Friday, November 20, 2009

Perhaps the most unexciting day ever

Next week we are having both the book club and Thanksgiving at our house. With two events in one week the kids and I decided (well I decided) that we should clean the house and dehomeschool it. For one event I would just pick up a bit, but for two, well we are pulling out all the stops. Sadly we only managed to get as far as the living room because that took the whole afternoon. I have been in other homeschool houses that look like ours. Projects, books, papers, games, school supplies and the like take over and multiply while we aren't looking. Then I have been in homeschool houses where there isn't a spoon in the sink or a project in sight. I was in one house where you won't even be able to tell that kids lived there, much less homeschooled kids. Even the basement was void of traces of children. Not ours, we keep the pencil sharpener on an end table by the comfy chair because we use it so much.

We vacuumed every square inch of the living room, even moved out all the furniture including the couch. Dusted every surface and baseboard. Recycled of two grocery bags full of papers and magazines. Put all the books and games where they were suppose to be in the first place and found homes for the projects and parts of projects that were hiding in the corners and piled on the ends of the couch. We even watered the plants and pick off their dead leaves. If you want to be a plant in my house you need to adapt to living in desert conditions because I don't tend to them very often. Then I sat down with a soda and reveled in the joy of our clean living room. I wanted to burn the memory in my mind in case it doesn't happen again.

Yesterday Spark and I didn't walk at all because we were gone almost the entire day with sorting our co-op order, gym at the YMCA and dance class. To make up for some of our lost miles today we walked five miles between the two of us. I walked outside where it is getting colder than it has been the last few days. The chill in the air made me think that we should have soup for supper.

I came in and we made cream of broccoli potato soup. All of the cream soup we make is made the same basic way. We chop onion, garlic, carrots and celery and saute them in olive oil until soft. In another pot boil whatever kind of soup it is going to be, broccoli, cauliflower, potato spinach etc. Throw in some chicken bullion with the veggies, if we don't have any chicken stock. In the pot with the sauteed mix I put in a bit of butter and scoop of flour. When that is cooked I start slowly adding the water from the veggies and let it thicken. Then I dump in the rest of the veggies and add milk until I get as much soup as we will eat. If there is any ham leftover or mushrooms in the fridge I will throw that in as well. When we eat it we put in some cheese in our bowl, add some crackers and call it dinner.

After supper was cleaned up and the barn chores done the kids worked on some projects. Dancer pinned a few of her quilt pieces together and assembled her things for a dance show tomorrow. Spark made a little headway on his dog education project for 4-H. And to make the evening really exciting.........Dad and I vacuumed the stairs! How is that for a romantic Friday night?

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