School night with Grandma every Wednesday night. It's fun, it's a bit crazy, and there's cookies. Yup, squeals of delight accompany the announcement and Big smiles greet me at 6:00 p.m. when our two oldest grand daughters rush in ready to begin.

If only their mom could get them to school with such enthusiasm. But this grandma after homeschooling our own children for fifteen years has a few tricks up her sleeve and it helps she's a bit off the wall crazy. 

Our night tonight began with a funny story about Mr. Sleeby who is always doing funny things. In tonight's tale he put his shirt on over his coat and his socks on over his shoes. The story requires attention to detail and the kid's have to listen carefully to figure out whats not right in the story.

The oldest grand child had a story about piglets and had to figure out how to assist the children in the story with counting them as they scurried about the pen.

 Then it  was addition and subtraction for the oldest with a number line to help. Last week it was with dice and next week we'll add popcycle sticks too. I'm searching for the best way for her to understand simple math. With numerous ways shown how to do something, you equip a child with knowledge that there is more than one way to solve a problem. Also you'll learn how they understand best.

Then we worked on phonics, serious phonics. The kind that teaches all the ways the long sound of a is made and how it is spelled and where it is most likely to be within a word if it has that spelling.

Giggles and laughter accompanied our problem solving with a pretend sink full of water that needs drained. With objects on the table I ask, "Would we use a teaspoon? Why not? Would we use strainer? Why not?" And we continue on with the kids deciding just what kind of object would work and why.

While the oldest is doing her work, her younger sister is in the living room setting up flash cards in alphabetical order.

You may be wondering why I started Wednesdays with Grandama. Well, there is some serious gaps in these girl's education and they are having trouble moving on in school because of it.

With the belief that your kids are your responsibility and that includes your grandkids. I believe that what they learn or don't learn is therefore also your responsibility. It doesn't matter if you have chosen others to assist you in educating them, you are the one that is responsible for the results. You are their parent or grand parent. 

I've heard too many parents blame the schools for their children not learning to read well or do math. The lack of an education suited to the learning of our children is the reason why I took my kids out of school years ago. If I just helping them after school would have done it, that is what I'd of done.

But I had children who's IQ's ranked then in the gifted class but had a few undiagnosed learning disabilities and were struggling at the bottom of the class. The oldest was in the middle of the third grade and never did like school. She struggled emotionally and educationally. Knowing how I struggled in school and how I did not receive a good grounding in the basics, I took over and began tutoring our children. Soon I had the blessing of the teachers for I was getting lists of what the kids were going to learn volunteered by the teachers because they were soaring under my tutuliage and drowning in theirs.

I see things haven't changed. Our grandkids have the same large gaps in learning that our children had so out has come the old school books. The ones that were old when our kids were young and had been found to produce phenomenol results in children, even those whose first language was not English. The ones that had gone out of style in the push to get schools to buy the new, the supposedly improved. The ones who's literature lessons were filled with tales of Benjamin Franklin and Helen Keller. The ones that when covering stories from different countries had Noah's Ark as one of the stories.

I still say, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

So with the tried and true and the weight of our grand children's lack of an addequate education weighing on my mind, I instigated Wednesdays with Grandma and I intend on continuing it throughout the summer. The girls love it. I'm having fun too. Mud pots using applesauce is definitely in our near future when I start introducing science.  

Yup, you've probably figured out by now that I love learning and I believe it is contagious. It isn't about teaching everything. It's about teaching children how to find their own answers to their questions. It's about instilling a thirst for knowledge and exploration. 

It's about love.

The Fun of Pigtails

 Remember when you wore pigtails. Those fun strands of hair that bob up and down and slap back and forth across your face when you swing your head from side to side. It's been a long time since I wore pigtails but I haven't forgotten the cool way they move.

Our youngest grand daughter had her first full set. You know, the ones where all your hair will fit into them. We've kept her hair short until now and Monday when I pulled her fine hair into two delightful swinging pendulums, our grand daughter couldn't leave them alone.

 She flipped them and....

 twirled them...

and looked ever so cute. Even when tears where rolling down her cheeks and her nose had flooded when a DVD of Scooby Doo was removed from the DVD player and Willy Wanka And The Chocolate Factory was inserted. The old one of course that I watched as a child. It is ever so much better than the newer version.

 But all was made better when she could curl up in one of Grandma's scrap quilts and cuddle with her Aunt Toni.

 Then the disappointment was forgotten when the Crayola window markers were taken out of the drawer and free rein was given to draw on the livingroom's great big picture window.

I love those markers. They wash off so easily but be sure and get the crayola like ones with the thick tips. They work so..... much better than the fine tips ones.

And because she is so... stinking funny, I've got to tell you about what our youngest grand daughter said. She's three and like so many before her, she got a hold of a pair of scissors and whacked off a chunk of her own hair. Thankfully only a chunk as her oldest sister removed the whole crown of her red head of hair down to a inch. It took forever to grow out and you couldn't hide it. 

 Hence, our daughter, her mom, has been trying to teach her that she should not be doing her own hair cuts.

When her Aunt Toni came over to her home, her mom  asked her," Now who cuts your hair?" and our grand daughter dutifully repeated the script she'd been taught,

"Mommy and Ammaw." (Ammaw is me.) Then as she turned and walked off, Toni heard her say cheerfully under her breath, " And me!"

LOL... yup, probably won't be the last time this character gives herself a haircut, no sirree.

Food Traditions

When I was small, and we know that was a long time ago, my Great Grandmother, for Christmas, would make us popcorn balls and gingersnap cookies, mailing them from Idaho to our Wyoming home.

I still make popcorn balls for Christmas using her recip. Well, kind of.

You know I can't leave a recipe alone and this one is no different. I add a little more corn syrup and flavorings such as grape, cherry, orange, or cinnamon oil instead of vanilla.  

When we were growing up, my mom would wrap this gooey goodness around a Tootsie Pop (sucker), that much I haven't changed. We use to give this treat as a gift to our friends and neighbors and sometimes I do the same. This year, I made this treat with our two oldest grand daughters, passing the tradition on to another generation.

The best thing about this recipe is the popcorn balls stay gooey and soft.

I'll give you my recipe though you'll have to guess how much popcorn to pop because I've never measure that. It's quite a heaping bit though.

3/4 cup corn syrup

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon flavoring of your choice.

a pinch of salt

 

Add a few drops of food coloring dye if desired.

Place corn syrup, butter, and sugar in a pot, bring to a boil while stirring. When the mixture is at a rolling boil despite your stirring and the sugar is dissolved, turn off the heat and add the pinch of salt along with the flavoring. This is when you can add a few drops of food dye.

Stir and then cover, leaving it for four minutes before pouring over popped popcorn that you've sorted all the Old Maids out of. You know, the kernels that didn't pop. Stir to coat the popcorn and butter your hands so the goo doesn't stick to them. Begin forming balls in the same manner as you would make snow balls intened for your onery brother, pressing hard to get them to stick together. Add plastic wrap to each individual ball and some pretty ribbon and it's festive enough for any holiday.

My neighbor, after receiving this recipe, made them each Halloween for Trick or Treaters she knew. These were of course orange flavored and dyed orange.

To read about another tradition, hop on over to our daughters blog at Crochet Me.

http://www.crochetme.com/blogs/crochet_me/archive/2011/12/27/my-great-grandmother-s-crochet.aspx

Tradtition dicatates that the story of Jesus's birth is told by Kirk on Christmas Eve. The story, though centuries old, gains a new twist each year as family takes hold of it and adds their own flavor. 

Maybe I should explain.

Our youngest grand daughter was getting a bit cranky by evening, having spent a no nap couple of days at her father's house.

She wanted no part in our Nativity story but everyone else dived into the costume containers and chose a role.
We had Joseph in our middle daughter's old fairy godmother's robe from the play Cinderella, along with a beard I'd made for the play Hillibilly Wedding.

Our oldest grand daughter became Mary in a sparkling dress and an old shawl of her Great, Great Grandmother's.

We aren't too wise so we could only come up with one Wise Man–our step-grandson.

With just two little sheep to watch over, our oldest daughter dressed in Noah's wife, Sarah's dress from another school play.

We had the cutest donkey too, complete with tail and ears played by our middle grand daughter.

Our middle daughter donned several different wigs in her dual roles as King Herod and the Inn Keeper.

 And all would of gone well despite laughing so hard the actors and actresses could barely play their roles but the youngest grand daughter refused to allow any one of her three dolls to play the part of baby Jesus. In the end, she decided that she would He, baby Jesus.

And she comfortably settled into the part despite the confines on the cardboard box.

We are off to see the Grandparents today and our oldest son who had to work on Christmas, but before we go, I wanted to share a little of our Christmas with you. I hope that your weekend was as memorable and delightful as ours.

A Home-made Gift Idea

"Sleigh bells ring are you listening. In the lane snow is glistening." Can't you hear me singing. Well, maybe your lucky but I have been because it's that time of the year. The time you have to put your rear in high gear and get to making Christmas presents.

The last few years I've bought them but this years funds are a bit short. And... our children have voiced numerous times in those years just how much they enjoy the home-made gifts. Would I please start making them again. 

So... though our daughters do sometimes read this blog. It won't be giving away their gift because they already know part of it anyway. It's the gift they've been hounding me to make.

No, not aprons, though I am making a variety of styles for gifts for Christmas. This one needs some ruffles around the pockets and a little this and that to jazz it up.

What all our children, including our son, has been after me to do is copy my recipes that I've worked to collect and change over the last ten years or so.

This year I'm working on breakfast. I've enough recipes to fill a inch and a half three ring notebook. A daunting task alone just to type them all up but... being me, I'm also photographing for it. Yup, those apples are apples off our tree and those waffles were served to our grandchildren one morn. I've seen cool programs on the Internet where you can type your recipes and a company will make a book for you but it doesn't allow photography freedom that I want. Plus you can't add to it like you can a three ring notebook with recipes in slip covers. The ability to slip out the recipes also allows you to add notes.

Since a cookbook is so... much more inviting with photographs to entice you to cook and I love to photograph...I've got to add that personal touch.  

Our one daughter will tell you that it will take more than some scrumptious looking food in photographs to get her iinterested in cooking breakfast yet, she is just as interested as the rest to have a cookbook also. Though she might not be interested, she still has a family to cook for. 

I'm not photographing for every recipe. That would take me for ever and ever since I can't stick with one task long enough with so much else that needs done. Plus, the cost of colored ink alone would break my tight budget. Instead, I'm taking a few shots here and there as I cook not only breakfast but desserts and main meals too. Yes, they are expecting those recipes to come along next in a cookbook.

And since so much of our lives revolves around food, with raising livestock for milk, eggs, and meat, along with hunting and fishing, I can't leave that out either. Yes, this cookbook will be a bit of a pictorial food history that will include photos of our family too. 

I've got pictures of the grand kids cracking eggs for breakfast.

Some of them making noodles, cookies, etc. and even a few of them eating that which I cooked.

Then there is this one for chicken noodle soup. Nap time couldn't come soon enough for our cute little bug and she fell asleep eating.

 And if our family thought I took a lot of pictures before, they haven't seen nothing yet. My camera is going to have a permanent home on the kitchen counter until I'm done, especially during the holiday season when everyone is home. 

Though this will be lots of work, it will finally end my steady search for recipes I know I have somewhere but can't lay my hands on when I want them.

Yup, I think I want these cookbooks as much as they do.

Halloween Preparations

Halloween, to Christians, is a pagan holiday. Because of this, some refuse to celebrate it. When our children were young, it was a greatly debated subject. I had a tug-of-war war within myself as this holiday often brings out the dark side of people. But then so can Christmas as the greedy use it to fill their own coffers.

As I've wondered about the holidays, I've come to realize that a holiday is what you make of it. You can choose how and what you celebrate despite what the world pressures us to do.

With this in mind, we set rule for Halloween for our family when they were small. No costumes that represent evil.  Just as an actors dresses the part to help them get into character, children do the same thing as they explore roles. Dress determines to a great degree how one acts. It's a proven fact and the reason behind school uniforms.

Evil, is not a role I wished my children to explore especially since they don't have the capability to fully compartmentalize. The lines between fantasy and reality are thin and they can easily be influenced. 

For  me, the goal of a holiday is to gain a sense of belonging, emotional warmth, growth, and learning to to be more self-less. 

I've discovered that the holidays is where the selfless shine and the sins of the selfish become more visible.     

Holidays create a measuring rod for myself.

They push me into the uncomfortable as I do things for others. Like the debate I had in the store about what paint to buy that would stick on the shell of a pumpkin. I read this label and that label and none of them gave me a clue. As my stomach began to twist in discomfort, over such a silly thing, I decided it was ridiculous, threw my hands in the air and just bought two different kinds. Surely, one of them would work. If not we'd try markers.

I know traditionally, we've always carved pumpkins, our oldest helped with her first one when she was two. But this year, our oldest grand daughter complained that scooping out the insides with your hands is just really yucky. One has to be flexible with traditions, so this year painting it was. 

We had chicken noodle soup and biscuits and the minute the kids were done, they disappeared. We could hear a dresser drawer in our room opening. We had to smile knowing what they were up to.  They returned with one of Papa's work t-shirts on. Papa's t-shirts make a good cover up for their clothes.

Out came the paints and our daughter's nerves, just shy of wringing her hands. Oh wait, she was wringing her hands. Despite this, the girls had a wonderful time, painting their pumpkins and a cazillion pictures on plain white paper. The decorating of sugar cookies was almost ignored, they were having so much fun. When bed time loomed near, we had to force them, despite the flowing tears, to quit and go home to bed.  

Next week, we will cook the pumpkins, make salted pumpkins seeds to eat and pies, cookies etc. Jack-o-lanterns have never been the end at this household.

Monday was also dress up and parties at school.

Making part or all of the costumes is a large portion of the anticipation of the holiday. It is a creative learning experience. Granted, more for me than the children but still, they learn as they watch and help with the decision making. Looking around at in expensive household objects, and seeing how they can be used to create a fantasy attire expands their minds. When they are older, more of the project will become theirs.

I admire some friends who spent sixteen hours with their ten or is it eleven year old son creating a Transformer costume out of cardboard, Wow, it was quite impressive! Pretty much just cardboard and lots of tape. Some would say what a waste of hours. I couldn't help but think of all the things their son learned, designing, following plans, using math, the importance of precision, and a score of other character building principle, not to mention learning to stick with a project until it is completed even though it takes a long time. Halloween, for them, went way beyond dressing up. 

For our middle grand daughter, we just added a few things such as a net collar and some whimsical antennas to her boughten attire. Her mom painted her face and added glittery hair spray. You can tell she is pleased with the results.

But for our oldest, who at first wanted to be a Clam, (yes, folks, a clam but luckily changed to Velma on Scooby Doo), I had to try and remember how to make a skirt from measurement only. I gave up and hit the Internet. After all our youngest, (a boy)  is 26 and he definitely didn't need a skirt, though he has been tempted to buy a kilt, testing out his Scottish roots. It was his older sisters and myself that I made skirts for, from measurements. That was a long time ago.

I found a pretty good tutorial on the Internet but not quite the way I'd done it before. After ripping out the skirt a few too many times for my comfort, trying to get it to work, I got it put together. Not as smooth a finish as I'd like but I've got the hang of it now and am going to make a few more especially since I remember how I did it long ago. Maybe as part of Christmas gifts but, we'll talk about that later.

The rest was of the costume was simple. As for our youngest, she didn't care what her costume was like since she KNOWS she's the cutest thing ever so we didn't do much to it.

For kids, isn't that what dressing up in a costume is about, adventure and feeling good about themselves? When they are small, I'll guarantee they don't pay much attention to what others are wearing. That is unless they feel their costume is way below par.

So despite the work, stress caused stomach aches that sent me hurriedly to the bathroom over the whole deal (yes, it is hard on this Autistic Gramdma), it was worth it. I had only to look at the ecstatic joy in their eyes and listen to the "Grandma, I love you!!!" said with emphatic heart felt assurance to know that they have no doubt of the love we have for them.  

Our children have often voiced that they had a wonderful childhood. I swear we celebrated almost every single holiday. Green mash potatoes and the like on Saint Patricks Day, creating paper May Day baskets filled with cookies on May Day, etc. etc. etc.

 I'll guarantee our kids knew the holidays and why they were celebrated. Not because of tradition but my longing for the power a holiday can have to bind a family together. 

 Sometimes the lack of creates a want but I've observed this is only in those with a driving character. Unfortunately, most who have done without just continue on with the doing without, think welfare. Traditions, good or bad, are powerful and live on.

 It may be the role of parents to use holidays to teach and bind their families, with grand parents playing a supportive role, but if they fail in this duty, despite encouragement, the responsibility lies with us the grandparents to do as much as possible.  It's a great love that drives us forth to give, teach, and bind.

Our step-grandson was at his mothers and wasn't around until Halloween night. We missed helping him create a costume and paint a pumpkin. Hopefully, we will be able to have the opportunity, next year.  

Story Time

 If you are taking your two year old grand daughter to story time and they are celebrating Halloween, be sure and put on your Super Women underwear. You'll need it.

 Doesn't matter if you haven't sugared her up because she's going to be on the floor.

 ...inside the shelving, out to get a drink, flopping in your arms,

 and even doing her most disgusting habit( the one you've been trying to get her to stop doing for weeks) sticking one finger in her nose as she sucks her thumb.

You may of thought story time at the library was for children but really it is an exercise program for adults just disguised so there will be more participants. Yup, I've had my advanced aerobics today . LOL 

Family, The Bestest Thing Ever!!

 Family is the bestest thing ever!!! Okay, that's bad grammar but it's true. One look into these cute little grand daughter's eyes and my whole world lights up. This morning, we ran around finding clothes for dress up. This week is homecoming at the high school and the grade school participates by dressing up too. Today's theme is western days.

 And last weekend we were blessed to have our oldest daughter with us. The grand daughters think their Aunt Toni is the best and well, she is. We reminisced by picking pumpkins. The grand kids loved the variation of an Easter egg hunt as they scrambled amongst the wilting vines looking for brights spots of red or orange.

Our daughters and us laughed as we remembered when they were little, shivering in the garden dressing up in coats, hats, and mittens as the whole family hurried to gather in the harvest before the night's frost destroyed it.

It might not have been the best memory for them and they might have much preferred the picking the garden in their shorts as the grand kids were doing but frost has waited patiently for the garden to come to fruition. Maybe not everything is done but we wouldn't of had much if Jack Frost had arrived on his usual schedule the beginning of September so I'm very grateful to the Lord.

When we finished picking pumpkins, we moved on to picking the apples off our small trees. Then yesterday, I picked three and a half - five gallon buckets of tomatoes and a bowl of zucchini, and more peppers, and... and... It was just in time too, as we woke up to 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Br....

I've still potatoes to dig and dried corn to pick, and buckwheat, and a slim maybe on dried beans along with a hope full harvest of  sunflowers seeds bu they can wait as I deal with that which we've already picked.

All this harvesting makes we feel a kin to the pioneers. We are so blessed though that what we raise doesn't have to be all the we survive on. How ever did they do it?

But work and no play makes for a dull boy they say and so first, last weekend, we had a bit of fun.

 Our oldest daughter, whose very creative, drew butterflies with the girls and they posed as the body in the middle of the wings.

 And earlier in the week we finally got around to taking the girls fishing. Sh.... don't tell them they were catching tiny little trash fish because they thought it was really something.

Our middle grand daughter's favorite part was digging for worms. The fishing she wanted to skip for playing in the park but after her two year old little sister had caught two, she decided she was being out done and caught two herself before calling it quits.

It didn't take long for we'd cast the line out into the pond and as the kids slowly reeled it in, the Blue Gill near the shallows nabbed on to the wiggling worms and the kids were guaranteed a tiny fish with every cast. Yup, it's a real ego booster. Just right for those with very short attention spans.