30 Days of Nothing - Update

I haven't updated on how I am doing with "30 days of Nothing".

Not good.

Anyway I had to go get some groceries last week and spent $137. So the total so far is $218 on groceries.
This is where I get confused. Do you count everything or just food?
September is actually a very bad month for me to do this. Kids start all kinds of classes so the checkbook is shrinking (and our bank account is draining).

Also I did write that I have a garden. However, it is more for the kids to see how things grow then fill our freezer. We have a few pumpkins this year (the kids are very excited about that) a bunch of cucumbers and few tomatoes. None of which make it to the kitchen since we all eat them right off the vines. I do not have a garden like Mary does but I do like to get ready for the winter months with homemade food so I get my ingredients from the local farmers. That adds to our normal grocery bill. However, it comes in handy for the upcoming winter months. January would be a better month for me to try the 30 days of nothing. We all have plenty leftovers from the holidays and everybody is trying to save money and loose weight (just a suggestion). On the other hand it is good to remind myself to watch what I put into the grocery basket (that means I have to leave Fil at home). I hope you are all enjoying this fall and let me know how you are doing with your 30 Days of Nothing.

Split pea soup

Split Pea Soup

(by Ina Garten)

This is one of our family favorite soups. Again it is a recipe from barefoot contessa. I make at least a double batch at a time and freeze lots of it. Enjoy!

2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)
1 Tb minced garlic (3 cloves)
1/4 cup good olive oil
1 Tb kosher salt
2 Tb freshly ground black pepper
4 cups medium-diced carrots (6 to 8 carrots)
2 cups medium-diced red boiling potatoes, unpeeled (6 small)
2 pounds dried split green peas
16 cups chicken stock or water

In a 8-quart stockpot on medium heat, saute the onions and garlic with the olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper until the onions are translucent, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the carrots, potatoes, 1 1/2 pounds of split peas, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 40 minutes. Skim off the foam while cooking. Add the remaining split peas and continue to simmer for another 40 minutes, or until all the peas are soft. Stir frequently to keep the solids from burning on the bottom. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve hot.
(Split pea soup will thicken considerably when it sits. Adjust the consistency by adding more stock or water.)

Sunday Reflections

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!

Romans 5:8-9

Learning Styles

Today meme at Heart of the Matter is learning styles.

I had to learn the hard way that my boys have different learning styles. I will start with my younger boy since he is the one that I discovered is learning in a completely different way then is his older brother.

Since the boys are only one year apart most of their school work is the same accept language arts and math. Nate is about 6 months behind Sam in those subjects. When I first started homeschooling I noticed that Nate picked up a lot just from watching Sam or listening to us working together. The funny part was that Nate was busy playing or doing other stuff so I never considered that he was listening. When I sat down with Nate the following year I almost lost it the first day. I ended up screaming and pulling my hair out not knowing what to do. I sat down and had to rethink the whole homeschooling thing. I knew I couldn't put Nate it the same box with Sam. I also realized that Nate would not survive public school. I backed up and tried different things with Nate. He does learn everything Sam does but does so by observing or listening to me talking to Sam. He learned to read without my direct help he just picked it up by listening to Sam and me reading out loud. In a way I believe it is a gift he has. He picks up a lot of knowledge just by listening. He is also a visual person so I play a lot of games with him. Sam will learn capitols and countries by singing music, Nate has to have a map in front of him and play a matching game. The same holds true for memorizing scripture verses. While Sam will learn a lot by singing it in a song Nate will learn it just by hearing me saying it out loud.

I love both of my boys and I am so glad God took us on this homeschooling adventure together. We all learn so much from each other. I cannot wait to discover my girls learning styles. I can already tell I will have fun with Emma (real hard time)!

That brings me to our school time. I know I promised a long time ago that I would write down how we do school in our household.

We start every day at 8am. That is my ironclad rule. We are all clean, dressed and done with breakfast and sitting on our sofa in the living room with our laps overflowing with books no later then 8am (If I start later the school day takes much longer for some reason).

We start with our daily devotions and memory verses. At this point the boys have only 1 verse a week to memorize but as soon as Awana starts that will increase by another verse or sometimes even two verses.

Then we move onto history and geography that goes hand in hand (Like this week we started learning about Vikings so they learned all the capitols and countries of Scandinavia).

Then we move onto science reading (our big science experiments are on Fridays) and end our reading with a book that we are reading ("Ginger Pye" this week). In between the boys take turns reading out loud to me and I know they both read to the girls throughout the day without me asking them.

After that we have a mini break. We move into the kitchen and start our writing. Actually Sam does his writing upstairs and Nate in the living room. It took me a while to learn that I have to separate them in order to finish in reasonable time. This way they are not distracted by each other. They are also old enough that I do not have to sit down with them all the time so I have time to do something around the house.

They each move at their own pace from subject to subject and they get other assignments after they complete one like spelling, math, answering science questions etc. We wrap up with some singing bible verses and this year geography songs. Also this year the boys started typing and they do that on their own. Both of them are doing a good job.

I do not do any physical education with them. They are busy running and playing around the house all the time. They also play different sports during the year. Their soccer practice started a few weeks ago and their first game is tomorrow. I am not worried about a lack of exercise on their part.

All in all we are done around 11am. No later then noon. Mondays and Tuesdays are our heaviest days and Fridays are to lightest.

I am sure the next question is what about the girls.

Well they are around. Sometimes they sit with us during reading but most of the time they find their corner and play. Emma is into coloring now and Jo sometimes comes to sit on my lap during reading time and takes a small power nap. Other then that I cannot complain about the girls. Last week they started to play with each other a lot. Sometimes I find them under kitchen table giggling who knows why. They like to play in their kitchen cooking together or just playing with their baby dolls. Yes sometimes they cry and want my attention. Like all other homeschooling families we have good and bad days. However, I will have to say that we have way more good days then bad.

I will just add that our school does not end at noon. The boys have free access to any books they want and most of time time I will find them after school somewhere in the house with their noses in a book busily reading. They are full of questions and both Fil and I do our best to answer them. I tried to review our school day at dinner time so Fil knows what we are up to and also see if the boys were paying attention.

That is roughly what our school time looks like.

Born in September

The September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.

30 Days of Nothing

I am going to give a try to 30 Days of Nothing. Mary at Owl Haven is encouraging people to spend less in the month of September.

I spend about the same amount of money as Mary does every month on groceries. The thing is that she feeds many more people with the groceries she buys. When it comes to food spending I count everything we spend on food that includes eating out, having friends over etc. I do not have a big garden and I like to cook from scratch so my groceries can get high just to begin with.

I will admit from the start I am not planing anything extra this month. I will try to cut extra expenses but other than that I am planning on feeding our family with good food.

I had to run to the grocery store today since I ran out of dish washing soap. Like many other people since I was already there and I remembered we are low on garbage bags and other things. Anyway I spent $81 (and used $14 in coupons)

I got into coupons a few months ago when I heard about grocerygame.com. I gave it a try for few months and since then I am doing it on my own. I buy stuff that we need not any extra and on average I save around $10 in coupons each trip. All it takes is paying attention to coupons in the paper, stores, and web sites. You would be surprised how much there is out there.

So here is to saving money and eating GOOD food.

(I will try to post some of our favorite recipes later on)

AHOPE - HIV-positive kids from Ethiopia

During our short stay in Addis Ababa Ethiopia we had the chance to visit AHOPE orphanage. Most of you who had or are planing on adoption from Ethiopia know that all the children in AHOPE orphanage are HIV positive.

I will have to admit that prior to our adoption my knowledge of AIDS and HIV was very limited. After we decided on Ethiopia both Fil and I read tons of books and tried educate ourselves. When it comes to Africa AIDS is everywhere. Nobody really wants to talk about it and many people believe it is Africa's problem. I was shock to learn that over the past decade, HIV has become a manageable, chronic disease, rather than a death sentence. That is right you can live with this disease if you have a access to proper medication. The truth is that most children and people in Africa do not. Going to Africa I learned:

What you should know about HIV
- HIV can NOT be spread through casual/household contact. HIV is not spread through hugging, kissing, shaking hands, sharing toys, sneezing, coughing, sharing food, sharing drinks, bathing, swimming or any other casual way. It has been proven that HIV and AIDS can only be spread through sexual contact, birth, breastfeeding and blood to blood contact (such as sharing needles).
- HIV is now considered a chronic but manageable disease. With treatment, people who are HIV+ can live indefinitely without developing AIDS and can live long and full lives.

The AHOPE orphanage was on my list of places to visit. I did not know what to expect but I wanted to go. We knew AHOPE was only a few blocks from our agency's TH home and we got to visit (you need to have an appointment to visit). I was not allowed to take any pictures but even if I did I would not be permitted to share them online with you. I did not know what to expect and I will admit I was not very comfortable when we first got there. And you know what? I discovered that there were about twenty beautiful children as normal as my own children at home. We got to play with them, paint their nails, put sticker all over the place. You can read about our visit here.

The most encouraging thing was that most of those children were waiting for their parents to pick them up and take them to a new home in America. Recently I saw a picture from AHOPE and I did not recognize a single child. We got to meet two families in Ethiopia who were adopting HIV positive children. They were so precious.

One of the blogs I read daily is Erin's . She and her husband adopted two HIV children from Ethiopia. Erin is the HIV+ adoption coordinator for Adoption Advocates International. Today she posted a link to an article about

Americans adopting HIV-positive kids from Ethiopia

It was a very nice article. However, when it came to the comments people left I was shocked. I will be the first one to admit I did not know much about HIV but I would never have made comments like this.

I guess this is my way to educate other people about HIV. There are many people around us living with Aids. We come in daily contact with them not even knowing about it. The visit to AHOPE was a life changing visit for me. Thanks to the V. family who came with us.