The joy of whipped topping!

Day 95:

(Thursday)

My day started with spilled juice and ended with a pot holder on fire.  In between, we did a lot of home school and a lot of Thai study.  Starting to wonder about the merits of blogging because my life is boring. And when it isn't boring, it's because I'm doing or have done something stupid.

Kora had mangosteen for breakfast. Then she ran around the place because she is quite a cheery ray of sunshine in the morning. That was only intended with the slightest air of sarcasm from this NON morning person.  Kees woke up, not a morning person, and wanted juice and a muffin.  But I wanted him to eat something with his muffin and that caused quite the uproar.  I snuck peanut butter into some oatmeal, but he wasn't fooled.  He ate a little of it, but not much. At least I tried, right?

Mangosteen

Playing and running around the place

The juice I spilled

Kees inspecting the oatmeal, this is before he realized I had defiled it with peanut butter.

I finished off consonants today with Kruu Jeab and started reviewing vowels to do with her tomorrow.  The vowels overwhelm me a little, but it's much more manageable if you just take it in small chunks.  I also alternated studying vowels and trying to memorize what class each of the consonants goes in: high, mid, or low.

When I was trying to study in the morning, Kees got upset that I wasn't reading books with him, and decided to dump everything out.  It was a stand off of epic proportions when it was time to clean up.  It reminded me of the bean incident two years ago, but I guess if we only do this every couple of years, I shouldn't complain too much. The hardest part for me is NOT helping him clean up.  I like to tidy up and organize things and it's quite agonizing that he is taking so long and fighting every step of the way. But I warned him before he dumped everything out that it wouldn't be much fun to clean all that mess up and I had to "stick to my guns" so to speak or I don't think he would have learned those natural consequences.  Now I'm just hoping that next time he thinks about doing this, he'll remember how crummy it was trying to clean up.  I was so proud that he did it, it was a lot of hard work, and there were tears, but he did it, all by himself!

The mess, about halfway through the clean up process.

Almost done!

 We finally went to lunch, at this point I was ravenous, cranky, and ready to cry.  Bonus mommy points, I held it together.  Lunch was so good, and getting that food in my body changed my outlook on life.  Kees and I were twice as productive in the afternoon and I was so proud of both of us.  I'm kicking myself for not getting pictures of us doing our letter work.  We have letter tiles and letter books. The Young family gave us these really cool books, they are small, and there is one for each letter of the alphabet.  I put down the letter tiles and Kees found the matching book that corresponded with each letter. Then we read the letter books.

These noodles saved my life and sanity!  Also, try not to look at my face, I'm making some type of weird expression.

Kees at a lot of meat on a stick.

We mailed some candy to a church to pass out for their VBS. There's a mobile post office near the place we had lunch.

Once we got home, Kees played with trains, while I worked at the kitchen table.

Vowels

Writing

Usually when I "help" clean up, it's by holding the basket.  Kees is happy with this arrangement, and so am I.

Using tools, Kees was the boss and he told me what to build.

I was asked to make a river, so I did this.

I made a list of 5 goals for us for each day we spend in the school room.  I hung them up and Kees "studied" them, so he'd know what we are going to do everyday. 

Our goals: Calendar, Letters, Numbers, Puzzles, and Reading.

 We finally "took off" work around 6 pm and came home for dinner.  Doug wasn't hungry and he is dieting, so the kids and I ate our obligatory "real food" meal, so that we could have some chocolate chip pancakes with whipped topping.  Oh, to live in America and have whipped topping options readily available and affordable....  Earlier this week, I was craving chocolate...remember the muffins I made. Anyway, when I eat chocolate chip pancakes I feel they require whipped topping. But heavy whipping cream and the canned variety option are both $5, a tub of cool whip is $10.  So none of those were viable.  I brought back 4 envelopes of Dream Whip from America last year. I attempted to make that by hand with a whisk and room temperature milk about 6 months ago, and obviously that didn't work. Since then, I have been given a hand mixer and read online that you should use cold milk...that seems so obvious, not sure why I needed the internet to tell me that.  My other option was coconut milk. You are supposed to be able to refrigerate a can of coconut milk and let it separate, you pour off the liquid then sweeten the cream that remains and whip it up.  Coconut milk is easy to find and it provides a non-dairy option...Doug is sporadically lactose intolerant.  He can do ice cream, and stuff baked with dairy, but straight up milk...not so much.

So, the other day when I was craving whipped topping, Doug bought me a can of coconut milk and I also refrigerated two small boxes of milk. So after 2 days, I attempted the coconut milk, but mine didn't seperate, at all.  Plan B, the Dream Whip, and thank you LORD, it worked!  Both kids loved the whipped topping!

She mostly just ate the cream.

After this, she just stuck her face right in the bowl.

Kees was explaining something to me...can't remember what.

While I was talking to Kees, Kora got a hold of my plate and licked it too.

Then, she stood up and danced.

Forgot to mention that while I was making Kees's quesadilla, I caught a pot holder on fire.  I actually calmly moved it over to the sink, and looked around for my ipod to take a picture of it, but I had left it in the school room with Doug and the kids.  So sad, that would have been an awesome picture!