Category: Travel

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Biking Daily Life Michigan Mommy Diaries

At Least There Was a Caterpillar

SAM_4477-EditLife is always harder when Sam is gone. This was true back in our sticks and bricks, and even more so on the road. He always gives me my second wind around 5pm when I’m about to crash, and I love sharing responsibilities, fun, and chores (those pesky things) with my best friend.

Occasionally he still has business trips that take him away from home, and I try and keep everyone still breathing and functional on my own. I am two days into his current 3 day business trip and remarkably today went better than yesterday.

We are camped in a State Park that has a network of mountain biking trails and after getting out on my own yesterday (don’t worry, the kids were fine) I was determined to take them out today on what the locals assured me was an easier trail.

First off, you have to be a special kind of crazy to take three kids mountain biking by yourself especially when one of them is 5 years old and frequently interchanges her “tired” voice with her “whiny” voice. Both sound the same to me.

Fortunately the trail started out pretty level & smooth, but we gradually had sand, tree roots, and even a few climbs that included sand and tree roots.There was definitely more walking the bikes than riding them on the last half of the trail. When Endomondo called out our lap pace and indicated the last mile took us 33 minutes I just had to laugh.

The bright side of walking your bike up the trail is that you see things that otherwise would have been a blur. As I waited at the top of the hill I watched Andrew bend down and then exclaim, “Mom! This is a really cool caterpillar!”

And it was. I dropped my bike and trekked back down to see it. The little guy was fuzzy, white, and had black spots running down his back and was arguably one of the most interesting caterpillars we’ve seen. After we saved his life by moving him off the trail with a small twig, the kids continued pushing their bikes up the hill.

This time though there was a little more spring in their steps. Even if the trail was frustrating, slow, and a discouraging, at least there was a caterpillar.

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Homeschool Mommy Diaries

The Magical Homework Fairy Makes Her Debut

The Magical Homework Fairy Makes Her DebutWe’ve had some problems lately in the home school department. Our road schooling/home schooling curriculum is fairly lax. We don’t have a strict schedule, and will often have more field trips than book days. Since I absolutely loved field trips as a kid, my kids learn the best with hands on exploration, and there is so much to see in this amazing country, I don’t think this particular trend is broken.

What we ARE struggling with, however, are the days we do stay home and work on our regular, core subjects. Before you can fully understand the complexity of our difficulties, I think a little background on our mornings is in order. Sam and I have discovered that I am not a morning person. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve tried so many times to get up early before the kids to read my scriptures, blog, or just get a start on the day and I just can’t! Rather than guilt myself every single morning, I’ve lowered my expectations so that my alarm clock is usually Cara climbing in bed with me at 7am when she is allowed to get up. The other two, older children are either in bed reading or playing Lego’s and happily stay that way until we call them to breakfast sometime between 8am- 8:30 when I’ve finally decided the bed no longer needs a guardian.

After breakfast we’d clean up and get started on schoolwork, but before you know it lunch time rolled around and we weren’t even halfway done. It was frustrating for everyone. No one wants to still do school after lunch. Not only did our mornings drag on and on, but the kids were usually pretty grumpy! They were frustrated that morning free time didn’t last all day and they had to stop doing something fun in order to work.

Obviously we needed a mental and structural change so Sam and I had a discussion about it one night and reminisced the days when Andrew would get up and practically have school done before breakfast. It was awesome. No poking, prodding, scolding, yelling, or frustration from us, he just got it done. We realized that although we loved the kids’ reading habits, spending hours reading in bed every morning was actually contributing to less than desirable behavior.

So we outlawed reading and playing Lego’s before breakfast. To give them something to do instead, we introduced the Magical School Fairy (aka Mom) who prepped their assignments ahead of time (which she never did before) and had them waiting on the bedroom floor. The kids usually wake up around 6:30am and many of their assignments are self-driven. They can complete those before breakfast, and leave Spelling, Math, and other group studies for after.

In the last week, we’ve seen a vast improvement in attitude, timely completion of schoolwork, and overall its just been a better schedule. Even Cara wants her assignments, and the other two kids are great at helping her read the instructions and know what she should do. Many nights the kids will ask before bed if the Magical School Fairy will be coming that night (as we don’t do book school every day) so they can be prepared.

The downside for the Magical School Fairy is that she sometimes doesn’t have time to correct school work and give out new assignments until after the kids are in bed. Last night, she was up until midnight putting groceries away (Costco trip), correcting school work, and trying to get stuff done. While the change has been good for the kids (so far), I definitely have some scheduling that I still need to work out for me!

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Backpacking Fitness & Recipes

Airstream Kitchen: Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore_66

We discovered these delectable treats as I was looking for a way to pack a dessert in to the Apostle Islands for Andrew’s birthday.  Made with whole wheat flour & ground flaxseed, I can at least pretend they are more healthy than regular chocolate chip cookies, right? At least until we add the marshmallow.

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cups white flour
1 1/2 Tbsp ground flaxseed
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cups semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips
Large, toasted marshmallows (optional)
Hershey’s chocolate bars

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, and spray or grease a 9×13 pan.

In a medium bowl, cream butter, then add sugars and mix until creamy. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Gradually stir in flours, baking soda, and salt until completely mixed. Really you should mix these all separately first, but I always just mix the soda and salt in the measuring cup with the flour after dumping a little in the bowl to make room. Call me lazy. Or just efficient.

Add chocolate chips until just mixed in.

Spread mixture evenly in prepared pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pan, cut into bars.

These are easy to wrap individually and take hiking or backpacking, or cover and store in a cool, dry place.

We roasted marshmallows over the fire, stuck a piece of Hershey chocolate inside, and then smashed them on top of the cookie bars.

I don’t think we’ll ever eat a regular S’more again.

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars with Marshmallows. Delicious and slightly healthier than regular cookies!

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Homeschool Mommy Diaries

7 New Books Should Keep Them Occupied For At Least a Week, Right?

While we would have loved to received free stuff to review, we actually spent money to purchase both our Kindles and the books. However, this post does contain Amazon affiliate links which help to fund the blog in a small, small way. Thanks for helping us out!

IMG_7752-Edit copy My kids are avid readers. I love this about them, but keeping up with their reading habits is almost a full time job by itself. For the last few days all I’ve heard coming from the back bedroom is, “Mom! I don’t have anything to read.” This is a serious problem around here.

Rachel and Andrew will squirrel themselves away for hours with a good book, which is great for me getting alone time to be, uhh… productive. This often leaves Cara to fend for herself as far as playmates go, but she doesn’t mind. The girl loves Lego’s like her two siblings love books, and she’s still in that imaginative stage where a hair elastic and a bobby pin is a magical creature in need of her protection. These particular attributes of my children have taught me that keeping them supplied with good books is in my best interest.

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Due to the overwhelming lack of acceptable reading material in our house, I sat down at the computer yesterday to find new books. Most of our reading material comes from our hometown library’s digital OverDrive lending system. As soon as we changed our legal address to Sandy, Utah we went to the library and got a card and asked how to get on their online digital system. We only got ONE card however, and I’m learning that was a huge mistake. We all need one. Including Cara and Sam who most likely won’t ever use it on their own. We are always maxing out the 5 item hold limit on my card, but plan to remedy that situation with our upcoming Utah trip.

We also just recently finished the last book in the Peter and Starcatcher’s adventure series and are in need of a new audio book for the car. I figured I’d knock out two birds with one stone and solve both our problems in on sitting.

It took at least an hour and a half.

In the end, I found seven (SEVEN) new books to load onto our two Kindle Paperwhites, two new audio books for us to try as a family, and although I really tried not to, I ended up purchasing Jim Dale’s narration of Peter Pan on Amazon  (because, honestly, Jim Dale is quite possibly the best narrator ever) using my nifty trick of buying the Kindle version first and then adding the audio.

The kids shrieked with excitement when I told them what I’d found, and after a frustrating 20 minutes for Andrew in which the books didn’t download, he took the Kindle off airplane mode and proceeded to get lost in The Magician’s Elephant. So far, so good, but we’ll see how long it takes before I hear “Mom, I don’t have anything to read” again.

Categories
Daily Life

A Week Off in Canada

Pukaskwa National Park_10

We’ve been on a bit of a mini-vacation. Last Monday we crossed the US/Canadian Border near Pigeon River and have spent the week skirting the northern border of Lake Superior.

Thanks to the awesome T-Mobile plan we are on, we’ve had cell signal, voice, text, and even data on our phones. While its been great, some of our favorite places this week were very much off grid so there’s been a distinct lack of posting to the blog.

It’s been great.

Sam and I had some in depth discussions around multiple campfires about our family, our plans, our future and what we want the purpose of the blog to be and where to spend our time.

While we are definitely not done blogging by any means, things my slow down a little around here while we get caught up on other things. Make sure to sign up for our weekly newsletters so you’ll be notified when blog posts do come!

As always, thanks for reading!