Sparking To Learn

One of the conveniences we’ve missed during our dive into gluten-free cooking and eating has been the ability to toss together a super fast sandwich lunch. We were lucky enough to receive a gift of samples from Rami at GFL when we returned home from our holiday ramblings.

Anna and I tested the pitas on a couple of different days, and we decided that they had both postive and negative qualities, but the postive qualities outweighed the negatives in many ways.

First off, fresh from the microwave, these pita pockets are undistinguishable from their gluteny counterparts. They’re delicious and soft and held up amazingly well to having ingredients added. Anna was actually a little worried that she would get sick, because she thought sure the GFL pita bread must have gluten.

After I convinced her to eat, she finished her plate in record time. The sandwich was excellently sized for someone small, but the pitas were a bit on the tiny side for a grown-up lunch.

Our biggest complaint, though, is that they do not hold well. After defrost and stuffing, there was about a 5 minute window in which the pita bread felt fresh and was easy to eat. When that window closed, the bread became hard and incredibly difficult to chew. It’s a downside to anything that has been frozen and must be defrosted in the microwave, I’m afraid. When Anna got distracted during her second lunch and left her plate at the table for a bit, she was upset to return to a sandwich that was just impossible to eat. She really just couldn’t bite and and eat the chewy/stiff bread. Reheating the sandwich gave her another small window of soft bread time, but the pita certainly wasn’t at it’s best after two trips through the microwave.

We did have a pita in our sample that arrived cracked, so that it was never really a “pocket”. That particular pita became strips to dunk in hummus. It was an excellent dip-scoop!

Our overall opinion of the GFL pita breads was that they’re very expensive for our personal budget. At $9 plus shipping per package, they can never be a regular part of our menu planning. They are the only commercially available gluten-free pitas that I’ve found, though, so they’ll probably be our fallback for special occasions and ethnic meals that really require pita to feel complete.

The quality of the bread itself, not inclusive of our pricing issues, was very good. I wish they held up longer in their delicious fresh-from-the-micro state, since we often have to hold over meals for small “emergencies” or want to take our meals along when we’re traveling. Would we recommend GFL pitas to other folks. Certainly! Will we buy them again ourselves? Probably! Are their things the company can continue to improve in the product. Definitely!

Thanks again to Rami and the gang at GFL for giving us the opportunity to try their product and spread the word to other families who eat gluten free.

It’s been super cold this week. The snow just keeps getting a little deeper each day, and the kids get more and more cabin fever symptoms hanging out in the house. I’ve been forcing them out for fresh air on any day in which they’re remotely perky.

Anna is not super excited at the prospect of getting “outside in the cold air”. She spends a lot of time tucked up under the eaves of the house in the only snow-free space.

The big kids love the snow. They have been trying to roll a record breaking snowball. Thus far, they’re making some decent sized attempts, but no real MASSIVE record breakers have been managed to date.

It’s very early in the winter season, and I’m already beyond tired of the cold. I’m not a lover of the long, cruel winter. I’d love suggestions from folks who have beaten their seasonal depression and developed a love of the cold.

I try to pay attention to the first bird or animal that I see at the start of a new year. I’m just superstitious enough to be interested in what information Nature may want to bring to my attention.

Most years, my first visitor is either a hawk or a squirrel. The last 3 years have been squirrel years, and I imagined that this one would be as well. Lucky me, I was wrong. This year, my first critter visitor was a woodpecker. To be more specific, my first visitors were a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers. The pair of noisy, rap-tapping birdies started up very early this morning.

I was busy making breakfast and tending children, so I had Dave grab the camera and snap a quick pick for blogging.

After breakfast, while the kids were doing some individual schoolwork, I dug into some research on traditional symbolic meanings behind woodpeckers and decided that this was a pretty good fit for the way I envision my next year unfolding.

Traditional wisdom says that a visit from a woodpecker means that we should:
* Nurture our ideas in the womb of our core passions.
* Use our heads (intellect) to think up innovative solutions to overcome barriers.
* Communicate our ideas in more creative or non-traditional ways.
* Stop and consider the opportunities available to us at this time.
* Look at projects in unique creative ways to bring new life to a project.
* Listen more clearly to subtle energies, there is a message that only our intuition can interpret.

((Thank you to many websites for the information about totem symbolisms))

I’m prepping myself for a year in which I think clearly in order to act creatively. What was your first animal or bird of the year and where do you see yourself going in 2010?

We were lucky enough to get to spend the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 in the company of friends and adopted family.

Our Goerlich friends came down from Rochester on Wednesday and spent two night with us, hanging out and playing games, before leaving on Friday afternoon. There was lots of Nerf battling, plenty of board game awesomeness, and some goofing off in the snow. We had a wonderful time playing with Steve, Heather, Tyler, and Emma. Poor Emma was out of her element, though, and spent a great deal of her sleepover refusing to sleep and voicing her displeasure.

Emma perked up on Friday and everybody got to play out in the snow for a while. I was so happy to get to shoot pictures of the Goerlichs out in the winter wonderland that is our yard.

Here’s Steve getting ready to launch a snowball:

Emma wasn’t sure whether or not she was having fun outside in the cold, but she looked incredibly cute toddling around in the snowy yard.

Tyler built an interesting snow wall with an old flower pot as his “bucket” for making blocks. He also got a couple turns on the sled, and threw a few snowballs. He did not, however, wish to have his picture taken.

It had been a long time (including the birth of two kids for the Goerlich family) since Steve and Heather had a chance to come visit at our house. We get to visit them every couple of months or so when we’re hanging at the GrandChen’s place, but it was fun having them in our space.

I’m hoping we will get to do it again in the spring when the weather is more cooperative.

Like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, OUR hearts dream of Spring.
-Gibran (paraphrased, thanks Khalil!)

It’s become tradition to spend a bit of our Christmas holiday outside. Typically with the traditional burning of pillows of sugar on the ends of sticks over a bonfire and sledding down snow-covered hills. This year, though, we decided we’d switch it up a bit and do some hiking and communing with nature.

Our first stop was a Mendon Ponds park, where we offered up a Christmas time feast to the local feathered friends. Birds at Mendon Ponds enjoy company.

Uncle Ryan and the kids started out cautiously kneeling on the ground outside the woods, trying to look non-threatening.

It quickly became apparent, however, that the birds were not threatened.

Emily loved the little Chickadees who perched so lightly on her fingers or palm.

Anna was also a bird whisperer…she was thrilled with all the tiny feathered friends eating from her hands.

Some of them were happy to just sit around for a moment and enjoy the sunflower seed bounty in her tiny cupped hands.

Our boy Nate, honestly, is not into Nature. He reluctantly agreed to feed the birds for a bit before declaring himself, “bored, cold and, oh, did I mention…bored?”.

We walked the paths in the Wood for a bit, and found this absolutely lovely bench tucked deep into a cove next to a small stream.

It was a fitting place for a group portrait.

We walked back to the van after our group picture. There was a bit more bird feeding. We said goodbye to the chickadees, the cardinals, the titmouses, and the bluejays.

Our next stop took us from flying creatures to swimming creatures. We were off to Powder Mills park to feed the fish at the trout hatchery.

There were hundreds, possibly thousands, of trout in all sizes at the hatchery. They were divided by age and ranged from tiny to impressively huge. We talked about how lovely they’d be…IN OUR FRYING PANS!!! It was only pipe-dreaming, though, since you can’t fish at the hatchery for obvious reasons.

Fish food pellets were available for a quarter per small handful at machines around the outer rim of the hatchery. The fish would jump up out of the water when you tossed in the food pellets.

When I got too cold to stand outside holding the camera, we piled into the van and headed back to the Kinnally homestead to warm our noses and toes while drinking hot cocoa and snacking on S’mores in front of the fireplace. It was a gorgeous, relaxing, and beautiful way to connect with each other and the promise of a coming Spring.

((*apologies in advance for the rough photography taken via Em’s p-n-s with one hand, while the other hand juggled bags and babes))

Taking five children under age 10 on a historic trolley tour and a gallery walk on a busy Friday night means that you’re either brave or crazy…or just homeschoolers who love to try something different on a regular basis.

Tonight’s adventure with the folks over at Mind Games involved taking advantage of our city’s First Friday activities, many of which were themed for the holidays this month.

Our first activity was a guided history and architecture tour of the city aboard a lovely old-fashioned trolley.

The tour guide, a member of the local Preservation Society, was gracious and full of information. Some of us learned how many bridges are in our city (8 major ones), what the almost-triangular architecture on the doors and windows of a church was called (gothic), and the names of the different kinds of Greek columns used in building design (the ones we enjoyed most were Ionic or, if you’re Nate…IRONIC).

Others of us were…less involved.

After the trolley tour, we decided to grab dinner at a local cafe that was featuring a live jazz band. Dining out with gluten-free Anna requires some care and planning, but the Lost Dog Cafe has a great gluten-free menu, not to mention some excellent cafe atmosphere.

We had a bit of a wait for our table, so we grabbed seats next to the band to enjoy their set.

After our buzzer did it’s thing, we moved off to our table to enjoy dinner. Waiting for a restaurant meal with 5 kids involves a bit of creative thinking if you don’t want a hungry riot on your hands. In our case, there were thumb wars, a game of trivia for Smarties candies (one handed out to each child, in turn, for answering a question correctly), and some passing around of the camera at the table for creative photo taking.

Handing the camera to the kids gives you some of this:

And a little of this:

And maybe a little of this:

Then the food came, and there was a little bit of this:

When we had finished eating, we decided to explore a couple of galleries. First stop was at Orazio Salati Gallery, where Anna signed the guestbook (half a page high, in all caps) to “let the artists know I came to see their work”.

Then KarateKids made his Mama sniffle by using all of his saved up money to buy her a fancy pottery piece from Fern Lynn. He was so very grown-up throughout the transaction. Finding the right person to approach about the piece, conversing with the adults along the way as we slipped off (he wasn’t carrying his money around tonight, so I “helped” a bit on the financial end so his Mama wouldn’t have to be involved in the buying) to make the purchase, and then presenting the gift to his mom with such innocent grace that we all wanted to squeeze him senseless.

We made a quick, end of the night stop at Cooperative Gallery and Anna decided to make her first independent gallery purchase.

Em bought a small pottery vase for herself, but she’s made art purchases before so she requested that I not photograph her transaction. She’s hitting the “no photographs please” stage of development.

We trekked back to our car, stopping briefly here and there along the way to talk about various buildings or store windows or interesting things we passed. One of the most fun windows of the night was filled with trains.

The business was closing, the sign had just been turned off, but the proprietor saw me taking a picture and pulled me inside because she thought I should take a picture of the kids looking INTO the store.

She stopped me as I was leaving the building to tell me how absolutely precious our children were…how beautiful they were standing there together in the night.

As we walked away, I got a giggle from hearing an older artsy man comment that “they look like a little, walking Benetton ad”. That’s us…a wee little United Nations.

We hopped into our car, came home to our menfolk, and then divided up to head to our respective resting places. My kids crashed immediately after teeth were brushed and now I’ve blogged. Mission Complete. It was a beautiful, beautiful night!

Today’s Muffin Tin Monday theme was apples. We live in apple country, and the kids are always up for a field trip, so PisecoMom and I loaded up our herd of happy apple pickers and moved our way out to the local You-Pick farm.

We started out picking in the rows of filled-to-overflowing trees. My kids were very anti-tart apples, and Pisecomom and her crew liked them on the sour side. Mostly, though, ALL of the kids liked running around the orchard and trying to avoid the camera. But, hey, I’m sneaky and I caught them all at least once!

Emily:

Nathaniel:

JediBoy:

Anna:

BabyGirl:

I even caught the PisecoMama snacking while we filled our bags.

After we paid for our harvest, we lunched on our Muffin Tins full of apple slices, lots of dipping options, and crushed walnuts for sprinkling. Thank goodness that PisecoMom was in charge of the apple dippers, since I managed to run out of the house with the wrong bad, so I had disposable bowls, forks, napkins, and some coughdrops instead of the gluten-free pretzels, cheesesticks, and juice bags I’d meant to bring along.

Nate was brave enough to try the Ginger Gold apples again…and they were STILL too sour for him.

When they were finished eating, the kids spent some time looking at dragonflies and trying to find more wildlife down by the irrigation pond (squishy, slimy green pond!).

After eating, we hung out with the farm animals for a while. Lex and I mostly just relaxed. She used my camera for some pics while I was making multiple trips to the potty with various combinations of children.

Since I put a picture of her at the top, I’m going to be brave and crazy enough to post one of myself. A completely unflattering one, but I have to say I was having SO much fun that I don’t really mind. I really was as happy as I look in the picture!

We managed to leave the orchard before anyone melted down. BabyGirl crashed in the car, and we hopped out at home to send the PisecoPals back to their house for some rest before Karate and Gymnastics.

It was a great day. The very best kind of sunny, funny, best-friends-and-best-fun type of day.

and I got the pictures to prove it!

Despite feeling half-dead (maybe 3/4 dead in some of our cases), we managed to drag out to the hairdresser yesterday to sheer the boy sheep and institute phase 2 of Anna’s hair-repair “Back To One Length” plan.

She was too blah to get pictures taken post-cut last night but managed to ham it up a bit for a couple of quick snaps this afternoon during one of our “Advil’s Working” moments.

Princess Snarky requested that I get an additional pose of her Evil Genius (trademarked, I’m sure) pose for The Internet People.

I enjoy the cute, short bob but she’s fond of longer hair. We’ve got at least one more bob in the future, probably around the winter holidays, before we get back to one single length with no visible bangs.

Our house is still full of semi-sick people who are primarily just laying around resting. Once we recover, the catching up is going to be insane. We’ve put off or put aside so many things while we’re sick that it may crash and cover us all in an avalanche of things left undone.

~L

I am the mother of three rabid consumers. They were exposed to consumer culture early and often, via heavy doses of commercial television and multiple sets of over-indulgent grandparents. When pressed for introductions, we frequently just call them “Gimme 1″, “Gimme 2″, and “Gimme 3″. Their collections of “stuff” fill up all the room in our moderately sized home that we, pre-children, wondered if it might be impossible to ever utilize fully.

Unfortunately for both our wallets and our little super-shoppers, giving birth to children with a strong desire to ACQUIRE MORE STUFF did not magically cause our financial status to change to comfortably-wealthy or come with their own little money tree where we can pick perfect hundred-dollar bills each morning to use for our spending sprees.

Learning to bridge the gap between want-to-have-it and do-you-need-it is an ongoing life lesson for the Chen family. Teaching our three kids the value of work and how to adequately control spending is important to us because we do not want them to become adults who fall into serious trouble with debt or who value possessions over people in their lives.

We have instituted an allowance plan that is helping the kids see the link between the money they have and the things they can purchase. Each child gets weekly allowance in an amount equal to the years of their lives. Our 9 year old gets $9 per week, for example, while the 4 year old is only given $4 as her weekly allotment.

From that allowance, each child must place 1/4 of their weekly total into long-term savings and at least $1 into a charity-giving account. The rest is used at their discretion to purchase snacks not covered under the family’s grocery budget, toys, and any type of extra-special treat that has not been previously budgeted for as a family expense.

We have a set list of things that are covered under the “Family Budget” rainbow. Comfortable and well-fitting clothing are a family expense, but clothing from specific brands or in specific designs that costs more than the average article must be paid for from allowance. Fruits/veggies/healthy snacks are a family expense, but candy, chips, or trips to McDonalds must be paid for via child accounts. Most books, school supplies, and hygiene items fall into the Family category, but special art supplies intended for single-child use, fancy bath or hair products, and the seventy-millionth new box of markers (bought because unnamed lazy children have left the caps off all the older markers and they’re no longer viable) are paid for by the kids.

Teaching the kids to take advantage of sale prices, plan ahead and save for major purchases, and think twice about impulse buys has taken some of the sharp edge off of their consumer hunger. We will continue to explore more ways of becoming conscious spenders, and I am excited to see what the folks over at the Parent Bloggers Network have to say on the issue.

Anyone who is interested in learning more about making wise financial choices can check out the MoneyWise Learning Tools sponsored by Capitol One.

My kids were in the mood for some time outside, and Dave was conveniently participating in an office tennis tourney at the court across from our house, so we loaded up bags and neighbors and bicycles and headed off to the park.

I was attempting to scout some new portrait shots for an upcoming Not-Back-To-School mini-session event while also chasing kids and (sort-of) watching Dave play tennis. Because I wasn’t focusing on ANYTHING, I walked into the trunk of a massive willow tree with the camera up to my face. I heard my toe crack and knew it was not going to be a good thing. Yep, less than 10 minutes into the playing saw me limping and crying through the anguish of a newly broken toe.

But I’m the Mama, so I sucked up and kept shooting pictures. While I had been whimpering into my water bottle, the kids decided that the best place in the whole park today was the sand volleyball court. I got to shoot all kinds of “beach” pictures as they built and then destroyed a sandy version of the city of Atlantis, complete with King Triton’s castle.

The big girls (Kathy and Emily) grabbed some ice cream and got in some serious “no little kids allowed” girl-talk on the swings and in their own corner of the sandbox.

I got enough shots of the little folks in the potential snap spot that I determined it would be great for what I need. Of course, my kids were only partially cooperative, so the pictures I got of them are full of their personality.

Here we have a prime example of Nate’s “let’s get this done and move on” face.

He totally has the same look on his face that Dave gets when he is humoring me but thinks I’m being silly.

Princess Anna had some trouble standing still.

Eventually, she managed to calm her body, but her eyes kept dancing.

Why, yes, she DID cut her own hair a couple of months ago and leave us to deal with “growing out the bang syndrome” again. She’s cute even when she’s got one of the world’s worst hairstyles. Of course, it looks fine when she wears clips, but clips never survive a trip to the park.

My favorite shot of today is this quick snap of Allie G., whose smile absolutely screams “I’m 7…and mostly toothless!”. She’s so full of joy, this picture just makes me grin every time I look at it.

I hobbled home tired, sand-covered, and completely happy even though the pain is excruciating. On the upside, having too much pain to sleep comfortably means that I had time to blog tonight instead of waiting for some unknown future moment of peace.