(And All My) Work Be Praise

I have two recipes in my collection from one of my mom's long-time friends, Julie. The first is your standard corn casserole made with Jiffy mix, which ranks as one of Levi's top five favorite foods. The second is the marinade I'm about to copy down for you. Julie says it's good on any sort of meat, but I've only used it for chicken. Dump everything in a bag with some chicken thighs (my personal preference), let it sit for a while -- I've done four hours up to two days -- and throw it on the grill. De-lish. The recipe below makes enough for two bags of chicken at my family's current size, so you can make one ahead for next time or freeze the marinade on its own (or just make half the recipe). Marinade 1-1/2 cups olive oil (or oil of your choice) 3/4 cup soy sauce 1/2 cup red wine vinegar 1/3 cup lemon juice 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons dry mustard 1 tablespoon pepper 2-1/2 teaspoons salt 1/2 tablespoon parsley flakes 2 cloves crus...

We're trying a new approach to cleaning the house this year. Three weeks in, I have to say, I think I like it. It has some downsides, which I'll get to in a minute. The simple details: we do school Monday-Thursday, so Friday morning is "cleaning day." I wrote down every chore I could think of that 4- to 9-year-olds can do, each one on a popsicle stick, and popped them in a jar. After breakfast, they start picking jobs, and we keep going till it's done, about 30-40 minutes. (Many hands really do make light work!) Three boys and a knight with their popsicle sticks. While they attend to their chores, I hover in the kitchen, answering questions (which cloth do I use?) and cleaning things they can't reach. I also do the sweeping, because I'm never satisfied when any of them do it. Definitely Levi ought to be able to sweep efficiently by now, but . . . I'm allowed to keep a few things aside to assuage my perfectionism, right? Because I'm n...

I'm about five years into this homeschooling thing now, and I've only ever done it with a bunch of babies and toddlers underfoot. I have lived and breathed by routines: the breakfast routine, the morning nap routine, the lunch routine, the afternoon nap routine. I always knew approximately what needed to happen in each approximate time of day, but I never, ever, ever planned anything by the clock. You know what happens when you plan things by the clock for toddlers and babies? They poop. Or they fight. Or lunch takes twice as long (or half as long) as you planned. Or naps take twice as long (or half as long) as you expected. Routines are golden. Schedules make you crazy. (In my humble opinion.) So it was quite a surprise to me when I realized, back in the spring when I started planning for this fall's schooling, that I'm sort of out of that phase. Sure, I still have Calvin (who will be two in October), but he's it. Everyone else is . . . dare I say it . . . fairly...

If you've known me for any length of time, you've probably heard me (lovingly, semi-jokingly) refer to my children as "wimpy." If you picture my household of boys as the stereotypical group of climbing, rough-housing, dare-devil male monkeys, well . . . you're wrong. While Calvin is out to prove every word of this paragraph incorrect, my first four boys are, by and large, sitters: they love to draw, read, play board games and card games, build things out of LEGO and magnatiles, etc. With the exception of Levi's newfound interest in soccer last year, they are, for the most part, artists and intellectuals, and I've never felt the need to push them too hard in other areas. Until this summer, that is. We simply couldn't ignore their need to know how to swim any longer. (Actually, I personally don't care much, as I don't find swimming all that enjoyable. Give me a novel and a lounge chair in the shade, hands down, every time. But my husband and mo...