Storms!

I've been feeling very "deep" lately.  I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, the responsibilities I have as a mother and wife along with the financial responsibilities that come with being an Adult.  Sometimes it's hard for me to put on my happy face and act like life isn't beating me down.  It's hard to show my kids Resilience, when sometimes I feel I have none left. We've had a lot of ups and downs around here lately and I just kind of feel defeated at times.  So in my pinched nerve mending, hacking week (don't ask!) I've searched for light, a glimmer of hope among the turbulence we face in this life at times.

I went to that one person I know is always constant in my life...OK the one mortal person I know is always constant... my mother!  When I feel like I'm just about to give up or I feel like the stuff I'm doing is mundane and pointless, she always seems to know what I need.  I have NO doubt she was meant to be my mom because she is AMAZING in every way. So through my pity party and uphill battle my mother reminded me that these are the tough years, the years you struggle to make ends meet, the years of uncertainty and the years that mold you to make you who you are, and the years that make you the great "mom" that will one day be counselling her own grown children through their "Morton Salt" years.  My mom reminded me that my Father Heaven Loves me! He knows me and knows what I am going through, He is my ever constant and if I but put my trust in Him, I can make it!  I can climb the mountains and bask in the glorious view, before I begin to climb again.  Because truthfully our journey is not ever over we must continue to climb and grow, be molded and become the BEST we can be.  A very neat lady who was my Visiting Teacher via my Church told me that her mother would often ask her why she was praying that her trials would end because it would just mean that a new one would begin!  How true that is!  It seems like when you've weathered the storm, you look up to see something brewing in the distance.  So today I choose to follow my mom's advice and to look UP to He who is my creator, and His son who died for me!  Because through them I will be happy! Through them I will be able to take one whatever is in-store for me.  I am most grateful to have an amazing mother in my life who reminds me that I can Smile through the tears, that I can laugh along the journey, that I can be the best I can while doing hard things!  The choice is mine!  To be happy or sad, to be helpful or loath in self pity!  I choose to be happy!  I choose to LOVE! I Choose to make today matter!  So today I am going to take a step back, and just BE!

I ran across this quote from one of my favorite authors, a strong independent woman who wrote amazing works.  Louisa May Alcott! The quote seemed to speak to me, I guess because here at Chaos Creek that is exactly what I want to be, not afraid of what is to come, but grateful for the lessons it teaches me in getting to where I need to go.

I also am LOVING this song Every Storm Runs Outta Rain by Gary Allen right now!  

Point's to all this

1. It is our Choice!

2. my mom's Awesome and I am forever grateful for her experiences, knowledge and unconditional love, 3.We all have the choice to be happy and to make the most of what we have been given

4. Hard things STRENGTHEN US, they make us who we are, make us better people!

5. Be still and Know that I am GOD (Psalm 46:10)  He is there!

How are you learning to sail in your creek?

Make it Monday: 28 POUNDS of ASPARAGUS

I promise I am not crazy!  Well....we'll just leave it at that.  HAHA!  I recently bought 28 lbs. of Asparagus from Bountiful Baskets.  If you haven't bought from BB you SHOULD!  They have incredible produce for a very reasonable cost, a lot of it is locally grown, or grown from small farmers in other countries (because we don't really grow all that Mexico can grow right?!)  I paid under $1.00 per pound for this asparagus...WOW!!!! Just for the record I LOVE ASPARAGUS, my kids love asparagus, my hubby.....well he isn't apposed to it (did I mention he only ate like 5 things when we got married? more on that another day).  But still 28lbs of asparagus is a little intimidating.  At first I thought, well we could just eat it with everything....realistic? probably not.  Then I thought I'd give some away and what not.  So I googled it and found that you can actually FREEZE it!  Hallelujah!!!  So here is what I did, you can just freeze it straight..... I guess but it's much less colorful.

This is only a portion of the 28 lbs.  It was a lot of Asparagus!

Step 1:  Cut the woody ends off of the bottom.  I usually cut about 2" off the end of all my asparagus.  The ends are tough anyway.  You can chop it into smaller pieces if you want but I usually serve it in long spears so I just left everything longer.

 Step 2: Fill a pot of water (I had a big pot) about half way full of water and bring it to a boil.  This step is the blanching step (I didn't  know what blanching was until I started canning when I got married but I had only blanched peaches and things to can).  When the water is boiling you just put in the asparagus, now remember I had a large pot so I put in about 2 bunches at a time.  My stalks are pretty medium to large sized so I blanched my asparagus for 3 minutes each batch. If you have smaller stalks you could do it for 2 min. or larger stalks 4 min.

  

Step 3: Remove the asparagus from the water when the timer beeps (USE A TIMER!)  Unless you are really good at timing things, I am not so I use a timer for everything and I'll have you know it's been YEARS since I've burned anything :)!  I used tongs to get the asparagus out because I just kept reusing the same water.  Put it right into a dish ( I used a cake pan 9x13) of ice cold water.  The asparagus will still be cooking unless you cool it immediately!  So the ice bath is necessary.  I don't have a picture of this step.  I had the kitchen set up into little stations.  Hank (yep I recruited the MAN!) was cutting the ends off, and I was timing the asparagus and transferring it from hot to cold to towels.  

Step 4: In between batches, take the cooled asparagus and place it on a few kitchen towels.  I just let it drip dry for a couple minutes then placed it in gallon sized freezer bags (Jo helped me label the bags and get it in the bags).

I put quite a bit in each bag.  Like I said we LOVE this stuff!  So feel free to portion your bags to fit your needs.  I even thought doing some quart sized bags would've been great for lunches or a stir fry.  But I only had gallon sized bags and I'm up for leftover asparagus any day.  When it was all said and done it took less than 45 minutes and all my asparagus was ready for the freezer!  I ended up with 11 gallon sized bags ~ holy asparagus!!!!  Wallah!  Fresh asparagus on hand at less than a dollar a pound, you can't beat that!   

And there you have it!  Make it Monday: 28 Pounds of Asparagus!  So now you know what to do when you find a steal on asparagus.  Now to dry my 21lbs of pineapple :)

Make it Monday: Goldfish in a bowl

Last week we decided to do a craft with the little munchkins we have at our house a few days a week.  They love to paint, doesn't any kid?  So we made goldfish bowls out of paper plates.  We painted the back of the plate blue and glued on some cute scrapbook goldfish and greenery, compete with GOOGLY eyes!  You could also do some beans or pebbles glued under the greenery for a little more detail.

Scrapbook paper goldfish

Painting away

GOOGLY eyes

Jo ~ adding details

Buckwheat ~ adding a Mohawk 

Fish have to smile right? :)

Peanut's Masterpiece!

Mohawk fish ROCK!

 Great project for a blustery day!  Spring isn't something we really experience here in the high mountain desert so having a few fun activities for those days when it's just too cold (again!) to go outside is a must!  The kids had a blast and it was a fun and easy project.

Make It MONDAY

Monday seems to be a BLAH day! At least for me, it starts with Sunday when I realize that the next day is MONDAY and I have to get back to the grind stone.  I don't know why, it's not like Friday and Saturday are free of housework or responsibilities  I guess it's just the thought that you know it must get done and there's work to do and school to do and it all begins on MONDAY.  To make Monday a better day, we've decided to Make it Monday! Which is now going to be our make it day.  Yes, we will make something, whether it be an art projects, a pan of cookies, a volcano, or ice cubes, we will Make it Monday!  Monday will be an adventure and we will learn something by Making something (other than just a mess, although I'm sure it'll happen one day)!

So for our first Make it Monday Post~ we did an art project.  Found on the lovely posts of yes.... PINTEREST. If you aren't following me on Pinterest...........well, you should :).  There are so many cool art projects, intense, simple and awesomely creative on there.  Go Here to find some cool teacher art projects, we wanted ours to look like these with water colors and sun's

 First Step: Draw your picture with pencil, kids learned that it's easier to erase and you can redraw what you don't like.

 2nd Step: Trace your lines with black marker.  Or in Peanut's case, any color marker that makes you happy!

 Once your done tracing and adding textured designs you can water color paint your picture!

Jo was super thrilled, because she thinks her mother is lacking in the art and creativity department!  HA!  I just need to get over the mess department and my creativity is always flowing :)!  The kids had fun drawing their mountains and water and finding the colors they wanted to make on their pictures.  We need to get real water color paper, since printer paper isn't the best for this type of project.  I'll put that on my supply list for future reference. 

Resilient

      I've been thinking a lot about my kids, their choices, the consequences they get...well, that we all get, from the choices we make in life.  Some good, some bad, and some indifferent.  When I was little, when I would get told "no" I couldn't do something, or when I was let down by one thing or another it would be upsetting but I'd "bounce back" and soon I would be trying again or have my sights set on something different. This RESILIENCE thing seems to be a past-tense verb today.  I see more children falling down and not wanting to get back up, getting let down and staying down - not coming back up fighting.  In my own home this has been the case lately.  If something is too hard or something doesn't come easily, they do not want to take a break and try again they just plain don't want to try ANYMORE!  If I say "NO we aren't staying up tonight," or "Nope, no dessert today." I don't get an "OK", I get a crying whining fest, a complete and utter melt down or a major ARGUMENT from a certain someone.  This is life, things don't always go your way and if you can't take "NO" for an answer or you think you're always going to get what you want...... it's gonna be ROUGH!

      This has really perplexed me the last few weeks.  I want my kids to be resilient! I want them to accept "no" for an answer and be alright with it.  "NO" will happen, troubles will come, rocky roads are on the horizon and storms in the forecast (Yes I am a realist!).  But we can get over the rocks, we can buy an umbrella, we can be OK if "NO" is the answer. So how do we teach this, how do you instill this in your children?  I read a great article in our CHURCH's Magazine this past month. It's message was awesome~

     You can find the article HERE.  It talks about giving our children the right attitude to be resilient.  That "perfectionism undermines resilience", boy did that hit me like a ton of bricks!  Perfectionism is my weakness.  I am not perfect but I'll be danged if I don't try to be.  I think this could be hindering my need for resilient children around here, they all think it has to be perfect because I think it has to be.  Home is where you should feel most comfortable, you should be allowed to make mistakes and practice being resilient, practice bouncing back, because the world isn't as forgiving as the Home! It also says,
     "This misunderstanding may also stem from what society teaches our youth: that their worth       depends on talent and performance. In schools and communities, sometimes even at church or at                        home, youth see their peers get acceptance, admiration, approval, and praise for being talented at something. So they try to measure up. As they do so, they start to fear failure and mistakes. They choose what to do based on how successful they think they will be. They procrastinate when they do not feel confident. They worry about what others will think if they make mistakes. They fear loss of approval. They view their performance as the measure of their worth. Their perfectionism becomes a mean taskmaster, and it wears down their resilience." 

      WOW!  I agree wholeheartedly that perfectionism and thinking our worth is measured by performance wears us down.  I feel this way, I feel the comparison and the worry that my children have about how well they think they can or cannot do something.  I just want them to try it, if they don't like it that's okay, if they don't do well at it, that's okay too.  Trying things and being able to accept "no" or being able to laugh at our selves and move on is vital in becoming resilient.  The article goes on to explain that we are given second chances and that we need to teach them with love and respect just as we are given love and respect, and to help them develop an understanding of a deeper love that goes beyond their successes and their failures.  We need to let kids have rules and to determine their own consequences... this one is hard for me.  I see so often that one of my kids could just use an extra few minutes when doing something I asked, so I raise my voice and complain louder that they aren't doing what I need them to do, instead of just making the request and if they choose to not do it they choose the consequence as well. I need to get better at that!  The article gives 5 steps to help teach this resilience 1. Paying the price for privileges, 2.  The law of the harvest (meaning nothing comes for free and we must teach them to work), 3. Personal accountability and responsibility, 4. The law of restitution, and 5. Learning from Mistakes.  Some of these are so hard, to watch your child make ill choices over and over hurts, but if we always protect them from the hurt how will they know the joy?  How can they pick themselves back up and learn from mistakes if we are preventing the mistakes in the first place?  I loved this article and it was just what I needed to help me remember that I want to raise my children with a resilient spirit, with a "don't give up" attitude.

      There is a great parenting book that my mom purchased for me at the home-school convention I attended in June of last year. It's by a homeschooling mother and a former foster parent, Nicholeen Peck, it is called A House United, changing children's hearts and behaviors by Teaching Self-Government, I haven't read it cover to cover (cause let's face it factual books I just don't do that with, I skim and skip and re-read and go over and highlight) but the majority of the book I have read and she has amazing concepts in teaching how to accept no answers and how to have our children be governing their selves and accepting their consequences.  The book is amazing so check it out! (I don't get anything out of it I just liked her concepts and I am trying to apply them in our home)

      Any way, Resilience is something I am going to add to my New year's resolution word of STRENGTHEN I want to STRENGTHEN my children's resilience! I want to teach them that they are better than giving up, that they can stand tall and hold their head's high because they are AMAZING, they are FIGHTERS, they are LOVED, they are SPECIAL and they can do anything they set their mind's to.  Might be a rocky road, might be a thunder storm or two along the way but you learn to dance in the rain and you learn to buy a jeep or to climb a mountain!    

How do you teach resilience?  Do you think we are lacking this skill in our world today, in our children?

Rainy Day

What do you do on Rainy days?  It is suppose to be SPRING here, but since we live in the high mountain desert, SPRING is a word that is used for the week we feel warmth and sunshine between the snow and the summer heat.  It was a rainy day in our neck of the woods (okay it may have snowed, but let's pretend it didn't!) and we were feeling glum because it's just no fun to have bad weather when you have only enjoyed a few days of the glorious weather, a.k.a SPRING.  So the kids were asking what we could do and we decided to get out a bunch of board games.  We played games and read books and just vegged out for the day.  I love lazy days like that, sometimes they are much needed for the mental sanity as well!  Here are a few pictures I captured while in the mix of playing the alphabet fishing game.  Oh by the way we LOVE Discovery Toys, and a lot of our games come from them.  They grow with your child, a lot are multilingual and they are educational which is a win win for  Mom and any family!  I took these pictures in order of their occurrence and it kind of shows little story of what our three youngest monkeys are like....every.....day.....LOL!

 Here, everyone's having  a great time playing fishing for alphabet letters

 Oh yay! Look what you got Buckwheat!

 Oh dear, someone made someone UPSET

 Yep, he's Mad!

 And now he's giving Jo a little piece of his mind

 OPPP, you better put that fishing pole down YOUNG MAN!

 Lil' sis thinking she can straighten out the situation

 If you've ever had a Peanut lashing, you know she's serious and you're in TROUBLE!

And here is order restored, and Peanut being told to calm her self....HAHAHA!

I showed them this little "still video" (which reminds me I should do a little unit on still animation) and they got a kick out of it! Buckwheat said "Nice movie mom!"  Oh the joys of being a Mother!  I Love it, literally!