas.  I'm on track for it. :)

 Here's a recipe that I'm sure you could have done without my help - ha.  I made my husband a bunch of breakfast burritos the other day and froze them so he can just grab a couple and microwave them each morning.  This is just scrambled eggs with a pound of pork sausage.  (I cooked the sausage first).  I think I used 2 1/2 dozen eggs.

 While it was cooking, I made a stack of aluminum foil pieces and got my tortillas out and ready.

 Once the eggs were done, I was ready to assemble the burritos.

 I put a small scoop of the egg mixture on the tortilla, sprinkled on some cheese...

 placed it on the foil, folded in the ends ...

 and rolled it into a burrito shape.  Please disregard the wings on the end of my burrito - I was trying to hold it with one hand and take a picture with the other.  They were normal looking burritos, I promise ;)

 Then I tightly rolled up the burritos in foil, and put them in a bowl.

 I ended up with 36 burritos, but could have made a bunch more if I had more tortillas.

 See how much was left?  It didn't go to waste.  I fed it to the daycare kids, covered in cheese.  The mixture was watery - as I'm sure you can see.  Too much milk in the eggs.  I just tipped the pan up by placing my kitchen knife under one side, and let it drain away.

 I placed them on a cookie sheet so they would freeze evenly, and stuck them into the deep freeze.  Now my husband can have a hot breakfast in the mornings when he sometimes has to be to work by 5 or 6 am.

 My next project was to make some cookies for the final program of our VBS at church.  My eight year old wanted to make them, so he did most of this with help from me.

 These cookies are called Cherry Chocolate Kisses, and I found the recipe on Pinterest.  You can find it at the original source here.  It is made with marachino cherries.  This is honestly the first time I ever remember making cookies and not tasting the batter or the cookies, so I can't swear to how good they are but I was told they were amazing.  The recipe calls for sprinkling sugar on the dough balls, but I just rolled them in sugar because I didn't want it to burn on the pan if I sprinkled it.

 Once they were rolled in sugar they went on the cookie sheet.

 The eight year old had the job of unwrapping all the Hershey's kisses ... and test sampling a few.

 The next step is to press a dip into the middle.

Then bake.

The kisses are added when the cookies come out of the oven.

Here's the full recipe:

Cherry Chocolate Kisses
Servings: approximately 36 cookies (we ended up with 32 cookies, using a cookie scoop leveled off)

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, softened, but still cool
1 cup powdered sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons maraschino cherry “juice”
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup maraschino cherries, chopped
Granulated sugar, for sprinkling the cookies
36 milk chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. In the bowl of your standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute.
3. Reduce the speed to the lowest setting and slowly add the powdered sugar and salt.
4. Add the cherry juice and the almond extract until combined.
5. With the mixer still on low, slowly add the flour, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
6. Increase the mixer speed to medium and add the cherries.
7. Shape the dough into 1-inch balls, and place the balls on a baking sheet, approximately 2 inches apart.
8.  Using your thumb, gently press each cookie in its center until the cookie is about 1/2-inch thick.
9.  Sprinkle each cookie with a little granulated sugar.
10.  Bake the cookies until the bottoms are lightly browned, about 14 minutes.
11. Once removed from the oven, immediately press a chocolate kiss into each cookie’s center.
12.  Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

What I've Been Up To Lately

 I have been extremely busy the past month or so.  Along with trying to re-organize my home to contain more dedicated daycare space, I have also been working on planning and purchasing for home school and preschool this year.  I'm trying a new method of lesson planning planning this year, thanks to my daughter's suggestion.  I need a schedule that is more flexible than writing everything out on a calendar planner.  She suggested putting every assignment on its own 3x5 card, then just giving the assignments a week at a time.

 We're using Tapestry of Grace this year for the first time.  The Lord dropped this one in our laps a couple weeks ago when I was given three of the four levels for free - levels 2-4!  I had been planning to use Sonlight Curriculum, and I'm sure I would have been pleased with it, but since this one was given to us and is extremely similar, we're going with it instead.  I purchased level 1, and now I won't have to buy any other main curriculum - ever.  Each level contains four different learning levels and all that you need to know to teach them - lesson plans and all.  There are a lot of other books you need - most of the learning comes through reading regular books.  But I already own so many of them that it just makes sense.  We are such book people anyway.  This seems like a perfect fit.  Anyway, back to the planning.

I'm in the process of writing out every single assignment for each subject for the entire year.  The white cards above are Tapestry of Grace assignments (we're studying ancient civilizations this year - level one of this curriculum covers from Creation to the fall of Rome).   The orange cards at the top are Math-U-See.  I left them unlabeled as to the year because all levels have the same numbering so I can use this same set of cards every year.

 For science we're using Apologia's "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day" which is a Zoology text.  These cards are yellow.  I will be using green cards for our language arts program - which will combine Tapestry of Grace assignments and The Phonics Road to Reading.  By the way, if you are looking for a phonics program, the Phonics Road is amazing.  I understand all the rules to spelling and such now thanks to this program.  Not cheap, but well worth the expense.

All this planning is taking a million cards, but I figure it's worth it.  If we take care of them, I should be able to re-use these assignment cards forever.

 I've also been going through my cupboards and organizing things better.  My daughter and I started this project in the Spring, but only got the top cabinets done.  My goal is to have nothing other than the coffee maker on the counter.  So the mixer is now put away instead of on the counter.  The box is for recycling. I love recycling everything I can, but I hate not having a good place to keep it, where it will be both out of sight, and neatly contained.  I have a recycling trash bin under the sink for aluminum and tin cans, so this will be for cardboard - empty cartons and boxes, newspapers, and milk jugs.  I anticipate taking this to the recycling center every weekend.

I also re-organized the pasta cupboard.  There were a lot of storage things in the cabinet before - a slow cooker I never use (love my big crock pot) and lots of canning jars, and such.  I'm very happy I finally got this project done!

Braggin' on My Boys

 The one year old is getting around so well.  He stands and moves around things easily and is F.A.S.T.

 He loves to sneak outside and play with the chalk.  See all those lines he made?  Oh yeah, when we're not watching, he likes to eat the chalk too.  :(

 He loves to be under things too - here it's the bar stool.  Not sure what it is with these things, but all the daycare kids go through this phase at about this stage.  They seem to like to be penned in, and then have a fit when they can't get back out. ;)

He likes it here because he can stand up.  He goes up and down forever under there.

 The other day, it was so hot that the three year old's horse was too hot to ride.  I saw him heading outside with blankets and had to see what he was up to.

 Pretty smart!

 (The baby likes the horse too.)

 Our eight year old is an amazing artist.  I'm not even exaggerating.  See what he did with an Etch-A-Sketch?  This was the day after watching platform diving in the Olympics.  The picture is a progression with the diver on the platform, then spinning, then entering the water.

 So much detail!  See the fingers and the hair streaking back?

 This one is a bull rider.  The timer is at the top left - he's just made 8 seconds as he's flying off, and the official and the gate opener are under the clock.

Full Course Meal in One Crock Pot

 I saw this idea on pinterest and had to give it a try - same concept, but my own recipes.  In my large crock pot, I put pork ribs and coffee in the bottom.

I cut up some red potatoes and tossed them in olive oil and seasoned salt and wrapped them in foil.  I should have used much more seasoning than I did, but they were good... or so I'm told.  They're not an approved item on my diet ;)

 I put the foil wrapped potatoes on top of the meat.

 Next I added four ears of corn, wrapped in foil.  I could have skipped the foil on those.

 On top of that, I added my lean pork loin for my portion (the other meat is too fatty for my diet).

 I tossed some whole mushrooms on top of everything for my veggie portion (can't have corn or potatoes).

Everything was covered with the lid and it all cooked in about 3 hours.  It was delicious.  And bonus - only one pot to wash.  :)  So if you have seen this on Pinterest and wondered if it works, now you know ;)