What's Cookin': Week of October 31

Here's what's cookin' out in the backwoods this week.  I thought I was going to have to make some changes to the menu because I've been sick and didn't get all of my shopping done, but looking at my menu it looks like I should have everything for this week.  I did miss out on some sale items that would have helped later this month, but I'll have to live with that.  When I was out shopping yesterday I was coughing so much (into a tissue, but still) that people were looking at me like I had the Ebola virus.

Breakfasts
Sunday:  Cereal
Monday:  Pancakes
Tuesday:  Cereal
Wednesday:  Banana Bread
Thursday:  Muffin Buffet
Friday:  Malt O Meal
Saturday:  Ham and Cheese Biscuits

Dinners
Sunday:  Taco Burgers, Spanish Rice (moved from last week when Mr. Sullivan brought pizza)
Monday (Halloween):  French Dip or Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Curly Fries
Tuesday:  Chicken Fricasee, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Corn, Biscuits
Wednesday:  Shepherd's Pie, Green Beans
Thursday:  Eggs, Sausage, Hashbrowns, Fruit, Toast
Friday:  Beef Stroganoff, Rolls, Carrots
Saturday:  Chicken and Dumplings, Green Beans

I'm not posting recipes for these because you can find them all either online or in a cookbook.  Everything I cook, for the most part, is a variation of something I found somewhere else, so they aren't original.  Plus, most of the food I make is pretty basic-there's no special ingredients or farmily secret.  Just trying to feed my family in a healthy, but budget conscious matter.

Halloween in the Backwoods

Happy Halloween!

This last week has been spent not in a hurried mess of fabric and props for Halloween, but rather a haze of Nyquil and Vitamin C, because I've been sick.  Today is the first day that I don't feel mildly hallucinogenic or majorly encased in snot.  I'll still be taking it easy today because I want to actually get better.

Halloween out here in the Backwoods is kind of silly.  Because I was sick, we had to make some last minute changes to costumes-and I'm sure one of my kids got the short end of that stick.  I feel badly for him but there was no way I was going to finish sewing what he requested (with a week's notice) in time.  Notes for next year:  Halloween orders for custom costumes from the kids will have to be in my hands by October 1st, to give me plenty of time to prepare.  And the early bird catches the worm.  In other words, if you get your info to me by an earlier time, you'll have your costume done sooner.  Every year I swear this will be the case, and every year it's not.  I'm making a Household Calendar for 2012 that will hopefully keep some of these things in check.

We did take a family trip down to Walmart to browse their Halloween selection.  It's the only place to shop for Halloween costumes within a decent distance.  It seems our choices were Expensive Superhero, Slutty Superheroine, or Winnie the Pooh.  I'm not sure why it's OK in some people's eyes to dress your daughters up in revealing costumes for Halloween, but that's what was available-and a big part of why we continue to make our own costumes each year.  I know Halloween is all about playing dress up, and I highly encourage playing dress up, but not at the expense of my daughters' modesty.

Traditionally, we have tried to contribute to the younger kids' classroom Halloween parties; however, after attending one of the parties last year, I decided that I don't really need to contribute much to the younger grades' parties.  They have plenty of goodies.  One of my kids came home with three cupcakes, in addition to the one he ate during the party.  For the older kids, this year I said I'd contribute cookies.  It's fast and easy to bake up some chocolate chip cookies for the kids, and they travel easily.  Unfortunately, due to the nagging, hacking cough, I figured baking was a bad idea.  No one wants cookies I've coughed on.  So we sent store bought cookies.  While that's a homemaker fail, contaminating half of the elementary school would be a much larger fail.

Of course, we've decorated the outside of the house with a spooky spectacular of Halloween decorations, right?  Well, umm, no.  Living out in the backwoods, we don't get many trick or treaters.  Everyone goes to one of a few fairly nearby towns to trick or treat.  I buy a bit of candy, for friends who make a point to stop by, and let the kids do a jack-o-lantern or two for the fun of it, but the candy usually ends up hidden in mom's stash, and the jack-o-lantern is only appreciated by us.  We have fun carving it and of course the seeds are yummy, but that's about it.

So then it comes down to the actual trick or treating.  To get the best bang for our "walk around and bug strangers for free candy" buck, we also head down to a nearby town to do our trick or treating.  So our afternoon today will be especially crazy:  sugar high kids coming home from school to take costumes off, eat a quick dinner (french dip sandwiches and curly fries), put costumes back on, then load up the van.  We try to get out the door by 6, then let the big kids run around on their own, with a pre-determined meeting place.  They usually cover twice as many houses as we do with the little kids.  Finally, we come home, sort through candy, and let the kids have one piece each, with the rest going into the "treat jar" so that they can have a piece after dinner each night if they've finished their dinner.  This way they get to enjoy their candy but it's not all gone through in a few days of gluttony.  And  yes, mom and dad collect a candy tax.

Food Storage, Preservation, and Preparation

I have a confession to make...

I realize it's probably a little early in my blogging "career" to be making confessions, but the point is to be honest, right?

I am one of THOSE people.

You know, those people who have months and months or maybe even years' worth of food stored away in case of some undefined "thing" that happens that causes them to need to use that food.  We also can, dehydrate, and freeze our own food for long term storage.  You kind of have to do that with a garden and having your own animals.

So along the way here we will be talking about those things.  Foods I've preserved, foods, I've got a stockpile on, etc.  Since we've moved, my food stores have dwindled.  For one, I didn't want to move the stores.  For two, buying this place sucked a lot of cash out of our hands, so we actually needed the stored food.  That sort of thing, is what I prep for.

So now that we've gotten settled in, and rebuilt some shelves, and financially recovered from the move (by financially recovered I mean we've paid off all the moving bills), it's time to start rebuilding the food stores.  My first priority is what are called "72 hour kits" or "Bug Out Bags".  This is a group of items you need to feed/water/clothe/medicate you for three days, for whatever reason.  Possible reasons could be:

Emergency Evacuation (due to fire, flood, hurricane, etc)
No power (where we live, three days without power is a definite possibility)
Tornado (grab the bags and take them with you to the basement so you have needs met for first three days)
Zombie Apocalypse
I'm sure there are other reasons that I can't think of right now because I always start writing before I'm fully caffienated.

The goal with a Bug Out Bag is to be able to get out of the house in less than 15 minutes.  So you want to have everything ready to go, stashed somewhere, so that you can grab it and go, so that you can be gone before the zombies get there.  Ideally, each family member should have their own bag, although  you'll be doing the carrying for smaller children.  Also, you'll need to keep in mind that no one should carry more than their body weight.  For example, my youngest son is capable of carrying a backpack, but his has mostly clothes, to free up space for the bigger kids to carry food and water.

So here's the basics of what you need for your Bug Out Bag:
Three days worth of:
Food
Water
Clothes
Meds

Plus
Copies of important paperwork (insurance, social security cards, birth certificates, etc)
Cash
Pull ups/Diapers
First Aid Kit
Pet Supplies
Pet Carriers/Leashes
A way to cook (I use a propane camp stove)
A tent
Sleeping Bags
Small kid distractions (coloring books and crayons, a special toy, etc)
A "Grab List" (a list of things you can't pack but need to grab-blankies, binkies, pillows, etc)
Anything else you can't live without for three days

You'll also need a place to "bug out" to.  If the Fire Department or Police showed up at your door and told you that you had to evacuate, do you want to spend your time in an emergency shelter, or do you want to have a place to go?  Our "Bug Out Spot" used to be my moms.  That's no longer a place I feel I can hang out for three days, because she really doesn't like my kids.  Well, it's not their personalities so much as the sheer number of them.  I think she breaks out in hives if I even ask her to come visit.  I think some grammas like grandkids in small doses, and there are no small doses here.  And frankly, she'll go pretty quickly if we do have a Zombie Apocalypse.  But we have two alternate bug out spots that will welcome us for a few days, and even be kind and generous enough to share their bathroom with my tribe.

So my main focus right now is to re-do our Bug Out Bags.  In our old house, we had space to keep a giant Rubbermaid tote that held most of our supplies.  We don't have that now, but we do have room in the living room for a coffee table, so I've asked Mr. Sullivan to make a wooden table top to go on top of the tote, and then I'll cover the whole thing with a pretty table cloth.  That way I can store things like water bottles and canned soups in there without worrying about it freezing.

Because I'm one for planning, and having things put down on paper, I'm working on creating a meal plan for the bug out bags.  This will do two things:  First, it will tell me what to buy.  Then I don't end up with 30 cans of soup and nothing else.  Second, in the midst of an evacuation, where I might be stressed or freaked out or even completely panicked, I'll have that plan to tell me what foods I need to fix for my kids-to make their experience a lot less "Holy crap, the house might burn down" and more "We're camping out for a few days, let's make the most of it".  I'll post that plan next week.

Clothes are a current "big issue" for me in terms of the bug out bags.  I have one kid who I didn't have enough pants for in his current size for every day, much less for putting in bags and not being worn, and I have one kid who just won't stop growing.  Plus with all the new house junk we've been buying (curtain rods, caulk because none of the windows were caulked, electric outlet covers, pvc pipe, and roofing materials), I've slacked on keeping things like socks and underwear at the levels they should be.  So those are all priorities right now with me.  Thankfully, the one boy is going into another size already so I should have enough pants in that size, and I can pack sweats with tie waists for the other kid, so the pants may be a little short, but they'll have enough waistline either way.

So I have four cans of ready to eat soup, and a propane camp stove with enough propane to cook for those three days, and some cereal to go in the bug out bags.  I'll be updating you as I get these completed over the next few weeks with more stuff.

I plan to be one of the survivors of the Zombie Apocalypse!

Why?

I was making my way through the blogoverse yesterday, and read this post, which I loved, could truly relate to, and understood to the core.  For those of you too lazy to click over (you really should, though), writer Stephanie Precourt talks about doing without things she's used to doing with.  Things that many of us would consider "basics", like a dishwasher and a toaster-definitely some often used appliances in my house.  As I'm reading I'm nodding my head, and I posted a quickie comment about how we have lots of power outages and a lot of our lives are like the Pioneers because we're way out in the backwoods and blah blah.

So last night I got to thinking that I would write a post about what's it's really like out here.  About how the wind blows constantly and sometimes, even though it's not a snow day, we can't get out of the driveway, and how I can't watch Criminal Minds at night anymore because if a random serial killer finds my house he will probably succeed in axe murdering us all because there are no neighbors close enough to hear us scream.  So I wrote down a few things I wanted to include and saved the draft to finish later.

Then I got to thinking (which is always scary), that everything I was going to write makes it sound like it sucks to live here.  Here are some of our harsh realities:

Run out of pull ups unexpectedly?  Nearest store is an hour away.
Need an ambulance?  Expect a 20 plus minute response time-for the volunteer first responders-if they aren't all at work.
Need garden space?  Expect to have to help your soil with mass amounts of trucked in soil or patiently tended compost.
Need pens for animals?  Get out the chainsaw, you'll need to clear some trees.  On the plus side, it will get you some fire wood for winter, because you certainly can't afford to heat your house with propane, at almost $3.00 per gallon plus fuel surcharges for delivery.
Don't forget to get gas before you leave town.  Nearest gas station is an hour away.
Want to go out for date night?  Nearest restaurant is an hour away.  Nearest movie theater is three.
Power Outage?  In rural areas, power is restored last.  Good thing you have that fire place, and an older propane stove, which doesn't require electricity to start, so you can cook and have heat.

So yeah, some of that stuff kinda sucks.

But here's the real reason we chose to live this way.

We want better for our children.  That goes down to the basics of food.  Despite the fact that I punked out on Monday and made them boxed mac and cheese for dinner because I was sick and tired and just done, we'd like for them to have naturally grown foods-most of the time.  Sure, we'll have an occasional pizza night or boxed macaroni and cheese, but growing our own foods is the only way we could ever afford to have organic meat and produce.  Organic ground beef runs about $7.00 a pound here.  I don't even want to know what an organic roast costs.

We want our kids to have roots.  We want to have a place our grandkids can come to, even if their parents choose not to live this way, and hang out with gramma and grandpa and pet the goats and pick apples from the orchard, and eat them straight from the tree.  As we've had one home taken from us by eminent domain, this is an option we know will never be taken from us.

We want us, and our children, to have respect for the animals that feed us each and every day.  There's no respect given to the cow that gave his life for the neatly packaged hamburger meat you buy at the store.  Most people buy it with not a thought for the stewardship that we should be experiencing when we grow meat.  Yesterday my friend K. called me to tell me her husband had taken a bull elk during hunting season.  He worked hard for that animal, and I guarantee that there is far more thanking God for that meat than for what is picked up at the grocery store.

We don't like the city life.  My kids go to a school where the average class size is 12.  Both my special needs kid and my profoundly gifted kid are able to get individualized attention, independent studies, and their needs met by the teachers who have watched them grow since they were three, or earlier, since we've known many of the teachers for the ten years we've lived in this community.  Traffic jams don't exist, unless it's the ten minutes it takes for the Amtrak to go through the railroad crossing.  My husband's commute probably isn't any longer than it would be if we lived in Suburbia.  My neighbors would, and have, put themselves in situations where they would literally put themselves in harms way to make sure me or my children don't come to harm-and I would do the same for them in a heartbeat.

When we sit on our porch on a summer evening, the quiet is broken by children's laughter, dogs barking, and the occasional neighbor's chicken yelling about something or other.  The sights aren't the other neighbors, as we can't really see them, or cars passing by, or neighborhood business that really isn't any of ours.  It's deer walking through the yard, the sunset through the trees, the bees on the flowers.

But here's the largest why:

Yesterday morning, I took the dog outside.  The perimeter to our land isn't all fenced yet, so I take him outside.  He usually listens when I tell him to stay near me.  As he did his business, I watched the sunrise over the mountains.  It was a beautiful, awe inspiring sight.  I could feel God hanging out there on the three acres of land that I own, enjoying His sunrise just as much as I was.  Worth every power outage, water lockdown, and rock dug out of the garden, a million times over.

Making Plans

Yesterday the middle kids and I went out and planned the garden, and where we will have the animals.  We went out in the fields and measured everything and then came in and drew up plans on Excel.  The garden will be 90x90.  The thought of having a garden that large terrifies me!  It will be a huge investment of time and some money..  For the fall garden prep, we will take all of the yard trimmings (does three acres qualify as a yard?) like the overgrowth of weeds, any grasses that get trimmed, and leaves after they get raked into giant piles to fall into, and put them into the garden area.  Then we will till it all under and let it rot into the dirt. To help the process along, we’ll have to actually water the garden in the winter if it’s warm enough and doesn’t snow enough.  And we’ll need worms.  Lots and lots of worms.

 I have a great recipe for helping soil along from Carla Emery’s book, which calls for stuff like wood ash and bone meal, so in the spring we’ll add all of that, and then the lovely compost will go on top of that, and then it will get tilled again.  In a perfect world, we’ll have someone come in and disc it, but realistically, we’ll have to dig it ourselves for planting.  Also realistically, I should do all of this again for one more year before planting, but that’s simply not an option.  Food prices being what they are, we need a garden badly!

I’ve been doing some figuring on layer chickens.  We plan on 20 layer chickens.  During prime egg laying season, they should average two eggs per day.  I’m guessing prime season here will be mid May through mid September, if we provide a bit of extra light in the evenings at the edges of that time frame.  If they average 2 eggs per day, that gives me 40 eggs per day, or 280 eggs per week, for 18 weeks, for an approximate yield of 5040 eggs, or 420 dozen.  Of those I’ll sell at least half at the co-op, so 210 dozen, which will probably earn $1.50 per dozen, or $315.  While after feed that may not seem like much profit, it actually is, and here’s why.

We go through at least two dozen eggs per week.  Each time we have eggs for breakfast, it’s at least a dozen, unless I’m doing something like breakfast sandwiches, which I can use less eggs for.  So you figure eggs at least twice a week, plus eggs as cooking ingredients-one egg per loaf of bread is 6-8 more eggs, 3 eggs per cake or cookies or brownies is six to nine more eggs per week, plus deviled eggs or tuna salad (I make mine with eggs) once in awhile. And I’m up to almost three dozen per week.  I can imagine those of you who are obsessed with cholesterol are freaking out at that, but realize that I make our own whole wheat bread, and we eat a lot of fruits and veggies, and will eat a lot more once we have the garden. We also have beans with dinner at least three times a week.   The high fiber helps with the cholesterol.

So figure three dozen eggs per week at a cost, for regular eggs, of $1.50 per dozen, and I’m saving $234 per year.  But in truth, I’m raising organic, grain and veggie fed eggs, so the cost for comparable eggs goes up to $4.00 per dozen.  Which means I’m actually saving $624 per year.  If I get 420 dozen and keep the 156 dozen I approximate that my family will use, and sell the balance of 264 dozen at $1.50 each, I’ll be earning $396.  Add that to the savings of $624 from not buying eggs, and I end up with $1020.  Since my chickens will be eating a light grain mixed with veggie scraps from the kitchen, I will be earning a profit on the layers.

A Day On The Farm

Well it's not really a farm yet.  We'll call it a wannabe farm.  Someday, it will be a farm, and this post won't be relevant.  Gasp!

I wake up at 5:00.  That's am.  That's less because I have so much to do in the morning and more because I am a raving lunatic without caffeine, and this is the only hour at which I can assure I'll be fully caffeinated before the kids wake up at 6:15.  Some days, I'm a raving lunatic even with the caffeine.

I get the family up at 6:15 and mom's chaos officially begins.  Breakfast, usually hot and cooked by me, but occasionally it's just cereal.  Today we'll be having waffles cereal because yesterday I got so enamored by Twitter and making my blog look pretty that I forgot to make pancake mix and the box of waffles I thought was in the outside freezer was used by Mr. Sullivan when he let me sleep late because I was sick.

Around 7:25 we leave to get the kids to school.  I'm home by 8:20, and I sit and write a bit, or do nothing for a few minutes, before being an actual housewife and getting busy on the laundry, the kitchen, and unpacking the miasma of crap still not unpacked from our move...in June.  I'm horrible at unpacking.  But not so horrible about whining because I can't find something I need.

Somewhere in there I eat lunch, usually absurdly early because I just grabbed something quick for breakfast.  Yesterday it was 9 Pringles.  For breakfast.

Then there's time outside.  I can choose from moving fencing, moving fence posts, tilling the garden, working with the compost pile, or picking up dog poo.  Golden Retrievers poo a lot.

I clean a little more and write a little more and take the dog out 77 times, and then go pick up my youngest from school.  She only has a partial day.  We come home and play a bit and clean a bit and work on dinner a bit, and then go get the big kids from school.

Then we come home and do the homework, prepare dinner, put laundry away and make the house look pretty before Daddy comes home.  Yeah, I'm that kind of housewife.  Deal with it.

I try to have dinner ready at 6:30.  That hardly ever happens.

Then we get the kids to bed and Mr. Sullivan goes and plays on the computer while I watch some TV and slowly become comatose.  On a good day I'm asleep by 10 pm.  I'm boring that way.

What's Cookin': Week of October 23

Here's what's cookin' in the backwoods for this week:

Breakfasts
Sunday:  Cereal (I was sick)
Monday:  Cereal (Dishes didn't get done, cause I was sick)
Tuesday:  Pancakes
Wednesday:  Muffin Buffet (combination of muffin mixes and berry muffins from Betty Crocker cookbook)
Thursday:  Banana Bread
Friday:  Bacon and Eggs
Saturday:  Cornbread and Ham (Cornbread left over from chili dinner)

Dinners
Sunday:  Frozen Lasagne (Again, the sick thing)
Monday:  Saulsbury Steak, Mashed Potatoes, Corn, Rolls
Tuesday:  Whole Roasted Chicken, Broccoli and Cheese Rice A Roni, Carrots, Rolls
Wednesday:  Chili in the Crockpot, Cornbread (Parent teacher conferences)
Thursday:  Turkey, Stuffing, Yams, California Blend Veggies (It's a turkey...do you really need the recipe?)
Friday:  Pasties (I don't remember where I got the recipe, but I know it's copywritten)
Saturday:  Taco Burgers

I feel kind of bad for Mr. Backwoods.  He has to work Monday and Wednesday night, so he's going to miss two of his favorites.  Hopefully there will be lots of leftovers!

Recipe: Taco Burgers

A long time ago, there used to be a restaurant near my school called Taco Johns.  Most Taco Johns locations have gone out of business, but I remember many lunches with friends (we had open campus as Juniors and Seniors) laughing and joking over their Taco Burgers.  This isn't quite the same, but is pretty darn tasty.

2 pounds ground beef
2 packets Taco Seasoning Mix (see recipe here to make your own)
Taco Toppings of your choice
8 hamburger buns

Brown ground beef.  Prepare taco seasoning mix as directed.  Spoon onto hamburger buns and top with taco seasonings of your choice.

Serve with:  Mexican Rice and Corn

Recipe: Whole Roasted Chicken

Here is my recipe for whole roasted chicken.  This recipe can be used as a base recipe for any recipe that calls for cooked chicken, or eaten just the way it is.  Serve it with a variety of sides, or use it on sandwiches.

1 Whole Chicken
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp Parsley
1 tbsp Powdered Onion
1 tsp Sage
1 tsp Marjoram
1 tsp Thyme
1 tsp Black Pepper
3 Carrots, peeled and sliced (they don't need to be pretty, you'll discard them at the end)
1 rib Celery, sliced

Preheat oven to 325.

In a small bowl, combine salt, parsley, onion, sage, marjoram, thyme and black pepper.  Mix well, add olive oil, and set aside.

Put chicken in 9x13 glass pan, or roasting pan.  Using your fingers, loosen skin over breasts.  Rub olive oil mixture over breasts, and then rub remaining olive oil mixture on outside skin of chicken.  Put carrots and celery inside cavity, then turn the chicken over so it's breast side down.

Cook chicken for 3-4 hours, until it tests done.  Discard carrots and celery.

Serve with:  Mashed potatoes and gravy, or rice, or stuffing.

Recipe: Chili

I love how the house smells when I make chili in the crockpot.

This is a standard red chili, with meat and beans.

2 pounds ground beef (or turkey, or pork)
1 Onion, diced
1 Green Pepper, diced (can reduce this, but this is my base recipe)
1 Red Pepper, diced
3 Cloves garlic, diced
2 28 oz Cans Tomato Puree
1 28 oz can Petite Diced Tomatoes (you can use any size, my kids don't pick out the petite ones)
3 Tbsp Chili powder
2 Cans Ranch Style Beans (I use canned beans because I can never get beans right.  Never.  Ever.)
Salt to taste

Brown ground beef, drain.  Add all other ingredients to crock pot.  Cook on low 6 hours.  Adjust salt at the end.

Serve with:  Cornbread, or Fritos, Cheese and Sour cream, or over Rice
Leftovers freeze very well.

Recipe: Saulsbury Steak

This isn't a traditional Saulsbury Steak.  Heck, I don't even know how to spell Saulsbury right.  But this is what we're going with.  Seriously.

I don't have a picture of this recipe.  DS12 broke my camera.  That will be my excuse for using Flikr Creative Commons pics until I manage to get a new camera.  I could take one with my phone, but no one wants to see that!

Ingredients

2 pounds lean hamburger (or ground turkey)
2 bottles BBQ sauce (I used KC Masterpiece that I bought with coupons)
1/2 c oatmeal
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
Salt and Pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350

In mixing bowl, combine hamburger, 1 bottle BBQ sauce, oatmeal, garlic, onion, salt and pepper.  Mix well.  Really well.  Using your hands.  Yes, it's messy.  Use gloves if you don't want to get messy.

Form into hamburger patties.  Place in baking pans (I use 2, 9x13 pyrex pans), then, using second bottle of BBQ sauce, add a small bit to the top of each patty.  If you really like onions, you could add a thin slice of onion to the top of each patty, too.  Cook for about 30 minutes, or until patties test done.  Top with more BBQ sauce, and cook for 5 more minutes.

Serve with:  Mashed potatoes, corn, whole wheat rolls

Welcome!

Welcome to the Backwoods Housewife blog!

I'm a not so modern wife, living a not so modern life, on a farm in the backwoods of America.

I’m the Backwoods Housewife.  I’m the wife of Mr. Backwoods, and mama to a whole bunch of BackwoodsKids.  We live on three acres in the middle of nowhere that we’re slowly turning into a self sustaining farm.  Our life is the very definition of “Make It Work, Make Do, or Do Without.”  We live on a very tight budget and seem to make do just fine, most of the time.  We make do by gardening, canning, dehydrating, owning livestock (soon), and wasting very little that God provides for us.  I never seem to catch up on the laundry or the dishes or the other household chores, but our little (OK, large; well, fairly large) Redneck Family is always fed and rarely naked.

My recipes don't come with pretty pictures, my kids aren't homeschooled, and my life isn't perfect.  But it's my life, and I love it.

Join me in my adventures-which you know is just another word for trouble!