Lifestyle of Learning

Once I finished my student teaching in late November, I went straight back to work, substitute teaching. I had not worked since early March, before my pre-clinical experience during which covid shut down the schools.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth continued to homeschool until the end of December, and Trust and Liv finished up their virtual school semester.

Jaden William will always have a special place in his heart for chickens. :-)

It had been a good while since I was able to fix meals from scratch due to being weighed down with all the demands of my student teaching semester. I made homemade tortillas for the first time in I don't remember when. I don't think Carissa had ever eaten them before. They were sooooo good. This meal was 100% vegan, using Gardein beefless beef tips. My mouth is watering just looking at this picture.

Though I had finished student teaching, I did have to work very hard to finish my edTPA by December 20 to get my scoring back in early January and get my degree officially finished. Shown below is just a teeny, tiny glimpse at what a huge and irritating project the edTPA was. I was organizing and figuring data and chose to make a chart with lovely color-coding and broke it down in numerous ways. I was determined to pass. I cried so many tears, though, and apparently that is a common occurrence for people going through it. It is a very faulty assessment.

Yay! I actually got to see and enjoy my babies again. :-)

Carissa fixed me grain-free wrap-like things for lunch one day that consisted of avocado and salsa stuffed into iceberg lettuce leaves, with baked cubed sweet potatoes on the side.

I think the stuff Carissa and Elizabeth made is called Oobleck. Apparently the idea comes from a Dr. Seuss book. I think the science lesson was over non-Newtonian fluids. It was pretty neat, and I'm happy to say I was around to feel the stuff and see how it acted. It was so wild, acting like a liquid until you squeeze it or press upon it, then it turned solid.

She also learned about magnets. I'm glad we already owned so many amazing tools from when I homeschooled so that Elizabeth had access to good magnets and such. I know Carissa had so much fun homeschooling Elizabeth, and they really enjoyed each other's company.

The kids get excited about winter so that even Trust and Liv started going outside a lot.

I was able to start making sabbath dessert regularly again. I think it was Trusten who requested cherry cobbler. I've made many cobblers, but I think this was my first cherry one, surprisingly.

Oh, what fun! It snowed! Finally a snowy winter came upon us again. We had gone several years without a decent snow. This one was ok, but there was even more to come!

We, of course, went on a walk in the snow during the day, but we also went out at night for a night walk in the snow. So much fun with my loves!

In mid-December we celebrated Elizabeth's ninth birthday! I shared about both the girls' birthdays in the post linked.

I saw an article in the newspaper about my earning my degree. So sad they messed up the title with "degree" misspelled.

Solstice gifts! Well, it wasn't much, but the oldest three were really thrilled they got nice nail kits of their very own, and Elizabeth was extremely excited to get a new flashlight. The girls also got a large shared bag of new scrunchies. I don't think they'll run out anytime soon.

Elizabeth, after getting outdoors exploration stuff and a backpack to keep the stuff in, was ready to take it along on our first walk after her birthday. She cracked me up when we didn't get far before she wanted to stop and get a drink from her canteen. I knew it would happen. I just didn't know it'd be so soon.

Carissa started experimenting with pouring, I think it's called. She mixes something with acrylic paint, which apparently has to be mixed in just the right proportion. Then she sorts the paints she's going to use for a particular work, then dumps them upside down, one after the other, and moves the canvas to get it fully covered. Afterward, the canvas has to carefully dry. She uses a hairdryer for it to do something special—I forgot the term—but it's all very risky, because it can go very wrong. The paint can crack, for example. It's pretty neat, but it seems like a headache to me.

The kids went to see their dad during the Christmas week, and Carissa and I visited part of her family (due to covid, we could not see everyone). Then we got the kids and visited my parents, sister and her family, and my grandpa while being cautious.

I made magnesium body butter again! I took all my ingredients and the containers I had left to my parents' house and made it there and gave some of it away and brought one home.

Carissa recommended I check out a book called Crispin by Avi from the library, to read to the kids. She read it when she was a kid. It's actually a trilogy, and the first book is pictured below. We got through the first one quickly, read another book called Coyote Autumn by another author, and went a lot more slowly through the second one, so as I'm writing this, we just started the third one last night. I love it! Trusten will often complain beforehand about a book, but this is one of those that he ended up really loving, at least during the first book. It is historical fiction (one of my two favorite genres!), set in the late 1300s, a short time after the Black Death, and it's very rich in vocabulary, as well as historical facts. If you're reading this, I highly recommend this trilogy. I intend on looking into more books by this author. He's great!

Winter means hot chocolate time!!! And yes, it means mini marshmallows, too!

Jaden comes to see me a lot, even during the weekends he and his siblings are at their dad's. He likes to go out and about, so he comes out for a few hours. Sometimes we go elsewhere to hike, other times we hike near home, but we almost always go hiking, and he nearly always climbs trees.

Trusten was assigned a human body bone project. They were graded with a rubric, and one of the requirements was creativity. He had some thin copper wiring that he chose to use, which he then hot-glued to a sturdy backing. I think he used beads for the knees. It might not be the neatest looking, but he met all the requirements and got a perfect score.

I went and had allergy testing done again, since I didn't start allergy injections back in late 2015. I've started the shots and am looking forward to feeling better. My allergies have caused me ever-worsening asthma that is chipping away at my quality of life, on top of the chronic pain. I am hopeful that I can overcome this, and I'll be better able to cope with everything else.

Trusten made the steak! He was very adamant about doing so. I was hesitant, since we rarely eat steak because organic, grass-fed steak is so expensive, and we don't eat a lot of beef, anyway. I chose to trust him, though, and it came out fine. It tasted delicious.

I just signed a contract with VIPKid and started teaching this second week of March. Pictured below are things I fixed up for my demo video. I had to create a demo teaching lesson, then teach a mock class to an adult pretending to be a student, and then undergo the background check and upload all my important documents, like my degree. This will be extra money, rather than a main source of income, which is really only possible for those willing to teach all night and not have a day life. It also gives me more experience working with students learning English.

It got so cold for a few days. We had highs in the single digits and negatives at night. We ran a heat lamp for the chickens and had to melt their water each day, twice a day. The cats came inside. Trust and Liv tried to save a robin. They moved it into a cage and gave it a blueberry and some water, but it never ate. They were going to release it the following day, but it died before anyone went to bed that night. :-(

It was so slick on the road, and it's dangerous near the cliffs down our road. I did well each time I had to drive down, but it wasn't fun. Someone didn't do so well, as you can see. They slid, but luckily they didn't drive off the cliff. My neighbor went out one day, but I think it's more likely it was their visitor. We've seen the person drive way too fast down the road.

Just over a year since I found an echinoderm fossil that I believe must be some sort of brittle star rather than the arms of a crinoid, I found another! I found it in the same location I'd found the one the previous year. So, I decided we'd go back the following day, and I looked and found another. So now I possess a collection of three!

This is the second book in the Crispin trilogy. The first one, pictured above, is entitled The Cross of Lead. The second one is At the Edge of the World.

Elizabeth placed again in her class spelling bee and competed again at the next level. Unlike placing and qualifying to participate in the regional bee (thanks covid), she didn't quite make it this time. She did well, though, and I'm proud of her!

Trusten decided he would climb a tree. He's not into it the way Jade is, but I think he sometimes just wants to be like his brother. ;-)

Liv played basketball again, and Carissa and I thoroughly enjoyed going to her games to see her and her teammates play. We really got into it!

Stereum ostrea (false turkey tail)

Cladonia sp. (probably Cladonia grayi), a type of "pixie cup" lichen

We happened upon a pair of snails getting it on. Snails are hermaphroditic, possessing both male and female parts. When they copulate, they each insert a penis into a vagina, but the one who has proved to be a stronger male will be more successful in causing the other snail to pay the more investment-heavy role as a female. Shortly before copulation, one or both of the snails will stab the other with a gypsobelum, commonly called a "love dart." It is so named due to its composition of some form of calcium (like calcium carbonate or calcium sulfate, which we know as gypsum) and the fact that it's thrown like a dart (from the Greek ballain, "to throw"). The purpose of the so-called love dart is to inject hormones that prevent the recipient from rejecting the subsequent sperm.