Normal Hum-drums.

A few fun pictures to share about our little world around here lately.

I've gotten a little creative in review techniques for homeschool.

Here Rachael, (who is not usually in her pajamas for homeschool, but we were having a lazy morning) is sorting capital and lower case letters into corresponding plates. I just used refrigerator magnets, Scrabble Jr. pieces, a few handwritten lower case letters, Word Whammer magnetic pieces, and Upwords (a stacking version of Scrabble) pieces. It did take her a handful of minutes to complete the task, but this allowed me time to spend some attention/love on Abi (after taking a picture or two, of course, so you all could witness this).

 Here Rachael's using her Wax Paper Helper to distinguish b's and d's.

And we made Valentines day review cookies. If you look close you can see that I decorated with A, a, B, b, C, c, and D, d. Rachael and Abi are still enjoying eating their way through Rachael's review. =)

 In other news, I attempted a pork stew (you can use any meat) to the success of the adult opinions in this household (since the sprouts have more picky moments when it comes to stews). My mom sent me the recipe and I had to get all of NOTHING from the store to make this. LOVE those kinds of practical recipes.

My mother's recipe: [ "All you need is an oven pan with a lid (or oven okay bowl with foil on top). Cook meat (Chicken, cubed beef, turkey) in a fry pan to brown the outside, cut up potatoes, carrots, celery, onions. Put in oven pan. Add a couple of bay leaves, salt and pepper to your liking, a little steak sauce (A-1, Worcestershire, etc). Then add water about half way up the pot. Cover, bake at 350 degrees a few hours until the meat is done and the potatoes are fork tender. Longer for beef, shorter for chicken, turkey."] 

I was running out of time before dinner so i cooked it on 375 for 1.5 hours. That worked quite as well, though I'm sure there would have been a thicker broth with the extra slow simmering time. 


Bravo Mom for the "pop it in the oven and forget about it" meal. 
Preparing at nap time is the way to go!