I picked up this game at Tuesday's Morning about 2 weeks ago - when I was trying to decide if I needed a yogurt maker.....haven't decided yet. This is ABC BINGO - FOREST. Isn't Zander's expression here great? I guess that's his "game face". And look...Nolan's skater hair is finally long enough not to stick out all over the place....

I loved the board, the photos, the playing pieces, the idea...but some of the words were bad picks. I wish a homeschool mom had made this game. I had visions of it being great for enforcing phonics and speech.....you roll the dice, move to a picture of something in the forest, say the word and pick the letter on your bingo card that you hear at the start of the word. Sounds good doesn't it....but with word choices like "knot hole" and "opossom" I was less than 100% thrilled.

Keeping Busy!

We are fortunate to have one of America’s most well-preserved Forts in our town. I’m not sure what that statement is based on but that’s the line. It is an amazingly well preserved fort. We love history. Today the “TX Archeological Society” (or some name close to that) held an Archeology Fair at the Fort. Cy didn’t have to work until tonight, so we opted to head over.

Folks were wandering around in period costume. I did get a kick out of watching a soldier’s pocket begin to jangle…after a moment’s indecision he whipped out his cell phone.:::snort::: There were horses riding up and down the parade grounds. The cannon were shot several times. There was a drum and bugle corp. They had demonstrations on spinning, medicinal herbs, foods of the time, fire-starting, basket making, lace making, pottery painting etc. Zander opted to roam around and not do many activities. The big boys sat in the shade and watched people coming and going. Arielle and Nolan had their faces painted with Indian signs and made clay pots. They would have done more but the big boys were ready to leave way before the younger ones were. Note to self – leave the big boys home next time. :::snort:::

While at the Fort Zander grabbed my hand and said, “I love you, Mom”. I told him I loved him. Then he said, “I miss my Dad”. I told him I missed his dad too. Then he said, “And I miss BreAnne and Krista too!” I told him I missed them too. Then he was off and playing again. :::sigh:::

Before we left for the Fort I had gone online to Sam’s Club and tried out the click and pack or click and shop or click and something feature. I got an email saying my food is ready to be picked up. I’ll do that tomorrow after Sunday school. I’m thinking this will save me TIME and MONEY as I won’t be sucked into buying things I don’t have on my list…. I had REALLY gone online to sign up to upload my photos to their site and get them printed. I was shocked to find that it is CHEAPER to upload them here at home and get them in an hour than it is to do the 2 – 3 day pick up. I uploaded the family photo we had taken so that I can send some to Mike and the girls. . . and grandparents.

We left the fort and came home for lunch. While the kids ate I raced to Sam’s and picked up the photos. I’m impressed with their printing. Honest – you can’t tell these are digital at all.

We attempted to find some caches in the two hours we had before Cy had to get ready for work. We were RIGHT AT two of them but the muggles showed up. We’ll have to go back some day when the park is quiet. We did find a Foursquare church we didn’t know about. LOL Then we headed to find two more caches. Again – we were .2 away from them – but we weren’t dressed to climb through cactus today…we thought this would be along the river walk. LOL We finally found one. I should say *I* found one. It was HOT…95*. The kids were tired and discouraged. They found the spot where the GPS was going off…and you had to climb down. All the notes left earlier about this had talked about being “blood donors”. The cache was rated ¾ and they sort of lost heart. I decided to give it a shot and it was EASY…hidden in a brick on the side of the path…I didn’t even have to climb all the way down. So we found ONE cache today. Ah well….not great but it was “fun”. :::snort::::

Josiah had to leave for work at 4:00 p.m. I baked bread. I played a game with the little ones (see photos somewhere – probably above). I made dinner – the garlic bread (below), rigatoni and the spaghetti sauce I made earlier in the week. BRE CALLED! It was such a blessing to get to talk to her.

We went for a nice family walk, gave the little ones baths and I’m going to work on my Shop Natural co-op order while I wait for Cy to get home from work.

Jodi's Garlic Pull Apart Rolls -

*I made some adaptations to the recipe to compensate for using whole grains instead of all purpose flour....

1 1/2 C of hot water

1/4 C olive oil (or coconut oil would be fine)

2 T honey

1 T of yeast

5 C whole wheat flour (I used hard red, 7 grain and soft white mix that was left over from baking today)

1 T vital wheat gluten

1 T garlic powder

1 tsp sea salt

Combine water, oil, honey and yeast. Let sit until yeast is activated. Add 3 C of flour and gluten to yeast mixture. Stir and let sit for 15 minutes. Add remaining flour, garlic and salt. Knead. Make into "roll sized" balls and place them in a circle around the outer edge of the pie dish; then add an inner circle and one roll in the middle. I did grease the pan too. Bake at 350* for 30 minutes. The bread pulls apart nicely. This is fun for kids to help make. Jodi and Lisa report it is also great with cinamon and sugar mixture.

*I wasn't sure how this would work with whole grains. I added the T of gluten "in case", added the honey to be sure the yeast was well activated and then did the sponge too.....turned out great. The kids raved about this bread. We love spices so next time I'll dump some Italian spices in with it.