Rethinking my blog

Again, I'm delinquent in my blog posting.  This time it's been almost a MONTH since my last post. 

Yikes.

It's not like I don't have fodder for posting; I always seem to have 5+ ideas running around in my frazzled brain.  What I lack lately is time and hutzpah (how DO you spell that word?).  Can't some genius out there invent something to read my thoughts while I'm in the shower and transmit them automatically into blog posts?  Is there an app for that?

Which leads me to a crossroads regarding this here blogspace of mine.  I know I've lost readership in the last months.  I'm guessing that's because 1) I haven't blogged consistently and 2) the purpose of blogs is changing.

I've been pondering the latter quite a bit lately.  When I consider the blogs that I read regularly very few of them are personal individually-authored blogs.  I read blogs on couponing, cooking, homeschooling, Biblical living, crafting, and geekdom.  Yes, I said geekdom (check out geekmom for all things geeky). 

Facebook seems to have become the new mecca for personal ramblings and photo posting.  I admit that I've been lured and have succumbed.  I love the ease and super quickness of posting in FB.  The notes feature still allows for journal-type reflection posts and I can share photos easily with my long-distance family.

The biggest drawback of Facebook that I can see is that the access is so universal.  Even though I have all my privacy settings in FB to "Friends Only" my friend count is an unwieldy 368.  Those 368 FB friends range from high school acquaintances, old friends of my husband's that I've never met, extended family, former students, college buddies and local friends.   Do I want those 368 folks to see all my photos and thoughts?  In posting to my blog, visitors have to know the actual url address to find me.  Or I suppose they could do a google search for my blog.  Or they could see the links to the notes I've imported into Facebook.  Huh.  So, I guess the blog does have the same access level for someone who really wanted to find it.  Confused yet? 

All that to say, I'm thinking of axing my blog.  Bloggers out there, are you killing your blog presence in lieu of FB?  What pros/cons do you see to both venues?

Horn Homeschool: Weeks 30 & 32

Weeks 30 and 32 of our homeschooling studies focused on EASTER.

We studied Palm Sunday, and all the events leading up to Easter Sunday in detail using many picture books and our family Bible.

We also made several visual projects during our study of Easter:

• Stained glass crosses 
• Easter cards
• Construction paper crosses on which we each wrote "Thank You Jesus"
• Resurrection cookies (REALLY powerful activity for the kids this year)
• Easter mountain (This is a super easy project and very kid friendly.  You make the *mountain* from a homemade playdough recipe and bake it to harden.  Then you fold pipe cleaner people and act out the events of Easter together complete with a cross made of sticks, a tomb, and a rock door.  We placed the Jesus pipe-cleaner man in the tomb on Good Friday and then sealed the tomb with playdough.  The kids were thrilled to see that the rock was rolled away on Sunday morning and the Jesus pipe-cleaner man was gone!)
• Easter story with colored eggs.  (We did the traditional dying of eggs as usual for our Sunday afternoon egg hunt.   After the kids finished the hunt, I gathered them together and asked for specific colors as I did an informal retelling of the Easter story.  Colors were as follows: Green - grass in garden of gethsemane where Jesus prayed, White - moonlight that shone down on Jesus' hands as he prayed in the garden, Orange - color of torches of soldiers, Red - blood that Jesus shed, Black - dark SAD day as Jesus died and was separated from God the Father, Pink - sunrise on Easter Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead!, Yellow - Golden color of heaven where we can live now that Jesus paid for our sins!)

We sang several Easter songs and hymns throughout our study.  We also read some fascinating books about how Easter is celebrated throughout the world.  And of course we listened ad nauseum to that great Easter classic, A Very Veggie Easter.  I subjected myself countless times to the annoying and super silly "Easter Cow" track.  Ah, the love and sacrifice of a mother.  :)

Overall it was a fabulous celebration, study and reminder of the great importance of Jesus' death and resurrection. 

We rejoice as they did in Luke 24:6, "He is not here; he has risen!"

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Horn Homeschool: Week 25

Week 25 we journeyed back to the wild wild west and learned all about cowboys, ranches, and cattle drives.

This was an odd week for me to teach since I really have very little interest in cowboy stuff.  And as is usually the case with unfamiliar subject matter, I surprisingly found myself very interested in all things cowboy!

As usual, reading books on the subject was central to our study.  We read up on wild west shows, the makings of a cattle drive, tall tales and biographies about Annie Oakley, and picture books chocked full of cowboy/cowgirl vocabulary.

Our favorite cowpoke book was definitely Cowboys and Cowgirls: Yippee Yay! by Gail Gibbons.  Whimsical illustrations and covering a huge variety of cowboy topics, we read this one several times throughout the week.

Another favorite activity of the week was staging our own cattle-drive supper.  We read the book Cowboy Cooking: Exploring History Through Simple Recipes from cover to cover and selected a menu for our mock cattle-drive.  This book was fabulous!  In amongst the recipes were sprinkled historical tidbits and black and white photos of actual cowboys on a drive.  This book really fascinated Chloe and we had a fun time choosing and preparing our cowboy grub.  Chloe and I dressed as "cookies" (that's what the chef on a drive was nick-named) and cooked up cowboy chili, cowboy biscuits and then peach pie for dessert.  Of course, I did most of the work while Chloe rigged up the chuckwagon and pretended to drive it.  Precious!

In searching for cowboy books, I stumbled across a really cute series of reader books called Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa (her horse) by Erica Silverman.  The illustrations are by the renowned Betsy Lewin and perfectly accompany the simple humor of this series.  Chloe loved them and we're still checking out these books even though we're well past our cowboy study.

The crowning touch to our cowboy-themed week was a special theater show about Annie Oakley and other American legends.  Chloe was captivated!  The show was geared for kids and incorporated lots of humor and interaction.  The theater company also used these amazingly huge puppets that were really spectacular!

Yeehaw for cowboys!

Chloe used a scarf to tie the *horses* to our chuck wagon.

Cowboy biscuits.  These were delicious!

Chili with lots of beans. 

Peach pie.  Yum!

Me and Chloe all excited before the curtain opens for the Annie Oakley show!

In need of an antidote for busyness!

Starting Wednesday, our family's life is going to get seriously busy.

Usually we have a maximum of 2-3 activities slated on the week's agenda.  But soon, we'll have commitments almost every single day for the next week and a half.

I'm getting edgy and nervous as to how this added busyness is going to shake out.  Besides affecting me adversely, I know it's also bound to make for crabby attitudes and increased meltdowns in the kids.

Thankfully, most of the activities on the calendar don't include ALL of the family.  A lot of it is falling squarely on me.  Sigh.

I REALLY don't want to transform into monster mommy/scary wife during these busy days.  I know it affects the ENTIRE household when mama is stressed out.

So, here's where I need your help.  How do you keep your spirit and attitude calm when life is going a zillion miles per hour?  I know God is key in the equation here.  I'm already drafting a plan to prioritize some quiet time for reading and praying each day. 

Any other practical tips for maintaining sanity during busy seasons?

Foolishness

For some reason it is ingrained in my being to celebrate crazy holidays with food. Themed cupcakes, cookies, or whatnot I find it lots of fun to make out-of-the-ordinary meals. Maybe it's my way of avoiding the dull routine job of continual meal planning and preparation.

Last year I made a silly dinner of fake fish sticks, candy lima beans, meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting and jello in the juice glasses.  Chloe thought it all hilarious!  Clive, on the other hand, was confused and ended up not eating much.  So, I ended up fixing him an alternate plate of food to fill up his little tummy.

This year, I vowed to make a more health-ful April Fool's meal.  I love all the ideas on the Family Fun website but almost ALL of them are comprised completely of candy.  I settled on a menu of fauxberry pie (shepherd's pie with pink mashed potato topping), breadsticks disguised as french fries, and no-bake chocolate cookies shaped as meatloaf slices.

Unfortunately, I used leftover ground beef and potatoes for the fauxberry pie so it turned out looking NOTHING like it should have.  Still yummy though!

For lunch, we hosted some friends and I did the jello-in-the-juice-glass trick again.  The kids ALL fell for it!  I also served apples with gummy worms crawling out of them (which the kids wouldn't eat because of the hole -- the gummy worms they ate without complaint) and silly face cupcakes.

As for other pranks, we didn't do much.  I let Chloe sit on the kitchen counter to do some of her schoolwork and she got a kick out of that.  I tried another prank but Chloe didn't get it at all.  I took all the clothes out of her closet and hid them in another closet.  She came downstairs looking all distraught that her closet was a "mess" (I tend to pile up gifts, outgrown clothes, and other miscellany in the back of her closet that was then exposed when I removed her clothes).  When I told her that it was an April Fool's joke she responded with forlorn, "Mommy, I don't like that joke."  Guess we have to wait on the pranks until they get a bit older!

I fell prey to a few April Fool's Day jokes too.  My dear sister and I were skyping Thursday night and she slyly and convincingly told me of her *fake* plans to move stateside.  She made up a whole story on the spot and it seemed too good to be true.  Alas, it was too good to be true.  :(  She really got me good!

How'd you celebrate April 1st?

Chloe stuffing the french fry envelopes with breadsticks.

Clive said his April Fool's joke was to dress up like a construction worker.  :)