Trying things out again...not sure if this will stick!

I really liked tracking my books when I was active on this blog....I may try to do that again, along with tracking games I have played.

Hello? Anyone out there?

So..I obviously haven't blogged in the last few years....anyone interested in me starting up again? If so, feel free to comment and I will take that into consideration!

Egg Roll

At book club last night, we had an Asian themed dinner in honor of the book we read- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. The book was fantastic but the people and conversations were even better! I made eggrolls for the meal and they were yummy. Here is the recipe:

Egg Rolls
Ingredients:
1 pound ground pork
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon minced garlic
4 green onions, chopped
1-2  12 ounce bags of shredded cabbage and carrots (cole slaw mix)
20 7 inch egg roll wrappers
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons water
peanut oil for frying

Directions
1. Season pork with spices and cook until no longer pink.
2. Add green onions and cabbage to pork mixture and saute until limp.
3. Let mixture cool.
4. In large skillet heat oil until medium high. In small bowl, mix flour and water to make paste.
5. Lay out one egg roll skin with a corner pointed toward you. Place about 1/4-1/3 of a cup of mixture and fold corner up over the mixture. Fold left and right corners toward the center and continue to roll. Brush a bit of the flour paste on the final corner to help seal egg roll.
6. Place egg rolls in heated oil and fry on both sides until golden brown. Remove from oil and place on paper towels or rack.
7. Enjoy!

Chili Recipe

I entered a chili cookoff and ended up getting second place. A few people have asked for the recipe, so here it is!

Chili a la Hot!

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons oil
1 onion
1 green bell pepper
1 Red bell pepper
2 lbs hot Italian sausage
2 lbs lean ground beef
3-4 Tablespoons chopped garlic
2 cans pinto beans
2 cans dark red kidney beans
2 cans white beans
4 cans Mexican stewed tomatoes
2 cans Italian stewed tomatoes
1 7 oz can chipotle peppers
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
2 Tablespoons oregano
4 teaspoons basil
2 Tablespoons chili powder

Directions

1. Dice up onion and bell peppers. Saute in skillet with oil, approximately 7 minutes. Remove from skillet for later use.

2. Break sausage into chunks. Remember, we are making chili, not taco meat, we want chunks. Start browning in skillet.

3. Break hamburger into chunks. Add to the sausage. Brown all meat but don’t overcook. Once all meat is cooked, drain grease. Add garlic and sauté another minute.

4. In a large pot, put onions, bell peppers, and meat mixture over medium heat. Cut tomatoes in can with knife to make smaller. Add beans and tomatoes.

5. Chop the chipotle peppers very fine.  Add to pot, along with spices.

6. Cook over low heat as long as possible, at least 1 hour.

Easter

I am just doing a quick post to check out a google feature.... here is a quick picture of Joseph and James....3 months and 23 months. Boy, time sure flies!

Happy Easter!

Maria's Birthday!

Maria is 15 today.

How in the world did 15 years fly by so quickly? I am so blessed to have a daughter like Maria. She is an awesome big sister to her three brothers. She is out and about with one of her best friends, Sonja, to celebrate her birthday. They are going to the movies, eating at Red Robin, hanging out at the mall, and then coming home for a sleepover....not that there will be a lot of sleeping going on!

Here is a picture of her holding Joseph as a newborn....it is amazing that he already looks different in less than 4 weeks.

Rest is good

Life continues. It is amazing what rest does to restore oneself. I find if I am able to get a nap in the middle of the day, the nights are much more bearable. Plus, going to bed earlier when Joseph goes to sleep for the first shift is also good. It is hard though....there are other things that I want to do....but I need to remind myself continually that this is such a short season and I just need to enjoy the time with a newborn. So, resting, reading, relaxing, gazing at Joseph, playing with James, and maintaining the basics of the household are what occupy the bulk of my time nowadays. And, I couldn't do it without the amazing help of Maria and William. They are both so incredibly willing to serve and to either hold Joseph or play with James....it is a wonderful thing to watch.

Today was a harder day....not as much sleep and James was BUSY! I think this is probably more the reality I will be living in coming up as opposed to the easy first two weeks.

Here is a picture of Joseph next to a black and white picture of William when he was a newborn. See any resemblance?

It sure is fun to watch James love on Joseph. My sister Annabelle has summed them up correctly....Godzilla and the Potato!

James definitely loves his baby brother....and even is starting to say his name!

Here is a video taken December 31 of James and Joseph. The video isn't long....but it is obviously done by an amateur!

Christmas in January

Today we celebrated Christmas with my sister Annabelle, her hubby Ethan and their daughter Sarah. It was kinda fun to have Christmas in January....plus it was the first Christmas for Joseph.

Earlier today we went to Joseph's first doctor's appointment, where everything checked out great. That is always reassuring. We then went to Costco to pick up the birth announcements and the timing was impeccable...they had just finished printing by the time we got to the front of the line. We were able to get the pictures into the envelopes and send them out today. Some of you reading this blog may even be getting one in the mail.

Welcome Joseph Balderrama

Is it already 2010? How did that happen? The only thing I have kept up on in my blog is the list of books I read.....125 for 2009. Some months more, some months less. I really enjoyed being able to see what I had read and review the list at the end of the year. So, I know I will be continuing the book list....and hopefully post more frequently than I did in the past.

But, the big news in our household is Joseph Balderrama joined our family on December 29 at 11:11 pm.

Friends and Family and Food

What could be better than celebrating a holiday than enjoying a BBQ with friends, family and food? I'm not sure....this was pretty much a highlight for me. I love having people over and it was so nice to be able to entertain three of my oldest (longest) friends and my sister and all their families. Our kids have all grown up together.....some of them met when they were less than 2 years old and others were born after the friendships had begun. I am so blessed to watch these kids continue to get along and grow up together, through all the various stages of life.

Ken gets back on Friday (assuming all his travel connections fall into place) and I am on the same kick I always get on when he travels. I like to try to get the house clean and straightened up and de-cluttered as much as possible. I know he likes to be in a clean, decluttered house and I love to do this for him. I figure it is a way I can support him while he is away. Since he has been gone so long, I have had more of a chance to do this, although I only started last week. I am now in the process of tackling our walk-in closet. Well, it is now a walk-in closet....last week it looked more like a storage shed in the center with clothes that weren't easily accessible around the edges. Now, it is a closet again! But, what to do with all the stuff that was in there that shouldn't have been. I am slowly sorting things out, but I definitely struggle with too much stuff. I keep chipping away though.

How is school going for us? We have started week 7 and it is going good over-all. I have had to tweak some things and one of the things I need to focus on teaching the kids is study skills....how to actually study for a test, not just read the material once. This year things have definitely gotten harder, which is good, but that means more work needs to be put into the subjects. What they used to be able to do and retain the information needs to be modified. But, that is the beauty of what we are doing....being able to adjust and modify and personalize and adapt and learn from our mistakes.

Feel free to stop by if you are ever in the neighborhood....you never know what you might find going on at our house.

Birthdays and Bocce

I have done a lot since I last posted....including celebrating a birthday! I had a nice, extended birthday celebration, starting on Monday, August 10 with lunch at Vic Stewarts with three of my best friends, on Wednesday, August 12 (my actual birthday) went to Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk with a homeschool group I am involved with, on Friday, August 14 went to Mountain View/Palo Alto to with my whole family for lunch to celebrate not just my birthday but my sister Annabelle's, on Monday, August 17 went to lunch with another neat friend at India 4 U, and then to end the birthday celebrations, had a fantastic afternoon and lunch at my in-laws on Tuesday, August 18. I am so blessed to have special people in my life to celebrate with.

Last night I went for the first time to Campo di Bocce of Livermore with three other ladies from the Mothers of Brentwood and played bocce. What a neat place. We had appetizers and desserts and their food was yummy. I have never played bocce before on an actual court and boy was it fun! In fact, I plan on going again soon. If anyone ever wants to set up a Girls Night Out or a Couples Night Out, I am game!

My School Schedule

I posted this to my homeschool group and one of my blogger friends suggested I post it here....it is long, so be forwarned. Feel free to ask me about any of the curriculum I am using....that is how I learned about what I have used....by asking people and looking things over and trying various things until finding things that worked for us.

I have had a few people ask me about my schedule for this year and I needed to write it up for another reason, so I thought I would post it here. If anyone wants to come over and see what I have done, feel free to ask! Or, if you want me to email a copy of my spreadsheets so you could figure out what I am talking about, let me know. I spent a lot of time over the summer trying out various things to get organized for the upcoming year. I have a ninth grader and a seventh grader, along with a 15 month old and another due in December. With the start of high school and also knowing I would potentially have less time due to the little ones, I wanted a system that worked for everyone that would be easy to implement. We have now used it for two weeks, and I have to say I am very pleased with myself! Sometimes I plan things that look great on paper and just don't pan out in reality. This time my work paid off and we all like how this system works. I realize that what works for my family will not necessarily work for everyone's family, but here it goes. Feel free to use and adapt whatever you can. I know I got a lot of ideas from other people that I have changed and manipulated so that it fit our household. This is by far the most scheduled/organized I have ever been!

I have set up two binders for each of my kids. The first of the binders is a 3” binder and this is for their cumulative work. I am not expecting the whole year to fit in here, but perhaps half a year. I will just have to see how crowded it gets before I begin another large binder. The second binder is for their weekly work. They each have 8 tabs, which are identical. Here are the labels for the tabs: Weekly Schedule, Sonlight 100 Schedule, History, Literature, Spelling, IEW, Science, and French, which I will detail in the following paragraphs.

Weekly Schedule: I have created an Excel Worksheet that has four workbooks (or whatever they are called), two for each child. The first workbook is the yearly schedule. The columns I have are Date, Sonlight, Apologia, CBS, Piano, Rosetta, Math, Starting Points, IEW, To Go/Other. I have then filled in the dates for Monday-Friday from when I started school until end of June 2010. Then, under Sonlight and Apologia, I listed the numbers 1-180, which corresponds with the Sonlight schedule number at the top of each day (the small number). We are fairly flexible homeschoolers that enjoy taking field trips and vacations and what not, and I am just not that concerned about when exactly our school breaks are, so I just have it going all the way through, which means we currently end our Core 100 and Apologia April 2. Well, that is assuming we would work straight through with absolutely no breaks, which I can tell you is unrealistic at best! But what I plan to do is when we take a day off, or weeks off like at Christmas/New Years, at that point I will just cut and paste the remaining days downward. For CBS (Community Bible Study), I have the day and the week of the work they are supposed to do that day. For Piano I either have the minutes they are supposed to practice or if it is a lesson day. For math we do ALEKS on the computer, and they are supposed to complete three sections and work a minimum of 20 minutes....this might be modified as the year goes by. For Starting Points I put the pages I want them to complete on specific days, along with listing the dates we meet for discussion. For IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) I will list what I expect them to have done that day or done by a certain day, along with marking the days we meet as a class. In the To Go/Other column this is where I put their outside activities, such as PE, going to a friend's house, etc. The second workbook is the weekly schedule. I have this formatted so that I can copy and paste the information from the yearly schedule into the weekly schedule, along with other items such as chores, more detailed To Go list, Special Instructions, etc.

Sonlight 100: I copied the IG and place that week's schedule behind this tab, so they can easily see what they are supposed to be doing.

History: I have copied the questions for the various history books they are reading that week and have starred certain questions to answer in written format. They know they are supposed to read the notes also. For the mapwork what I did was include the “answer key” maps and I also put the number that corresponded to the correct answer above the name of the place. So, instead of them having to try to figure out where a certain place was on a map, what they need to do is go to the particular map, knowing that a certain place was #3, and then they were to label it. I have always had good intentions about doing mapwork with the kids and ended up never doing it, so this was a great compromise for our family and it looks like it will actually get done!

Literature: I have copied the questions for the literature book(s) that they are reading for the week. They are to pick two questions for each day to answer, and I don't care which two questions they pick.

Spelling: We are doing the Alternate Spelling. On Monday we do the pre-test, on Tuesday and Wednesday they write their misspelled words 5 times, on Thursday use misspelled words in sentences, and on Friday they have a post test. Any words they get wrong on the post test are added to the words for the next week.

IEW: This is where they keep their writing that they are working on.

Science: We are doing Apologia Biology this year and while this is our third year of doing Apologia, this is our first year that we purchased the lapbook/notebook from Knowledge Box Press....and I have to say I am thrilled with it so far. We follow the Sonlight schedule, so I have that behind the science tab along with any of the pages from the KB Press file, such as On Your Own questions, experiments, etc. I have also typed out the vocabulary words with blank lines next to them that the kids can choose to fill in or not. Last year they had to do the vocabulary, but this year I am making it optional unless their test scores start to be affected.

French: We are doing Rosetta Stone French, version 3. We have used Rosetta Stone German version 2 before and I have to say version 3 is far superior. I printed out their schedule that the suggest along with the worksheets that they are to do for that week.

My kids are liking having everything in one binder and what we do is sometime on the weekend we go through the various answers. An added benefit of having them pick their own questions in literature is that they typically don't choose the same questions, so they actually are exposed to four questions for each day's reading. Once we are finished going through their work, I then transfer the old work and schedules to their large binder and put the new information in. This allows me to actually look over what they have done and I am able to double check for completeness. This does not take very long at all and it keeps the kids and myself accountable.

If you made it all the way to the end of this long description, congratulations! If you have any questions, please ask. It is hard to describe some of the components, and I am sure that I have left some vital things out.

I have not fallen off the face of the earth....

But I have fallen off the face of regular blogging. But, I (think) I am back and want to start up again. It is always hard to restart something....the guilty feeling, the sense of failure, the dread of starting and not following through, all of these things go through my mind. Plus, where to start? I certainly can't recount all that we have done for the last two and a half months.

What did we do today? We started school! Maria is a 9th grader and William is a 7th grader and James is a 14 monther that gets into everything. For those of you familiar with homeschooling curriculum, we are doing Sonlight Core 100, Apologia Biology, Rosetta Stone French, ALEKS Geometry, the second half of Starting Points, the second part of IEW SWICC-B or C (depending on which kid), piano, Community Bible Study-Acts, PE with Dr. Gibbs and we are trying out All Out Sports League too. I am sure there are other things, but this keeps the kids busy!

Ken leaves for Abeche, Chad on Saturday, August 1, which happens to be William's 12th birthday and Switzerland will be celebrating 718 years of independence. He will be returning on September 11.....and boy will we be glad to see him at that point.

I am now 1 day away from being 20 weeks pregnant and things are still going great with the pregancy. We are choosing not to find out the gender before the baby is born- we like the surprise.

How was our summer? GREAT! BUSY! FUN! Filled with people, activities, travels, adventures, and all kinds of other things.

Well, time to sign off....hope to post sooner the next time.

Birthdays and Mothers Day

James turned one on Friday. I am not sure where that year went. What a joy he has been in our life. The best gift he got was a t-shirt that said "Big Brother" on it.

Yep- James gets to be a big brother starting sometime in December!

Hmmm....no wonder I have been tired and unfocused for the last month or so.....maybe postings will pick up in a bit when my energy comes back.

Diverse Ages

A little glimpse into the range of ages in our kids.....here is where the kids were this afternoon/early evening. James was in his high chair eating dinner, William was at the movies with a friend, and Maria was at The Silver Ring Thing, which is an abstinence before marriage conference. Earlier in the day Ken and I checked out Scoops! Play n Cafe to see if this would be a good place for James' first birthday. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, but it turned out to be an ideal location. So we are looking forward to celebrating James' first birthday on Thursday, even though he actually turns one on Friday.

Back in the Swing of Things

I arrived home on Sunday. James and I traveled 2,338.5 miles in 11 days and boy, was it fun! There is too much to capture and instead of worrying about it, I am just going to put some notes down and move on. Otherwise I will never get back to blogging on a regular basis if I keep trying to catch up.

We stayed one night in Forks, which is where the book Twilight is set. We did a few wonderful hikes in Olympic National Park and I could have stayed there for much longer. James rode on my back in the Ergo, which I could not have done without on the trip. On all of the hikes, he pretty much either watched what was going on, leaning backwards to look at the trees, or he would fall asleep on my back. There were a few times he fussed, but not so much that a little bouncing didn't put him into a better mood.

We also went to the ocean and had a nice time feeding the seagulls...of which James was not too thrilled with when they came close. So we mostly watched from a distance.

Another highlight was being able to visit our friends Will and Linda Royston in Eugene, Oregon. We shared a few meals together and it was so nice to see them.

Our last day we spent at Redwoods National Park and then driving through the Avenue of the Giants. What a great way to end the trip.

Now I am home and we are definitely in the swing of things. Kids are doing school, I have already gone to a bookclub, I will be hosting Bunco tomorrow night, then on Friday go to my in-laws for pizza after the kids are done with a homeschool event. And life goes on.

This afternoon after lunch, as we were all just sitting around doing various things, my house felt so peaceful. I am very blessed to have this house and the life I lead.

Happy Easter

This is our last night in Seattle and boy has it been fun so far! James and I stayed in Medford, OR on Thursday night and arrived in Seattle Friday evening. When I checked into our hotel, I asked for a connecting room with my sister, who was arriving later that evening. They upgraded me to a corner suite and it is fantastic. We have been fairly low-key in terms of activity level, but that is just right. We have gone to Pike's Peak Market twice, Gum Alley twice, walked around the Anime convention a number of times, walked along the waterfront, went to a sculpture garden, walked over to the Space Needle, visited a glass blowing shop, eaten a lot of yummy food, picked up Daniela from the airport, and connected Sarah with her orchestra group from her high school.

I hope to put some photos up later, but right now am using Ethan's computer....so no photos yet!

Stay tuned to hear about where we go next!

Packing for Road Trip (and some pictures)

I leave tomorrow for a road trip with James. We are driving to Seattle, where we will be meeting my sister Annabelle, my brother-in-law Ethan, and my niece Sarah, who will be arriving Friday night. On Sunday, my cousin Daniela will be flying in from Switzerland, and Sarah will be leaving with to tour with her school orchestra. Then, Annabelle, Ethan, Daniela, James and myself will drive back to California, stopping at various places in the Pacific Northwest such as Olympic National Park. We will also be visiting our good friend Will Royston and his wonderful wife Linda. We should be back by Sunday, April 19. I am looking forward to this, but with a bit of trepidation because I have no idea how James will do on a road trip like this. But, I guess the best way to find out is to do it.

Here are some pictures-
Annabelle with James

We hung a swing in our backyard that James loves.

Here is William!

James went with a bunch of other little ones to Habitot....he is there in the middle sitting on Emma's lap.