(And All My) Work Be Praise

Today I made a meal to take to a family with a newborn, so not everything I made was for the freezer. But I think all meal prep falls under the "freezer cooking" heading these days. :) Here's what I made today: * banana wheat germ mini muffins (This was a new recipe for me, and it's a winner!!)  * zucchini, carrot, apple muffins (This looks like a fussy recipe, but it doesn't have to be. I didn't bother with oat flour this time around.) *one jar of refrigerator pickles, out of cucumbers from my mom's garden and a recipe from a lady at church *2 gallon bags of orange chicken, from an old Kraft magazine (It says slow cooker, but I'll do it in the instant pot. I doubt I'll ever use my crockpot again, after the wonders of the IP!) And for the family with a new baby, as well as our dinner tomorrow: * rosemary olive oil bread *dark chocolate butterscotch brownies (also torn out of an old Kraft magazine) *hamburger vegetable soup, for which I used 2 pou...

Isaac has a friend from college with whom I am a casual social-media acquaintance. (You can read beautiful, faith-filled writings at her blog .) This weekend, I shamelessly plagiarized one of their family's fun traditions: YES DAY! We made some adaptations to suit our family and planned the BEST DAY EVER. (Yep, all the capital letters.) A few rules: 1. Daddy has a budget in mind, and he'll let you know if we're getting close. 2. Everything goes back to normal at 6:30pm on Saturday. So, no animal acquisitions, no wall painting, and night-before-church baths and bedtimes still stand. 3. COVID restrictions remain in place, as well as a bit of family democracy when choices have to be made. It would've been fun to do the whole day on a whim, and Isaac would've been 100% on board with that. But since we have a baby who naps and too many little ones to run to the grocery store repeatedly, we made a big list the day before of things they'd like to see happen. Then I too...

 A few weeks ago I wrote a massive post about our many and varied curriculum choices for this year, and the internet stole it. (It was very sad.) It's been four years since I last wrote about curriculum , though, so I'm going to try this again, albeit with significantly less commentary and fewer pictures (like none) than the first time around. If you have questions about anything, please don't hesitate to ask! For reference, I have (approximately) middle school, fifth grade, third grade, first grade, preschool, and a darling little girl who will be ONE YEAR OLD this week and just started taking 8-10 steps at a time! MATH Levi is using Elements of Mathematics: Foundations  (an online course). He's been using this program for three years and it continues to be a perfect fit for him. The first course is free right now, thanks to COVID, so if you're in the market for prealgebra for a mathy kid, give it a try! Owen will finish up level 5A of Beast Academy within the mon...

Now that my parents live in town full-time, my kids have regularly scheduled times at Grandma and Grandpa's. On Fridays, Toby and Calvin spend the morning there, we all meet up for lunch, and then Levi, Owen, and Silas stay for the afternoon. Since the older three especially are so good at entertaining themselves, and because I let the younger ones have some screen time in the afternoon to force them to rest, I've found I have a fair bit of time to pursue my own agenda. I've frittered away several Fridays now without a plan, but this week I decided: Fridays would be perfect for working ahead in the kitchen. Since a little alliteration always makes things feel official, I hereby declare Freezer Cooking Fridays! Here's what I made today: a double batch of fudge bites (actually, Levi made them!) for snacks a triple batch of spinach cake muffins a triple batch of taco meat, some of which we'll eat for dinner tonight The next two recipes are both from this list of 15 fre...