Year 2, Day 355 & 356: Polishing It Off

"Are you ready for Christmas?" That's the word on the street.  How can anyone really be ready for Christmas until it's here?  Well, we are closer to ready this evening (Friday) then we were a few hours ago.  I'm feeling a bit better on that front.  Just as long as I can keep my head in the game and not get sick with vertigo or something, we should be ok.  I'm very, very grateful that our commitments the last two days and the two days this weekend are minimal.  We had one appointment yesterday, one short outing today, a short time of errands tomorrow and church in the evening, and then church again on Sunday morning then Sunday dinner, then we are home for nap and our own Christmas Eve whateverness, just the six of us.  And I've asked Jared to take care of all the dailies, including feeding children, diapering the toddler, keeping the toddler occupied (and not just by using the screen), and breaking up any fights between the 4 of them.  I just need some uninterrupted time to polish it all off.  Keturah helped wrapped gifts today for extended family.  We plan to wrap gifts during naptimes on Saturday and Sunday.  That way Sunday evening will be totally free and we won't have to stay up late doing that part.  Then I can focus on last minute cleaning and packing.  And then Christmas happens!  Ah!

So, what else is going on?  Well, we wrapped up school today for our 2 week break.  I needed to "count the days" and we had a few lingering things, so the kids diligently did their work.  They are reading books based on history lessons over break because well, I'm a mean homeschooling mom.  No, I'm not.  But it will keep their minds engaged and I think it will help to have a quiet hour every day.  They will also be reviewing their Classical Conversations Foundations material.  Justin will be studying Bible Bowl.  Keturah has one last assignment to finish for our human body studies.  I don't feel like I did the greatest job with this semester of science, but at least they've heard it all once.  I think I'm going to focus on physics next semester.  They had botany last year, and I'm sure they are plenty familiar with animals and insects with all our nature study type stuff.  I would to just like put some vocabulary with the physical science, like fulcrum and force and planes and gravity.  We also haven't studied much geology either.  We have covered weather in depth based on real life events.  Chemistry is another one we should try to cover soon.  I know I had Benaiah do a bunch of Backyard Science experiments like putting an egg in vinegar and observing what happens.  We could also go over the scientific process again.  And yes, we have covered astronomy.  This summer I plan to go through the boxes in front of the science shelves so they have full access to them again.  Thankfully, science is fairly easy to pick up on and doesn't really change, at least at the elementary and middle school levels.

Wow, that was a tangent.  Oh well, that's a homeschooling mom for ya.  I'm always thinking about what's next and how to improve.  I'm bringing non homeschooling books to read with me though.  One is a novel about Esther.  I'm reading a companion book that talks about beauty and health in Bible times and how we can apply that to our perspective on beauty today, including real tips and tricks for health and beauty.  I think I might purchase it to use with Keturah when she's about 15 or so.  It's got a 30 day devotional section as well.  The information is not really new to me, but it's pretty easy to read and concise.  I'd also like to finish that lighthouse crossstitch on this trip and catch up on my podcasts.  There's plenty of time on a 13 hr drive, right? I never do as much as I want to though.  I'll be typing up my thoughts for the day at the very least, even if I can't put the blog together and get it posted.  That's my goal anyway.  It should be interesting.  At first we wanted to go see a bunch of stuff in New Orleans and beyond, but then we were thinking the kids just want to play together and maybe go bowling and to the movies.  My kids are so tired of field trips and honestly, I just want to rest as well.  And they will all have new toys to play with, too.  We might even get to play outside because the weather is warmer down there.  Stay tuned because you never know what we'll do!

Now, back to the last couple of days.  That's right, I made more cranberry bread (gluten free) and cherry winks yesterday!  Both are Howell traditions that I've been doing for 15 years (I think, maybe a year or two less than that).  So, I'm pretty comfortable with the recipes, and had adapted them to be gluten free 4 years ago.  The kids love them, too, even the gluten free versions.  The cookies came out quite different this year though.  I used stevia and a gluten free baking blend and they came out pretty dry.  I even added extra oil to the mix.  They don't taste as rich as they usually do and I used real butter in them.  I'm glad that I had just watched a video where the blogger was showing that it's ok if a gluten free batter is dry because once you roll it together between your hands it will stick.  And that's what I did.  I also used rice chex instead of cornflakes (or the original shredded wheat that we had growing up) on the outside.  But the cherries and dates are the same.  The cranberry bread is made with almond flour and came out a tad different this time, but alas, the kids ate up the first 1/2 loaf.  I still have 3 loaves in the freezer, so we have plenty to share while in NOLA.

And then today we went to see some trains in an indoor conservatory/greenhouse.  It was only $10 per family, so pretty cheap and small experience.  The really big display in one of our downtown museums is $15 per person because you pay for the entrance to the museum itself.  I figured it was a nice compromise.  I took the 4 kids by myself and wow, the sibling clashes were awful.  But, wait for the funny story in the captions of the pictures below.  It was hilarious!  Then we wrapped gifts this afternoon after school work.  And I packed my bags tonight.  Onwards to fixing some picture cd's and loading up pictures on Snapfish and the blog.

Benaiah's friends from his self named group called "the mafia" got each some gifts!  What a lucky guy!

Two rubix cubes, Starbucks dark chocolate hot cocoa, some kind of ceramic creature from the show he likes called "Stranger Things" and.....

A ball ornament filled with things that are referenced in "Stranger Things."  He was pretty pumped about all of this!

Miss "I can rearrange my room daily!" did it again.  A perfect little hideaway.  She even put the hat rack there so it looks like it's a wall.  At least her room is picked up right now.  She can organize her stuff fairly well, when she wants to.  She is one of those artsy types that don't mind the mess, but can also organize on demand.

Crushing up the rice squares for the cherry winks.

At first Abishai was upset that we would do that to cereal, but then he enjoyed the process of crushing them, too.  I used the leftover crumbs on some fish for dinner tonight after I added some seasonings.  We roll the cookies in the crushed cereal.

The recipe, called "Cherry Blinks," is from a reproduction copy of a 1963 Betty Crocker cooky book.  It was printed in 2002.  I thought it was my mom's original one, but I guess not.  Same recipe though, so maybe she got it from her own edition of the book, or a a version in a magazine/newspaper.  I don't know that detail, but I know she made them every year since I was a little kid.

Keturah cut all the cherries!  And couldn't help herself from asking 100 times if she could drink the sweet cherry juice made with pure corn syrup.  We said no.

Time to blend it all together!

Roll the cookies, which now contain small pieces of dates, between your hands.  Drop them in the rice chex and move them around so they are covered in cereal.  Then put them on the trap.

Final step is the cherries!  One for the cooky and one for me!

Everybody got to do cherries!

They didn't flatten out at all and taste undercook and dry.  I'll have to remember to use regular sugar next year.

It looks amazing!  But just not as tasty as I had hoped.  Plus, using parchment paper is the best thing man has ever created.  Ok, not really, but I'm really liking the easy clean up.

Time to clean up the cookie mess!

 Friday, Trains at the Garfeild Park Conservatry.

The Garfield Park Conservatory is near where we used to live in Beech Grove.  I took the kids to a MOPS outing when they were really little.  They have a rotunda area and had two big trains going.  Pretty simple but pretty.

Funny story: I was barely in the doors of the conservatory and just scoping out the lay of the land, when, all of a sudden Abishai had climbed up on some bricks outlining the poinsettas.  I hadn't had a chance to notice the sign that said, "Don't climb the bricks."  Well, the bricks were only stacked and when Abishai stepped up on them, they and he tumbled right onto some poinsettas!  There was an older lady there and I was totally embarrassed at this #momfail but laughed it off the best I could.  No one was hurt and we fixed what we messed up.  Abishai was careful and didn't try to climb or touch anything after that.  It was so funny because he just climbed up and over he went in a flash before I could remind him not to touch or do anything.  Whoops!

The kids discovered Buddy the Elf from the E.L.F. movie!  They had a scavenger hunt as well so I did my best to help the kids (who weren't really interested) find the items.

Meanwhile Abishai went back and forth between two loops of the train, tripping over a little ledge between the pagoda and the regular flooring each time.

Trains!  And Abishai wanted to wear Sissy's cat hat the whole time.  He finally did get hot and take it off towards the end.

See, now he's back at the other end!

Pretty church!

Bored teen solved his new rubix cube several times and listened to his music.  Enthralled toddler oohed and ahhed over the train.

The other train was a circus train and went around the bottom of a beautiful Christmas tree!  And that's it for the trains.

The rest of the indoor garden is well established, so they just added some poinsettias and lights to make it more festive.  Plus, most of the plants that were in bloom had red flowers.

Two of the mini ponds had these ginormous fish in them.  All kinds of colors, too!

A fish tank with some fish and a sucker fish.

Tarantula and no one was freaked out.

Poisonous tree frog of some sort from South America.

A blue eyed lizard.  There was also a corn snake which is known for it's orange color and they live in the southeastern United States.

The plants were from all over the world including Taiwan, Hawaii, Madagascar, Panama, and other South American countries.

Waterfall you can walk under and big fish!  We fed these fish (or their predecessors) when we visited here long ago.

Cool colored fish!

Some purple flowers.

The teen Benaiah taking a picture for his Instagram feed.

It's so pretty with the red in the greenery!

A powder puff tree!  I don't know if they are prickly or soft, but I've never seen them before and they look so cool!  They are way up high in a tree thugh.

Is that a real pineapple plant?  I think so!  It seemed to be attached.  We learned during our Hawaii vacation 14 1/2 years ago, that it takes 2 years to grow a pineapple.  You plant the top part of pineapple and it clones itself or something like that.

More purple blooms!

Then we found a train table!  And we worked on our sharing skills.

Oh so cute in that hat!  It was so steamy in the conservatory that some of the condensation was dripping on the train table, so we moved it over out of the water.  Jared didn't come with us, but he would have enjoyed having some humidity to heal his very dry skin.  Thankfully New Orleans is always humid!

Justin and Keturah played a chair race, or rather, who could rock the most.  There were springs in the chairs so they had a little give to them for rocking.

Lots of great foliage!  They have a large outdoor garden you can walk through in the summer months.  I think it's called the sunken gardens or something.

Very pretty.

Abishai wanted Benaiah to wear the kitty hat, so he did.

A bigger view of the pagoda and train.

Abishai wouldn't pose for the picture.

What an unique way to hang up coats!

Garfield Park Conservatory

Brothers goofing off.

Yesterday morning, I sat down in Jared's rocking recliner and saw a ton of rainbows from the light coming through the window of the glass door.  There was 7 or 8 of them! One was on the snowman, one was on the couch, two hit on Socks when he came over, and they even reached the wall behind Benaiah's desk!

Very pretty!

On Benaiah's gate.

Right next to the chair.

Abishai made a little gift for the postmaster in his Sunday School class.  It's just a candy cane, but it has the message that "God Loves You" on it.  We put it on top of our Christmas cards we finally finished!  It was pretty cool outside, so I carried him, although he finally weighs 27 lbs!  That's a 1 lb weight gain in 1-2 months!  Yeah!  I thought he looked bigger!