Category Archives: National Blog Posting Month

menu plan Monday, National Blog Posting Month

What we’ll be eating before we eat turkey

11/23/2015 Nichole

It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year! We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving with my dad, my brother, my sister-in-law and my nephew. Our menu includes turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing (hopefully; we forgot to make it a few years ago!), butternut squash parmigiana if I can find it, and a bevy of desserts. There’s a lot of prep involved, and even though my sister-in-law is doing most of it I’m still taking it easy for meals for the rest of this week.

Monday: Chicken parmesan meatballs: The first time I made Rachael Ray’s Chicken Parm Meatballs, I just served them with some marinara dipping sauce and a veggie side. They’re a little fussy to make, but they were a big hit. This time I’m going to make some pasta to go along with them.

Tuesday: McAlister’s: I’ll be making a few Thanksgiving sides tomorrow, so we’re going to take advantage of kids-eat-free night at McAlister’s.

Wednesday: Something simple: On Wednesday we’ll be making a lot of desserts for Thanksgiving, so we’ll be having something simple for dinner.

Thursday: The Feast

Friday: Pizza: Our favorite pizza place closed earlier this year and a new one took over its space. We hadn’t tried it until last week, and I’m pleased to report that I have a new favorite pizza place.

Diversions, National Blog Posting Month

I have no NaBloPoMo mojo

11/21/2015 Nichole 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to put together a post for today for about two hours. Poppy and Pete each have a friend over for a sleepover, though, and my house is chaos:

“I’m in the magic laundry basket!”

“As king, my first decree is that you don’t have to push yourself in the laundry basket.”

“Pretend the signal for calling them is ‘WAAARGGGHOOOOOOooooooOOOOOarrrrGGHHHH.”

“So are you dead?”

“That fart was foul.”

“That wasn’t mine.”

“Don’t steal my magical laundry basket!”

So instead of whatever it was I was trying to say, let’s look at November 21 posts from years past.

This time last year found Rockford recovering from having his gallbladder removed in The Convalescing.

In 2013, I wrote A Very Terrible Villanelle.

In 2012, my youngest brother rapped incomprehensibly.

The post from 2011 appears to be a black rectangle.

In 2010, I shared with you the contents of a Post-It note.

I lied to you in 2009.

The 2008 post was just a bunch of links.

We laughed at baby Pete’s tiny head in 2007.

I made a CD of cheesy love songs in 2006. A compact disc! Not just a playlist! Ah, the olden days.

And I didn’t post anything on November 21, 2005, because National Blog Posting Month didn’t exist yet.

It has become evident that I traditionally lose my NaBloPoMo mojo on or around November 21. Perhaps I’ll get my act together on November 22.

Homeschool, National Blog Posting Month

This week in homeschooling: A lot of unexpected free time

11/20/2015 Nichole 3 Comments

When I sat down to write this week’s homeschooling wrap-up, I initially thought that we hadn’t done much at all. Looking back at our daily to-do lists, though, the kids did get a lot of their work done. They were just so expeditious the first four days of the week that it was all easy and breezy. They finished their schoolwork before lunchtime almost every day, and a lot of our regularly scheduled activities were canceled due to weather (tennis) or sickness (piano & guitar). The rain was dreary and I felt bad for the ailing music teachers, but it was nice to have a lot of free time.

Today has been … less breezy. We’re getting there, though. Here’s a bit of what the kids worked on this week:

SOCIAL STUDIES

History

This week in history we learned about opium! More specifically, how the opium trade led to China being forced to open up to the Western world. I was going to make poppyseed muffins to go along with the theme, but Pete spent most of the morning rolling around in his chair and whining about math, so it hasn’t happened yet.

Geography

I have once again given up on the grand plans I made at the beginning of the year regarding geography. Maybe someday we’ll complete a 50 States study, but this is not the year. I was being too inconsistent in actually working on that project, so I bought a long geography workbook and we started on it this week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Reading

Pete finished the “Star Wars” book he’d been reading, and we haven’t been to the library to find him something new. Do you have any book suggestions for the energetic 8-year-old boy?

Poppy’s current literature study book is “Black Beauty.” She’s been enjoying it, and she’s gotten to ride a horse twice since she started the book. That was pretty much coincidental. The first time was at her friend’s birthday party, and the second was when her aunt took her while we were on vacation.

Writing

Poppy is nearly at the end of her “Writing Strands” book, and she actually asked me to order the next level. She has a wonderful imagination, and I love that she’s starting to put her ideas to paper. She’s currently working on a story that involves a great gust of wind, a cupcake and a lion.

STEM

Math

This morning Poppy told me that the work she’s been doing with fractions “is starting to make sense.” Yay! Less than “yay,” however: Pete started his math test this morning at 11, and he still hasn’t finished it. He’s currently at his make-up guitar lesson. Hopefully he’ll have a bit more focus after he jams for awhile.

Science

This week we studied mirrors, using a Young Scientists kit. The mirror we tried to make out of foil and cardboard didn’t work so well, but the kids really enjoyed the symmetry drawing exercise.

How was your week?

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!