Bit and Pieces of Our Days

The Post-Graduation Edition

Except that it's not exactly "post-Graduation" around here.

We have one more graduation celebration coming up. Same daughter, different town. Anne-with-an-e will join the larger, regional Catholic homeschooling group for its graduation Mass, ceremony, and reception.

We had the big local party here at our house, though, over the weekend -- family in town, ate lots of restaurant food, bid farewell to my parents on Tuesday, spent Wednesday doing laundry, and now we're looking forward to the next celebration of our grad (which, because it is out of town, will not require me to clean any toilets.)

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I love Instapaper. I love it almost as much as I love this pencil sharpener. And that's a lot.

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An impromptu tag-along to some friends' 4-H meeting last night led me to think about my love/hate relationship with 4-H, and crafts, and salt dough, and food coloring. So I was going to write about it here, but I just now realized that there's nothing to say about it other than the fact that I sometimes get crabby in the midst of it all, and then I apologize to my children, and ultimately I realize that it doesn't really matter whether or not I like arts and crafts. Ramona and Betsy do, and since I love them, I love their crafts, and I do what I have to do to help them out, inspire them, encourage them. Enough said.

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Blogging about 4-H made me think about tagging this post with the "4-H" tag, which made me realize that I haven't been tagging posts since Blogger morphed into the New Blogger and made me forget the tag option was there. This reminded me that I hate New Blogger with a passion that is practically an entity unto itself. Am I overreacting?

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Even though we dropped cable TV, we can still watch The Next Food Network Star online. It's a dorky family tradition, and the show has gotten sillier and sillier, as has the network, but we still have fun with it and it's an excuse to sit around eating ice cream with my girls and talk about Giada's scary smile.

4-H ... for Jenn

Occasionally I mention the fact that we're involved in 4-H and then Jennifer  hints that she'd like to hear more. I repeatedly promise that I'll tell her more, and then I neglect to do so.

Today, I will do so.

We first got involved with 4-H about three years ago. A friend described the club she belonged to, and we joined.  The club was a great introduction for us, if ultimately not a perfect fit. The leader was a sweet, very talented (think Craft Mom) woman who planned an activity for each monthly meeting, thereby providing us with several completed projects which were ready to enter in the county fair when summer rolled around. 

The only problem with this method (for us) was that our supposedly completed project always ended up being our "practice project" and the girls regularly wanted or needed to redo it once we knew what we were doing.  The exception was their  pillows, which amazingly were beautiful. 

I say "amazingly" not due to any lack in my girls, but because of my sewing fears.  So, Pillow Beauty came at a price, but, hey, we did it. And we learned something, just as we did when we sewed pillowcases and discovered the Knifty Knitter.

Some of the projects the girls have pursued on their own include a "Family History" display (in which we dug into the family tree), an animal science report/poster on cat allergies, an interview with a favorite author, scrapbooks chronicling participation in plays, reports on community service, cookie baking and cake decorating.
We were club members for two years and did a lot of fun projects, but due to both scheduling conflicts and the desire to be more in control of what we did, we decided to become independent 4-H members.  So, last year, we weren't affiliated with a club, but simply signed up as independents. We received all the same mailings and project/fair information as everyone else, but we set our own goals, schedules and projects and had no monthly commitment. 

This worked pretty well for us last year. Each of the girls chose projects that best suited them. Perusing both our local 4-H website  and the county fair guidebook, the girls found ideas that they were excited about, and the requirements for entering any given project in the fair. Our only problem with the independent route was our haphazard scheduling. We ended up cramming a lot of work into June, in order to be ready for the fair.

To summarize the pros and cons:


Pros of a club for us:

A leader who taught us the 4-H/fair ropes
Experience in formal club proceedings (officers were elected, my girls learned about secretarial duty, note taking, leading a meeting/discussion) 
Planned projects and the creative input of others
New ideas or new avenues for community service

Cons of a club for us: 

Lack of scheduling control
Projects that may not be a priority for us

Pros of Independent Membership: 

Control over schedule and amount of involvement
Ability to choose/focus on areas that the kids are really excited about

Cons of Independent Membership: 

Accountable only to ourselves, which results in procrastination (however, we had the same problem the two years we were in the club, especially since we were constantly redoing projects.)  Obviously, this con is really just dependent on one's level of commitment and prioritization.

Jenn, does this even begin to answer your questions? If not, I promise to post more. Soon. Really.

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The best way to find out more about 4-H is to call your local county extention office, or take a look at the national organization's website, which can direct you to the right place.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

My oldest daughter turned 16 last month. Sixteen. As in, "I maybe get to keep her around for a couple more years, but then ...." Yikes. Hey, fellow moms ... all those cliches about the years flying by? They're cliches for a reason.

Betsy made and decorated the birthday cake for her sister, thanks to her newfound skills (a friend of mine taught a cake decorating class for the girls last summer.)

I took Anne and Betsy and two of their best friends out to a fun little coffeehouse for breakfast.  The breakfast plans fell on the same day as our Writing Group, so I said we'd skip the group and head right for the cappuccino. But, much to my delight, none of the girls wanted to cancel it. They took their stories with them and we read them over french toast, coffee and hot chocolate. The only thing lacking in this coffeehouse/writing experience was an appreciative audience snapping their fingers for our compositions. 

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Anne-with-an-e and I are reading Fahrenheit 451. Wow. I haven't read this for years, and when I last did (high school?) it certainly didn't resonate with me the way it did this week. I could be heard repeatedly exclaiming, "Wow! Atticus. You've got to read this ... Wow! Listen to this ...." (I get a little predictable when I'm engrossed in a book.)

Of course the book deserves its own post and when I write it, I'll try not to quote so much of it that I violate any copyright laws.

The next bit of prophetic brilliance I want to read with Anne is Brave New World.

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Both of my older girls are thoroughly enjoying a video history course we're doing from The Teaching Company.   We will definitely be using more of their stuff.

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My SuperMom friend, previously mentioned here, has been keeping our 4-h group busy with a tie-dye apron project (though we all cheated and didn't tie anything -- we sprayed the dye on, so I guess it would be a spray-dye project, which lacks the rhyming quality but produced cute results), and a food packaging session at Kids Against Hunger  and a bread baking class. Even the littlest girls could easily handle the bread recipe -- I'd never done the bread-in-a-bag method before (similar to what you'll find at this link), but it was fun and totally my kind of clean up.

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If I were doing a meme that asked, "When was the last time you cried?" I'd have to answer, "Yesterday when I read a letter from my friend, Heather, who wrote to me about her reaction to my Rosary book."  Thank you, Heather, and a return letter to you will be on its way soon.

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Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Last week we visited the local pumpkin patch. It was bittersweet for me. When we first discovered this place, it made for a very sweet family outing. Yes, other people knew about it, but the place wasn't overly commericalized. Visiting meant leisurely strolls, participating in a few simple activities, and buying our pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns. It was pastoral. Over the years, the place has grown up and become more commercially savvy and as "attractions" have increased, my enjoyment has decreased. It doesn't feel quite like the same place for Ramona as it was for Anne and Betsy. We still had a fun day, but overall, the experience made me want to escape to the woods we visited last summer:
















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My friend, J., who would deny the label "Super Mom" but who will be thus labeled by me anyway, has started a new 4-H group for us.

Yes, yes, I know. Last summer, I was prepared to bribe my children to keep them away from the (as another friend calls it) cult of 4-H. But this year will be different.

You may now imagine that my eyes are glazed over, in perfect Stepford Wife Style, and that I'm chanting, "This year will be different ... this year will be different ... this year will be different ...."

But, it will. Really. Uh-huh.

Because we're focusing on food, and I can do food. I'm no Next Food Network Star, but I have faith that my deep and lasting interest in food will carry me through this cult year. Hey, I even have a food label on this blog, proving that I know how to eat. Plenty, mister.

And some things, I actually do pretty well (which continues to surprise me to this day) and sometimes my passion in the kitchen even results in poetry.  Not that I'll be serving an addictive substance to the 4-H group, but I'll definitely have a few cups before we meet. And that always helps.

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I was sick yesterday. Down-for-the-count-couldn't-go-to-Mass-stayed-in-pajamas-didn't-go-to-the-free-dinner-at-church sick. But, I feel amazingly better today.

And the Yankees won. So, Atticus is a very happy man.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Woke up at 5:15 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. I spent 45 minutes thinking that I should go back to sleep. I didn't go back to sleep. I've been up for an hour. I should have more to show for it.

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Saturday, a dear friend took Betsy and Ramona to the Ashfall Fossil Beds. Yes, that's right -- cool fossils right here in Nebraska.

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Saturday night we went to an anniversary party -- old college professors were there. I suddenly felt quite stupid. One of these guys can actually read hieroglyphics. I feel as if there are parts of my brain I haven't tapped for years. But the spinach/feta bites were delicious and gave me something to talk about (or gave me a reason not to talk as I shoveled more of them in my mouth ....)

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Yesterday, we picked up all the kids' projects from the county fair. They came home with loads of purples and blues and spending money from the ribbon premiums. They were thrilled with their accomplishments. The free Dippin' Dots (thanks, 4-H, for the food coupons) didn't hurt either.

We've done 4-h for three years now, and every year I say I'm going to drop it. June gets hectic, and we're always behind on the things we planned to finish. This year's stress led me to announce that next year "We are skipping 4-H!" and when fair day rolls around, "I'll just pay you twenty bucks apiece!"

Yes. I really said this. And I'm pretty sure I meant it. But, then, I take a look at everything my adorable kids accomplished:








Ramona's artwork and the sewing she did on her "I Love Jesus" banner? Betsy's gorgeous purple-ribbon cake? Anne-with-an-e's potato bread moving on the state fair? Can I really put a price on all of this?

I'm gonna have to up it to at least twenty-five.

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Did you watch The Next Food Network Star last night? We were aghast that they didn't send Integrity-Challenged Debbie home.

Grrrrrr.

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