Amish Leftover Oatmeal Cake

I don't have much time but wanted to share this recipe before I forget. This week I had some leftover oatmeal and leftover French Toast dip so I combined the two and made this recipe.

http://www.totallyfrugal.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6552

I left out the water and raisins to compensate for the milk/egg leftover from the French Toast. It made a really tasty breakfast cake. I get some weird sense of accomplishment when we have a week with no leftovers going to waste. And on that note, you have to check out these videos called "Great Depression Cooking with Clara" on You Tube ... they are just fantastic!

http://174.129.234.45/Depression_Cooking/Episodes.html

Once again I have a house full of sick kiddos. For some reason dear Rachel is 100 times worse than anyone else. Her eyes swelled shut in the night and she just cried and cried. The crying makes her cough which in turn makes her throw up. Around 2:30 AM I finally gave her some Benedryl and we watched tv until it kicked in around 3:30 AM. There is nothing to watch on tv in the middle of the night by the way. Elizabeth began coughing just minutes after I got Rachel back to sleep which made me just laugh ... Tag Team Mommy Waking ... a new sport.

I was supposed to "shower" my sweet friend Rebecca tonight with fellowship and gifts before her new baby arrives but have decided not to risk exposing the ladies with sickness. I'm very sad and disappointed and hope a day of rest will help the kids recoup.

I can feel Spring approaching in a variety of ways. The weather is getting increasingly wonderful (although we've had almost no snow this year), the boys are so antsy they can hardly do school and I'm dying to order seeds for my garden. I'm also noticing how badly our house needs Spring cleaning. Our carpets need steam cleaned, things need dusting, the closets are messy, school drawers/shelves are in disarray and the kids clothes are either too small or holey ready to be replaced with Spring/Summer hand-me-downs. But I am desperately trying to put all that out of my mind and stay focused on the chaos at hand ... electives, hemming Boy Scout uniforms, maintaining the basics and getting kiddos healthy. What I want to do though is cancel school, clean everything and redo our schedules/chores ... but that will have to wait.

The Monday of all Mondays

Our day began at 4:20 am with Mike waking up to leave for the airport. This was after a night of interruptions with Rachel who has pink-eye and a rotten cold. When I last spoke with Mike, around noon, he was stranded in Chicago on his way to New Jersey. After breakfast I threw chicken into two crockpots, left for an 8:40 appointment, returned home to a cleaned basement (thank you children)only to leave again for two orthodontist appointments. We returned home from the orthodontist, ate lunch, made a quadruple recipe of muffin batter, I gave the children new assignments only to head out to a follow-up appointment from the morning. Whew! But I'm home now to stay. No BSF for this tired, wire-mouth, eye oozing, runny nosed family. Dinner in the crockpot smells yummy and we're all ready to collapse. Tomorrow is another day that will hopefully start with a little less zing.

The chess tournament this past weekend was great. The boys all out-played their games of last year and moved up in rank. Timothy even received a 10th place State trophy! Woohoo! The Pride and Prejudice debate continues and we've decided we must find a family with nice boys and the name "Darcy" so that Lizzy can one day marry a Mr. Darcy ... it's just so fun to say with a British accent! When I get time I'll post some pictures from the weekend ... time ... hmmmmm, if only it grew on trees.

All Pride, All Prejudice, All Weekend - 2009

So this is the weekend of the Annual Scholastic State Chess Tournament in Denver and ALL the boys are gone. It's 4 girls, a mom and a cat. In an effort to decide the on-going debate as to which Pride and Prejudice movie is better the girls and I will be watching both the 2 hour new Pride and Prejudice and the six hour (or maybe it's 8 or 10 hours) A&E version of Pride and Prejudice. The debate is as follows:

The new version has a prettier Jane (who Mary points out is supposed to be the "pretty sister" in the book)but an awful Mr. Darcy (IMO = In Mom's Opinion).

The new version doesn't take several days to watch.

The new version has actors that Mary has heard of and that I have not.

The old version has a prettier Elizabeth ... I mean she's just darling with her long, dark curly hair ... plus she's joyful and not stoic like the other version.

The old version is more true to the book .... because it takes days to watch.

The old version has a much better Mr. Darcy ... hands-down.

The old version reminds me of when I only had 4 little ones, we lived in Katy and Mike traveled ALOT ... I'd watch them while I folded laundry at night ... is this a good thing or a bad thing ... I don't know.

And, so the debate continues. I'm guessing the little girls aren't going to enjoy our dive into the 18th century as much as we will and will be appeased with some silly show they haven't watch in months like Cinderella.

Today is also WINSTON'S FIRST BIRTHDAY .... HOORAY! And we hope to take him to Lamar's for his first donut. We'll let his parents come I suppose.

My camera has died so I can't take pictures of the birthday boy. Cameras may be added to the list of the most expensive and annoying modern conveniences along with vacuums, cars and washing machines ... all of which tap our checking account as if they have conspired against us. Ugh!

Pictures of Electives

These were taken by photography students, Luke and Josiah. I was really hoping for a shot of the erupting volcano in my Astronomy class but they missed it. Ben, Jacob, Timothy and Elizabeth are in a separate building which is why there are no pictures of them ... yet.

Anna in Ballet Class ...


Kathryn teaching how a telescope works ...


Josiah and Luke in Creative Writing ... they were writing comic strips which explains the silliness ...


Mary in Sewing Class ...

I told Rachel that it sounded like a herd of elephants was in her class and she said, "No. There was only one elephant. I was a dog."



Luke knows I love it when the trees look like this and so he took this picture for me ... a photographer in the making.

Our quote for the day is, "I'm not good at drawing Speedos on pieces of pizza," which was spoken by Luke as he was drawing his comic strip about a piece of pizza aspiring to be a male swimsuit model. I don't know where they get this silliness.

Life without a Laptop

Mike's work laptop crashed so he sent it out to be fixed and has been using mine. Oh, how I miss my laptop and so do the kids. Our school laptop is not configured for our printer and our older math discs won't work on it since it's new. So, in little splices of time when Mike isn't using mine we have been getting on to type in essays for Creative Writing Class, print off pictures for Photography Class, ping my family on Instant Messenger, race through a math lesson and on it goes before he needs it back. What a pain.

We had a great weekend. For Valentine's Day we took the kids to Chick Filet for lunch which was a great treat. Eating out is one thing that is not feasible for a large family ... even a fast food meal costs $50. But it was fun and tasty. Mike and I went out to dinner as well and came home to watch a silly romantic comedy with the older kids.

Yesterday after church we had the Hick's family over for lunch. It was a sweet time of fellowship and the kids enjoyed playing with friends.

Our funny story for the weekend involves Elizabeth, of course. As we were getting ready for church I realized I hadn't seen or heard her for a while and started calling for her. She didn't answer. We all started looking for her and I was beginning to panic. She's been known to open doors and I was envisioning her walking through the neighborhood in the cold ... shoeless. Then I remembered that a bit earlier the other kids were all in the garage getting their shoes for church so I checked in the garage. Sure enough. Sitting on the cement floor in front of a box of stale, old donuts was Elizabeth. Covered in sugar and chocolate she sat engulfing her treasure. Ewwwwww! Thankfully I had just put them out there that morning so I could put them in the dumpster when I was dressed. At least they weren't last weeks donuts. What a girl!

Making Valentines and Little Girls Reading

We made Valentines to take to electives yesterday. I'd like to say it was all smiles and roses but the kids were pretty grumpy until we realized how silly we all sounded complaining about the placement of eyes, the centering of lollipops and the width of forked tongues. So it was fun in the end.




While we were waiting for our Valentines to dry the kids went outside to play ... except Rachel who I found playing with the caterpillars. It was so cute and she was so involved in her imagining she didnt' even notice the camera.


























And, finally, I caught Anna and Rachel reading behind this chair in our front room. What cuties. They're almost joined at the hip. Never having a sister myself, I just LOVE that they LOVE each other.

Feeding Ducks, Silly Girl and Time Management ....ha!

We met Uncle John, Winston, their sitter (Kyla) and Grandpa at City Park last week to feed the ducks. We've been blessed with amazing weather this winter ... it's been like Spring for weeks.

Cousin Winston walking ... he'll be ONE this month!

Anna, Mary and Rachel ... 3 peas in a pod ... the 4th pea was napping.

Jacob, Benjamin and Timothy ... I think Luke was pushing ...

How many kids can fit on one tire swing?

We bought a little tent at Walmart for our very spoiled cat ... she doesn't like it but Elizabeth sure does!


Throwing two chess tournaments, Valentine's Day, AWANA and Friday electives into our already busy life is forcing a whole new level of time management in my day. The pinnacle of our week is Friday so I started there and worked backwards on scheduling our week. I figure the kids and I have until noon on Wednesday to get everything ready for electives including our Valentine's to bring. The issue with electives is that when I taught this curriculum to my kids I did it over a summer going through a chapter per week finishing with an experiment on Fridays. With electives I have 3 chapters to cover in 55 minutes plus at least one experiment. I've had to cut out a ton and prepare the experiments ahead of time to fit it all in. I also didn't volunteer to teach until January so I am NOT in any way prepared. I'm just taking it a week at a time. But, next year, I'll be set. I'll have my outlines all done and everything laid out so that teaching it in the future will be much easier. The kids are beginning AWANA this week as well which nixes Wednesday as a free night.

I'm off to read with Jacob. Elizabeth is rocking Batman right now saying, "oh, baby, it's ok, shhhhhhhh"! What a girl!

Rocky Mountain Muffins

Mike thought these muffins looked like mountains they puffed up so high so we renamed the recipe to Rocky Mountain Muffins. They are really Leftover Oatmeal Muffins and they are awesome.

2 1/4 cups white flour
2 1/4 cups wheat flour
3/4 cup leftover oatmeal
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. baking powder
1 cup milk
3/4 cup oil
3 egg
cinnamon sugar

Mix all ingredients except cinnamon sugar. Scoop into greased muffin tins or muffin papers. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Either freeze or bake. If frozen bake at 350 for 20 minutes. If fresh bake at 350 for 15 minutes. These puff up and are beautiful. A great use of leftover oatmeal.

Grape Jelly and Cell Phones Do Not Mix

Yesterday I set my cell phone on the kitchen counter ... in a glob of grape jelly. (My lunch time kitchen crew did NOT wipe the counters!) When I picked it up there was jelly all inside the buttons so I very carefully rinsed off the keys and dried them off. When I picked it up later all my phone numbers were gone and it said my card was missing ???? I opened the back and water drizzled out. So, maybe it's water and cell phones don't mix. I've had this lesson before when I set my cell phone on a basket of dirty laundry to carry down stairs and then proceeded to wash it. But this was a little bit of water! So, if anyone needs to call me ... call my home phone. Ugh!

And I thought the weekend was busy ...

It is just a crazy week. Mostly because we spent the first few days catching up from the weekend and now are racing to get ready for Electives. Electives is a good reminder of one of the reasons we home school. With home schooling there's no homework. We do school every morning finishing for the day by noon. The three older kids all have home work from electives ... nothing hard or too time consuming but definitely has us on our toes. Josiah and Luke each have two essays to write and Mary has sewing practice (which includes constant requests for "help" as she plays with the sewing machine ... as if I know how it works?!) Josiah also has home work from Biology and promotion tests to study for with Civil Air Patrol.

I've always had this theory that a mom can do a maximum of three things ... well. For example, I can stay on top of the laundry, make three meals and home school OR I can drive kids to various activities, keep the house clean and home school. Any more than three things and something has to give. The only thing that keeps our house from turning into a tenement is that we only school 4 days per week and that my kids know how to clean. Another thing that helps is when I cook I quadruple (or more) the recipes so I don't have to cook as often. Laundry is laundry is laundry ... one catastrophic accident, a tummy bug or a muddy day and it takes days to get caught up.

I thought I'd post some pictures of last week before I emptied the camera for the boys Photography class tomorrow.

The Lego birthday party ... they made these space ships.

We had a snack and the older kids took the little girls on the carousel. For the first time my 3 little boys had no interest in the carousel. Boohoo ...





Illustrating why my boys need to take a photography class.



I wish I'd had my camera at my friend Rebecca's yesterday. Our kids played and played. Elizabeth and Summer even hugged ... nothing is cuter than two almost 2 year olds hugging!

A Busy Weekend

I anticipated having a busy Friday paired with Saturday plans being a bit stressful and I was right! Starting on Thursday at 2:00 with Biology class and ending with our Date night on Saturday night things around here were hoppin'.

Electives went beautifully and everyone but Mary enjoyed their classes immensely. Mary was by far the oldest child in choir and she was really embarrassed by it. Next week I won't make her go to choir ... I figure we'll squeeze her into another class, give her free time or let her play with Elizabeth in the nursery. Poor Mary, she was really looking forward to choir. We also learned that she needs a portable sewing machine for sewing class which we don't have. I think she was disappointed in general which makes a Mom feel rotten. All of the other kids really enjoyed their classes (well, not Elizabeth but that's just because the nursery workers didn't understand that the world DOES revolve around HER!) I loved teaching Astronomy and Mike got a kick out of the chess class.

After helping the group clean the church we arrived home, gobbled down lunch and rested until leaving for Chess Club at 4:00. We didn't arrive home from Chess until 6:00, ate dinner, watched a bad movie and went to bed.

Since Friday chores didn't get done the kids and I scrambled to clean up before leaving for the Lego Outlet store for Benjamin and Jacob's birthday party at 1:00. The party was absolutely fantastic. It was really cost effective having the two boys have their party together and have all the guest be kids in our own family. They each got to choose a $10 Lego set, got a box to fill with loose blocks and a goodie bag. Super, super fun. John, Joanie, Winston and Grandpa all joined us which was a nice treat.

Mike and I finished our 2 day dash with a date to Tortilla Marissa's which I love and Mike suffers through. He loves me. I need to think about how to make things easier if we are going to be loosing our Fridays for the next 5 weeks. Not planning things on Saturday would help but with a Denver Chess Tournament, Valentines Day and the yearly State Chess Tournament that doesn't seem likely. Hmmmm, we need an 8 day week with 36 hour days I think. I wonder what planet I could live on that would allow that? I'll have to research that. I do have some pictures I'll try to post later but I can't find the camera ... how unusual!