It’s a gorgeous day outside here at our house… pull up a chair. Sit and chat a while.

October is a month of getting back to the basics for us. You can’t get more basic than a good home-cooked meal, right? 🙂 My mom gave me a bottle of Raspberry Chipotle Sauce by Fischer and Wieser about a month ago and in the last couple of weeks I’ve had the opportunity to try it. MM-mmm!!! I give this two thumbs up! I baked some chicken in it once and I basted some turkey breast in it a second time and cooked it in a skillet. Both times it was just delicious. I believe she bought this jar at Costco, but it’s also available here. If sweet and spicy is your thing, this is it.

In school, math is a very basic and essential skill. This past week I gave Princess a Saxon placement test in preparation for switching curriculum. Big Daddy wants me to use Saxon math. Initially I started her on Math-U-See because she was having trouble grasping the concept. Now that she’s got the hang of it, I think moving to Saxon will be just fine. And since it will make Big Daddy feel better, I think it would be wise. She did well on the placement test except for two things: telling time (she only missed one but they have to get them all right to get the point for that section) and money math (she missed most of those.) All curriculum are structured differently, so it’s just a switching-curriculum issue. Her first grade MUS book hasn’t addressed time or money. I’ve been teaching her a little outside of class and I’ve printed several free worksheets to help her work on this while she finishes up her first grade book so she can start with the Saxon two book. For free counting worksheets look here and here and here and here. For free telling time worksheets, see here and here and here.

When you think of chores, you probably think of laundry and dishes, don’t you? And then you probably cringe. 🙂 I know that those are my two least favorite chores. What I hate most are season changes. 🙂 I love that the weather is cooler, but that means we need more clothes out in circulation and that means more laundry to keep up with. I never seem to pull out the “old” clothes fast enough either. I’m committing to doing that this time though. I know we could still have some hot days, but I’m going to go ahead and pull out 80% of the summer clothes and pull out the fall clothes. I’ll probably have to do that again in about six or 8 weeks and pull out all the summer clothes and add in the thicker winter clothes. Here, we don’t really have separate fall and winter wardrobes. Our winter wardrobe is our fall stuff with some sweatshirts, sweaters, and jackets added to it. 🙂 Today and tomorrow I need to go through ALL of the kids’ clothes and purge as much as I can. Some of them will be stored for later, but many of them can go in the yard sale I’m participating in on Saturday. I’m praying it goes well and I’m able to make some money for more school books. That’s two birds with one stone. More books, less clothes to keep up with. 🙂

Well, today I’m fighting off a sinus infection. So today is all about basics, too. Food, water, sleep and the bare minimum of school and chores. Sometimes you gotta just stick to the basics. 🙂

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Amber

Hey, y’all! I’m Amber and I wear many hats. I drink a ton of coffee and I’m constantly sweeping crumbs off the floor. After 18 years of homeschooling, I’m getting close to graduating my third child and now we are starting over at preschool with our fourth, Lil Miss Mouse. She keeps us young and she’s the main reason for my excessive coffee consumption. Drink up!