Today's Menu cost: $9.77

Breakfast -cereal with bananas and milk

Breakfast total: $2, .33 cents a serving

Lunch - fried rice, apples

rice- $1
corn- .25
peas- .33
ginger- .10
organic soy sauce - .10
eggs - free
apples - .8

Lunch total: $1.86, .26 cents a serving

Dinner - fried beef wontons, banana splits (I know, I know, not the healthiest meal I've fed my kiddos :O)
1 lb grass fed beef - $1.40
ginger - .10
soy sauce - .10
wontons - $2.98

banana - .8
icecream - .75
caramel syrup -.50

Dinner total: $5.91, .84 cents a serving

Christian feminism

Thought this was a great scriptural response to one of my great pet peeves...


and as a side note, this was Annaliese's birthday cheesecake. We find the nifty candles at Wally-world, I remember someone asking. Part of the birthday fun is choosing your candles.

Special, special day.

coveredbridge, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

At their request, our two eldest kiddos were baptized as an outward sign of their growing faith and new life in Christ.

Sean did the honors in the chilly mountain waters while Chase, Ella, Aiden and I sat by and watched. Across the stream an elderly couple watched too. And God was there.

baptize1, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

Today's Grand Total....

Breakfast: organic oatmeal

3 cups oats - .33
2 cups milk - .25
water - free
flax seeds - .10
honey - free

Breakfast total: .38 cents (plus Sean's coffee - I'll let him figure out how much that cup costs later) .5 per person

Lunch - cold cut sandwiches, crackers, water

cold cuts - $2.50
bread - $2
crackers - $1
natural root beer - .89
bottle of milk for Chase - .25
apples - .8

Lunch total : $6.72, $1.12 per person (Annaliese ate lunch at a friend's)

Dinner - Pasta with pumpkin sauce
Pasta - $1.00 (half left from last night that I had cooked up to put in the soup and a half lb from a new box)
Package of frozen squash (instead of pumpkin) - .33
1/2 red pepper - $1.00
red onion - .50
cream - .75
garlic - .10

Dinner total -$3.68, .53 cents a person

Snack - popcorn - .25, butter - .15
Bottle of milk for Chase - .25

Grand Total - $11.43 (plus Sean's cuppa joe)

How much our meals cost today - $7.46

Breakfast:
cereal and bananas, milk

3/4 box of Peanut Butter Bumpers - $1.75
2 bananas - .16
milk - approx. .50

Breakfast total - $2.41, 34 cents a person

Lunch -
leftover pasta and sauce from dinner last night, apples, water
apples - a bushel for $8, approx 4 cents each
water

Lunch total - .16, .4 cents a person

Dinner :
veggie soup, buttermilk biscuits, water
large can of crushed tomatoes - $1.49, veggies from the garden - free, 1/2 lb past - .50
buttermilk biscuits - buttermilk - .50, butter - .38, dry ingredients - approx $2
water

Dinner total -$4.87, 35 cents a person
(half the soup went into the freezer for another meal)

Grocery shopping for the week so far....

Breyers all natural vanilla bean ice cream - $3.25 (ugh, this pained me. The shop we usually buy ice cream from sells it for buy one at $1.49, get one for .75. It is closed on Sundays though.)
Heavy cream - $3.94
Won-ton wrappers - $2.98
Saifun bean noodles - $1.18
chocolate chips - $2.78 (Ghiradelli, which is why they cost a dollar more than Aldi's. So worth that extra buck!)
Bananas - $2.54

Total: $16.67

Weekly Menu and Grocery List

Sunday am - buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup
dinner - homemade pasta and meat sauce

Mon am -dry cereal with bananas
lunch - leftover pasta and sauce
dinner - veggie soup and buttermilk biscuits

Tues am - oatmeal and o.j.
lunch - cold cut sandwiches, carrot sticks
dinner - penne with pumpkin sauce
buttermilk cookies

Wed am -zucchini bread, milk
lunch -fried rice, canned peaches
dinner - beef wontons, brown rice,

Thursday am - dry cereal with fruit
lunch - pb&j
dinner - miso soup, biscuits

Fri am -oatmeal
lunch - happy plates
dinner -beef and bean chili, cornbread

Sat am - fried dough, orange julius
lunch - chili over rice
dinner - grilled cheese, pasta salad

What I need to buy:
cream
bananas
wonton wrappers
asian noodles
chocolate chips

How little can I spend?

Here's the challenge.
How little can you spend, without causing your family to suffer for it, on groceries this month? Think fresh and bargains and healthy.
If you're up for it, leave a link in the comments so we can follow your progress on your blog and check back here. I'll be posting everything I spend that goes onto our plates and into our bellies for our family of seven.
Need more motivation? I just ordered this book through my library.

Ninth

IMG_5884, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

Happy birthday, beautiful sunshine girl.

The brevity of life

The brevity of life.
That's what has been on my mind, filling my heart.
Brevity.

It shows its face as we talk about fostering, adoption, adding to our family and I realize that half of my fertile years are behind me. I've never regretted having one of our children, even though most of them were unplanned. Instead, I'm shaken, realizing what we would have missed had our plans been.

It falls into my mind as my son asks what year it will be a 1,000 years from now and we fall to talking about leaving a legacy past our lifetimes. Life as a breath.

It sweeps me off again to thinking as I wrap our firstborn's birthday gifts which signify almost a decade of being a Mama. Flown by in an instant.

Brevity. How brief is the life we live.

Learning about the Revolutionary War

For more of my own sake than any other reason, I wanted to make compilation of resources we've used to make the Revolutionary War learning time the fun party time that it has been.

9.18 038s, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

Books:
Johhny Tremain
Ben Bryan: Morgan Rifleman
Revolutionary War on Wednesday
If You lived at the Time of the American Revolution
The Winter of Red Snow:The Revolutionary War Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart

9.18 048, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

Activities:
Role playing colonists, native Americans, soldiers, British officers. This is an activity the kids have just picked up on their own as we've been learning about this time period in history.

Videos:
Liberty's Kids: The Boston Tea Party
Schoolhouse Rock: The Shot Heard Round the World
Liberty's Kids: Midnight Ride

9.18 043, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

Using a timeline to mark out dates, events...

9.18 036, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

Attending a battle re-enactment and demonstration of period correct crafts and occupations was by far, the icing on the cake. Seeing my boys eyes light up as they watched the battle, pointing and talking about everything that was going on made a perfect fall day.

9.18 032, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

9.18 029, originally uploaded by hannahhagarty.

My Day

Chapters read aloud from Ben Bryan, the "Every Letter Makes a Sound" song by a three year old to me, keeping my thumb on one kiddo's not so kind antics, apple cream pies in the oven, talking to my Grandma on the phone, sorting in the attic, pouring over old photos of just the two of us before we had our five by our two oldest (that's Papa?), a fresh coat of paint on a set of shelves intended for filled canning jars, grilled pizzas and newly hung shutters on the porch. Thankful that God gives me grace for every day and fills our home with His immeasurable peace and love,
Have a sweet night,
Hannah

Organic apple picking in upstate NY...

Make do shearing. Shearing by hand. With kitchen shears.

When it rains, it pours.

Four hours in the ER last night/this morning with a boy who stuck a dried bean in his ear. Way in.
First they tried suction, next flushing it and finally a long pair of tweezers did the trick.
Anyone want to take a wild guess as to which fellow is the culprit?

What a difference a little change makes!

Yes, I don't dust quite as often as I should. I'm unashamed about that. But here you see my piano with our gallery in an assortment of frames. I'm not a gold/glitzy type of gal so a bottle of brushed bronze spray paint caught my eye last time I was at Wally-world.

Limping around this afternoon, I managed to dust and spray paint lots of little rectangles on my lawn ;)

What happens when you step on a nail?

"Can you keep your foot up during the day?" she asked and I guess my smile gave away the answer before I laughed and said, "umm, not really."

That's how my day started at 7:30 in urgent care, foot propped up so the doctor could see where I stepped full on onto a nail sticking out of a board last night in the pitch dark. Yes, I tell my kids all the time to wear shoes outdoors, so not following my own advice I had it coming. I'm pretty sure thought that it would have pierced my rubber boots too.

Swollen foot, sore arm (tetanus booster) and sore wallet ($141 antibiotic) later, I'm actually having an enjoyable day immobile. Making Christmas craft gift lists, reading lots of library books and having nice discussions with the kids, enjoying some science experiment videos via youtube and looking forward to laying a very mobile sixteen month old down for his nap in a bit. (smile)

Need another reason to consider home education?

Relaxed homeschooling Pt. 1

I used to call myself a wanna-be unschooler but I think at heart I am more of a relaxed homeschooler. I require my kids to learn math on a daily basis and I think that negates me from ever being trendy enough to be an unschooler.
What does our relaxed home education look like? A little bit of everything. I prefer not to use textbooks, believing that textbooks were designed for schools. I'm a big proponent of not duplicating a school environment in our home. We don't say the pledge every morning and we don't line up in desks. I'm not much for curriculums. They scare me. If there's a fun or hands on way to learn a vital life skill or piece of knowledge, I want to find it and incorporate it.
Ever since I graduated from school, I have loved learning. I don't want our children to have to wait that long.

We went for a nice after-dinner walk last night with friends in the fields behind our home. One little friend was having a rough time, lagging behind, not happy to be not getting his own way.
Aiden stopped playing with his siblings, walked back to the little guy, and took his hand.
The tears stopped.
His dad joked Aiden has a compassion for tantrums since he's had so many.
So true, I think.

Light

This boy we love so much. He is funny, sensitive and we wouldn't trade the last five years for anything.
He has also been one of our more difficult children to parent, which I don't feel bad saying, just honest. Compliance isn't naturally ingrained in his behavioral DNA and because of that he has stretched us in good ways in our parenting.

I know God cares more about our character than our comfort and for this reason I believe He allows situations in life to come that develop our character. I also believe that He gives us the children we need. Parenting has been so good for my selfishness and pride.

I always get a little chuckle when I hear people say "this" is the way to parent, the "only" way to raise children. Truth is some children do great with one method and others do better with another. Every child does great with consistency, which is what Aiden has taught us.

A while back I was listening to a popular parenting author, while wiping down kitchen counters, and I was surprised to hear him say that the Bible says very little about parenting. Of course, I took notice, digested it, mulled it over and disagreed.

Even if you take just one verse: "Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." Even if you take just that one verse, you've got a whole days' worth of parenting wisdom. When every situation of the day is pulled back to a spiritual anchor of "what does God say about this", "what wisdom have we been given for this situation", "what examples have we been given", and "what principles or truths am I teaching through this" - before we know it the day of parenting is over, littles are tucked into bed and we're left with open hearts to God, free to repent and confess our failings and receive His strength and forgiveness for the next.

I know it is hard to take time to teach or to spend your day being intentional about pulling things back to the fine sieve of those questions! Days are long and hard sometimes. But whether or not we are intentional about it, we are teaching our children throughout the day in everything we do. They watch us, they listen and even at their young ages, they have insight and understanding.

If we're not sowing into our children's lives from a basis of pleasing the Spirit, then we are sowing into them from a basis of our own sinful nature. If I speak my opinion, which does not line up with God's truth, I am sowing pride into my children. If I cannot control my tongue but teach them that "a soft answer turns away wrath" and "the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of Christ", I am teaching and sowing into them disrespect for God's word.

Are we supposed to be perfect parents then? Are Christian families perfect? No! We are dirty mirrors of God's love and perfection, faulty at our best. Any good in my mothering or wife-ing is Him. So many times I have asked my kids for forgiveness or gathered them around and shared a verse from the Bible that God is using to teach me a better way. If we hide our sin under pride from our children, we are doing them a great disservice.

Aiden has taught me that my children being pleasant and kind and fun to be around is not a reflection of me, but of Christ. He's taught me that I have to do the right thing and be consistant even when I am tired and don't want to get up. In turn, we've been rewarded with a little boy who is so compassionate, the first to help a friend, the first to lend a hand to be squeezed when a splinter is being removed from a sibling, the first to pray a compassionate, heartfelt prayer, the first to think *how* things make other people feel. Now, I love that he is strong willed. I see how God can use that wonderful trait in his life. I'm pretty sure he's the most awesome five year old boy on the planet and I am so thankful for the blessing of his life.

Nature and Ella

I've mentioned before how clever my father is in the woods and among plants. He lives north of us and receives an extra few months of winter but still, his garden puts mine to shame! Perhaps its a throwback to his years in forestry school or that he reads so much, but my Dad knows so much about so many plants.

His love for plants has sparked an interest in me, almost a feeling a shame about not knowing anything about all the wild things that grows around here. Earlier this year I devoured a few good books on foraging. While I'm not so motivated yet to go dig up cattail tubers to use as potatoes, I have been motivated to use more of the resources around us that go unused. Its been handy to know which plants to pick and use to treat bug bites, since kids and bug bites seem to go hand in hand and we don't use chemical sprays.


Yesterday I pulled the van to the side of a country road on the way back from the library. The boys and I climbed out and they helped me pick the fruit off of a crab-apple tree that was just sitting lazily by the side, hanging over an old barbed wire fence. We cooked them down with cinnamon and cloves and the juice is drip, drip, dripping from a jelly bag as I write, a beautiful shade of cranberry/raspberry red.

Again this afternoon we set out with foraging in mind, bringing a basket to hold whatever treasures we might find. We found mint, wild apples for sauce, raspberries and blackberries and in an old part of once farmed land, a plethora of old milk bottles, canning jars and even a chamber pot! We left the chamber pot but brought home a pretty aqua ball canning jar and a beautiful old doorknob that reminded us of some in our home.

Everyone is tired and resting now, including me. I am very much looking forward to Chase being able to hike alongside me instead of on my back!

A few of our moments off -grid

On a few occasions, I've tried to talk my husband into moving north to our little cabin in the woods. The thought of having no mortgage payment and no electric bill thrills me, to say the least. Being far, far away from a real grocery store doesn't sound too fun though. Either does two extra months of winter!

We hiked out our dirt road to visit my Dad's place. The smell of the woods and the peacefulness is unmatched. We had bonfires with Grandpa, listened to owls as we lay tucked in our beds, made midnight runs out into the dark to pee, heard coyotes, listened to stories of the bear that visits Grandpa and Grandma and hoped we didn't see him, roasted marshmallows, laughed as Ella consoled herself with the thought that the outhouse wasn't too deep for Papa to pull her out, visited a lake, read a few chapters, wished for Chase to sleep at night, napped, swam in the cold, cold creek with Papa, played with Grandma, made Grandma get teary by saying her name for the first time (Chase!),ate lots of yummy food, played games, and had Sunday worship and reading in the wild.

Grandma bought the kiddos balloons. She always does and they love it and look forward to it. Aiden was surprised to see his had a special shape!



We made it home with six loads of laundry and happy, tired children. Sounds like a successful trip, right?

Hi-ho, hi-ho - off grid we go!

We'll be spending the weekend here. With bears and moose and deer. Without electricity or plumbing or running water or phone or computer. (GULP).
Looking forward to the quiet, some hand sewing, and breezy forest walks with my family.
A good friend is settling down here to keep watch over the various critters.
Enjoy your long weekend!
Hannah

Dining Room chair Makover

If you haven't been in our home before think old wooden chairs. We bought them all at auctions or were given them. Non-matchy.
Sturdy but mismatching no longer. Well, they are still sturdy but now they match each other thanks to a few coats of semi gloss black paint and interior decorator fabric seat covers.