Green Hour #2: Use Your Words

We've been continuing with the Green Hour activities. This time, since the goal was to introduce some vocabulary, we did it over a couple of trips outside. The most recent was digging in the dirt to plant some flowers.


One of our words is "hose." Not terribly natural, I suppose, but still an important part of the yard! Monkey likes to help me water the plants and the compost, but he's a bit of a wild waterer!




Our next word is "grass." You may notice that my grass is a little bit out of control, and up to the Monkey's knees in some places. We're having troubles with our lawn mower. I'm sure the neighbors are thrilled. There are several - including our next door neighbor to the East - that have such beautiful yards! In my heart of hearts, I think that the cheerful dandelions and pretty little purple flowers (clover?) are a lovely addition to a huge green swath of grassy sameness.





I've got the gardening bug pretty bad this year (as usual), and I have to guard against both biting off more than I can chew and against spending more than I should. For instance, I received a petunia at church for Mother's Day, but one lonely petunia looks a bit out of place. I needed a bigger smorgasboard for my resident bunnies! So I headed off to the garden shop to get a few more annuals to grow next to the petunia. Of course, if it's at all like last year pretty soon I'll have petunia nubs which, after a time, will disappear all together. Courtesy of the local bunny population. So in addtion to a few more petunias, I got a couple of pansies, and some violas. Monkey helped me dig some of the holes here to put the plants in. The word was "plants" and the action was to hand me the plants, often faster than I could get ground ready for them!




While I was browsing the annuals, I noticed the perennial section of the garden shop, and I just took a "quick peek." Then I put back several items that somehow fell into my cart. And I bought the others. For instance, this columbine. I also got a pair of 4 inch creeping phlox with pretty little pink flowers, but I'm not at all happy with how those pictures turned out, so I'll have to try again. The nice thing about the phlox is that a friend of mine said that her mother-in-law helped her get her very beautiful flowers along the front walk going, and she took and divided the creeping phlox they bought so that it went a lot further for the money they spent on it. I felt almost frugal when I divided my two big phlox into five little phlox. They don't seem to mind the abuse, so I'm hoping that they start to "creep" here pretty soon as they're pretty small right now.




My tulips are a bit slow - they're planted on the north side of the house in very deep shade. But they're coming!

Other words we used while we were outside:
"flower"
"moon"
"grass"
"yard"
"pretty"

Check out the complete list of Green Hour "assignments" and the considerable resources that Barb has assembled on her blog to help folks get out and enjoy Nature!

Monday(!) Scripture

Sorry folks, I was at my parents' house for the weekend & not only were we incredibly busy, but their internet seemed rather reluctant, so I could barely look at my blog, much less post on it. So I'm a day late with my verses this time. Gonna have to play with the new "scheduled" post feature that Blogger just added, as the next 6-8 weeks are a complete ZOO. So. Here are my verses for the week, sorry they're late!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
-John 1:1-2

Who shall say that it was not a miracle that by his word the heaven and the earth should be; and by the power of his word man was created of the dust of the earth; and by the power of his word have miracles been wrought?
-Mormon 9:17

Wherefore, I must tell you the truth according to the plainness of the word of God.
-Jacob 2:11

Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to bring forth the words of the book; and in the mouth of as many witnesses as seemeth him good will he establish his word; and wo be unto him that rejecteth the word of God!
-2 Nephi 27:14

Not Looking Forward to This

I'm getting a wisdom tooth removed tomorrow. Oh. Yay. I'm so stinking nervous. And then I've got to get the boy down to the doctor's. Poor little sausage is still sick.

Trivium part 2: discipline

My poor little Monkey is out cold on the couch for his second(!) nap of the day, down with a fever. Little guy just isn't feeling really well this afternoon and I'm not sure if I should blame it on the molars he's cutting or the snot that persists in dripping down his face in spite of my efforts to keep it cleaned off. Maybe some of both. In any case, it does give me a few extra moments to blog while he sleeps. As he fell asleep on my tummy as we were reading, and I was reading Teaching the Trivium, that's what I'm thinking about right now. (Although scrapbooking is giving it a run for its money. I just finished labeling 2007's pictures & I'm ready to get scrapping!)

I've spent some time just flipping through the back of the book recently, where they have various problems dealt with in a question and answer format. There's some pretty interesting things back here. One of them is the discussion of discipline that begins on page 328. The Bluedorns observe that the discipline in the home is a hugely important factor in the success of the homeschooling endeavor. This makes a lot of sense to me. I've been asking Monkey to listen to me, and praising him when he does it. But I hadn't been able to put my finger on WHY that's so important. I mean, to a certain degree, it's obvious that children should listen to parents. But WHY? How does that listening serve them? Sure, it's something that scripture says they should do, but God always has reasons for things He asks us to do, and often makes those reasons available to us. So WHY? One reason that pondering the Bluedorn's comments on discipline made me aware of is that children need to listen to their parents so that they can be taught. It doesn't do me any good to feed him the words to describe his world if he's not paying attention. Warnings about dangers he's about to blunder into do neither one of us any good if he's not listening.

There is this idea of "first time obedience" that they talk about. It's intriguing. My folks used, among other things, the 1-2-3 Magic stuff; I remember them going to one of the seminars. But Mom frequently complains about her kids ignoring her until she gets to "3." And it's a fair charge: we've all -including me- done it. After all, nothing happens before then. We've got a little time. But the Bluedorns tell a bit about a home they visited where things were very different:

During one of our trips, we visited a family which lived a very simple life in a very modest home, and homeschooled their five small children. The parents were quite soft spoken and gentle in manner, always speaking to the children in a clam, quiet way. From the very beginning of our visit, it became obvious that the children attended to the voices of their parents. The parents had first time obedience from even the youngest, and this obedience was obtained with quiet voice and manner. In all my life, I have never witnessed anything like it. On one occasion, the one-year-old began to climb up on the kerosene heater. I saw the father give an almost imperceptible shake of the head and heard him say in a whisper, "Isaac, huh, uh." Immediately the child shifted into reverse and backed away from the heater. The child attended to and obeyed the very whisper of his father. It moves me to tears to recall that scene and the affection which the children and parents had for each other. Oh, that I had trained my children so well when they were young. God wants first time obedience from us, and we should form the same habit in our children. When we resort to speaking in a loud voice when we want something of our children, or when we form the habit of repeating our requests, we train our children to ignore us when we speak. If we could only begin at the very beginning to train our children to attend to our voice - to listen for it no matter what they are doing, and to immediately obey, how well we will prepare them to listen to the heavenly Father as well. (pg329)

What a wonderful outlook on discipline: preparing our children to listen to God! This should have been obvious. Teaching my children the gospel, helping them gain a testimony of the Gospel and a through knowledge of the scriptures is a hugely important aspect of their training. But although I love the way that parenting is analogous to our Heavenly Father's care for us, I had never considered how the discipline aspects of our parent-child relationships ought to also reflect our Heavenly Father's relationship to His children! King Benjamin taught that that sibling rivalries are not a natural normal part of growing up and we shouldn't allow our children to fight or quarrel with each other. How much more true is that of parents, as the example in the home? Many times I've heard talks that invited the listeners to consider their parents, then consider God. I think that I need to become more godly in my interactions with my son, if I am to worth of that sort of comparison, if I am to lay the foundations which will allow that sort of comparison to be profitable for my children!

First-time obedience. It's both a worthy goal and a tall order, in training our children and in the heed we pay to the Lord.




Teaching the Trivium commentary, part 1: Role of Scripture; Thoughts on Higher Education

Weekend Snapshot

These pictures didn't turn out the best, but I love them anyway: they communicate so well how enchanted he was with that bird book! We'd been working on identifying the turkey vulture, and he loves watching birds anyway, so the bird book was a treat.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Malachi 3:10

This week, the blessing that we have had so much of that there literally wasn't room is hand-me-down clothes. We got 2 big boxes of hand-me-downs, plus I hit the jackpot last fall on some clearance racks and got a bunch of summer clothes for about $2 each. When I sat down to sort it and put the new size into the drawers I had way too much clothes! I filled his drawers with cute stuff and then I had 3 big paper bags to pass along to a friend who's got a son that's a week older than Monkey. We are so blessed!

Green Hour #1

Andy had some schoolwork that he needed to do for one of the classes that he's taking right now, involving going to a bit of "wild land" and making some observations and then writing a paper about it. I've been wanting to do some Green Hour stuff with Monkey, so it "counts" for him too. For the Monkey, it was more an exercise in exploration, observation and walking on uneven terrain. It was quite enjoyable watching him explore the little section of State Park that we were in! The last picture is Monkey and Daddy looking at a rock they found on the ground.






I did a little bit of bird watching while we were there. Several times we have gone to this part and seen these beautiful birds. This time, I came armed with camera and binoculars, determined to make an identification. Turns out that those big birds are turkey vultures - a new one for my life list!

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops

So, I'm a bit late with this Daring Bakers post. But I did make the cheesecake pops. They were amazing. I dipped them in chocolate then sprinkled nuts on some, cute little round cupcake sprinkles on others, and a few I left just plain. Those were my favorites. Then I forgot to take them to church, where I had planned to feed those babies to my Sunday School class. This recipe is not for the faint of heart: there's 5 blocks of cream cheese in there kids! But I think that it's the best cheesecake that I've ever eaten, and the whole dipping thing, well, it shouldn't be done in a rush. Make sure your pops are nice and hard or they'll mess up the chocolate. (That is, the chocolate will cease to be good for dipping. Make no mistake, it's still good for eating!) It's crazy good. I think I'll offer to make these for my Mom for her birthday: she loves cheesecake.

The careful observer may note that my picture is not actually a picture of Cheesecake Pops, rather I have a picture of a very tiny remnant of cheesecake and an incriminating spoon. This is because I was in a rush to get to church, so I forgot the Cheesecake Pops. Then I was lamenting this fact to a friend who kindly offered to eat them for me. So they came and took them away. Whereupon I realized that I hadn't yet taken pictures. Not a problem, there was still more than half of the cheesecake remaining, and surely I could take pictures later. Only this requires that I make more Pops, rather than just eat the cheesecake out of the pan. As the astute have noted, this did not happen.

This is dangerously good stuff, folks.

One question: how did you guys get the cheesecake to ball up into such nice little packages? Even after chilling overnight mine wouldn't ball. I had more of cheesecake globs. Not that I'm complaining. Balls and globs taste about the same. But it'd be nice to know where I went wrong.

Cheesecake Pops From "Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey" by Jill O’Connor. Got it from the library: the whole thing looks dangerous. YUM.

Makes 30 – 40 Pops

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature
2 cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ cup heavy cream
Boiling water as needed

Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks

1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate – candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.)

2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

(Note: White chocolate is harder to use this way, but not impossible)


Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) - Optional

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes. (Or more. Mine took longer, and it was pretty soft when I took it out, but the color was right. It set up nicely in the refrigerator, but didn't ball well.)

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.