Thanksgiving 2010

I think it only just hit me that it is TWENTY TEN. And, of course, the year is almost over.

I won my 50 free Shutterfly cards, but I passed the code onto the lovely Maggie over at http://magpienight.weebly.com/. She just had surgery on her spine and I thought it might be a nice treat.

We had a great Thanksgiving. The antibiotics really started working and we all got better. I cooked a big Thanksgiving dinner - half for regular folks and the other half for us gluten mutants. I even managed to make a gluten free, corn free pecan pie for my dear mother who is also allergic to corn. If you like pecan pie, but are not a huge fan of the gooey, this is a pretty great pie. I used Namaste gluten free pie crust mix - it's also corn free.

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/pecan-pie-v/Detail.aspx

Gluten Free, Corn Free Pecan Pie

Ingredients

• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon gluten free all-purpose flour (I used a tablespoon of Namaste pie crust mix)
  
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
  
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs until foamy, and stir in melted butter. Stir in the brown sugar, white sugar and the flour; mix well. Last add the milk, lemon juice, vanilla and nuts.
3. Pour into an unbaked 9-in pie shell. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until done.

I followed a reviewer's suggestion to turn the heat down to 300 degrees and cook for 20 minutes longer to avoid burning the top and it turned out well. My Mom loved it. I'd love to make one for her to take on the plane back home, but I doubt TSA would allow that.

We had several new friends in OKC join us for our Thanksgiving feast, which was a real treat. There was plenty of food and plenty of wine. Though we were really missing our family in Houston and Austin, we are thankful to have a lot of folks around us here in OKC.

Iggy's Nana (my Mom) was willing to brave the Black Friday crowds to get Iggy his Christmas present from her - the huge set from the new LEGO theme, Pharoah's Quest.

http://pharaohsquest.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx

He was extremely excited to get it.

While he was waiting for us to get ready - fixing our hair, etc, he had us contribute to his Star Wars Mad Libs. It was a classic unschooling moment - we chatted with him about adverbs and he wrote down our answers, asking us to help him spell words. We talked a bit about how the CH sound in English is a hard CH, but in a word of French origin, like "chef", CH makes a soft Sh sound. I peeked at his handwriting and it looked pretty good. I also like the fact that he is concerned with spelling - Google has been a big teacher of spelling for him.

My Mom brought him a beautiful set of watercolors and watercolor paper. I think they have a date for tomorrow to use the watercolors together.

Lucy is talking quite a bit and definitely desires for us to read to her more often. Most of her books are books that Iggy owned, and it's been wonderful for us to rediscover the books. Right now she likes Froggy Plays Soccer, Katy and The Big Snow, and anything with Clifford The Big Red Dog.

I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Why Shutterfly Is Awesome.

Shutterfly has asked me to tell you, my reader, why you should choose them for your photo hosting, printing, card-making and photo-book making. They might give me 50 free cards if I do a good job, but that's not why I'm shilling for them. The truth is, Shutterfly rules.

I am tasked with writing 150 words about their Holiday cards, and you can see from my Flickr that we've ordered them in the past. In 2007, we went with some of their budget cards and I liked them. I think their photo processing is better than most.

In 2009, I ordered those gorgeous flat stationary cards and Wowie Zowie! They feel good in your hand, the colors are gorgeous, I thought the card really represented us as a family and I got to use my favorite pictures. Ho ho ho, indeed!

Looking at the new Shutterfly card preview catalog, I'd say that my preference for this year would be the card at the top of the post - another of those gorgeous flat stationary cards.

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/cards-stationery/top-ten-moments-christmas-card-5x7-flat?sortType=1&storeNode=93479

Our list would include all of the milestones of 2010 - our 2nd year of homeschooling, our 1st anniversary of living in Oklahoma, our 10th wedding anniversary (just like that Cleveland Family! haha!), Lucy's first steps, Iggy learning piano, Larry running his first 5k, our first veggie garden, me....uh....getting braces. I think it's a wonderful idea for a card - more concise than a family letter, but it lets us tell the folks back home what we've been up to since moving to OKC.

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards

And now a product endorsement that Shutterfly didn't ask me to write about, but I'd like to share - their Simple Path online software for designing photo books.

http://www.shutterfly.com/photo-books

First, I feel like I am totally qualified to tell you to use Shutterfly because I've been using them since 2003. When Iggy was born and we got a digital camera, we were like all new parents and we went picture crazy. Shutterfly was the easiest upload for our pictures, so we used the site to share pictures with friends and family, and ordered prints without having to wait in line at the drugstore.

Those pictures are still in my account, seven years later, with the same pixel quality, and I have never once received a notice that they would be deleted unless I did X,Y or Z (can't say the same for another online photo company that starts with an S). We uploaded pictures while living in Hong Kong, when we went back to Houston, and now in Oklahoma. And we're probably about four or five computers from when we started this crazy pictures business. I have photos on Shutterfly that I honestly have no idea where they are stored, hard-drive wise. Yes, you have to buy the pictures from Shutterfly and can't download them again, but honestly.....I'm just not that organized. Shutterfly has become my central location for digital photos. I'll pay 15 cents if I ever need the picture again.

Secondly, I think their products are great. Check out my Flickr and you'll see that I've made a photo book or two for every year of motherhood. I always order prints as well, and those get tossed in a shoe box for future generations to look through. But, we actually look at our photos as a story in a picture book. Iggy has always loved his picture books - they handle better than photo albums (not as heavy, not as long). They tell the story of our lives better. Some years I had the time to really labor over cute captions. Some years the book has no words, but there is a definite narrative in there anyway. The books make it so easy to edit your photos down to the best ones, that ones that really tell the story of your family.

Until Lucy was born, I really did have the time to sit and edit and pick and caption each photo book. I made one (or two) for every year of Iggy's life, and sometimes a special book for a special occasion all on its own. When Lucy was born, I thought "Well, I've really made my bed this time. She's going to want to have as many books as I've made for Iggy! Now, I have four books to make a year!" Lucky me - 2009 (the year Lucy was born) was also the first year of Shutterfly's Simple Path, an automatically generated photobook that looks (somehow) like a person put it together. It takes me literally 10 minutes to make a photo book now. And THAT is why Shutterfly's Simple Path is awesome, why it's a superior product, and why I am extremely glad that I chose Shutterfly to host my pictures 7 years ago.

Strep, Stress and Unschooling.

The last couple of weeks have been about strep, stress and unschooling. Everyone in our house has been sick - strep, croup, some nameless tummy virus.

We quickly got out of routine with Larry missing work, shuttling the kids to Dr. and ER visits, the house falling into that dirty disarray that happens when Mom is in bed for a couple of days. Right now we have a laundry monster - piles of laundry (clean and dirty) spilling over from baskets. Little dust bunnies roll across the floor. So, forget homeschooling. Lots of learning got done anyway, because Iggyschool seems to roll effortlessly into unschooling when the merde hits the fan.

Iggy is sort of a classic unschooler type anyway. Larry and I are both autodidacts. Iggy takes after us. With no supervision from me for the past couple of weeks, Iggy did a lot of reading Garfield and watching Scooby Doo. But, he also carried around his stack of science books (Basher Physics, Chemistry, Periodic Table, the Usborne See Inside Science) and re-listened to parts of A Brief History of Nearly Everything. He seemed happy to talk with us a little about what he was learning, but more interested in sitting and reading for a little while, then just seemed to sit there and think for a bit, and then move on to watching Adventure Time. And he did most of this with a really high fever. So, kudos to Iggy.

Lucy has really started to ask us to read to her, and it's been nice to revisit books that Iggy really liked as a toddler - Katy the Bulldozer and a very wordy Sesame street book about the "Colors of Spring" have been her two favorites for the past week. We just don't have time to read as many books to her as we read to Iggy, but the gift of so many years between them means that Iggy will read to her as well. He's a sweet brother!

Despite all the sickness, we managed to do a few new things these past couple of weeks. The whole family went to the Sam Noble Natural History Museum in Norman, Oklahoma. What a great museum!!! So many of the exhibits related to topics we'd heard in A Short History of Nearly Everything. It is a wonderful museum if you're interested in paleontology, evolutionary biology, and pre-historic culture. It's huge, gorgeous and as quiet as a church. And it's not very expensive. Adults are $5 and children are $3. There is a great coupon on this page

http://www.travelok.com/listings/view.profile/id.6590

scroll down to "deals", as of 11/21/2010 there is a BOGO admission coupon. It cost us (two adults, a toddler and a kiddo) all of $8 to get into the museum.

In gluten free news, I have been making and eating a ton of the Quinoa fruit bread from the Oct/Nov issue of Living Without. It is divine and full of the fiber that I sometimes find really lacking in my diet. Buy a box of Quinoa flakes and a box of Quinoa flour and you will get four really big loaves of the bread. I added lots of dried fruit - apricots, raisins and dates - and used brown sugar instead of honey. It freezes well. I microwave a slice and then slather it with butter. Yum!

http://www.livingwithout.com/recipes/quinoa_banana_bread-2211-1.html

I got my copy of Living Without as a freebie in an order of Jules Gluten Free flour mix. It is a great magazine and definitely going on my Christmas list this year.

I was really sad to find out that the Betty Crocker mixes are probably not really gluten free. They're delicious and easy to get! I was wondering what was messing with our tummies, and was in a bit of denial while I made pancakes every morning for the kiddos. Until Betty Crocker starts making their mixes in a totally dedicated factory and until they start testing the mixes to make sure they are truly gluten free, I will be switching back to Bob's Red Mill. Bob's FAQ says "All of our products marked with our gluten free symbol are produced in a dedicated facility and batch tested for gluten content." Betty Crocker mixes are made in the same factory as the regular mixes and are not tested. No thanks, GM! That's not really "gluten free"!

Still doing the same old stuff around here. Iggy is learning about punctuation from his Basher book and the Grammar Ray Punctuation comic. We are still doing grammar and language arts worksheets verbally (he tends to go quite fast if he's allowed to say the correct answer, rather than write it).

We have a lot of fun with these worksheets. The reading comprehension workbook for second grade ends each story with the question "Which of these makes the best ending?". Some "best endings" are quite obvious, but others....Iggy and I scratch our heads and then do what only a homeschooler can do without penalty - we cheat! We look at the back of the book! And we still can't figure out why the author of the worksheet chose the ending as the "best"! Then we have a good laugh and move on.

We are working on penmanship with Printing Power from Handwriting Without Tears. If he is only focused on writing the letters themselves, he does quite well. It has been helpful for me to have him write the letter in the air, with his fingers, as a warmup. He is still trying to unlearn all of the backward and bottom to top strokes he is naturally prone to. Lucy has her own penmanship book and scribbles in it while Iggy does his lessons.

Iggy begged off from minute math drills and flashcards and asked to do his math this week at the online site time4learning.com. Iggy's working memory deficits really show when he is trying to do math "work" (his practical math skills are pretty great - knowing how much allowance he has, for instance). Bless his heart, he isn't behind, but he's not ahead either. I remember how difficult certain math concepts were for me - multiplication tables, for instance. Telling time for another instance. We'll just keep working on it and I will present the information in as many ways as I can. And I will continue to adjust my expectations.

We are now on the second CD of the audiobook A Short History of Nearly Everything. From that we've had discussions around the age of the earth, fossils, radiation, and the atomic weight of the elements.

Iggy is still doing a short piano lesson with Larry every night. He's doing swim at Chesapeake twice a week. And he's got a big part in the homeschooling play as Zebulon Zook from the Planet Mirth.

We've also talked a lot about the changing of the seasons. This wasn't something he was very interested in until recently. He seems very awake to the idea of the holiday season. We're looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas and seeing all of our friends and family.

Basher books are 4 for 3 on Amazon!

Hey! The wondermous Basher books are buy 3, get one free on Amazon. So, four Basher books for about $27 and free shipping. Pretty good deal.

I'm reading Smart But Scattered by Dawson and Guere. Iggy's definitely got deficits in executive skills. He has an incredibly hard time following multi-step instructions in order. Being as close as I am to him all day, I see how hard his brain is trying to process, how hard he really is trying, but how the concept of doing A and then B and then C gets incredibly muddled in his head. And forget a multi-step task if there's also a transition or any sort of hurry-up pressure involved! That poor kid's brain just shuts down! I think he'll grow out of this, or at least develop coping skills that work in the long term.

He certainly works very hard at it now. He's helpful, observant, tries to remember "what comes next", but his brain just isn't there yet. He can be so mature, so smart, and so polite that it can sometimes really sneak up on me that his short term memory and executive skills need a lot more time to catch up to the rest of him. It was nice to read in Smart but Scattered that I am doing everything right - giving him enough support so that he doesn't entirely fail, while expecting him to really put forth the effort to at least try new skills.

It is interesting to see how Iggy's interests diverge from mine - take his sudden interest in Physics and Astronomy as a "for instance.". Can a seven year old delve into string theory before he has his addition facts down? Larry says that it's possible and he and Iggy have conversations about dark matter and inter-dimensionality and the scientific nature of the Universe.

There is a Basher book for Astronomy and another one for Physics (and a Periodic Table book - Iggy very seriously pointed out that some of the elements are missing from the book). Man sakes, I love those Basher books!

Because I really am just totally ignorant about a lot of Science, I borrowed the audiobook of a Short History of Nearly Everything from the library and we've been listening to it in the car. It's interesting! Iggy gets something out of it and says "See, I told you about Oort clouds!" (I just called out to him "What's the name of those clouds in space?!" and he replied "Double O R T!") and all I can really take away is that a lot of those eighteenth century scientists were really odd and eccentric. I just don't grok the material the way that he does. Which is fine! It just feels funny - I can see that an unfettered Iggy is an Iggy who will know a heck of a lot more than me.

Halloween 2010

Iggy was Harry Potter this Halloween. It's only been a few months since Iggy has gotten into Harry Potter. He read the first book, really his first novel without pictures (think Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Magic Tree House up until now) a couple of months ago and Larry and I were delighted. He saved up his pennies to buy the Harry Potter Wii game, looked up parody YouTube videos and watched some of the movies. I've endured him singing a lot of silly songs about the Harry Potter universe.

Larry and I both like Harry Potter. We read the books as they came out. We have been joking that we are creating the perfect triumvirate of Nerdiness. Iggy likes Star Wars and Harry Potter. As soon as we can get him into Lord of the Rings, our mission will be complete.