King Cake

King Cake a photo by AngieMc6 on Flickr.

King Cake details....

Thanks to the ladies at 4Real, we made our very first King Cake. We've never had one so are satisfied with something less than the real thing. We started with this Easy Mardi Gras King Cake recipe, complete with step-by-step instructions. After looking at some authentic recipes, I added nutmeg to the filling and made the glaze with 1.5 cups powdered sugar and fresh lemon juice. Lacy (thanks!) at Catholic Icing showed us how to color our sugar. Next year we need to up the intensity of color (2+ drops per couple of tablespoons.) We didn't have a toy baby so used a little plastic...chicken (oh my.) Now, where to find the toy baby?

Manners and Courtesy

Everyday Graces:  A Child's Book of Good Manners
Goops and How to Be Them
Richard Scarry's Please and Thank You Book
Madeline Says Merci:  The Always Be Polite Book
What Do You Say, Dear?
George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation

From 4Real:
Poetic Gems for 4 Manners
Books on Manners

Manners Mini Unit

"Stand up in the presence of the aged, and show respect for the old; thus shall you fear your God. I am the LORD." Leviticus 19:32

Clouds Unit Study Mini

Clouds at Enchanted Learning
It Looked Like Spilt Milk
Peterson First Guide to Clouds and Weather
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola

Memorize types of clouds:

alto-cumulus - Middle-level, medium-sized puffy clouds.
alto-stratus - Middle-level, layered clouds.
cirro-cumulus - High-altitude, small, wispy, patchy, puffy clouds.
cirro-stratus - High-altitude, thin, wispy clouds in layers.
cirrus - High-altitude, thin, wispy clouds.
cumulo-nimbus- Large, dense, towering clouds that cause thunderstorms.
cumulus - Low, puffy clouds.
fog - Ground-hugging clouds.
nimbo-stratus - Low, dark, rain cloud.
stratus - Low, layered, horizontal, wispy clouds with a flat base.
strato-cumulus - Low clouds, broad and flat on the bottom, puffy on top (higher than cumulus and lower than altocumulus).

Corned Beef

Here is our favorite corned beef recipe:

2 point cut corned beef roasts to equal approx. 6 lbs. and their seasoning packets
2 bottles of beer, dark is best, or water to cover roasts
2 bay leaves
many cloves of garlic
1/4 cup peppercorns

Use point cut roasts because they are less expensive ($1.27 # this year) than flat cut and they are more marbled which keeps the meat moist. Place roasts, their juices, seasoning packets, liquid, bay, cloves and peppercorns in slow cooker. Cook on low for 10 or more hours (preferred) or on high for 6 hours or more. Remove roasts from slow cooker and let rest for 10-15 minutes. Remove fat and carve meat against the grain in thin slices. I estimate 1 roast per family of 6 light eaters if served with all the fixins or to make as sandwiches.

Adapted from this recipe.

Potatoes for a crowd (24 eaters):

Place 5 pounds of red potatoes, cleaned and poked with a fork, into a slow cooker on high for 4 hours. No need to oil potatoes or add liquid to cooker. Serve with butter, salt, and pepper.

Veggies for a crowd:

Place steamer basket into the bottom of a 12 quart pot. Add water until you can just see it coming through the basket. Add ~2.5 #s baby carrots, 6 quarted onions (can spear each quater together with a toothpick), and 2-3 heads of cabbages cut into 6 wedges (core removed) to fill pot. Place lid on pot and steam until cabbage wilts, approx. 30 mintues. Serve with butter, salt, and pepper.

Irish Soda Bread for a crowd:

Irresistible Irish Soda Bread: Make one recipe as is (we bake it in a shamrock shaped cake pan) and make another and add raisins (~1 cup) and caraway seeds (~2 teaspoons.) For a more savory bread, Irish Brown Soda Bread. Serve with butter.

Corned Beef Sandwiches:

2 slices rye bread
yummy mustard (My friend Marie shared Trader Joe's Aioli Garlic Mustard Sauce - YUM!)
Thousand Island Dressing
corned beef
swiss cheese
cole slaw

Stack!

Beverages
Irish beer (Guinness, Harp, Killians)
Lemonade tinted with green food coloring

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Love,
Angie

Be Blessed! A Family Study

A few months ago, with complete sincerity I asked my husband, "Will I ever be happy again?" Below is a retrospective look at how my family and I came to answer this question with a sweet and humble, "Yes." Learning together about Christian happiness, mood, and responsibility is one of the most fruitful relationship enhancing activities that we have experienced. Changing our habits of thought and behavior is hard work yet we are encouraged by our overall increase in positive mood, which is so very contagious...for better or worse. The events that piled up for over a year prior to my desperate question are private, yet typical of my peers. I offer this sharing to you with gratitude for praying me through a difficult time and with a prayer that you too will be blessed.

Background Helps

Pray and Fulfill the Duties of My Vocation. ..even when it is hard or messy or less than what I can do when my life is more stable. Pray differently. Find a new prayer to memorize. Start a new novena. Meet a new saint. Get on my knees. Lay down and fall asleep with a rosary in my hands. Yell out from love and weakness. Go to Church. Go to Mass. Go to Adoration.

Take Care. Eat well, sleep enough, and move my body. Face health concerns actively such as fatigue, poor circulation, poor posture, sore muscles and others by taking vitamins, increasing water intake, T-Tapp, other posture helps, increasing vegetables/greens, and being open to other ideas.

Basic Organization. Have a weekly family meeting. Discuss Christian happiness and related topics. Post notes on "faith board" (a corkboard used to display items related to the liturgical calendar, character formation, etc.), refrigerator, or the like. Keep meeting short. Serve a treat.

Read and Learn. Optional topics include but aren't limited to prayer, suffering, grief, mourning, depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, cognitive distortions, the Beatitudes, the Book of Job, habit formation, temperaments, the five love languages, etc.

Be Patient. Follow the natural pace, inclination, and discernment of family. Take as many weeks, months, as is helpful to gain peace and insight.

For ages 8+. Modify as needed.

Christian Happiness

This past August I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Peter Kreeft. As a long time fan, Dr. Kreeft's Christ's Concept of Happiness vs The World's did not disappoint and struck an immediate chord. He distinguishes between our culture's definition of happines and challenges us to see ourselves as blessed, as described by the Beatitudes.

Optional Activities

*Listen to Dr. Kreeft's audio.
*Write each beatitude on a sheet of paper large enough to be displayed on faith board. Post one per week for discussion and ongoing reference.
*Ask each family member to rate how happy they are on a scale of 1-10 (their happy number) and note replies on index card with name and date, then post on board (There are no right or wrong answers. Trust each person to answer to the best of their ability. Avoid the inclination to change another's mind/answer or to answer in a way expected by others.) Continue to keep track of happy numbers each week. Look for patterns.

Mood

This past June I was chatting with the awesome ladies online at 4Real, my favorite gathering place for homeschooling moms, about erasing the negative tapes in our heads. Holly recommended the book, Feeling Good and she made a good argument for reading it. I asked my husband, a psychologist, if he knew of it and he recalled it positively but vaguely from many years ago. I read it and found it to be sound, organized, and not trying to be more than it is. I found the book easy to gel with my faith.

Optional Activities

*Read Feeling Good, (you can preview it here) or other information about cognitive distortions and dysfunctional attitudes.
*Write on one sheet of paper, "Action", on another, "Thought", on another, "Feeling", on a final, "Behavior" without others seeing. Have one family member hold up "Action" and another, "Behavior." Ask, "What comes between someone's action and another person's reaction or behavior?" My children were stumped so I showed them the "Thought" and "Feeling" sheets and asked if these two came between the two. Upon discussion we agreed they did and then I asked if they came in a particular order. We discussed recent examples of difficulties we've had with each other. We agreed that thoughts came before feelings. We hung the papers, in order, on our counter bar that divides our kitchen and living space.
*List "thinking distortions" on a sheet of paper, next to ATFB papers above. Discuss each as related to family tensions. Discuss in a matter-of-fact manner, avoiding rehashing or blaming, coming from curiosity and courtesy.
*List, post, and discuss "attitude distortions." They are: Approval, Love, Achievement, Perfectionism, Entitlement, Omnipotence, Autonomy
*Use new vocabulary to identify, describe, and solve problems.
*Discuss connections to Beatitudes and Mood.

Responsibility

Each of us is ultimately responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. We are committed to maintaining our happy number at a minimum of 8. We use the information that we have posted on our faith board and counter bar when our mood is negative until we feel relief. We are also a loving family and each of us impacts other family members. We treat each other with respect, sensitivity, and courtesy. We try to solve problems between each other quickly. We make and accept amends. We strive to stay in a blessed state individually and as a family.

Optional Activities

*Post and discuss Peter Kreeft's diagram found on page 111 in Making Sense Out of Suffering (Below is my attempt to recreate it. In this cycle, Pride points to Disaster and Repentance points to Blessed. Plus there are counter arrows that point to opposites - Blessed is opposite of Disaster, Luxury is opposite of Suffering, and Pride is opposite of Repentance.):

Blessed -> Luxury -> Pride

Repentance <- Suffering <- Disaster *Discuss how Disaster can be self-inflicted or not. Distinguish between mistakes, misunderstandings, misfortune and inconveniences. *Discuss grief and how there are times when all we can do in the face of loss is cry and wait. *Show love through the 5 love languages.
*Keep track of tendencies. Initial specific distortions. Look for individual and family patterns.
*Battle tendencies, especially Entitlement and Perfectionism.
*Practice doing over mistakes properly.
*Have fun.
*Show gratitude.
*Give alms.
*Fast.
*Smile - It Confuses People (saw that on a bumper sticker!)

He said, "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD." Job 1:21

Posture Helps

My posture has been poor, rolled shoulders, for as long as I can remember. Eight years ago I worked with a wonderful progressive chiropractor in Elko, NV, and he helped to get me into better alignment and nearly fixed my reverse neck curve before I needed to move. A few months ago I decided to work on my posture again, but this time I wanted to find tools that I could use at home on my own. These are the helps that I found, in the order that I found them:

Posture Alignment is a helpful book which explains the nuts and bolts of proper posture. It is a quick read, practical, and not too new-agey like so many books on posture connected with yoga and optimal health are. The author explains how to find where you need help with your posture and then directs you to specific exercises for correction. The exercises are gentle and take ~ 25 minutes. I enjoy doing the exercises because they are relaxing and feel good, bringing relief to my sore back. I was also able to fix, on my own, a lower back kink by doing these exercises.

Posture Pal is a passive device that feels sooooooo good to my back. I purchased this originally to use in conjunction with the posture exercises from the Posture Alignment book, since several include laying on my back. More often, though, I just use it when I'm tired in the middle of or at the end of the day, when I need to rest and have quiet time. I was pleased to find this product because over the years, I have tried to simulate exactly what this product does. It places firm padding between my shoulders and allows my shoulders to drop back into proper alignment.

While purchasing the Posture Pal, I added the D-Core pillow to my order. I have mixed feelings about this product. I'm doing my best to learn how to sleep on my back, due to pregnancies and nursing in bed I'm a devoted side sleeper, and I think this pillow helps, but sometimes I fall out of it or roll to my side but don't land where I should. It is definitely better for my posture than my previous pillow, a latex pillow that I loved, but I will keep my eyes open for other pillow opportunities.

The Nada Chair is a funky little device that helps me to sit properly anywhere. I use this "chair" when working at the computer, sitting at the table for meals, sitting at the table doing formal work with the children, sitting on the couch folding laundry, etc. I've used on long rides in the car as a passenger and when at a Dback game in the cheap seats. I love how, without effort or thought on my part, this back support gently and firmly forces my back and neck into a proper sitting position. Now that the good weather is coming to Arizona, I hope to develop the habit of bringing the Nada Chair with me to use on nature walks, hikes, and park days.

T-Tapp deserves a post of its own because it has helped me with so much more than posture, but for now I'll share that these exercises have made my back, shoulders, and neck stronger than I've ever known them to be. I do Theresa Tapp's "Primary Back Stretch", which takes ~ 3 minutes, as soon as I get up in the morning and before I go to bed.

I thank my husband for encouraging me to risk spending money on products that might help because they have! Here's my favorite proof. When Dave took me out for dinner on our 21st anniversary at the end of August, we went to Carrabbas and were seated in a booth. I would normally have suffered mightily and squirmed like the other customers around me, yet I sat properly without back support and with complete comfort for appetizers, dinner, and dessert! Improved posture and cannolies, now that's a happy combination:).

Independent Study and Chores

Much of the work that my children do each day is independent. At ages 9, 12, and 16, they work off of their checklists that are kept on clipboards and we adjust monthly or as needed. My 16 year old daughter is accountable to her dad, by calling him daily and reporting her work. The 9 and 12 year old boys work together on their checklists and are accountable to me daily by asking me to initial their work. On Sundays, they show their Dad their completed checklists at our family meeting. Here is their current Study Checklist (click on the image for better viewing):





Here is their current Chore Checklist (click on the image for better viewing):


When the children were young, I had picture checklists posted in rooms throughout the house to remind them. (These are easy enough to make by using Google Image Search.) Checklists are reminders of tasks that they can already do on their own.