There's nothing wrong with you!

There's a very good reason we have such a problem with spending in our culture. We're not just being bombarded with commercials and advertisements designed to convince us we Just. Can't. Live. Without. such and such gadget, but we're also subjected constantly to an attitude that money equals success and therefore a lack of a large bank account must mean failure.

And who wants to feel like a failure?

This starts very young. It's not just the entertainment industry and retail businesses feeding us this horrific lie, either. Starting all the way back in grade school we are told that we must perform well in our classes, not to become better people, not to acquire knowledge to help us someday make a difference in the world; no, we're told this because it will be important that we "get into a good college" when we graduate high school. And why is that so important? Because, of course, we have to "get a good job." That's it. In the end, public schools are teaching us that it's all about the money. (More in full post.)

With that kind of pressure on us, is it any wonder so many of us wind up in the big houses we can't afford, driving the expensive cars and wearing the designer clothes, so we can at least appear like we aren't failures, even if it means being way over our heads in debt? And the pressure only grows when we have children, as others tell us we're depriving our kids and damaging them for life - even abusing them (!) - if we don't let them live like we're quite well off, even if we aren't. And if we aren't affluent enough to afford all the latest this-es and thats? Well, there comes that failure label again, only now, we aren't just personal failures, now we've failed our children, too.

It's all a bunch of horse hooey.

Children need to be fed. (Nutritious meals - NOT Burger King!) They need a clean, safe home, whether it's an apartment or a condo or a house or a manufactured home or a trailer. They need clothing - no over-paid designer's name stamped on the pocket necessary. They need an education, which doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars to be good. And mostly, they need the love, care, and time of their parents/guardians. The things beyond these basics are treats and should be handled as such. No child *needs* to watch television. This is a treat. No child *needs* to have an ice cream cone with mint chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate sprinkles. Again, it's just a treat.

Give them too many treats to often and you wind up with spoiled children who have no concept of money nor of self-restraint. And self-restraint is not a bad thing! It prevents you from buying every little thing that catches your temporary fancy, which will only drive you straight to financial ruin.

So right now what I want to say is this: There is nothing wrong with you! (Or your spouse.) You are not a failure just because you don't have a six figure income. Your house does not need to be a palace. Your car doesn't have to be a Mercedes. If you've been struggling with this lie, if you've been feeling ashamed or guilty or anything else because our society gives off an attitude like nothing less than a McMansion is acceptable, take a moment to step back and re-evaluate.

Whether you are just beginning to get control of your own finances, or if you've been living within your means for a long time, real success is not the amount of money you have, but rather how well you are living your life regardless of how many dollars you can call your own. Ignore the critics and focus on what's really important. So what if your own home is only 1100 square feet in a working class neighborhood while Family X lives on some million dollar estate? They are no better than you are and you are not a failure because of it. Don't compare what you have to what anyone else has. It doesn't even matter in the end.

Remember, it's a cliche, but it's true. You really can't take it with you. And when you come to the end of your life, you will not be looking back at your bank account. You will be looking at your friends, your family, your loved ones, at the memories and milestones.

And should someone ever imply you're a failure for not having some smashing career with an outrageous salary, just remind yourself that you are doing what's right, and doing what's necessary to live by the means you have for you and your family. Yes, sometimes you might slip or maybe you're currently facing a mountain of debt you're trying to climb out of, but if you keep working at it, one baby step at a time, then you are a true success, not just the flimsy image of one.

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Car care tips.

MOTOR TREND offers these simple suggestions for making sure your vehicle is running at its most fuel-efficient and possibly lower your gasoline expenses.

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Free Jane Austen unit.

Some free Jane Austen novels and study guides:

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (Through Wowio. Free, but you must register.)
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE STUDY GUIDE
SPARKNOTES PRIDE AND PREJUDICE STUDY GUIDE

PERSUASION
PERSUASION STUDY GUIDE
SPARKNOTES PERSUASION STUDY GUIDE

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Family traditions, part 2.

To follow up from my FIRST TRADITIONS POST, I wanted to talk about some other traditions we have in our family. (More in full post.)

One thing I didn't mention in my last post but we also do every November, along with our Thanksgiving traditions - we participate in NaNoWriMo's YOUNG WRITERS PROGRAM. If you are familiar with the original NANOWRIMO - National Novel Writing Month, then you know every November thousands of people try to write a novel, or at least 50,000 words, in one month. The young writers program is a little different, in that you can set a word goal ahead of time, not necessarily 50,000. (In fact, we follow the rule of thumb for 1,000 per age year. For instance, a 9-year-old would write 9,000 words, except both my children work together on the same book.) Once the official writing frenzy is over, we take the work we've done, clean it up and "publish" it by printing it, designing a cover, and comb-binding it. Several years ago the children made up an imaginary kingdom with a name that's made out of parts of their first names combined and each story they write is set there. I consider these books family heirlooms now.

BTW - If you're interested in participating in the Young Writers Program, they do allow homeschoolers to join. In fact, there's a special homeschoolers section on the forum.

It wasn't until I got married that I learned people actually eat certain things for "good luck" on New Year's Day. Since I really don't put any stock in luck, I told my husband he was welcome to keep eating black-eyed peas and cornbread on January 1st, but I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it. (Especially because we eat black-eyed peas and cornbread several times a year!) We also don't write out resolutions. What we *do* do is on December 31st get out our New Year's Notebook and write down our most exciting or favorite memory/event/activity from the past year, and why we chose it. It's fun to look back over the years and see what we all chose in the past. There's a definite trend in events always seeming to be something that happened in the latter part of the year - which doesn't say much for our memory skills! :)

Our Valentine's celebrations always consist of a "everyone makes his/her own cake" afternoon. What that really means is I bake a few small round cakes and a few small square cakes and we cut them up and use them to make heart shapes, which the kids and I then frost and decorate with a choice of toppings. We also all make homemade Valentine's hearts (from construction paper) for each other and then they are displayed by hanging them by thread from the ceiling over the dining table. Each heart has a message written to the recipient that starts with "I love you because...". After Valentine's Day, these are put away in a shoe box like our Thanksgiving tree leaves, so that we can take them out and look at them while we're making our new hearts each year.

A few years ago, we started a new Easter tradition, aside from the food and goodies we serve. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are devoted to church and family time, but the Thursday before Easter my kids have a "school-work hunt", because we don't have Easter egg hunts. (They're a little old for that now.) All right, I know what you're thinking - who'd want to look for school work? If you've looked at my lesson plans, you know we rely heavily on the internet. The week before Easter, I pick certain websites with activities and games that pertain to what we are currently studying. I build a web page with some sort of outdoor/forest image as the "setting" and I hide the links to the websites on the page. The children have to mouse around the page and find these links. For instance, a bird in the sky might be a link, or a certain flower, or a rock on the ground. Once they find a link, they click on it, play the game or do the activity, then go back to the webpage to find another link, until they've found them all. Once they've completed the tasks, they click on a link that says, "I'm done!" and that takes them to the beginning of a story I've written about the scene/setting they've just explored. It's really just some sort of long-ish writing prompt. They take my story starter, and it's their job to finish it. They LOVE doing this. So much so, in fact, that they keep asking if I'll make a school-work hunt for them in the fall, too.

We end our school year with a Make-Your-Own Pizza and Banana Split party. This is basically a family celebration where the kids get to build their own pizzas using dough I've made and a variety of toppings and then make their own desserts. Afterwards, we watch a movie (checked out from the library) together. We also present the kids with promotion certificates I've printed from a free site.

So, these are our family traditions. Feel free to post more of yours and share ideas. I love to read about what other families do. :)

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Friday Five for Free (5)

If you're around my age, you may recall those old television commercials that ran when we were children where people were encouraged to send away for free information booklets from the government, and the address to mail our requests was in Pueblo, Colorado.

What you might not know, is you can still do that, only now, you can find the information on-line. No really. They even use "pueblo" in the URL. :)

Here are five booklets worth ordering, downloading, or reading on-line. (More in full post.)

1) 2007 CONSUMER ACTION HANDBOOK - "This everyday guide to being a smart shopper is chocked full of helpful tips about buying a car or home, preventing identity theft, understanding credit, resolving problems after a purchase, and much more. In the 2007 edition, you'll find new information about filing for bankruptcy, finding a lawyer, and planning a funeral, along with many other useful topics."

2) HANDS ON BANKING - "Money skills you need for life. Customized instruction in English and Spanish for four age groups, from 4th grade through adult. Adults curriculum is a valuable resource for success in personal money management, includes special sections on buying a home, investing, and starting and managing a small business. Curriculum for school-age students meets or exceeds national education standards for math, literacy, and economics. Available free to the public on CD-ROM, the Internet, and printed curriculum."

3) START SMART: MONEY MANAGEMENT FOR TEENS - discusses saving, spending, borrowing, and more.

4) TAKING THE MYSTERY OUT OF RETIREMENT PLANNING - Even though this is "designed for people who are about 10 years away for retirement" - don't let that stop you if you are younger than the target age group. Learning as much as you can about retirement planning now, no matter how far off it may actually be, can only help you in the long run.

5) SIMPLE STRATEGIES FOR MANAGING YOUR MONEY - "Be Prepared, Be Informed, Be in Charge"

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8 Things About Me

CHARITY tagged me. (*Waves* to Charity. :) No worries about going "off topic"!)

The Rules:

The rules are simple. Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Thing One: I'm such a geek, I had to fight the urge to correct the rules to say "Each player lists 8 facts/habits about himself/herself.", and then continue on through the rest of the rules to fix that error each time it shows up.

Thing Two: I don't lie about my age or have any problem telling people how old I am (37). Wrinkles are a badge of honor in my book.

Thing Three: I really, really don't like spiders. I grew up in an area with FIDDLEBACKS and so spiders were always considered the enemy. I never really got over that.

Thing Four: I read The Lord of the Rings when I was in 7th grade - all three books in just four days, while school was in session. I read every spare minute I had, in class, at lunch, after school and late, late into the night until I fell asleep.

Thing Five: Any time someone says, "Life doesn't come with an instruction manual." I promptly reply, "Sure it does. It's called the Bible."

Thing Six: I married my high school sweetheart one year after we graduated. Our 18th anniversary is in 10 days.

Thing Seven: I believe in going to the source of things. If I suspect an article or story is bogus, I will investigate. I have called the FBI, the CIA, and various other law enforcement agencies (to find out about crimes supposedly committed), university professors (to confirm studies done on various foods or products), and tracked down countless footnotes in things I have read. There is a highly disturbing amount of information out there that is total bunk when you start really looking in to it.

Thing Eight: My current "just for me/not a gift" project that I'm working on is a filet crochet table cloth for a round table. I hope to have it done by late October.


And... my apologies to anyone being retagged if I missed it.

1) 5 KIDS AND A DOG
2) HOMESCHOOL IN THE LITTLE HOUSE
3) WALKING ALONG THE ROAD
4) MY TWENTY CENTS KEEPS MOVING!
5) WING AND PRAYERS
6) THE RANDOM ACCOUNT OF QUASIMODO
7) PEAKMORE ACADEMY
8) THE ROAD TO TOTAL GROWTH MIND BODY AND SPIRIT

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Money talk in the news.

First, ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT I am now worth $138,095 a year. Heh. Guess what. To my family, I'm priceless. It's highly unlikely I will ever earn that much money in one year, but I know you can't really put a salary on the work mothers do, so it's always amusing to see what someone tries to say our work is worth.

And then there's THIS STORY that will make your head spin. For instance, there's this:

In wealthy Westchester, N.Y., a couple earning $200,000 a year could barely afford the $2,500 fee that Kathy Boyle, a New York certified financial planner, charged for creating a plan.

"If you drive by their house in Westchester, their life seems like nirvana. They live in a $1.1 million home on a gorgeous road, with two luxury cars in the driveway," Boyle says. "But walking inside their financial house, it's in shambles."

Today, their 19-year-old son's college bills are paid by a generous family friend because they cannot afford them. Yet the mother stays at home with the 13-year-old daughter.

Boyle advised the mother to consider going back to work, but she declined, saying her daughter "needs her." The extra income could have helped the couple tackle their $20,000 credit card debt and maybe start a college-savings fund for their daughter.

Wow. Let me just get past the making $200,000 a year and can't even pay the bills thing for a moment and focus on something else here. I sure hope Ms. Boyle did a lot more for her $2500 than tell this mother to get a job! And if this family honestly needed to pay someone to tell them something plainly obvious - then it's no wonder they're in such financial trouble! The tone of this article is astounding. "... because they cannot afford them. Yet the mother stays at home...." This is posed as if everything is out of whack solely because mom's not working outside the home. This family has a real problem and quite frankly, Ms. Boyle's advice is actually pretty bad. If mom goes back to work, based on their current spending habits, it is only very likely that they will simply start spending and buying more with whatever money she brings in. More money is not going to be an overall solution here. This family needs to rethink their spending habits on a grand scale and learn to live with less. Until that happens, they will always be in trouble. Hopefully Ms. Boyle will actually explain this to them, or someone else will do it, because only then will they be able to achieve some sort of financial stability.

But you know the real question here?

Just what is it dad does that he's worth $61,905 more than I am? ;)

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Wednesday Quick Tip (3)

So, do you have a bacon lover in the family? I do! While my entire family likes it, one member - my son - LOVES the stuff. Since it's not exactly the healthiest thing out there, I do limit the intake. Still, occasionally I'll pick some up and here's something I've found very helpful.

Have you seen those packages of microwavable "pre-cooked" bacon that cost way too much for 15 or 16 slices? You can make your own pre-cooked slices easily enough, buying the inexpensive store brands of regular bacon. Fry or microwave the entire package at the same time. Er... I mean, fry a few pieces at once, but cook the whole pack while you're at it. :) Cook it until just slightly underdone for your preferences.

Blot off the excess grease, then refrigerate it. (I keep it in a plastic container, with layers separated by some parchment paper.) When you want to serve some bacon, just take out the number of slices you want and crisp them up in the microwave. We have a small 700 watt microwave and it usually takes 20 seconds to warm up 4 slices.

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Well, golly. I rock! Hee.

So, *blush* MOMMA KNOWS - nominated (designated?) me for



- which? Aw. Thanks. And I totally think you rock, too. :) And my husband will be so amused by this, because I'm such a nerd, no one would ever usually associate me with something, you know, cool. LOL!

Now I get to choose 5 ladies who also rock and wow! That's hard! Not because there aren't any - I assure you - but because there are so many! I just love the internet and how we can all connect this way.

So, here's what I thought I'd do. Rather than just linking to a blog itself, I'm pointing you to my nominees by way of posts they've made that I found particularly awesome. I'm assuming that's okay, because I did manage to track down the creator of the award, HERE and I'm not seeing any definite rules.

Go see Kathy at BROKEN HOMESCHOOL - and read "8 Things Everybody Knows You Need To Homeschool (But You Don’t)" - I couldn't agree more with her - she nailed it.

Have some COFFEE WITH MRS. DANI - and explore whether Mom can even afford to work. She breaks it all down very well and I hope plenty of moms considering staying at home run into someone who can offer them this same sage advice.

This next one might seem like an odd choice. Tersie at THE ROAD TO TOTAL GROWTH MIND BODY AND SPIRIT has an amazing blog that shows a determined, gutsy lady I really admire, and if you aren't a regular reader already, you should be. But I chose this post not for those reasons. I chose it because it made me laugh out loud when I read it. So loud, in fact, that my children demanded to know what was so funny and when I told them, they laughed, too. (Tersie - we weren't laughing at you like, "What a moron!" or anything. We were laughing because on more than one occasion I have tried to open the doors to vans that don't belong to me. Fortunately for me, I haven't actually succeeded yet!)

Quasimodo, might call her blog a RANDOM ACCOUNT, but her posts on paying attention to home are very thoughtful and thought-provoking. I'm linking to part one, but make sure to also read her newly posted part 2.

And last (but of course not least!) Drop in at THE HOMESCHOOL IN THE LITTLE HOUSE - for a beautifully written post reminding us that we are who God made us and meant for us to be - whether we are oak trees or sunflowers.

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Fascinating article about price tags.

THIS ARTICLE has some interesting theories about the adverse (for consumers) effects of the "price tag only on the shelf" system that has become the norm for most of the country. The story ends with words of hope, about a possible solution, but, in the meantime, we should all be very aware of the points brought up here.

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Are you tracking your spending?

Back at the beginning of June, I encouraged you to RECORD EVERY PENNY YOU SPENT. Now that we're in July, how did June look for you? Did you have some entries in the "Money I Never Should Have Spent" column? Whatever reason you had for spending that money then, what do you think about it now? No, I'm not trying to brow-beat you here! This isn't about "Bad Mom! Off to bed without supper for you!" This is about changing your buying habits if you need to, even if it's just a little bit at a time. (More in full post.)

We are all products of our society and we are bombarded by advertising on a daily basis. It's on TV, the radio, bill boards, mail-outs, the internet - it is pretty much inescapable. Not only that, but we even have people *urging* us to spend every dime we have and then some, because, if we don't, we're not supporting our country. Huh. With that philosophy firmly entrenched, we're creating a population that, as we age, winds up needing the country to support us! If you aren't already, start thinking very carefully about every purchase you make. Watch those pennies! You're probably already tired of hearing me say this, but remember, this is all about being responsible and living within your means. It is also about planning for your own future, outside of what the government might hand you in retirement. It can be done and you can do it, even if you're currently in debt and starting from less than zero. Take it step by step and day by day and you will get there.

And keep on keeping on with your budget book and recording those purchases so you know precisely what areas you need to work on more. :)

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Gift giving for single friends.

If you have any family or friends who live by themselves, or if you yourself have ever lived alone, you're probably aware of the challenges that face a single guy or gal when it comes to eating at home. Shopping for smaller portions is difficult, (and often more costly because bulk-buying can be less appealing to someone who knows he'll have to eat the entire "family pack" of chicken drumsticks himself.) There are items like celery or lettuce that can go bad before being consumed. There are other considerations, as well, like a lack of scaled down recipes and even the general feeling of "I don't even like bothering with cooking when it's just for me."

This situation presents you with a wonderful gift you can present your friend either for a birthday or Christmas or any other event - even just as an "I appreciate you." surprise. (More in full post.)

What you will need: Freezer containers, enough for several meals, in sizes of individual portions. (Note: I do freeze many things in plastic bags, because they can lay flat in the freezer, but it is up to you whether you want to do this, or would rather use something studier as this is for a gift.)

Several weeks before you are giving the gift, pick one or two meals you are cooking for your own family and increase the portions enough to include one more serving. If you do this far enough in advance, to where you are only picking one meal a week, you can squeeze this into your regular food budget with very little adjustment.

Freeze the extra portions, making sure to label and date them. Do this each week until you have as many meals as you want to give. I personally like to give 7, as a "Week of Dinners Just for You". Also, if you bake your own breads, you can add a loaf, a dozen biscuits, dinner rolls or mix of different breads to the gift. Write or type up a page with a list of each meal and any heating instructions the recipient will need to know. (For instance, if I give a bowl of chili, I also grate some cheese and freeze this in a small bag, so my instructions will include the note that the cheese is to be thawed and sprinkled on the chili.)

I deliver this gift in a regular brown paper bag, which, sadly, nowadays I can only seem to find at Target. I will occasionally go to Target and cruise their "Dollar Spot" section and then, if I purchase anything, I always request a paper sack to carry it. They do have nice, sturdy bags, with handles, which is particularly helpful. I put the instructions in with a nice handmade card, and I always try to add a few pieces of fresh fruit, such as an apple or two, or a banana.

This is a great gift for young folks just out on their own, all the way to older retirees. Before my father - a widower, he'd lost my step-mother to cancer - passed away some years ago, I quite frequently brought him a bag of meals and it was not only something nice for him, but peace-of-mind for me, knowing he was eating a good, home-cooked meal and not running out to some local junk-food place again.

Everyone I have ever done this for has always expressed a great appreciation for it, especially the gentlemen. As my BIL once said, "This is even better than winning a free meal at a local restaurant. It's a whole week of food and no one's trying to sell me anything!" :)

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Sign the Declaration of Independence.

Blogging fly-by from Summer Science Camp: THIS SITE (THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES) has an awesome feature where you can sign and then print a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Too cool.

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Host a summer day camp.

Looking for something fun (and not budget-busting) to do this summer? How about having a week-long or once-a-week day camp? You could pick any one theme, such as art, or have a different theme each day like History Day and Music Day.

Borrowing from the idea of weekly science camps held at the Orlando Science Center, this week we're having a Summer Science Camp at our house. We have two other homeschool families involved for 8 kids total. The experiments are all conducted using common household items and the kids are filling out FREE SCIENCE EXPERIMENT NOTEBOOKING FORMS for each experiment. (More in full post.)

Our camp is meeting daily from 10:00 until 3:00 and we're sharing lunch costs by each family contributing different food items for each lunch. Today was Chemistry day. We followed several experiments found online and let the kids begin their Summer Science Camp notebooks. Tomorrow we'll be having a Physical Science day. Wednesday is "Backyard Science", which will combine some fun outdoor science experiments and a 4th of July party. (For instance, instead of traditional fireworks - we'll be making an exploding volcano.) Thursday, we'll be studying Earth Science, and on Friday we'll be having a general science fun day to wrap up all the experiments that took more than one day, due to necessary observations of results, followed by a movie and a presentation of CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION.

Summer day camps hosted by companies like the YMCA can run hundreds of dollars or more per child, but if that's out of the question for your budget, as it is for ours, you can recreate the same concept right at home. Find some friends to join in and though it's a learning experience, keep the focus on the fun. Be sure to take plenty of photos, too, so that the kids can have some to paste in notebooks if they're making them, or in a homemade photo album. (I use a digital camera and print pictures right off my color printer on regular paper - not the expensive photo paper.) You can host every day at your house, as we're doing, or have each family host a day or two at their own homes.

We're making our notebooks in plain green folders I bought last summer for 10 cents each. I printed THE PERIODIC TABLE and glued them to the fronts for covers.

At the end of the week the kids will have their notebooks, their certificates, and a few "souvenirs" like spongy eggs - made from soaking eggs in vinegar - and the crystals we're growing.

We had a lot of fun today, but wow! I think I might need a nap now! :)

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Science - weeks 5 & 6.

The Integrated Science lesson plans for weeks 5 and 6 are posted.

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Family traditions, part 1.

Independence Day is this week and so I thought I'd mention some holiday traditions in our house. Having certain traditions creates an even deeper sense of family and belonging and it gives your children something special to look forward to. That does not mean that you have to go crazy in a "buy-out-the-store" way like retailers would have you believe. In fact, focusing your traditions on other things, outside of material gifts, can make them all the more meaningful. (More in full post.)

I'll start with Independence Day, since it's right around the corner. We celebrate the day a few ways, including a reading of the Declaration of Independence. We also have a "red, white, and blue" shortcake for dessert with our dinner - which is strawberry shortcake with blueberries added. I only make this once a year, on the 4th, so my kids see it as an extra special treat. (Familiarity breeding contempt and all that.) In the evening, we take a blanket and a bottle of lemonade and go sit out by a nearby lake where there's a fireworks display. It's all very simple, but it's something the children know as a family tradition and something they can look forward to.

On the first day of October every year, I start the morning with pumpkin pancakes and homemade apple syrup, plus slices of Canadian bacon. Again, this is something that only happens once a year, so my kids really love it. Were I to make pumpkin pancakes more frequently, they'd lose their "specialness." Weather permitting, we follow our breakfast with a nature walk where we gather up some fallen leaves - not a lot here in Florida, sadly, and usually they're all brown - and we bring them home and do leaf rubbings using crayons that are orange, red, and yellow - so that we can make our own fall foliage. (On the one year that it was just pouring down rain that morning, we ended up drawing our leaves instead.) These leaves are set aside until November, for a special Thanksgiving project.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, we make our "Thanksgiving Tree." This is a bare tree cut out from construction paper and taped to the wall. We carefully cut out our leaf rubbings and write things we are thankful for on them, then tape them to the tree. This will include the names of friends and families and other blessings from the year. On Thanksgiving day, we get out a shoebox where we keep the leaves from Thanksgivings past and read out the things we'd written in previous years, and after Thanksgiving is over, we add the current year's leaves to the box. (Actually, the box has gotten quite full. We might be needing to start a new one this year!)

In addition to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner we always serve - plus a chocolate pie my husband loves, also something I only make this one time of the year - every Thanksgiving we also read from a book about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.

And this leads into the Christmas season for us. We do not do any formal schooling from the Sunday before Thanksgiving until the new year. (Hence the reason we're actually doing school right now.) First of all, it gives us the chance to focus on the holiday season and second, here in Florida the weather is so hot right now, we might as well stay inside and get our book work done, and then, in the late fall, when things are much nicer, we spend a lot of time outside.

After Thanksgiving is over, we do two things. We get out our Christmas decorations and we construct our advent calendar. We make a new calendar each year out of construction paper. We decorate our home (with mostly handmade things) and set up our Advent wreath. (Special note - I've seen Advent wreaths in catalogs in recent years, costing quite a lot of money. You can assemble one yourself using discount store purchases for around $5.) At the beginning of December, the kids will make a bunch of ornaments. Some are given as gifts to family members, and some are hung on our own tree. We also make a special trip to the grocery store where we buy things to be delivered to the local food bank. In mid-December, we have our annual "Yummy Baking Day" where we will make cookies and spiced/sugared nuts and candy, to be used as gifts for various people, like the kids' Sunday School teachers. And of course, the kids get to eat a lot of the results themselves. We don't often have dessert throughout the year, except on special occasions - but we sure make up for it at Christmas time!

Christmas Eve we have a special dinner with any family members in town, followed by a Bible reading about the birth of Jesus, and then we go to a midnight service at church. On Christmas morning - pretty late in the morning; everyone sleeps in! - the kids get up and get their stockings, then we have a brunch which is always Monkey Bread, fresh fruit, and Quiche Lorraine. (Which - yep, you guessed it - the bread and quiche are only served this one time of the year.) Because the kids choose their gifts themselves, they aren't surprised by anything, but they are allowed to bring their new things out to play with in the afternoon, then in the evening, after a nice dinner, we watch a movie together.

I will talk about other holiday traditions we have in another post, but I wanted to bring the topic up because I think maintaining traditions - whatever may suit your family - is the best way to keep any holiday focused on the meaning behind it, rather than on the "buy-buy-buy" mentality advertisers try to sell us. Don't you just *love* those commercials every year where we're being sold the idea that it would be really awesome of us to give cars as gifts? Oi!

Special times are not made special because of the amount of money we spent on them. They are made special by togetherness, fun, and the time spent on them. I did not grow up in a family that had many traditions, and neither did my husband, so we've had to create them ourselves as we go along, but we've found them to be something our children adore and anticipate with a great deal of excitement. This past Easter I had suggested to my children that perhaps we didn't need our traditional "baby chick" cookies* I always make, because I thought maybe my kids would think they were too old for them now, but both children were utterly horrified at the suggestion and so I made them again. Lesson learned! I suppose I'll still be making those cookies even when my kids are grown.

So feel free to jump in here with any traditions your family enjoys! We can swap ideas and perhaps find new traditions to begin. :)

*Baby Chick Cookies - these are made using a BASIC COOKIE MIX - and following the COCONUT COOKIES RECIPE, in which I tint the coconut with yellow food coloring. I make the cookies by making one batch of larger cookies and one batch of slightly smaller ones. (The larger cookies go into the oven first because they need to cook longer.) When the cookies come out of the oven I put them on the cooling rack and gently press one smaller cookie next to one larger one - to become a head and body. I press a chocolate chip in for a beak, and use snips of green-tinted coconut for eyes.

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