Renoir Value Umbrellas.

I borrowed this idea from Happy Homeschool Nest and created a powerpoint presentation for use in a sixth grade classroom of thirty students.  Thanks for the great idea!  I read the  book on Renoir by Mike Venezia aloud to the students.  They really seem to love any reference to the childhood of a world-famous artist and the development of his/her interest in art.  Renoir’s drawing with his parents’ fabric chalk was of particular interest to them, though I suspect it might give them some ideas.

As part of my instruction, I made sure to emphasize the aim of the Impressionist movement, which was to capture the “impression” that natural light gives an object or landscape rather than to depict precise forms.  Because Renoir tried to blend these two goals toward the end of his career, I felt a distinction needed to be made.

Since I always attempt to teach an art concept as part of my lessons, we focused on “value” as we studied The Umbrellas by Renoir.  The students then painted a single umbrella, mixing white and black tempera paint with a chosen color to achieve depth and dimension.  See my powerpoint: Renoir Value Umbrellas for details.

Materials: Mixed Media Paper, Tempera paint, pencil, small fine art brushes (flat, I hesitate to give a size because it seems there is so much variation between brands but no more than 1/2 cm in width).

Difficulty: Moderate.  Some students were done in ten minutes, and it wasn’t just the kids who rush through everything.  Others took a full 45 minutes.  The beauty of color-mixing is that it is a skill worth repeating, so have plenty of extra paper and paint on hand for students to try a second (or third) time.

How to love leftovers.

I grossly overestimated the amount of gravy my kids would put on their chicken fried steak the other night.  I could have thrown it out.  Tim could have chugged it single-handedly.  But thanks to the waste not, want not side of me, I opted to incorporate it into another meal this week:biscuits and gravy.  Yum.

When my husband and I got married, he brought with him a strong aversion to leftovers.  I quickly cured him of that.

Here are my favorite ways to use up leftovers:

  1.  If there’s enough for another meal, throw it in a labeled Ziploc freezer bag, lay it flat in the freezer until solid, then line it up filing-cabinet style in your freezer.  Like so.As a side note, my very favorite meals to freeze include:  Indian food (meat and sauce), Chili, Chicken (Our family doesn’t eat an entire chicken from Costco so I shred up the rest, pop it in a freezer bag and save it to make something else another day), meaty spaghetti sauce, and pulled pork (or chicken, or beef).  It is delightful to thumb through my freezer filing cabinet on a busy day, pop the leftovers in a crockpot and only have to worry about whipping up a vegetable or grain to accompany it.
  2. Stow it in a clear container in the fridge and enjoy it for lunch another day.  Store them at eye level so they don’t disappear into the dark abyss.  If your leftovers start to pile up, designate one night of the week “leftover night” and have each of the kids pick out his/her favorite to reheat for a hodge podge dinner.  Everyone gets what they want.  It’s almost like eating at a restaurant.  Almost.
  3. Plan a meal around it.  Put the right side of your brain to work and come up with another way to use up what’s left behind.  For instance, when we have taco salad for dinner, I invariably end up with extra lettuce and cheese.  So the next morning I sprinkle all of that cheese on scrambled eggs for the kids’ breakfast and throw some grilled chicken strips(frozen leftovers, naturally) on the lettuce for a lunch salad. Or I might use the cheese to make quesadillas and the lettuce to pull together a Caesar salad to go with pasta that night.  The possibilities are endless but you’ve got to get creative.  Or just google recipes that use up leftover ingredients.

 

One of these days I’ll get around to posting some of my faves.  Until then, get your own creative juices flowing so you don’t have to guilt your kids into eating more than they want by telling them about the starving kids in Africa.  Because, while guilt trips might be effective, they aren’t necessarily the best course of action for weight management, or for saving your wallet, or for showing gratitude for the abundance we enjoy.  Or for learning compassion for the starving kids in Africa, for that matter.   So yeah.  Leftovers for the win.

 

Another fracture makes it 4-0 for mom.

Jack broke his arm this week.  Considering the diagnosis we got over a year ago, I count it a huge blessing that he hasn’t had a fracture until now, particularly after some of the spills he’s been taking since becoming mobile.  After all, he doesn’t know he has fragile bones.  It was rather uneventful.  In fact, some of the spills he’s taken up to this point elicited louder gasps and subsequent examination of limbs.  He cried, I held him until he settled, then sent him on his merry way to get into more trouble, as all toddlers should.

Then he tried to use his arm to stand up.  It buckled.  He cried out.  Darn.  The next few hours made it clear that, though he could use his arm for non-weight-bearing movements, it was definitely broken.  Called the pediatric orthopedist under whose care Jack is, made an appointment to see him the next day, confirmed fracture and bam!  Blue cast for three weeks.

Kids are resilient humans.  Within 24 hours, Jack was toddling around like any 15 month old, even trying to climb the ladder to the trampoline.  Yikes.  We have had a lucky 14 months since his last break but it is clear that it will take a few years for Jack’s recognition of his fragility to catch up with his desire for mobility.  Pretty typical of any kid, really.  It makes bubble wrap sounds like a pretty great option, in fact.

Nevertheless, I’m pretty grateful, for a number of reasons:

  1.  I got to see the xrays, which displayed lines across the bones in his wrist, much like tree rings, indicative of the bone growth that each of Jack’s infusions has stimulated.  So thankful for modern medicine.
  2. Jack’s femoral fracture at one month old was such a traumatic experience for me(not to mention, for Jack) that I admit I had residual fear of future breaks lest they resemble the last.  It’s nice to know that some fractures don’t require a frantic rush to the ER and hours of uninterrupted pain and screaming on the part of my sweet baby boy.
  3. Three weeks in a cast is totally doable.
  4. Knowing that a simple fall while trying to climb on my lap resulted in a fracture confirmed to me that our trampoline is going, going, gone as soon as Jack figures out how to climb on it.  I think Tim especially had a false sense of security after 14 months without a fracture and toyed with the idea of keeping it and just strictly enforcing safety rules.  Nope.  There are simply some pleasures in life of which we will have to be deliberate in steering Jack clear.
  5. Before his break, Jack was mostly walking but falling back on his trusty bear crawl if he wanted a little speed.  Now that his arm is forced into a right angle for three weeks, he’s been relegated to walking at all times.  He’s a sturdy little fella on his feet now, presumably building bone strength in those short little legs of his.

 

The light of our lives.

Shortly after Jack got off his first cast at eight weeks old, I strictly enforced tummy time.  Owing to the fact that he’d lost an entire month of gross motor development, I figured he had a lot of catching up to do.  Tim remarked, “You sure are militant about torturing that kid on his belly.  Is it because he’s a boy?”  Ha!  No, it couldn’t possibly be because he was born with a bone disorder and I was desperate to help him build bone strength despite his deficiencies.  Funny Tim.

I do, in fact, find that I force Jack to do things that I wasn’t in a hurry to do with my girls.  I definitely go out of my way to allow him maximum mobility – things like not installing a safety gate for the stairs but instead following him up and down so that he is not stifled in his motor development.  Or, being extra careful to encourage a healthy diet instead of resorting to convenience foods.  Or, severely limiting exposure to screens, at the expense of getting stuff done.  Anyone who has a special needs child can tell you that it’s anything but convenient.  I sort of think that I’m finally bringing my A-game to this parenting thing and I’m embarrassed to admit it took a disability to force me into it.  Don’t get me wrong – I have always been a deliberate parent, but I definitely cut corners in certain ways for the sake of convenience.  I don’t beat myself up about it, but it does make me ponder the long-term effects that my laziness may have had.

In any case, Jack is meeting all of his physical milestones at the same time or before my other kids.  We weren’t even sure if he’d be able to walk, let alone at a time that is on par with others his age!  So understandably, we are incredibly grateful to witness this sweet boy’s unforeseen progress.  We all adore Jack.

 

Magnify those talents.

As a child I think I took a grand total of three years worth of piano lessons.  I started young, but am unsure of how, when or why formal lessons became a thing of the past.  Somehow, I kept playing, despite my inexperience.  I attribute it to my insatiable appetite for singing – and the absence of anyone else in my family capable of accompanying my melodies.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way, though for me, that way involved a whole lot of fudging the bass clef and playing many an errant note.

Somehow I made it to adulthood with those meager lessons tucked under my belt and, aside from playing the keyboard for a few recordings I made with a friend in college, didn’t really develop my piano-playing ability any further.  Then, as many a Mormon missionary in a foreign country can attest, I got to try my hand at every hymn in the book practically every Sunday for 18 months straight because I WAS THE BEST THEY COULD FIND.  (Except for the three months I was being trained because I actually had a companion who could play better than me).  Those poor Taiwanese people.

When I came home, and later got married, Tim and I were fortunate to have a piano loaned to us by his grandmother until we moved to Boise, so I got to fool around on the keys, but again, not to hone my piano skills but to accompany myself singing my favorite tunes.  Still, I considered a piano a fixture in any decent home, so within a year of moving to Boise and purchasing our first home, we found a great little upright on craigslist and have had it ever since.

Those early years of motherhood did not exactly facilitate piano practice.  At the first hint of a note, some lovable toddler would find her way into the living room and bang out her version of Ode to Joy.  At least one of us was joyful.  And it wasn’t as if I were about to take a chance on practicing during naptime at the risk of waking said toddler(s).  Heaven knows I needed that time to last as long as humanly possible.

My wish list always included a whole host of piano songbooks from Broadway to Disney (not so much classical – remember the whole part about only wanting to sing along?), most of which I have now acquired, though they for some time collected dust on the shelf, waiting for a more accommodating time.  The early lesson books I used to teach my littles beginning piano got much more use, as did the piano, now that the toddlers had become grade-schoolers capable of reading music and practicing to their hearts’ content.  Naptime was still sacred so I was relegated to an occasional Sunday evening for a little dabbling in piano fun.

And all of sudden the piano players suddenly moved out of our ward congregation at church.  And the most accomplished one who was left behind was called as the choir director.  I asked her, “Who the heck are you going to get to accompany the choir?”  She gave me a “deer-in-the-headlights” sort of look and mentioned inviting a couple of the youth to do a song or two.  I offered my services, to lighten the load, not realizing at all that I had pretty much just signed up to be the “official” accompanist.

To go from playing painfully imperfect accompaniment for oneself on occasion to accompanying a choir in front of a couple hundred people was a steep learning curve, let me tell you.  I came home from choir practice every Sunday with a massive headache and a fervent commitment to practice every spare moment I could find.  My embarrassment at my inadequacy was palpable, though I plugged through over a year’s worth of accompanying and realized that I had witnessed a miracle.  I played pieces I could never have dreamed of playing because I had committed myself to serve and the Lord made up the difference.  Boy, did He make up the difference.

That was about five years ago.  I still teach my youngest grade-schooler beginning piano, and have passed my older daughters off to experienced teachers.  They will inevitably surpass me in skill, owing to my utter lack of technique.  Still, I am given opportunities to volunteer in my kids’ schools, most recently by accompanying the choir and guess what, I actually LIKE playing the piano.  For the sake of playing the piano, not just so I can sing along.  And I’m not too bad either.

Most recently, I accompanied Lily’s 5th/6th grade choir as they sang on the floor of the Idaho State Senate at the Capitol building.  Then, I played for Anna’s benefit concert, a bunch of songs from Sound of Music and Into the Woods.  I’m learning that nerves will always be part of the package but that perfection is not the goal.  While practice is absolutely vital for one so inexperienced, I know that an errant note or two is not going to make or break the song because I am not the main attraction.  I just have to make the choir(or soloist, as the case may be) sound good by not royally screwing up.

Lastly, I am grateful that I get to use my talents and see them flourish as I use them in selfless ways.  As a young performer, I daresay it was all about the glory.  As an old(er) behind-the-scenes accompanist, I get to enjoy the fruits of giving the glory to someone else.  Which, counterintuitively, is a really great place to be.

Strangely, though this post was pretty much all about me, THIS girl here was amazing. I got compliments about her being everyone’s “favorite” left and right. She was my favorite, too. Anna performed “On the Steps of the Palace” from Into the Woods.

Getting a tour of the Capitol before the performance.

Soaking in the rays while waiting for the bus ride home from the Capitol.

Wear it out. Make it do.

A couple of weeks ago I taught an art lesson that required crayons so I brought my stash from home in the event that the school crayons were in use by another art volunteer.  One of the students took one look at my crayon container and said, why do you keep your crayons in a hot cocoa canister?

Not sure what he was getting at, but my guess was that in his home repurposing might have been a foreign concept.  You see, I’m no staunch environmentalist, but I have serious concerns about the waste we humans (particularly in industrialized countries) can tolerate.

I’m reminded of the saying, “Use it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do or do without.”  Many of us have the “do without” part down, at least insofar as it means throwing stuff away.  I consider it one of my personal hobbies, in fact.  Many a stray (important) paper has been tossed because it had occupied countertop real estate for longer than its allotted five minutes. Still, I dare say we would do better to employ the “do without” portion of that saying at the front end by not making the purchase in the first place.

I can’t stand stuff.  My garage drives me nuts because it is the bottomless pit over which I have limited jurisdiction.  I get reprimanded for throwing away other people’s junk, er, prized possessions, so I’ve washed my hands of the responsibility of organizing that particular space.  Even so, I can’t avoid it altogether so I grit my teeth every time I have to retrieve something.

Just install shelving, you say.  Buy an awesome tool chest, for heavens sake.  Build a rack for those bikes and scooters.

I would LOVE to, believe me, if I thought that would be the solution to our problems.  But I’d just be buying more stuff to organize the overabundance of stuff I already have.  There’s just something wrong with that.

The first solution to reducing waste and keeping life (and stuff) manageable is to not buy it in the first place.  Be more deliberate about the purchases we make.  Clearly I have a bit of work to do in that area.  And with a husband who believes that in order to be self-reliant, we have to own one of everything, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.  Garage chock full of junk it is.  But the house is largely my domain so I do my best to weigh carefully the number of purchases I make.

A second way to reduce waste is to buy good stuff in the first place.  Note: I didn’t necessarily say it has to be brand new.  Just make sure whatever it is has good bones.

Which brings me to my next point.  Buy used when possible.  Cars, toys, baby stuff, costumes, toilet paper.  Wait.

Truly though, there is absolutely no reason why someone else’s trash can’t be your treasure.  In Jack’s short 15-month life I can count on one hand the number of clothing items I have purchased brand new for him.  Thanks to generous friends and family who have equipped him with all sorts of duds from designer to hand-me-down, we are set until he is out of the house…or at least out of diapers. How silly we would be to turn up our noses at perfectly good clothing for a kid who will NEVER KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

A third way to reduce waste is to use what you already have before buying something redundant.  The crayon container is a perfect example.  I could have bought a fancy schmancy container at The Container Store.  And sometimes that’s exactly the thing to do.  But not when you have a sturdy Stephen’s Hot Cocoa container sitting in your storage room that costs absolutely nothing.  See?  I repurposed AND I saved money.  (Check back for a list of my favorite ways to make trash a treasure.)

A fourth way to reduce waste is to give your kids experiences, not stuff.  Added bonus: experiences bring happiness.  Stuff does not.

A fifth way to reduce waste is to embrace food leftovers.  When I first got married I had to convert my husband to this particular art form.  Apparently, he had grown up in a home where leftovers sat idle on the counter long enough to harbor bacteria before they were relegated to the fridge with nary a piece of Saran Wrap to cover them.  No wonder.  If you have enough leftover from a meal to feed your family again, throw it in a labeled Ziploc freezer bag to pull out on a busy night.  Otherwise your leftovers will make a great lunch in the coming days.  (More tips on how to use up leftovers).

It’s time to simplify and be wise stewards of the earth upon which we live AND the resources available to us.  Let’s resist the urge to overwhelm the trash collectors with all of our “junk” by first using prudence in our purchases and then owning our decision by letting each and every purchase fulfill the measure of its creation.

 

 

February fun.

 

Sometimes Valentine’s Day is pretty special. Other times, heart-shaped chocolate chip pancakes is about all you can muster.

The seats were comfy, and it was a good thing. The adults mostly slept through the movie. Fun to join Noah for his fifth birthday!

Cousin time

And more cousin time.

The long-awaited Art Night. It might have been one of the busiest weeks of my life. With artwork from all three of my elementary student’s classes to display, early morning practices accompanying the sixth grade choir, and a huge youth fundraiser to pull off the following week, I’m just lucky I didn’t get sick. Eve looks pretty stoked, though!

Joan Miro-esque project by Eve.

 

Marriage-putting off “the natural man”.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles on marriage lately and, all of a sudden, more articles start showing up in my news feeds.  A little creepy, to be honest.

Lately, Tim and I have been taking out our stress on each other more than usual.  Chalk it up to the five kids and their activities and needs, the sleep deprivation having teenagers and toddlers affords and the demands of work and heavy-duty church assignments. There’s no excuse for it, but there’s no shortage of things to which nurturing our marriage sometimes takes a back seat.

Last week we had a full-blown tizzy, ahem, minor disagreement.  As is often the case when Tim and I don’t see eye to eye, I start hunting for any and all marital advice, searching the scriptures, reading counsel from church leaders, and yes, scouring the internet for related content.  Hence the uptick in marriage articles on my newsfeed.

So today I stumbled across an article with this title: Scarlett Johannsen says “marriage a lot of work, monogamy unnatural.”  I clicked on it, despite my usual distaste for celebrity opinion.  It was disappointing, as one would expect, to hear a high-profile individual simultaneously state the obvious and then pooh-pooh the greater good.

Yes, marriage can be a lot of work.  And sure, monogamy is unnatural if you want to lump ourselves in with the rest of the animal kingdom and ignore the fact that we were endowed with complex brains and the ability to make moral decisions.  (Incidentally, several animal species employ monogamy, perhaps with more consistency than humans.)

In any case, why is it that we’re so quick to absolve ourselves of moral character?  Why do we assume that when the going gets tough, the tough get going?  As in going, going, gone.  What makes us think that we should do what comes naturally instead of what is right?

“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Ghost, and putteth off the natural man, and becometh a saint through the Atonement of Jesus Christ”.

I believe we are so much more than what the world would have us believe.  We are sons and daughters of God, created in His likeness, and endowed with potential to become like Him and inherit all that He has.  And I believe that marriage, with all its “work”and “monogamy”, is the perfect training ground in which to do so.

Everything of value in my life has required work.  What a convoluted view to suggest that marriage would be any different.  Monogamy provides stability and satisfaction to a relationship, and, by extension, to a family.  How ridiculous to think that we can experience any real measure of joy by doing what comes naturally!  What comes naturally to me is sleeping in every day and eating chips and chocolate around the clock but, last I checked, that isn’t exactly a recipe for a life full of meaning.

So eat your heart out, ScarJo, and set that bar low for yourself and humankind.  Me?  I’ll take work and monogamy with a huge helping of joy and happiness on the side.

Young Women/Young Men Jeopardy Game

Update:  A lot has changed in the youth program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since this post was written in 2017.  I have updated the Jeopardy Game at the bottom of this post to reflect these changes and to include the Young Men program in the questions and answers.

I’ve been serving as the president of the Young Women organization for a couple of years now.  We pulled off our third New Beginnings last week and incorporated the 2017 Mutual Theme – James 1:5-6.  Our theme was, more specifically, “If Any of Ye Lack Wisdom” since the whole point of New Beginnings is to help the young women learn the basics of the program.  We used a “wise old owl” to add a bit of cute factor the refreshments, invitations and decorations.  Throw in a couple of speakers and top it off with the Laurel class, who put together a skit and game of Jeopardy to test everyone’s knowledge of the Young Women organization.  It pretty much went off without a hitch.

Twelve.

This girl is a delight.  Just look at that smile!  She’s a quirky one, for sure, asking for baby snacks for her twelfth birthday, jeesh!  Lily has an inner confidence that is astounding – she simply doesn’t care what others think.  She knows she is fantastic through and through.  (This can be problematic in the parenting department because she occasionally doesn’t give a darn about impressing her parents, but I still count it an attribute, nonetheless.)

For Lily’s birthday, she dragged a few of her favorite friends to a movie at the “real” theater.  As in, not the dollar theater… or home theater, as the case usually is for our family.  I even indulged her fancies by springing for soda and popcorn – unheard of.  We then returned for a pizza dinner and Just Dance.  Lily has been blessed with a fantastic circle of friends.  We affectionately refer to them as the Catholic, the Muslim, the Mormon and the Jew, though I’m not entirely sure as to what extent each of these friends’ families practice their religion.  They are four peas in a pod, however, and we love having them in our home.  Almost as much as we love Lily.