Waterpark Day!

Our homeschooling support group had this amazing opportunity yesterday. A brand new indoor waterpark in nearby Sevierville needed kids for its Grand Opening media blitz, but, hmmm, all the kids are in school—except the thousands of homeschoolers in the area! Fortunately, one of our BHEA dads works for a public relations firm and mentioned that he could round up a good number of families for the big day. So over a hundred families from our group (and word snuck out to a Knoxville group or two so we had some extras) showed up expecting to get to play around for a couple of hours. What we didn't expect was a boxed lunch for each child and a full buffet with everything from eggrolls to crab legs to carrot cake for the parents!





With a wave pool, waterslides, surf pool, tube slides, and more, this is heaven for the kids (and parents who like this stuff!) For parents who don't, there is an indoor/outdoor hot-tub set off in a quiet corner and plenty of quiet places to sit and watch.





This place is fantastic. If you are taking a trip to the Smokies and like to hang out in the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area, as most tourists do, you might consider booking a room here (especially in fall and winter). From now until Dec. 31, they have a great grand-opening special for rooms booked anytime in 2009 (but you have to make your reservations by Dec. 31).

I think they should give me a free room for this promo, don't you?

Chocolate Peppermint Bark

Really easy, amazingly delicious!

Chocolate Peppermint Bark

Ingredients:
2 16-oz. bags semi sweet chocolate chips
1 16-oz bag white chocolate chips
6-8 candy canes

Unwrap 6-8 candy canes and put in a ziploc bag. Wrap a towel around the bag and crush candy canes with a meat tenderizer or whatever works for you. This shouldn't be powdery; some small bits are good.

Melt two 16-ounce bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I do it in the microwave for one minute and then stir, and then at 30-second intervals, stirring after each 30 seconds until melted.

In a separate bowl, as soon as the chocolate chips are done melt, one 16 oz. bag of white chocolate chips in the same way.

When the chocolate chips are completely melted (and while you are in the process of melting the white chips), add the peppermint to the chocolate. Mix well and spread evenly on a cookie sheet. When the white chocolate is completely melted, drop by spoonfuls onto the chocolate and swirl with a knife to marbelize.

Put in fridge until hard. When it's completely hard, you can take a knife and break it up into fudge-sized pieces. That's it!

Gift Idea: Bananagrams

At least a few times a day, Dr. H. and I play a game on Facebook called WordTwist with a college friend, Laura. (For the record, she beats me pretty much all the time, and she beats Dr. H. much of the time.) So last week she sent us a fabulous surprise in the mail: the game Bananagrams. My 11-year-old daughter and I were headed off for a long performance weekend, the vast majority of which was to be spent waiting patiently in the green room. I stuck Bananagrams into her bag, thinking it might help pass the hours away.

I had no idea just how much attention the game would attract! Kids of various ages instantly gathered around as Laurel and her friend Caitlin began to play. Moms came to check it out and asked what it was and where they could get it. I had to sit down and play with them, too, as I find word games irresistable!

Basically, Bananagrams is like Scrabble, except that you aren't confined by a board, you work independently, and you don't score according to the value of the letters. The object of the game, as the directions say, is to work quickly to use up all your letters in your own crossword puzzle and then yell "Split!" and you and the other players pick up another letter. You keep going until all the tiles are used up, and you then yell, "Bananas!"

Of course, we instantly altered the rules to fit our needs. You can do this in endless ways. One time we set a 5-minute time limit, so that whoever had used the most tiles at 5 minutes, won the game. The girls wanted to play by using proper names, so we tried that way. You can also be category specific, as in creating only animal words, or kinds of food, etc.

I wasn't anticipating what a great game this would be for my second-grader. He and I play a low-key version of the game. I'm flexible about allowing him to trade in tiles, and I give him hints at words he might make. He absolutely loves it and has been begging me to play. I was thrilled to see how good his spelling is, too! This would be a great game to use in all kinds of ways in homeschooling: spelling, vocabulary, language arts (make words that are nouns or verbs or adjectives, for example).

Another great thing about the game: it comes in a small zippered, banana-shaped pouch which could easily fit in a purse (or a Christmas stocking!). This would be fanastic to bring with you whenever you are going to have to wait. The great thing is that not only do the kids love it, but I love playing it, too!

Really, this is a multigenerational game that you could safely give to anyone on your Christmas list, from age 6 through grandparents. It will be a huge hit!

(And thank you again, Laura!)

Three Beautiful Things: Japan, Softness, Chocolate

1. Journey to Japan. A local, as-yet-unopened Montessori school has been doing classes for homeschoolers this month. For five days in December, the kids are at the school learning all about Japan, from cooking to art to culture, and everything in-between. Nearly all of the 13 other kids are great friends of my kids, and they have been having a blast. And I've had four (so far) 5-hour days to catch up on things. For a homeschooling mom, five hours to oneself is almost incomprehensible. The other days I had meetings or shopping to do, but today I stayed home and did catch-up jobs at home. I can see my counters!

2. Slippers and a very soft blanket. Yesterday we had our annual American Heritage Girls Christmas Tea, and Caroline and I, as co-coordinators, were presented with an abundance of purely lovely gifts. Tonight I am enjoying being slathered in lotion that smells fabulous and wearing new slippers, and I'm about to go cover up in my new outrageously soft blanket to read.

3. Chocolate. As if I didn't get enough delectables at the Christmas Tea, Randy came home today with a box of Godiva chocolates from a former graduate student. I will probably be feeling woozy by the night's end.

What beautiful things are in your life lately?

Ingredients for a Mother/Daughter/Grandmother Tea

A sweet girl in her new Christmas dress



Beautiful decorations


Teapots and helpers


Tables filled with cookies and tea, and most importantly with mothers, daughters, grandmothers, aunts, and special friends.

Homeschool Memoirs #17: Chores

This week's Homeschool Memoir asks for how we do chores at our house: "how you order your day with school and getting housework done. How do you decide which chores should be done by which child, of which age?"

We've tried various approaches through the years. While we don't do this consciously, I would say that we use the phrase "family responsibilities" rather than "chores." My kids have had the kind of thorough immersion in historical fiction that when hear the word "chores," they think of milking cows and sweeping the hearth. They also know that "chores" is supposed to bring about a batch of grumbling. It's all a matter of semantics, really; however, our goal is to foster the idea that we all have to work together to make our home run smoothly. Thus, the term family responsibility.

Our kids have certain responsibilities—cleaning their rooms, making their beds, setting the table, etc.— that are directly tied to their allowances. Here is a post about our allowance system that really explains the whole process. For other jobs, I just ask, and they do it. Perhaps I should rephrase that. I don't "ask" them: "Hey, would you kids like to pick up the living room?" Rather, I tell them: "It is time to pick up the living room." Sometimes I'll make jobs fun by playing a game of I Spy ("I spy something brown and bumpy that belongs to Duncan") or picking up color-by-color or by having each pick up a certain number of things ("Everyone pick up 22 things, even if they're not yours.").

Something that I used to do frequently when the kids were younger was called "15/15." For this, I would set the timer for 15 minutes, and we would all clean. When the timer when off, we'd stop and play. They absolutely loved this system, and I have no idea why I don't employ it more regularly. Perhaps today I'll start it again!

Our house goes through various phases of cleanliness and clutter. If we have a particularly busy week, we'll have piles of stuff everywhere. I would be fairly horrified for anyone to walk in my house right now. But then we'll have weeks like this one, when activities are at a minimum and we can attack the chaos. I do daily maintenance, of course. I was a Flylady follower years ago, and she taught me the basics of managing one's home: shine your sink, get dressed, put on shoes, declutter for a few minutes at a time, etc. I am still fairly consistent with all of those things.

Basically, we've trained our kids from toddlerhood that they are a part of this family, and that in order for our home to run smoothly, they must help. They know that they can't watch TV or get on the computer, etc., unless they have done what I've asked them to. As they get older, their responsibilities and expectations increase. I have been really happy in the past year to see that our 15-year-old regularly cleans his room, including vacuuming, without ever being asked. I can't remember the last time that I reminded him to get his room clean. I think it all comes down to years of training, consistency, and, well, a kid who likes a clean room.

* Guess what? I'm hosting the next Carnival of Homeschooling here at SmallWorld! I've been an avid reader of the Carnival for a couple of years, and I'm excited to have a chance to host finally. Any blog post you write that has to do with homeschooling can be submitted by using the form here. If you've never submitted, just look back over your past posts and find one you especially liked, and send it in!

Christmas Tree Day

Sixty-six degrees at 4:30 p.m.: if you can't have a good deep snow, then it's a perfect day for Christmas-tree hunting.

And the hunt is on. So many choices!


How about this one?


This one?


I don't really care. I have him.

And them.

At last! We found the perfect tree! Not too short, not too fat, not too skinny, not too tall.


Now to get it chopped down and home before the rain sets in.


A flurry of ornaments: remember this? remember this? Who made this one?


I can't help but get just a little teary-eyed at the sweet, homemade ornaments and photos of little faces.


It's done, and beautiful as ever. Our home is magically transformed.


This is my life. It is a very, very good one.

Monday Memories: Scary Movies

I have no idea why this is on my mind this weekend. This post should be all about lovely Christmas memories and such, but I keep coming back to this aspect of my childhood: scary movies. And I saw way too many of them at a very young age. I have four brothers, three of whom are much older than I am: 9, 12.5, and 15.5 years older. Naturally, my older brothers were the usual babysitters for me and my brother Stephen, who is just 2 years older than I.

A word to parents: older brothers are not the best babysitters. You might think they are, but here is just one of the things they are very likely doing with your precious little ones while you are off gallivanting to bridge club (OK, nobody really goes to bridge club anymore, so let's say bunko instead):

Watching scary movies.

The most memorable for me is Let's Scare Jessica to Death. I have not encountered many people who have seen this classic horror flick, but apparently it has quite a following as evidenced by its website. I actually, really, truly, got panicky when I saw this website. I can't even describe the depth of terror that I experienced as a seven-year-old child when I saw this movie, in which a women recently released from a mental institution moves to a spooky New England farmhouse. She starts having strange encounters with people/vampires, or possibly she's just having hallucinations. Either way, the result is terrifyingly chilling.

When I was 22, I saw the movie again for the first time since I was seven or eight. I was sitting with a bunch of friends in broad daylight watching the movie, and within 20 minutes I had to turn it off and leave. I was still terrified. (It turned out to be a good thing that we stopped watching the movie, as that is the night that Randy and I got back together after an eight-month break-up but anyway...)

There were other movies, too: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Sybil, Rosemary's Baby. Nearly as horrible as Jessica was The Other. This is not the one with Nicole Kidman, but a totally different 1971 movie based on the novel by Thomas Tryon. This movie has everything from dead rats to evil twins to a paralyzed mother, and I could hardly breathe after watching it. Even now, I can't read the Wikipedia synopsis that I linked to.

I was often scared as a child, and no wonder. I'd seen a world of vampires and mental patients and demonic children before I was even a teenager. The Twilight Zone and even Stephen King were fairly tame compared to my early childhood horror viewing, although I did enjoy a heavy diet of horror flicks and books in my teens and early twenties.

My days of scary movies are long past now, and I've been careful to make sure my little ones never stumble upon vacant eyes and spinning heads. (They'll see enough of that when they're grown-ups.) What about you? Do you watch scary movies? Did you have a horror-flick-free childhood?

Decorating Woes

I'm feeling behind. No, not because we've hardly done any "school" for the past two weeks. I am pretty good with substituting Christmas plays, Scouting events, family time, baking, games, and a special "Journey to Japan" 5-day class for regular bookwork.

I'm feeling behind because it seems that just about every blog I read tells of, usually in pictures, the Christmas decorating that is going on in your homes. I am not worthy.

Yesterday we put up our Dickens village. Today I bought a poinsettia.

And now I've changed my blog for Christmas. See my best Christmas present ever beneath the tree? That's my Duncan, born on Christmas Day in 2000.

I'm heading out in a few minutes for a weekend full of The Christmas Carol musical, in which Laurel is a dancer in the Fezziwig's ball scene. Next week, the decorations come out for real.

Christmas Cookies: Jam Diagonals

These cookies are my family's absolute favorite, and I only make them at Christmas. Maybe that's why they are so special!

Jam Diagonals

1 stick butter, softened (don't even think about using margarine)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/8 tsp. salt
1 1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. raspberry jam
3/4 c. confectioners sugar
3-4 tsp. lemon juice

Mix butter, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt until fluffy. Gradually stir in flour until blended. Divide dough into thirds. On lightly floured surface, with hands, roll each into a 9-inch rope. Place 3-inches apart onto lightly greased cookie sheet, or, better yet, a baking stone. With finger, make 1/2-inch depression down center of each rope. (Ropes will flatten to about 1-inch-wide strips.) Fill depressions with jam. Bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes, or until golden but certainly not crispy. Cool. Blend confectioners sugar and lemon juice until smooth. Drizzle in zig-zags over jam. When icing is set, cut diagonally into 1-inch cookies.