Bread recipe and glance at my literally poopy day :)

I walked up to the back patio, the sweat from my short work-out with Piper stuck to my hair. I noticed the garbage that I had failed to take out the day before, crowned with the poopy diaper that I had found stinking up my kitchen in the bottom of the inside garbage sack.  Yuck!  Then I had to laugh as I took them to final 10 feet stretch to the actual garbage can.  It was only 9 am and it already felt like I had been up for hours. Oh, wait. I had :D.

Starting with waking up before my alarm can be good or bad: either a sign of being well-rested or a sigh of stress.  This morning I think was a good one because my mind didn't start going for a minute or two and I could just lay there and enjoy the comfort of having a real bed again. Even after four months of having a bed, the novelty and comfort of having a bed is still a blessing.

Having a jump start on my day of 15 minutes, I used them to preview the upcoming days of seminary.  I am incorporating the Old Testament with the Book of Mormon and just kind of winging it, so I do a lot of improvisation.  I like to think some of it comes from inspiration but time will tell :D.

Getting ready as quietly as I can, I check the time. 5:15 am.  Time to get those crazy kids out of bed who want to go to dance at the Y.  Drew set up a daily time to go and dance and they love it!  At least love it enough to get out of bed in the wee small dark hours of the morning.  Lily drives them over (yay for teenage drivers!) and I get some quiet time to finish prepping for Seminary and for a little personal study.

Around 6 I throw in a batch of bread.  After failing again and again for about 20 years, I think I finally am getting the hang of it and I don't have anxiety about how it is going to turn out.  I have given up for huge stretches of time but think I finally have a recipe that works for us:

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For 2 loaves:
1/4 cup warm water sprinkled with a heaping T. yeast and 1/2 tsp sugar--set aside
Place the following in a mixer with a bread hook and turn on while you add ingredients:
2 1/2 cups hot water
a dollop of molasses
2-4 T flax
1/3-ish cup of wheat germ
1 T salt
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey
4 cups whole wheat flour

Here's the awesome part...because you use the flax and wheat germ, you can do this 100% whole wheat!
Once ingredients are all mixed together, add 2-3 more cups flour and the water/yeast mixture. Once it has mixed for a minute or two, add more flour if it still seems really runny.

Turn on the mixer for 5 minutes and let the mixer do the kneading while you:
-turn the oven on to 200 F
-clean off the counter top from the accumulation of yesterday's spills
-put 2-3 T of oil on it for kneading when it is done
-grease the 2 pans.

If that goes quickly you might actually get around to putting away the ingredients you have used so far.  5 minutes can be magic!

Once the 5 minutes is done you touch the dough. If it is only slightly sticky, you are good!  One thing I look for is if the dough is staying on the hook and pulling all the dough to it.  Many times it doesn't.  If it doesn't and still looks like a big lump of dough and feels a little sticky.  Regardless, unless it is super gooey, smear the oil around with your hand and then use that deliciously slippery hand to get the dough out and plop it onto the oiled counter top. At this point, it has probably already been kneaded enough. If not, add more flour, etc and you won't kill it.

Divide the dough into two masses and then place in greased pans. Put the in the preheated oven and turn the oven off. This is a speed-raise method my friend taught me.  10-15 minutes and your bread should be rising nicely.  After the 10-15 minutes, turn the oven on to 350 F and cook for 50-60 minutes. (Tap on top, should sound hollow.)

Yummm!

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While bread is not the easiest thing to do for breakfast, it is nice on the pocket book and we are trying to live within our means. It is crazy how fast money can be spent!

I finished some seminary prep and we're off!  Seminary happened with a great group of people.  We ended and got everything together for breakfast, devotional, discussion and CNN10.  Harassing Eli to brush his teeth is the next challenge.  Piper is technically in charge of helping him, but he is not much of a listener and it is a battle every morning.  Someday the ferocious 4 stage will be past and these battles is not something I will miss.  Everything else, though....sigh.

Piper and I headed to the gym a little late.  I always get caught up in things at home. I love it here.

My workout this morning focused on not pushing myself too much so that maybe I can start actually enjoying my exercise. Time will tell.  

I found Lily and Hyrum working on the sign language for a song we are performing next week.  Hava was playing the piano and Maia had the three littlest upstairs playing a horsie game.  With carrots.  Hmmmm...there is a no food rule but carrots.  Sigh.  (Don't tell Daddy.)  They were being car....eful. :D

I had a great morning. I love that Lily likes to sit at the table and do math with me in the morning.  After she was done, the other kids were still in horsie-mode with Hyrum doing his daily "tickle" rampage.  I had a few moments to work on tomorrow's seminary. Lily did some driving for Quinn, taking Ticklemonster with her.  Xai yelled out, "I want to dance to some songs!" Cue Mom, whose heart is full of gratitude to her mother for making her take piano lessons.  We sang songs about the wind, butterflies, monkeys, the seal and the walrus and even a new sad one about being eaten by lions.  (The kids loved it.)  I love the Brady's songs for Nature and for People.

Xai then helped me cut potatoes for dinner, which was so fun for him until he sliced his finger a little halfway through.  Then he moved to the safer occupation of opening chicken bullion cubes from their wrapping while Eli took over at the cutting board...cutting butter into slices :D.

Maia did a blissful stint in the mud outside with Liesl and Eli while Havala made hootenannies for lunch.  

Lunchtime now and I have my "study" time.  I pay Hava $1/lesson to teach Xai grade 2 math from The Good and the Beautiful (great curriculum!).  They are doing it right now in the other room. Hyrum and Lily are back enjoying lunch. Maia is upstairs reading to Liesl.  Eli is lying next to me for his quiet time.  Constant supervision is the only way he can do a decent rest time.  It works.  he is super cute as he plays with his dinosaur.

I could list all the things I didn't do, the subjects I didn't cover, the people I didn't reach out to and the laundry that I didn't do. I could focus on the poop, the stink of my day :D.  But I am kind of past focusing on that. I like what God has to tell me about my day at the end of each day and have come to realize that what I do do is just fine. I have a sincere heart and good intentions.  I like to look at the beautiful.  It makes for a good day.

Crazy hair day!

My kids saw their cousins do this on their blog and didn't want to miss out on the fun. I figure, if I don't have to worry about it, they can do what they'd like if it doesn't destroy anything and doesn't make a mess, right?

Complete with spoons, apparently...and paper towels torn up and wadded into pieces.

My kids are definitely not camera-shy!

Pipalicious did this herself.  Nice :)!  Oh!  I stand corrected: apparently, Chugger-dude helped :).  What a nice brother!

Kid-isms, Scheduling Successes, Visa, Games

Kid-isms :)
Last night, Avot was carrying Pipalicious around on her front, like a monkey--having some silly fun.  As she did, Pipalicious said, "You smell like Spooner, and Spooner smells like ice cream!"  Love it!

Another "kid-ism": I was teaching what we call "Kid's Science" about the water cycle.  We had just covered how much water was in the planet.  They had just figured out that most of the water was in the oceans.  (They were able to identify that it was salty thanks to "Ice Age 4," the part where Sid sticks his head in the ocean, drinks some in, and then puckers up, saying, "Salty!"  Whatever works!)  Anyway, I asked, "So, where does the fresh water come from...the water we can drink?"

Hava: "A cup!"

Chugger-dude, turning to her said, "No, Hava, not a cup.  The faucet."

Apparently, we need to find a movie that teaches about the origins of fresh water...or not :).

Papaya's latest favorite phrase is "Big Huge!"  Everything is "big huge!"  If she needs a book to support the paper she is drawing on, she points to a book and asks, "big huge?"  If she anything slightly large, she gets a deeper, dramatic voice and says, "biiiig huuuuuge!" So cute!

All I can say is, it is a good thing that little Spooner's nose is "Big Huge!" like his daddy's, so, even though he is congested a bit, it is never enough to completely obstruct his breathing.  A good thing, too, because I haven't found a "booger sucker" (blue bulb syringe) yet here in Hungary.

School Scheduling Successes!
Avot is truly blossoming into womanhood, discovering its joys and trials :).  One of those is the art of scheduling all that you want to do in a day.

She uses Q-dawg's cell phone to wake up in the morning (alarm clocks are ridiculously over-priced here).  The other day, as we were "mentoring" together, she said, "I think I am going to get up at 4:30 instead of 5:00, because I can't seem to get everything in in a day that I want to, and I keep getting distracted."  I recommended getting her extra half hour of sleep, and just trying to focus more :).

Yesterday, she did it!  She was able get all the things done she wanted to do in a day, and you could see her relief and happiness at having a little while in the evening to herself.  And her day was full of awesome, amazing things! This scholar phase* stuff is incredible!  I have worked towards it for so many years in faith, letting her decide her own schedule, read her own books (for the most part), and, when she was younger, it was hard to see her, with all she is capable of, do things that seemed trivial or just seem to waste her school hours.  This past year she has really taken off and it is so awesome to see her find her way through her genius and be passionate about developing it.  Like it says in a book I read recently: "Leadership comes more naturally to those who have had a chief hand in their own education." ("A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens," pg 3)

Lek is really catching on, too, and it has been amazingly powerful turning over his accountability to Q-dawg.  He gives his dad the schedule of things he wants to accomplish in a day, and then reports to Q-dawg at the end of the day.  Even if he doesn't do it all, it is amazing how he tries harder the next day to do it, or revise his schedule to be more relevant and realistic.

*I think I have postings on what "scholar phase" is...or at least Thomas Jefferson Education on my Lazarus blog, for reference.

Residence Visa...today?
Q-dawg may be getting his residence visa today...woohoo!  He really wants to get a job teaching English, or in English, somewhere.  It has been quite the process, but we think this is the last step today--faxing over an agreement between our landlady and us that we can extend our housing contract if we both want to. (I don't know that either of us do, but it is there :)!)  He has worked so hard for so long to get this.  It has been challenging, since we had to appear in person at the office to submit the paperwork, so we couldn't get it started in America

The older kids are excitedly hoping it happens today, because then they will get to go and see "The Hobbit" with him in Buda.  I will take my turn later this month, when Spooner is a little older and we go in for our doctor's visits, doing it all at the same time.  Love it!  This way, the older kids will be a little happier about watching the youngers while we are gone longer, knowing they already got to see it...at least that is the plan :).  We are all excited to see it.

Games!
The kids have been on an UNO playing spree lately.  Pipalicious even plays it by herself, dealing out 3 hands, and then taking the turns for each one :).  We sometimes use it to practice our colors or numbers in Hungarian, too.

Speaking of Hungarian, we almost have "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" mastered in Hungarian.  Woohoo!  Between that and the "Rainbow Song" we are learning at least a few things to help us interact better with the beautiful people we are living among.

Another game we all really like right now is "Dabble," a word game that kids of all ages can play, if you adapt it a little.  Last night we used it in Scouts with the Goob, giving extra points to those who created words that had to do with scouting.  So fun!

The Goob and Lily played in the snow yesterday for quite some time, generating a ball a little taller than the Goob.  Lek went out to help roll it for them when the Goob came in saying, "I need someone with big huge muscles to come out and help us with something!"  Go, Lek!

For preschool, Chugger-dude, Pipalicious, and Hava picked out books that started with "S", our letter for the week, and I read them as they practiced writing their letters.  Chugger-dude says he likes cursive because you don't have to lift your pencil.  I hope that lasts, because most of the other kids have given up on cursive.  I think it is just Avot that has truly taken the time to master it.   Anyway, one of the books was one of my favorites, "The Fisherman and the Sea," about the fisherman who catches a magic fish, and his wife wants him to ask the fish for bigger houses, and, eventually, power over the sun, the moon, and the stars.  The kids wanted to act it out, with Hava as the fish, Chugger-dude as the fisherman, and Pipalicious as the wife.  They have read it enough that they could do it all pretty much without my help.  Pipalicious was especially adorable as she would say, "Us shall see!" to her fisherman husband when he says, "now we can be happy" with each wish the fish grants.  "Us shall see"...

Great School Day

It's been a great day so far!

We had "preschool," reviewing our "J for Joy" from the other day, and then doing our homemade coloring pages for "K for Kindness."  Liliputian and Chugger-dude join Pipalicious and Hava with the letter practice, practicing cursive letters instead of the printing the littler ones do.  We are doing a little "catch-up" so we are doing two letters in one week. 

See!  Simple and Easy...who needs a printer :).  These are Liliputian's and Hava's respectively

Chugger-dude's (top) and Pipalicious (bottom)

This applies to our spelling lists for the week, which range from "so, do, lo" for Pipalicious to "jujitsu, kumquat, kaolin" for Q-dawg and I.  Our fun "challenge" list includes "kaleidoscope, joie de vivre, jeremiad, and empyrean."  For that final list, I just look for the strangest words I can in our book of 20,000 Spelling Words (awesome find at the library surplus sale!).

Again, not fancy, but it works :).  Chugger-dude picked and wrote out theirs...

The gentlemen won our contest last week *sigh* and Lek is already drooling over potential victory in a couple months (we take the most wins over three-four months).  Victory comes with waited-on special feast for the winning team catered and cleaned up by the losing team.

Anyway, back to our day, we then did our time machine, learning about the Celts in ch. 2 of Medieval History Story of the World.  Bring out the blue!

They insisted I participate, so I let them do small things for me.  They had no such reservations.

Any wonder why my kids are so crazy?  I think they could have driven the Roman soldiers out of Britain single-handedly :).

Did you know that dry-erase markers wash off of skin pretty quickly and well?  We tested it first on Lek :).

I sent the warriors out to drive out the Romans from Britain while I made the traditional sandwiches for lunch. (I am glad they like them so much...we have them every other day :)...)

After a most triumphant lunch, in which celts and captives (Lek, Avot, and Q-dawg who had been attacked and captured upon returning from their run) alike enjoyed the feast, we started reading Beowulf together.  I found these awesome Dover coloring books that covered the story, so I ordered one for Avot through Pipalicious.  I read the original text (which is surprisingly poetic to me--"wave-walker" for boat and "swan path" for seas), pausing to re-cap periodically, and they were remarkably attentive.  In fact, Lek and the Goob didn't want me to stop, which was a nice change :).  They all colored quietly, comparing and inspiring each other with coloring ideas (the Goob added some wounds to the sea creatures battling Beowulf that he thought were sadly lacking and Chugger-dude latched onto that idea predictably fast :)...).  I was surprised all the kids understood.  What fun!

Pipalicious then busied herself in the kitchen "trying to make it look nice" and did a nice job!  Maybe I have one that will delight in straightening and making things orderly :).  They all have their gifts, of course, and I wouldn't trade all the unique strengths of the older ones for anything: Avot's calm spirituality and dependability, Lek's sensitivity and passion, the Goob's eccentric brilliance and quicksilver temper and forgiveness, Liliputian's creativity and ability to nurture, and Chugger-dude's steadiness and purity.  However, I definitely won't complain if I get one that loves to make the house look nice :).

Lek and Q-dawg are off to return a plug adapter and pay for another one, and then pick up some ice cream, our first since coming here.  They only really sell soft-serve at "ice cream" stands, but we saw some ice cream bars in the local Penny Market that looked good, so we'll see if they come back with those...yummy!  Lek likes to practice his Hungarian and is getting better and better.

Preschool G's

Fun with "pre-school"...they had letters to write or trace on the back (with cursive ones for the older ones), and G for "grains" on the front.  So fun!

Liliputian

Hava

Chugger-dude