My youngest son has finished school for the year. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. I am especially glad to be done teaching him music. We are not a musical family and teaching music is pretty painful for us all. He had to use a slide whistle this year which none of us enjoyed. I almost lost it on purpose a few times but knew I would have to replace it if I did. That would mean ordering a slide whistle from musicians friend or someplace similar. We use a cyber school and have to return all of the educational materials sent to us at the end of each school year. I am really glad to be packing up the slide whistle, tambourine, and other music supplies. It will be good to have a little bit of quiet once again.

I am sitting here hoping for just a bit of rain. We now have part of our garden planted, and it is in need of a drink. I could turn on the hose, but I hate paying for water to water the garden. It hasn’t rained enough here to fill my rain barrels yet so using them is not an option. We were supposed to get rain a few hours ago, and the sky still looks clear. Hopefully, we get a little rain soon which would make my wallet and garden happy.

Next month I will have been married for 22 years. It really is hard to believe that I have been married over half my life. I feel very blessed to have shared this amount of time with such a wonderful man. Marriage isn’t about getting a diamond wedding band in my opinion. It is about having a quality person that you can share the high points and low points of life with. We have grown up together in a sense but have in the process allowed each other to grow into who we are meant to be. Although I married young I don’t feel like I have missed out on a single thing. I simply feel blessed to have shared my life with someone who wants the best for me and our life together.

There is something in the air lately that is bringing people to my door. They are not coming to my door for any other reason than to “sell” me something. I have had 4 people in the last two days wanting to sell me gutters, lawn care, or religion. One person actually came back a second time to give her sales pitch another try. I finally posted a sign on the door stating that I do not welcome ~ sales people, canvassers, evangelists, free estimates, free offers, or surveys. We will see if that helps.

The mood has finally struck me to get some spring cleaning done. There is just something about finally being able to open the windows that makes me want to give the house a good cleaning. I have spent quite a bit of time in my kitchen getting things organized. The entire process makes wish a set of kitchen cabinet organizers was in my budget. For now I am just going to have to work with what I have. I am glad to see everything neat and clean and smelling fresh. No matter how much I clean during the winter it just always feels stale inside. Opening the windows and washing everything down makes such a difference.

We spent all day on Sunday helping my folks clean out a camp they have on there property. The camp has slowly but surely become filled with stuff they have accumulated over the years. In the process of cleaning it out we came across a number interesting things. Perhaps the most interesting things, to my children, was a set of intercoms. They have had the best time with these things talking to each other from various parts of the house. It is funny how the simplest things can be so much fun.

Recently I have come to realize that I don’t have the right kind of dishes for transporting hot foods. Today I found myself wishing for some custom styrofoam packaging for my one and only casserole dish. I have had to take a number of hot foods to various events lately and am completely unprepared. Normally I bring desserts or things that don’t require special gear to transport them. I guess for Christmas this year I will be asking for a casserole carrier.

We just got back from having Easter dinner at my brother’s house. I had some hesitations about this dinner because his wife absolutely cannot cook. She surprised us all and did a very good job. She is usually such a nervous mess when she has to cook that it drives everyone crazy to be around her. This time she was calm and collected and we all had a good time. I am glad to be home and am looking forward to a quiet day with my kids and husband tomorrow.

We have decided that our one neighbor is as elusive as Big Foot. We know he exists but no one ever sees him. In the summer he will come out occasionally to smoke. I used to see him leave the house when the local shop was running cigar specials. I haven’t seen him in months but I see the lights go off and on in the house from time to time. I suppose it isn’t really my business what he does with his time but since he doesn’t work and he isn’t elderly or frail you have to wonder what he does all the time.

This week I have very few “make it yourself” things on my list. I have finally gotten my sourdough starter where I want it to be and have been using it almost daily. I have been making a fantastic sour dough pizza crust and bread. I started a batch of orange cleaner this week and can’t wait to try it. It is essentially orange peels soaked in vinegar. The vinegar extracts the oil from the orange peel and makes what is purported to be a fantastic cleaner.

We have lived in a bunch of different types of neighborhoods over the years. The one we live in now is probably the nicest of them all. The only thing I ever notice going on in this neighborhood is someone playing a good electric drum set every so often. I don’t mind a bit of music here and there as long as it isn’t every night all night. Our neighbor gives music lessons and sometimes things get a bit loud over there but it is never past 10 pm at night. I have learned over the years and having lived in differnt places that overhearing music is nothing in the big scheme of things.

For some reason about a month ago my youngest son developed a fear of the dark. He was never afraid before this and went to bed without incident every night. Now he lays awake and whines until we come in and console him. He has night lights and the radio playing, but he still seems afraid. I don’t know what else we can do other than wait for this phase to pass. I am convinced it is a phase and that soon we will be on the other side of it. I don’t what cause it but I am sure it is just a phase.

For about a week my youngest son has been carrying a toy guitar around with him everywhere. It seems like once a week he picks a toy that is his favorite for that week. This week seems to be the week for guitar playing. If I thought his interest would extend beyond this week I would consider looking for the best acoustic guitar and finding him a guitar teacher. Right now his playing is pretty abysmal but he is really enjoying himself and I am not about to put a damper on that.

About six months ago I discovered a recipe for chicken sandwiches made with ground chicken. The recipe is extremely simple but it tastes absolutely delicious. My husband and I bought about 10 pounds of ground chicken and made a huge batch of them. We partially grilled them and froze them. They make for really quick and delicious meal that the entire family loves. It was an afternoon of cooking that was well spent. I never thought ground chicken could taste good but it really does. Discover a recipe for chicken patties and make some for your family.

One of the things about home schooling you learn quickly is that children are easily distracted. I fooled myself into believing that at home my kids wouldn’t deal with distractions and could better focus on learning. The truth is that there are constantly distractions occurring. It could be something as simple as novelty pens sitting in the pen cup. One minute the pen is just sitting there and the next minute it has become an object for playing with. Other distractions are things like the mailman delivering packages or the phone ringing. What I have learned is that these distractions are minor in the big scheme of things and that my children still obtain a better education despite these little occurrences.

It has been a very long time since I have been very active with using coupons. I decided that most of the things that I bought with coupons ended up being food items that really weren’t very healthy. This week I found out that CVS is an awesome place for stocking up on items like cleaning, healthcare, and beauty stuff. I have been working my coupon magic and have been getting a ton of great stuff for next to nothing. It is fun to put my coupon skills to work in a way that brings home stuff we can use and isn’t horrible for us.

In a couple of month we have to travel to a town about 80 miles away for our children to take part in statewide testing that is required. What frustrates me about this is the distance we have to travel and the fact that no other children travel this far. They spend the entire day sitting in church stacking chairs and in an unfamiliar situation while taking these tests. I am confident that if they were able to test locally in a familiar environment that the test results would be much different. It is really hard for a child to focus after having travelled for a couple hours and having been woken much earlier than normal.

In a couple of weeks my husband and I will be traveling to the “big” city for a doctor’s appointment that he has scheduled. We only get into the city once or twice a year which makes it a treat for us. In our small town there are only a couple of places to shop so I never get to look for patagonia clearance or anything else. Pretty much if I can’t buy it at one of two stores in our town I have to buy it online or wait until I get into the city. We are not taking the children with us which makes it even more of a treat. As much as I love my children, shopping with them is something I do not enjoy very much.

My oldest son woke up with a tickle in his throat this morning. I have been waiting for our first cold of the season and I suspect this might be it. I have already started him on a few home remedies to possibly help in case what he has is the beginning of the flu. One thing I really believe in is vitamin d. The other thing I make is an elderberry syrup. We have been using it for the last couple of years and it really seems to help when we are getting sick. It has been proven to help with lessening the duration of the flu. It is easy to make and tastes pretty decent.

My father-in-law loves to shop. Frequently throughout the week he will send me emails with links to places like slane and slane to show me deals he found on various things. He gets entirely bent out of shape when I don’t look at these links. What he doesn’t understand is that I don’t have time to shop nor the inclination to do so. I don’t need a bunch of stuff and have little interest in most of the things he sends me. I would think that after knowing me for over 20 years he would start to see that I lead a pretty simple life but I guess that hasn’t occurred to him yet.