Apples to Oregon is a delightful tall tale of how apple trees were first brought to the Willamette Valley. Based on a true story, this book by Deborah Hopkinson gives an exciting twist to history.

Not only is this just a fun read, it's an excellent book to add to your Oregon Trail studies, giving your students another look at what the pioneers chose to bring with them. You can even do a unit study from this book, found here.

At the end of the book, the author and the illustrator share what their favorite apples are. I like all apples and can't think of a favorite at the moment, but my favorite apple recipe is Birds'-Nest Pudding and it can be found in The Little House Cookbook.  It's delicious, and I'm sure the main character in Apples to Oregon would think so too!

I like British humor. The clean stuff. This video joking about getting rid of the department section of the Department of Education and Science is a total crack up. Too bad the DES man is exactly like the reality of the thinking of the NEA.  

If you have problems with the video starting and stopping, mute your volume and go do something while you let it play throught once. Come back and replay the video. It should be good.

 Silence is actually the lack of sound, like when the power goes out and you realize that the computer is no longer humming, the air conditioner isn't thrumming, and your son has stopped strumming his ukelele because it's dark. At that moment all my nerves give a big sigh of relief and put in their bid that we move somewhere off the grid.

I like silence for the most part. I don't keep my t.v. or radio on all day just for company. It's a rare day indeed when I buy a battery operated toy. I've even been known to hit the roof when one of my children has only just begun a repetitive noise.

Still there is a time when I don't like silence. When it indicates disapproval. My family and a few of my friends will be engaged in heated conversation when all of a sudden they go silent. The other person may continue to babble, expounding on their great philosphies. After a bit they notice that they are carrying on a monologue and attempt to engage the silent one to jump back into the conversation. At this point I know two things:

1. The monologuer in all likelyhood believes that the reason the other person has ceased talking is because he/she has "shut them up". The person can't aruge with Mono because Mono has proven his point.
2. My friend or relative is only silent because they disapprove and are saving themselves from a long, drawn out, and potential scene. You can't just change some people's minds with mere words and sometimes silence can be louder than words.

I've been on the receiving end of the silent treatment (and sometimes I have been egotistical enough to think it's because I've "shut them up"). I've also given the silent treatment. Remember, we are talking about disapproval silence here, not "I'm mad at you and I'm pouting" silence. (Although I admit I've dont that too!) 

Silence doesn't always mean peace, although one person is striving to keep the peace. It doesn't always mean agreement and it doesn't mean that you have conceded the point.

This is something I am always trying to teach my children. You don't have to have the last word! It's okay to walk away. It doesn't mean the other person has won, even if they "think" they have.  

I also try to teach them that when there is something to disapprove of it is far better to be silent then to babble inanely about nothing in an effort to pretend you don't care or act as if you have no opinion. While you may not have shown express approval, neither have you shown disapproval and it actually creates a sense of "all is well". All is not well and we shouldn't ever pretend it is for that is a lie. Ecclesiastes 3:7 tells us that there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak. Sometimes we just need to let our silence speak for us.  

My mom is nearing retirement age and the closer it gets the more she talks about moving in with us.  We've joked around about it for years, like how I'll keep her in a high turrett where her grandchildren can throw food up to her through the window. 

My mom claims she will be very cranky and a pain to live with because she will be old, tired, and in pain.  She'll be angry that she can't do all the things she wants to do. In one way I can understand that but in another I keep telling her she's just going to have to accept it.  It's a fact of life and I don't know why she has to make all of us miserable to boot.

While Dear Man likes my mom he wonders if he might lose his sanity living with someone who chooses to be a grump. He decided we would be a little house on wheels so when my mom is good we'll park her house next to ours and when she is being a pain we'll park her in the back forty.*

Actually my mom will need to have a house on the ground floor so a two or three story house with ground floor apartment would be best. We could also go with a house that has a ground floor mother-in-law house on the property.  Either of these could be hard to find in our price range and in our neck of the woods. 

So we've been looking to see what kind of houses are out there that we could add to our property. Here are some possibilites.  Some are just fun, some are ugly, and some you just  have to look at because its there.

Tumbleweed Houses - It's a house, it's on wheels, it's cute!
Eco-Pod House - For the bee in your family
Micro Compact Home - It's ugly and one might be called in to social services if you actually housed your mother in it.   
Just a house pod - Might work if we lived in the arctic.
Shell house - Since my mother says she'll be a crab...
Simon's Eco-house - My mom would actually like this even though she doesn't have hairy feet.
ICOSA pods - You could always hope Han Solo might stop by.
A Yurt - You want a reindeer with that?
Loft Cubes - I'd be worried that an alien ship might mistake it for a spare part.**
Pumpkin House - To prevent it from decaying would you have to shellac it?

* I hope you know we are just kidding and that we would take good care of my mom. Maybe.
** I don't believe in aliens but that's what it makes me think of.

I read daily.

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/061808/legalize-books.gif  

Packaging is everything or says marketing teams.  I don't always get it though, just tell me about the product and how much it costs.  While shopping today a box of Lucky Charms caught my eye.  It now has a new marshmallow shape; an hour glass.  I have no idea how an hour glass is lucky.

The last few months vintage products have been popping up on store shelves.  At first I thought it was kind of fun to see all the old packaging.  It's also much more pleasant to look at then some of the modern advertising as it's not trying to sell on sex appeal.  

Continuing with today's shopping I found numerous vintage packaged products.  Like Grape Nuts and Hershey bars. They proudly claim they are vintage thereby proving they think there is something to this vintage craze.  I'd be more willing to purchase the items if they would go back to vintage pricing.

I told Dear Man it would be nice if I could just go back to the vintage me.  I wouldn't want to go back to the first packaging as I only weighed 4 lbs 4 ozs at birth but perhaps my age 22 packaging would work.  Remember we are only talking packaging, not internal value.  I'm not sure I'm really worth more now then I was then but I know a whole lot more and I have no desire to take back that 22 year old attitude. 

So in honor of my going vintage I have changed my avatar and you can get a closer view of it below. 

Currently we live in the country.  This suits three out of four of my children.  When we were looking for a house I told my husband that it had to be out in the country with enough property for two growing boys to romp and play.  I didn't want to live in town with my sons cooped up in a tiny back yard.  Running around the neighborhood was and is not an option.  

While running around the neighborhood was a memorable experience for Dear Man, we don't live in times like that anymore.  I grew up in the country and ran around the five acres my parents had purchased.  Both of us spent most of our times outdoors.  It was fun and if you could get far enough away you might not be calld back to the house to do some chore. 

Tiki is not an outdoor boy.  When we send him out to play in an effort to rid him from our hair, he stands about not knowing what to do with himself.  He might shoot a few hoops or ride his bike for a bit but then he's back inside.  He has a wonderful imagination but he just can't seem to make it work out of doors. 

Several times he has complained that if he only lived in town he could do things that "real" boys do.  Like have a lemonade stand or deliver newspapers.  You don't get huge profits from lemonade on a dead end road that most people don't know about. In order to deliver newspapers in our area he would have to have a mountain bike and I'm sure a route covers ten miles or so.  It's just not an ideal setting for my entrepreneurial son.

Recently though an offer to deliver newspapers as a substitute for some friends of ours came along.  Tiki was thrilled to pieces!  The girls were not so keen on the idea but having no other choice they decided to buck up.  We have to drive to town in order to deliver the papers and as it is several routes we drive half of it and the other half is walked. 

This is our second time subbing and Tiki ran around like a pro.  Only at one home does he get to throw the newspaper onto the porch from the sidewalk.  To him that is the end all of being a paper boy.  He just loves that house! 

As we drive along, Tiki grabs a paper to get ready and then he hops out of the car and runs up to the house in need of a paper.  After carefully placing it as the subscriber has requested, he runs back to the car and off we go to the next stop.  Today I said, "Hurry, hurry!"  He opened the car door and said, "Go, go, go!" as he ducked and ran just as if he was a special forces soldier on patrol. See, he has imagination and he can play, but not in the "wild". 

At any rate I won't be the least bit surprised if he figures out a way to sell lemonade while he delivers papers. I don't even want to think about the kind of vehicle he would want me drive for that.  

I have no idea where Tiki got the idea that "real" boys only have odd jobs.  A book or two somewhere along the line I'm sure.  I need to find a book or two about some boys who just go outside and play all day long until their stomach notifies them that mother has baked a pie and it must be time for dinner. Let me know if you've read any such books.  I'm getting desperate.  

Right now I don't know where this post is going but I have to start somewhere and in all likelyhood it will probably end somewhere else.  That's the way it is with writing.  You begin, you end, and if you are blessed with enough thought you can usually put something in between. 

The real problem is when your brain is faster then your fingers and it moves along ahead and your fingers are left in the dust trying to pick out the tracks.  Usually the trail goes cold and the fingers sit huddled like well behaved children who have been told to stay put when lost.  The brain realizes it's left something vital behind and must go back and search for it.  Sort of like Mary and Joseph leaving Jesus behind in the temple.  They let their brains get ahead of them, each thinking the other had Jesus with them.  Although Jesus wasn't anything remotely like typing fingers trying to keep up.  So perhaps this was a bad example. 

Moving on. 

At any rate in all that middleness and forgetfulness, you spend a great deal of time trying to remember what it was your fingers were supposed to be typing because it was surely good.  You begin to wonder if the Lord blocked it from your memory on purpose because it may not have been so wonderful after all and then you can always say you were obeying the Lord which makes you feel better. 

Eventually you have to come to a close but not really being great on final impacts you spend another minute, or two, or fifteen, typing and retyping the last paragraph.  Finally you just give up and give it a parting shot. 

The end.

As he is such a small boy, Cheeko takes delight in things that are smaller then himself.  He's quite fond of Chiuauas, which he calls Chiwow-wows.  He watches owners walking their rat dogs with great admiration. 

He's also very fond of ants.  He is exceedingly anamored with them.  He makes them homes, transports them from here to there, bottles them, finds them food, and attempts to bring them into the house.  I draw the line at ants in the house.  This saddens Cheeko who doesn't understand at all why we aren't as fascinated with his little friends as he is.  He'll pop outside from time to time to check on them. 

For Christmas this last year my mom bought Cheeko one of those gel ant farms.  He could hardly wait for Spring to come so he could go collect several.  He liked it pretty well and the rest of us were fascinated by the tunnels they dug but Cheeko is also very fond of dirt and the whole shebang just wasn't dusty enough to suit his tastes.  So back out to the dirt he went to commune with the insects. 

Today Tiki found Cheeko outside crying over his ant pile.  He asked him what was wrong.  "I'm sad betause I tilled my ants."  No he didn't plow them under, he killed them.  He can't even tell us why he did it, he just did.

I'm not sure what this means for his ant farming future.  Will he give them up all together?  Was it just an experiment?  Will the price of ants go up due to a lack of product?  Will the ant queen retaliate? 

I think I'd better get out my heavy duty cayenne pepper and sprinkle a defense line around the house. 

Wow!  Things around here have been pretty crazy the latest couple of weeks as we prepared for my daughter Eyebright's graduation.   First we had a graduation BBQ that we invited over 90 people to and in which most of them showed up.  The weather had the audacity to storm and pour rain.  Everyone moved inside and finished up their dinner or dessert, watched Eyebright's slideshow, looked at her display table, chatted and then went home.  We had family from out of state here so they stayed with us.  It was fun having them but I was soooo tired I didn't feel like a very good hostess. 

Finally everyone left and we had two graduation ceremonies to attend.  One in the big city where we used to do most of our classes for homeschoolers.  The other here in our "new" town.  The first had 12 graduates and the second had 10.  (That's just the graduates that participated in the ceremony.) 

The whole thing was a pretty neat experience and it was interesting to see the difference between the two ceremonies.  The Big City graduation had cap and gowns, each student had to speak, as well as the parents.  Eyebright prepared a beautiful speech, I felt, and we were told so by many other participants at the ceremony.  The whole affair was very formal and much like a regular public school graduation. Only not so long, unless of course you had a graduating class of only 12.

The second ceremony the graduates chose to wear nice clothes and only caps so they could throw them.  Each graduate also had a slideshow and the parents spoke.  I liked this graduation ceremony much better but I definitely think gowns are the way to go.  It covers up bodies that are a little too revealed.   I'd also recommend taking along ear plugs, some of the music was LOUD and disorganizing to the brain.  I had a severe headache afterward.  My friend was there and she has hearing aids.  She told me she was grateful she could just turn her hearing aids off.  Normally when she does she takes them out so she can hear a little better but she left them in to help soften the blow to her ears.  

The slideshows themselves were WONDERFULL and so neat to see the baby pictures of the graduates and how young  the parents were, and to see them in "action" at their favorite activities and events. 

What I liked about both was how every single male grad cried. (Girls cried too, but the boys surprised me.) They were moved by their parents' speeches and all the grads thanked their parents for the sacrifices that had been made for them.  It was amazing to see that many students stand up in front of an audience of 300 people or so and say, "Thank you."  "I love you."  "I so appreciate what you did for me." 

Of course in the middle of all of this we had a day without internet at all and a power outage in the middle of that.  Right when we needed our computers of course. The next day we finally went over to my in-laws to use their internet just to catch up on e-mail. 

We survived it all!  It's done and unless BlueJane decides to accelerate her courses there won't be another graduation for four more years.  I think we will do the BBQ event again but I don't know if we will do the ceremony.  That's a little bit too much to ask of the people we love. 

Now, maybe life can go back to normal.  Yeah, riiighht.   

 I can't count how many times people have said to me, "I don't have the patience to homeschool."  I'm not sure what makes them think I do.  It's true that I have no problems standing in long lines at the bank, waiting for two hours to finally see the dr. or could care less if that car just cut me off.  When it comes to my children though I'm not that patient.  It irritates me no end that I have to spell everything out.  I get mad.  I yell.  

Yes, homeschooling is hard work but it's also so much fun!  Even in the midst of my yelling I have burst out laughing when my son Cheeko says, "My eyes awr pewfectwy fine!"  

So what keeps me going?  Even though I've said that public school is not an option it doesn't mean that there haven't been days that I wanted to get away from my children.  When things are going wrong I take a look at what is going on and see if I can fix it.  It's not always a quick fix.  Sometimes I have to be really honest with myself.  I will bite off more then I can chew and will fool myself into thinking that I can handle it.  (Makes me sound like a druggie doesn't it?)

More often then not when my children are way out of control the problem lies with me.  I have seen parents choose to put their children back into public school because they don't want to deal with themselves.  If the child goes to school it looks like the problem is solved but it's not.  The problem still lies within them, they've just rearranged their problems so that one or two faults are hidden or disguised.  It's a whole lot easier to spend forever on the computer if noone is standing there wanting to be fed, wanting you to correct their work, or just plain want you to play a game.  

While I've had to get real with myself I've also had to get real about curriculum.  Man, some of that stuff is boring!  I have wanted to keep plugging away because I paid good money for it.  My children are crying, I'm yelling, and that curriculum is still sitting there on the desk.  Again, I have to step back and ask myself, "Just what is going on here?"  "How can I make this better?"  I can't afford a new curriculum but I can afford to change the way I use it.  Curriculums are just guides, not prison wardens after all. 

One year for math Eyebright was really struggling.  One day by accident I started using a Fisher Price Little People king to "teach" her.  His kingdom was falling and he needed her help.  I would talk in a silly, deep voice and waggle the king this way and that.  He didn't have arms so he couldn't write the math problems himself and would "order" her to do it.  Eyebright loved it!  She wanted to help the king solve his problems and save his kingdom. 

Another year, another curriculum.  Same old song and dance.  That  year I had read a book that showed me how to use index cards to make games.  We turned Eyebright's math problems into games she could play over and over.  We were using the curriculum we had, just doing it differently.  Neither of these ideas took a ton of money.  I just needed to figure out how to use what I had.  As long as you are willing to search for a solution instead of the escape hatch you can find a cure to the problem. 

The only reason your situation would require a true escape is if you won't take care of a growing problem sooner.  A pilot doesn't just let a gas leak keep on leaking on his plane.  He finds out why it has a leak and fixes it.  He's only going to need that escape hatch if he was too stubborn or lazy to take the time to fix things while the plane was still on the ground.  While a plane can get a sudden leak, unlike a plane your child doesn't just up and become a problem that is about to blow.  The problem was there you just refused to face it.

So that's my second tip.  Get real with yourself and the situation.  Don't expect a quick fix.