Three Week Wrap Up: Travels and More

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In our life these weeks…

Well, there was Valentine’s, a visit from a brother-in-law, a huge truck load of logs for the fireplace, the Olympics, and a snowmobile accident right next to our house with huge numbers of rescue workers, including a helicopter.

I also went for a trip to Manitoba, all by myself, to celebrate my Mom’s 75^th birthday and my parents’ 50^th anniversary.  While I was gone the children at home watched way too many movies and did very little learning.  Sigh.  I had never even thought of forbidding movie-watching, because it’s something we always reserve for Friday nights—but our internet provider’s data showed that the days I was gone our internet usage was 5 times higher than normal!  I suppose it was partially due to the Olympics, but still!

Other than that, Miss 16 is struggling with a serious cold and we pray it will not get out of hand like last winter when she became so ill that she lost much of the school year.

In our homeschool …

We worked hard on our together-learning so that no one would fall behind while I was gone.  We’re having such a good time with Grammar of Poetry that I pulled out our old binders with Ambleside Online’s poetry selections.  We also wrote poetry for my parents’ anniversary celebration.

Everyone did fall behind in their schoolwork while I was gone, but at least they were able to enjoy the Olympics in peace without being bothered by incidentals like grammar, fractions, and French.

In our gluten free kitchen… The most beautiful Valentine’s meal prepared by Miss 16, a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.  Soups and stampot and spaghetti.  Cupcakes and Nanaimo bars and cornbread.  Ground beef and roast and sausages and lots of bacon.  Pancakes.  Pudding, and all sorts of other good things.  And, while I was gone, many special convenience foods like chicken wings, tinned mushroom soup, cheerios, chocolate sauce, and chips.

Of course I ate strictly gluten free at my parents and it was not as difficult as at other times.  These are the foods I relied on while living in my mom’s gluten-filled kitchen: V-8, milk, yoghurt, quinoa flakes, frozen veggies, gluten free sausages and liverwurst, ground beef, eggs, fruit, celery sticks, pepper slices, prepared coleslaw mix, almond butter, cashews, raisins, rice cakes for emergencies, and, for a Sunday treat, chocolate chips.  It was not a very inspiring diet, but not bland either.  I discovered that ground beef, coleslaw mix, onion, and V-8 make a delicious, quick, and satisfying soup.  To prevent contamination, I used my own dishes, cutlery, tea towel, and my sister’s gluten free pans.

Some of my favorite things were…

• Visiting my parents
• Coming home
• Spending time with my brother-in-law
• Listening to Mozart with the girls

Questions/thoughts I have… My family really missed me.  They don’t function well without me around, and I don’t recall that from the last time I went to visit my parents.

Fitness… Between getting ready to travel, travelling, coming home, and having a cold, I exercised very little.  Now things are improving and I’m almost at 10,000 steps a day again.

Some of the things I’ve been working on…

• Reading about the history of modern physics
• Homeschooling
• Sleeping away my cold
• Planning how to lose 10 pounds in 20 weeks by fitting in 2 miles of walking a day and learning how to cut out 100 calories a day.

We’re watching… As I said, earlier, our daily internet usage was much higher when I was gone, but much of this was due to the Olympics.  And at my parents’ place I watched Anne of Green Gables.

I’m reading… Micah. I finished Balanced, God and Cosmos, True Reason, Our Only May Amelia, and Polkinghorne’s Quantum Theory. Currently I’m reading Ten Days Without, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, A House for My Name, and The 40 Most Influential Christians.

Reading Aloud… We’re reading Isaiah, Volume 4 of In de Zoete Suikerbol, Young People’s History of the Church, and Henry Hudson.

When my husband is home for meals we read 1 Timothy.

I’m grateful for …. Airplanes.

Quote or link to share….    Here’s a splendid sermon on Psalm 51 I listened to one Sunday afternoon when I was not feeling well enough to go to church.

This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up .