Homegrown Thoughts

…just looking at the picture of these bars. Oh. My. Word. I am so making these as soon as my husband is done with his challenge diet. 2 more weeks to go!

I mean, seriously. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars? Each word you read just makes it better and better. And that doesn’t even include the chocolate drizzle on top.

Check these out!

Bake or Break recipe post

If you’ve been reading my blog lately, you’ll know that we are now sponsoring a little Tanzanian girl through Compassion International. My desire to do this was brought to a head as I read the blog posts from a group of bloggers who recently went to Uganda on a Compassion trip. One of those bloggers was BooMama. She has now brought to my attention an initiative by Compassion to provide mosquito nets for families in malaria-prone areas, such as Uganda and Tanzania. If you feel that you want to help the children of Africa but can’t currently commit to a monthly sponsorship, read on. You can easily have a huge impact on a family with a small one time donation. From BooMama’s blog:

“I sat next to one of the hospital’s doctors, and after a few minutes of pleasantries, I asked him if it was frustrating to be a physician in Uganda. Much to my surprise, his eyes filled with tears. And he nodded.

“It’s tough,” he said, “because our children die from preventable diseases. AIDS is preventable. Malaria is preventable. But our people don’t have access to medicine. They don’t have access to mosquito nets. Mosquito nets are so inexpensive, and they can save children’s lives. But there aren’t enough to go around.”

Today, April 25th, is World Malaria Day. And through the Bite Back campaign, you can give a one-time donation of $10 and provide a mosquito net for a child - or a family, if they’re all sleeping in the same place - who otherwise would have no protection from this completely preventable disease. That $10 will also provide education and treatment for people who are already sick with malaria.

Click here to donate $10 that will provide a mosquito net for a child (you can donate more than that if you feel led and can still donate after today). Each net lasts three years, so for $3.33 a year - less than a penny a day - you can save a child’s life.

Please prayerfully consider donating to this cause if you are able.  And if you just can’t spare $10 right now but still want to help, then link to BooMama’s post from your blog. Help to get the word out and encourage your readers to give.

My husband took Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off from work. Usually we make plans for these times and then get very little, if anything, done. Well, not this time! I don’t think I’ve had such a continuous stretch of manual labor…ever. Here is what we’ve accomplished over the last few days, in no particular order:

1. Shopped at multiple home improvement stores.  Bought from one, ordered online from another.
2. Replaced the 3 yard lights on the front of our house.
3. Got part of our online order picked up from Lowe’s - the rest is coming later.
4. Replaced non-working  disposal.
5. Put our gazebo up on the deck.
6. Assembled (and used) new grill.
7. Assembled new lawn mower.
8. Used said mower on front and back yard on 2 different days.
9. Manually de-thatched front yard.
10. Declared war on sweet ants who decided to invade our kitchen - their occupation was short-lived.
11. Bagged up yard waste.
12. Hauled several large and small items to the curb for ‘pick up anything’ trash day.
13. Removed front storm door and took to the curb.
14. Gave my older son a haircut.
15. Put down grass patch in several spots in the yard, watered, etc.
16. Weeded, cultivated and seeded 2 flower beds.
17. Trimmed the raspberry bushes.
18. Cleaned out the shed.
19. Got a Razor scooter and helmet for the kids.
20. Got a new bike for older son since we discovered he is now too tall for the existing bike.
21. Raked leftover debris out from the other 2 beds (which should have been done in the fall) and put into yard waste bags.
22. Removed one side of our deck bench after realizing that it was not a good idea to actually light the grill under the gazebo because it could catch on fire and our deck didn’t leave enough room for the grill AND the gazebo.  Decided to do this on the spur of the moment so we could get the wood out to the curb for pick up.  This is a typically impulsive move on my part especially since we didn’t measure to make sure it would fit even after moving the gazebo over!
23. Installed new curved shower curtain rod in the master bath.

I might be forgetting something, but that’s probably about it.  You’ll notice there is no mention of laundry, washing dishes or any other regular housework on that list.  That’s because I didn’t do any of that!  So guess what I’m doing today.  :-)  It works out well, anyway.  Hubby is back at work at least for most of the day and it’s rainy and cloudy outside.  My body needs the rest - I literally hurt from the tips of my fingers (from raking and I got a splinter, even!) to my toes (tons of standing and walking and crouching…).  So I’ll hobble around the house today and try to get the inside of our house looking like a family did not run rampant through it without cleaning anything for nearly a week.

Whew!  Vacations can really wear a person out!

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before…either into a creature that is in harmony  with God, …or into one that is in a state of war with God. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.   — C.S. Lewis,  Mere Christianity

Is that title random enough?

We have ‘officially’ finished the legally required number of school days for this year.  Since we school year-round, this isn’t really that big of a deal, but for some reason I’m feeling a sense of accomplishment.  We’ve also just finished my older son’s grammar book, the math book we were working on (taking time from Math-U-See to establish a bit more mastery in a tricky area before moving on) and the Capitalization & Punctuation workbook we were also using for Language Arts.  Things seem to be wrapping up all at the same time here without me planning it that way.  Funny how that happens.

We’re going back to Math-U-See now.  I back-tracked a few lessons to make sure we get a running start at it, and so far things are going much more smoothly than they did the last time we were here.  I’m glad I seem to have made the right decision to step back and work on the tough stuff more before moving on to new skills.

We’ll also be diving back in to The Mystery of History and our timeline notebook.  We’re learning about Africa in general and Tanzania in particular since we started sponsoring Selina.  I haven’t yet decided what will go into our Selina notebook and what will be made into a lapbook.  We’ll be continuing our Language Arts by using the Total Language Plus guide for Charlotte’s Web.  Just a small problem there.  I can’t find our copy of the book!  I’ve been almost literally tripping over the thing since I bought it last year and of course now that I need it, I can’t find it anywhere.  ARGH!  Good thing I’m in spring cleaning mode.  I’ll find that thing one way or another.  Or buy a new one, LOL.

My younger son has a new pet - a ladybug.  I got him a bug pod for Christmas and he’s had to wait all this time for a bug to put in it.  Poor child.  I suppose it was a little mean to give it to him so far ahead of time, but he managed to play with it in the meantime - treating it like Tinker Toys, mostly.  My older son found the first ladybug of the season (or a ‘leftover’ from last year) in the kitchen yesterday, so we now have it imprisoned comfortable in its new home.  Which my younger son is carrying around the house like it’s a pet carrier.  I’m just waiting for one of the tubes to fall off and the ladybug escape.  We’ve warned him but he doesn’t care.  He wants his ladybug with him so he can keep an eye on it. I’ve armed him with a magnifying glass in the hopes he’ll be happy watching it that way and not decide to take it out and ‘play’ with it.  We’ve given it water and some raisins so it should be good for now.  It’s currently napping on top of one of the raisins. :-)

So, that about does it for the excitement around here today.  Our heavy rainfall of earlier today has now turned into snow of the very fat and fluffy piling up quickly kind.  It should melt by tomorrow, though.  I’m so sick of snow, but at least we’re getting to the time of year when any snow we get can’t stay long.  Hopefully this will be the last of it for this season!