Haphazard Homestead Happenings

Where does the time go?  The days are just flying by lately and so much is happening around here.

The gardening is beginning to show signs of growth.  Except for the potatoes, onions and ginger, everything we planted this year went directly into the ground as seeds.  Almost all the little seedlings have started to come up.  We have carrots, onion, radishes, peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and beets.  No signs of cauliflower yet, though.  We've been eating asparagus on a regular basis, and some of our rhubarb is almost ready to harvest.

We had a couple of nights of freezing temps last week (in late April?), but we covered everything and it all made it.  The weather, and therefore the garden, are running a few weeks behind this year, and I'm wondering now if we'll have any room for our late spring plantings that I had thought would follow behind some of the early crops.  Oh well, we might just have to build another raised bed or two.

Like everything else, our flowering trees are behind schedule.  Our red bud, white bud and crab apple are just now starting to bloom.  One of our young rhododendrons is in full splendor right now, though.

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I have almost completed my April craft project and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.  Look for it on Wednesday, along with the rest of my April goals update.

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For those who enjoy hearing about Bob the Basement Cat, he is doing well, but we've come to the conclusion that he is either partial or completely deaf.  I'm not sure how we missed it, actually.  We can often go in and out of the basement and do whatever we need to do, and if he's asleep or just looking away from us, he might never realize we're there.  Also, when you speak or make other noises, his ears don't move toward the sound, not even a little.  It might also explain why his meows are so very loud and might be the reason he craves touch so much.

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Our weekend schedules are filling up fast for spring/summer.  A couple of biggish home improvement projects, a trip to the zoo on Mother's Day, a day of city-wide garage sales, and camping, have us booked up for most weekends until after Independence Day.

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19 more days until school is out for Kat, possibly for good!  We have decided we will unschool her once this year is over.  Learning about this lifestyle change is huge in our lives right now and is what I've been spending much of my time on recently.  I promise, though, that this shift won't turn this into an unschooling blog.  I'm not sure I'll blog about it much at all, but if I do, I'll spin it off to a separate blog much like I do with our RVing stories.  Just thought I'd mention it, since it's been taking me away from the blog and Facebook page lately.

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I apologize again for not being around to visit your blogs and pages much lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that this week. 

Personal Finance on the Playground

Do you ever wonder if anything you say or try to teach your child(ren) sinks in?

At supper last night, Kat said that the subject of allowance had come up among a group of kids at school.  When she told them that she saves her allowance, they looked at her as if she'd sprouted a second head.

They wanted to know why she would do that, and told her that they always spent their allowance as soon as they had the chance.

Her response was that she usually likes to save for bigger things that she wants and doesn't want "cheap $2 stuff that just breaks". 

She said the others told her that "just isn't right" and got up and walked away. 

Kat, with the Lego set she saved for and bought last April.

I don't know what makes me happier - that she is developing good money habits, that she voiced her opinions with confidence, or that she was listening to us in the first place!

Do your kids get an allowance?  If so, do they spend it or save it?  The general rule here is that whatever money Kat gets (allowance, money from extra chores, gift money) is divided as follows:  10% to the charity of her choice (usually the local cat shelter), 10% into her savings account at the brick-and-mortar bank, and 80% to save or spend as she likes. 

New 'Do, New Glasses, New School Year

I managed to get a couple of pictures of a non-cooperative Kat on her first day of 4th Grade.   The purple dress just happens to be her school color, and she decided at the last minute to wear tennies instead of sandals so that she wouldn't get gravel in her flip-flops at recess.

She got her hair cut in a cute bob a couple of weeks ago.  Her glasses frames broke irreparably on Tuesday night, so we rushed -- and spent beaucoup bucks - for a new pair at a one-hour place yesterday.  It was almost time for her yearly exam, so we did that, and got the glasses filled with a new prescription.  Some back-up glasses are going to be ordered from an online vendor very soon, so that we don't have to spend that kind of money again.

You probably can't tell from the photo, but the glasses are black on the outside surfaces, hot pink on the inside.  Very bold and very cute.

Summer's Winding Down

• Shane and I enjoyed a weekend getaway in the camper. I'll write more about that later this week.
   
• Kat has a quick back-to-school night on Tuesday, then classes begin on Thursday. Yes, already.
   
• When we checked out teacher assignments, we learned that Kat's new teacher is named New Teacher. Hmm...seems a little late in the game to not know who's filling that position.
   
• Looking forward to dinner out on Thursday with my good friend C. We've been friends since 5th grade. She invited all of us, but I may decide to ditch the family and make it a Ladies' Night Out. Used to be that would have meant heading straight for the bar, dancing and drinking until the wee hours, then somehow each of us making it to work the next day. Now a wild night means dinner, one cocktail (if any), a little conversation, and making back home and asleep by 10:00 -- and probably feeling it the next day all the same.
   
• How dare you insinuate that we're getting old!
  
  



• Our garden is down to just tomatoes and a couple of watermelons at the moment. We let the pinto beans dry on the vine and shelled those out last week. We completely missed our window of opportunity on picking corn; it got too tough and chewy to eat, but we are letting it dry on the stalk and will try making some cornmeal with it. Our few cucumbers were so bitter from the heat that we gave up and ripped them out. The green beans and zucchini that we planted along with the corn (Three Sisters planting) didn't produce a thing.
   
• We're not done gardening yet, though. It's time for a fall planting!

Back to School???

Is summer vacation almost over? 

It would seem that way, judging from the ads in Sunday's paper and the back-to-school displays in the store.  As for us, we still have about a third left.  As of tomorrow, seven weeks behind us and five left to go.

Since Kat received a gift card for her birthday that was burning a hole in her pocket, we went shopping this morning.  And since we were there, and the school supply list for our school was there, and the school supplies where there, I went ahead and picked up what Kat needs to start 4th Grade in August.

Our district doesn't ask for much.  This year, they asked for a little more than in the past, but it's still not much compared to some other schools.  I got this pile of supplies for right at $10.

It's three spiral notebooks, 1 package of loose leaf paper, 2 packs of pencils, a package of ball point pens, a package of highlighters, a box each of crayons, colored pencils and markers and a couple of glue sticks. 

The list also called for scissors, a school supplies box and a backpack (things we already had at home), two boxes of tissues (that I still need to buy) and a bottle of hand sanitizer (which I'll opt out of buying because I think it's unnecessary and may not be safe).

It's a small list, really, and I didn't mind paying $10 for what we bought, but I can't help but wonder if Kat will use these things.  Every year, at least one or two items are sent home unused, usually around the winter break, and usually it's the spiral notebooks and/or the supplies box.  I wish, instead, the school would just ask for items as they are needed.  I guess I could opt out of buying all of these things, but I suppose I'd end up paying more for them later when they aren't on a back-to-school sale.


POP QUIZ:

1. Has anyone else purchased school supplies for this fall? 
2. Does your school ask for items that probably won't be used? 
3. Is your school's list long or short? 
4. If you are a homeschooling family, do you take advantage of the back-to-school sales to stock your at-home class rooms or do you wait to buy things as you need them? 
5. If you don't have kids at home, do you still take advantage of the sales?  (In addition to office supplies, it's a great time to buy new underwear and socks...)
6. Most importantly -- do you think summer really is almost over??? 

Explain your answers.

Lunch at School

Whether I'm eating it, growing it, or just thinking about it, food is on my mind a lot.  So, after having been asked by Kat, and having recently read Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project, and because it was Valentine's Day, I decided to have lunch with Kat at school yesterday.

I knew I shouldn't expect the homemade whole wheat dinner rolls or chicken and noodles that were standards in my school cafeteria growing up.  I doubted I should even expect made-from-scratch breads like those we made when I was a substitute lunch lady a few years ago.  Nor did I think that I'd be staring down at a handful of nasty paper and cellophane microwave meals like those pictured in Fed Up With Lunch.  What I ended up with was just what I expected -- something in the middle.

I was all set for an entree of biscuits and sausage gravy.  That's not one of their usual lunch offerings, but I like B&G much better than a toasted cheese sandwich, a hot dog or a "sunbutter" and jelly sandwich, which were my other options. 

As it turned out, because of the snow day, Monday's menu was served instead of Tuesday's.  My new choices were a breaded chicken patty on a bun, "Italian Dunkers", a hot dog or the sunbutter sandwich.  I chose the Dunkers, which were two halves of a hot dog bun with mozzarella cheese melted over them and spaghetti sauce for dipping.  I decided to call them "almost breadsticks".  With them I was offered canned peas and whatever I wanted from the salad bar.  I said yes to the peas, and chose lettuce salad and half an orange from the bar.  I also chose 2% milk; other milk choices were fat-free chocolate or strawberry.  The only dressing available for my salad was ranch.

Kat was a few people ahead of me in line.  When I caught up with her at the table, I saw that she had also chosen the Italian Dunkers, but her only other picks were strawberry milk and a whole banana.  Not good enough, but it wasn't the school's fault. Several veggies had been offered but she didn't take them.

As we ate, I asked Kat what would happen if she had only picked the main entree, and she said she also had to chose one fruit or veggie and one milk.  I asked her what would happen if she wanted a lot of the food from the salad bar.  She said that she could have a total of 5 items, including the main dish and her milk.  (At older grade levels, these limits increase, I think.)

Kat and I both ate everything on our plates.  I didn't especially enjoy the "almost breadsticks", and the peas were like any other canned peas.  On the other hand, the items on the salad bar were all very fresh and tasty.  The ranch dressing was overly sweet and reminded me more of bottled coleslaw dressing than ranch.  I would have preferred whole milk over 2%, but whatever. 

I paid $3.15 for my meal and felt like, in terms of quantity, I got a fair shake.  I left feeling comfortably full.  Kat's meal was $2.05.  I didn't think she had two dollars worth of food on her plate, but I'm sure on other days she does.

The meal wasn't especially healthy, but it didn't disgust me, either.  What did disgust me was that Kat had only 15 minutes to eat.  I couldn't finish my meal that quickly and sat for another 5 minutes after she left to finish up.  I don't think that is nearly enough time for students to eat their lunch. 

But wait...this was just something that happened today.  Kat is in a group of four students who are studying for some upcoming standardized tests.  For some reason, one of the boys in the group thought it was time for them to head to their study group 10 minutes early.  I would have thought a staff member would escort them, but I guess they are on their own for this activity.  In any event, I learned that lunch sessions are all 25 minutes long.  That's much more reasonable than 15 minutes.

In general, I think the school lunches could be better, but I don't think I'll deny Kat her favorites, which only come up about once a week.  She asks to take her lunch the rest of the time.

What do you think? Do you think this is an absolutely awful lunch or, like me, do you think it's fairly mediocre? 

If you have kids in school, do you let them eat the hot lunch, and if so, what kinds of things are served?

Does your school offer a salad bar, and if so, do your kids eat from it?  It seemed to me that a lot kids were choosing a banana or some canned peaches for their side item, but little else. 

Do your kids have enough time to eat and digest properly?