Weekend in Jackson

Last Friday we headed to Jackson for a visit to the Johnson Hotel and to watch Jimmy run in the Mississippi Blues Half Marathon on Saturday morning. Russ and Megan were so kind to let our family of seven invade their home, especially since they arrived home from a two week vacation just an hour or so before our arrival! After visiting the race expo to pick up Jimmy's race packet, we met Russ and Megan at the Broad Street Baking Company for supper.

The children at their table

Russ and Megan at our table

After eating, we went to Russ and Megan's house for an evening of fun before settling down to sleep. Jimmy and Russ played with Jimmy's new camera, Clay played his Gameboy, Sam ran around torturing their dog, Farley, and the rest of us broke in Russ and Megan's new Singstar Country!! Fun! Fun!

Russ holding up his Christmas ornament Julie made for him.

Clay and Olivia putting together a happy meal toy

And the Singstar Stars.......

Singstar Mama

Singstar Mama with Sam climing on my head

Singstar Julie

Singstar Leah! She was singing Kellie Pickler's Red High Heels!

Singstar Megan

Singstars Olivia and Leah

After singing most of the songs, I finally got all of the children settled and asleep by about midnight. The next morning came early! Jimmy's race began at 7:00 a.m. Russ took him at 6:00, and the rest of us arrived there about 7:45.

Sleepy Julie, Olivia, and Clay at the Half Marathon

Clay, Olivia, Megan and Julie waiting for Jimmy to cross the finish line

Leah and Sam waiting for Daddy

Leah and Megan

(Megan spent most of her time waiting holding Leah while I held Sam.)

Sam and Clay.....still waiting

Here comes Jimmy!

The wait was over! Jimmy did great! He finished the race in 1 hour, 48 minutes. The course was extremely hilly, and Jimmy was glad to be finished. After he cooled down, he was ready to pose for some pictures.

Clay and Jimmy

Our family

After the race we spent a little more time at Russ and Megan's house. For lunch, we met one of Jimmy and Russ's cousin, Chris Gibbs, and his family at the Haute Pig. The food was delicious!

The children's table

After lunch the children played a couple of more rounds of Singstar while Jimmy and I packed the van. Thank you Russ and Megan for a wonderful time! We'll visit again soon!

Week 2 Mileage

I know that at least one of my blog readers is also training for the Half Marathon on April 25, and she is interested in our weekly training schedule. Hopefully some of you will find this helpful as well. Only Olivia is actually running the half-marathon, Julie, and I are training for a 10K on May 2. I will post each weeks' mileage on Sunday. We begin our running weeks on Monday, and we run on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday or Saturday.

Miles this week:
3,5,2,7

Happy Running!

Mrs. Barnes

Sam, Clay, Me, Mrs. Barnes, Leah, Olivia, and Julie

Mrs. Beverly Barnes has been my weekly housekeeper for over five years now. She has grown to be part of our family! Leah and Sam both have called her "Barnes", since the time they could talk. Because of extremely sad circumstances, Beverly has been coming to our house only occassionally since the end of October, and is currently taking an extended leave of absence. She will let me know in a couple of months if she will be able to continue helping our family. We miss her terribly, but we also want what is best for her---even if that means she won't be working with us anymore. Beverly is irreplacable!

Last week we had Beverly and her sister over for supper---we wanted to spend some time with her before she left. We enjoyed our meal together, and then we played a super fun, LONG, game of Uno. Leah entertained us with her artwork, which we all participated in coloring.

It was a fun evening. We miss you Mrs. Barnes!

Mrs. Barnes and Sam

Mrs. Barnes, Olivia, and Julie

Leah, Clay, and "Barnes"

Back to School

After a month long break, tomorrow is the big day! We are beginning our second semester of school tomorrow, bright and early! I know that it will be extremely difficult to get the kids out of bed at 7:00 a.m. Especially, since they have only been asleep for 30 minutes or so, and it is 11:55 p.m.! We have gotten into the habit of staying up very late and the children have been sleeping late too. I am thinking that tomorrow night, 9:00 will seem like a reasonable bedtime to the children. Hopefully, they will be tired!

We are joining a homeschool co op this semester for history. It will meet on Fridays from 9:30-2:00 at a church building only 5 minutes from my house! That is the best part. Since we live kind of "out in the country", we usually have to drive at least 20 minutes to get anywhere. Five minutes will be great!

The co op is studying the 50 states of the U.S. We are using the curriculum, KONOS. I have used KONOS for 7 years now, with the exception of last fall. I really love this curriculum, but the problem I began having with it was/is that I have a hard time finding or making time for the "group school" aspect. I read aloud to all of the children all together first thing each morning, and after breakfast we do our daily Bible lesson together, but beyond that, it gets more and more difficult to gather all of the children (or at least the school aged ones) for group instruction and discussion. My girls especially like do complete their schoolwork independently and on their on time frame. Clay needs a little more assistance, but still likes to do his work at his own pace....frequently before his sisters even awaken! So as I composed my lesson plans for this unit, I modified the suggested activities to be completed independently as much as possible. I made each child a checklist of items to be accomplished each day. These checklists will be included in the section of their 50 states notebook called "lesson plans".

I also make checklists for each child for all of his daily work. Since we don't work on all subjects every day except for math, I also include on the checklist how many days of each subject they need to complete for the particular week. These checklists allow the children to work independently as much as possible, and when everything is checked off, I know that they are ready for me to check their work. I type up these checklists one month in advance.
Some subjects also have specific assignments each day, so I make weekly checklists for these subjects, and they are included in that subject's notebook (like the KONOS checklist I described above). The subjects that have these detailed plans are science (for Julie and Clay), IEW (for all three), and KONOS (all three). For subjects like math, grammar, spelling, handwriting, etc. they know to just do the next page or lesson.

This second semester of school is longer than our first one.....20 weeks rather than 16, but hopefully two taking full weeks off will help. We will be taking a trip to Disneyworld in 19 days! We also take off the last week of March for our Spring Break. The school year will end on May 27.

Happy New Year!

For the past five years we have spent our New Year's Eve at Kelly and Lynn's house celebrating with our church family. This year, we all headed out to Kelly and Lynn's after our Wednesday night church service. We enjoyed lots of good food (Kelly cooks delicious chili!) and fun. Several different card games were being played, and the children played inside until it was time for fireworks! The younger children watched the firework display through the windows, but the older children braved the cold! I took pictures of almost everyone who came......I don't have any of Clay or most of the other children.....they were just too busy playing to slow down to pose for me! Thank you Kelly and Lynn for your wonderful hospitality!

Menu Monday

Monday:
Taco Soup, Pasta Roni

Tuesday:
Chicken Pesto Pasta, salad

Wednesday:
Frozen Raviolies, salad

Thursday:
BBQ Chicken Thighs, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, salad

Friday:
Little Cheesy Meatloaves, mashed potatoes, peas

Saturday:
Jimmy and me--out to dinner! Kids--frozen pizza

Sunday:
Pasta Salad

Running

After a one week break from running, I began training again today. The children are in the middle of a two week break from running. They will begin next Monday when we start back to school.

On April 25, Jimmy is running a FULL MARATHON and Olivia is running another half marathon in Nashville. This is a huge race.....45,000 participants! Julie is too young to race (you must be 12), and I am going to keep the children myself, so Julie and I will not be participating. Our whole family is going to Nashville for the event. Julie, Clay, Leah, Sam, and I will be at the finish line to welcome Olivia and Jimmy.

Julie and I are going to train with Olivia. I began the program today, and they will begin the 16 week training schedule next Monday. We are following a different running schedule than the one we followed for the St. Jude Half in December. This one has about the same amount of weekly mileage (16-28), and it also increases the weekly mileage in very small increments, about 1-2 miles each week. The difference is in the division of the miles during the week. We will still run 4 days a week with optional cross training on a 5th day. Our previous schedule had us running basically 4-5 miles 3 times a week with a long run once a week. This new schedule has two short runs (2-3 miles each), one medium run (5-10 miles each), and one long run (7-12 miles each). So we will alternate--short, medium, short, long. This first week the runs are 2,5,2,7.

When I typed up the running schedule and taped it to the pantry door, anxiety set in. Just looking at all of those medium and long runs caused me significant stress! I started thinking about what will I do with Leah and Sam during those long runs? What about school? What about this new homeschool co op we are joining this semester? What if it is freezing rain, and I have to run 10 miles on the treadmill? Then I stopped and remembered how I did it last fall....one week at a time, one day at a time. The big picture is overwhelming, but day by day it seems manageable.

The Saturday after the marathon/half marathon in Nashville, Julie, Clay, and I (and also Jimmy and Olivia if they are up to it) are going to run the Corinth Coke Classic 10 K. I am hoping that training with Olivia will allow both Julie and me to run our personal best times in that race.

Happy Running!

Bye Bye Ba Ba!

I took Sam's pacifiers (he calls them ba bas) away from him today. Last night, out of the blue, I decided that today would be the day. I know that most of you are rolling your eyes saying that it's about time! Especially since he will be three in less than a month! But those of you who know me personally, know that I am a very relaxed kind of mama......I usually don't take away my children's comfort items. There are more important things that matter to me than things such as how long my children nursed (4 out of 5 nursed passed their first birthday), how long they took a bottle (2 took a bottle for a long time after weaning from breastfeeding---one until 19 months, one until 30 months), or until now, how long they took a pacifier (the only other child who took a pacifier, used it until 26 months). In each case, the child gave up the comfort item on his own! However, Sam has shown absolutely no signs of ever giving up his beloved ba ba!

My main motivation for ending the pacifier addiction is that I didn't want to have to keep up with pacifiers at Disneyworld, where we are going in 3.5 weeks. So, today was the day.

He did super! This morning I hid all of the pacifiers except for the one he was sleeping with--before he woke up. While he was eating breakfast, I secretly snatched the last one. After breakfast, he asked, "Where is my ba ba?" I told him that they were all gone, he was a big boy, and he did not need them anymore. He went to the drawer where I previously had kept them, and to his dismay, they were all gone! He asked, "Where are my ba bas?" They are all gone!! I repeated what I had just said, then picked him up and loved on him. I distracted him, and he was fine. I spent the day making sure I held him more than usual (is that even possible?). I kept him busy close beside me. He only asked for his ba bas 4 or 5 times all day, and was for the most part satisfied with my answer. Twice, he whined for several minutes....before naptime and bedtime. He fell asleep in my lap as I was reading books to him for his nap, and at bedtime, he jumped, sang, rolled around, tossed, and turned for one hour before falling asleep. But he never cried! I am so proud of him. Now that we have made it through the first day, I think all will be fine.

What a big boy!

Menu Monday

Sisters

Monday: shrimp spaghetti, salad

Tuesday: baked chicken, baked sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli

Wednesday: chicken strips, ranch dip, cream cheese with pepper jelly and crackers (New Year's party at Lynn's house after church service)

Thursday: poppy seed chicken, brown rice, green beans

Friday: out of town (Russ and Megan's house) Jimmy is running a half marathon in Jackson on Saturday morning.

Saturday: homemade pizza

Sunday: taco soup

Pleaning Day

Sam spent most of Christmas Day eating the entire contents of his stocking!!

Pleaning is a word that my children made up to describe the activity of clean a little, play a little. Today we are having a pleaning day. I set the timer for 30 minutes and we clean, then I set the timer for 30 minutes again, and we play. We will continue this cycle until the job is complete or the day is over, whichever comes first! Today's cleaning involves taking down, packing, and storing the Christmas decorations (we actually began this task last night) plus straightening all the rooms in the house. We are finding or making a place for every new toy, game, etc. Today's playing involves dolls, coloring and drawing, legos, stickers, and games.

Christmas Traditions

Leah, Julie, Olivia, Clay, and Sam

Christmas Eve

Each year on Christmas Eve, we give the children one gift to open. It is always new, matching pajamas. They look forward to this each year, and they all try to guess what they will look like.

We visit our extended families and exchange gifts with them before Christmas Day. (I forgot my camera when we celebrated Christmas with Jimmy's family!! Hopefully Russ and Megan will make me a disc of the pictures they took so I can scrapbook and blog!) Visit Megan's blog to see pictures of us at Granmomma's and Pop's.

On Christmas Day we spend the entire day at home in our pajamas! Jimmy and I do not get new pajamas each year, but we do have Christmas themed pjs that we wear for the occasion. The children awaken fairly early (this year we said, "Do not call us before 6:30 a.m.!"), and come down the stairs all together to see what Santa Claus brought them. At our house, Santa leaves one item for each child plus a stocking full of candy and small items......nail clippers, key chains, stickers, lotion, etc. The children, Jimmy, and I spend the next few hours opening presents (the gifts that we give each other) at a leisurely pace. I prepare the same breakfast each year: egg and sausage casserole and monkey bread. I fix the casserole on Christmas Eve, but usually have to prepare the monkey bread on Christmas morning. This year, however, my grandmother gave us homemade monkey bread for our Christmas gift. It was delicious, and all I had to do was reheat it in the oven. Yum! Our traditional Christmas lunch was grilled steak for many years. Last year I decided to do something different--soups. I also served two different soups this year (chicken gumbo and cheesy chicken stew), but Jimmy and the children very politely informed me that they really preferred the steak dinner instead! We rarely eat steak and often eat soup, so I agreed to reinstate the previous years' Christmas dinner. The rest of the day is spent enjoying our new gifts---playing lots of legos and games.

Now that this wonderful holiday season is over, I will be moving to my next project that I usually tackle this time of year: CLEANING OUT AND ORGANIZING. I will be offering regular tips about this subject.

Christmas Tip

This is a little late, but it is time to clean out your children's toys. I spent a few hours today and yesterday doing just that. I box up what I want to keep (for sentimental reasons or for future grandchildren), bag what I want to give away, and throw away all of those little broken bits and pieces. I also bought various sizes of clear plastic boxes to store new toys and games in. I will type and print labels for those boxes after Christmas. Plastic storage boxes are useful for storing things like legos, KNex, Little People sets, dollhouse furniture, jewelry making supplies, etc. Just be sure to label each box. In my boys' closet, almost every single item is in a labled box. This makes clean up easier, and the closet looks nice too.

Holiday Recipes

I have been cooking for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Tomorrow (or I guess today, since it is after midnight!), I am taking Hash Brown Potato Casserole, Pumpkin Cake, and Caramel Brownies to my in-laws house. Christmas Eve is also Jimmy's mother's birthday. I guess we will stick some candles in the pumpkin cake! The children are all excited about visiting with their aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, and exchanging gifts. I will include my Christmas Day recipes in a separate post.

Hash Brown Potato Casserole
1 32 oz bag or 2 20 oz. bags of frozen shredded hash browns with onions and peppers, thawed
1 stick butter, melted
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
1 tsp. salt.

Mix all ingredients. Put into a 9 x 13 baking dish and bake for 1 hour at 350.

Pumpkin Cake
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. groung nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 can solid pack pumpkin

Blend all ingredients using a mixer. Put into a greased bundt pan. Bake for one hour at 350.

Caramel Brownies
1 Pillsbury German Chocolate Cake mix (get Pillsbury, it does matter)
1/2 container caramel apple dip
1 & 1/2 sticks melted butter
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 cup (1/2 12 oz. bag) chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans

Combine cake mix, butter, milk, and pecans. Press 1/2 mixture into a greased 9 x 13 baking dish. Bake at 350 8 minutes. Microwave the caramel dip to soften. Sprinkle chocolate chips over cake. Drizzle apple dip on top. Use your fingers to blob the rest of the cake mixture in little blobs on top. Bake 20 minutes. Cool well before cutting.

The Simmons Family Christmas

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas with my parents, my two grandmothers, and my two brothers and their families--Rhett and Amanda, Wesley (2) and Davis (2.5 months); Ryan (who was on call and could not attend) and Mary Margaret, Causey (5) and Bounds (2).

The celebration was at Southaven at Rhett and Amanda's house. It was beautifully decorated, and we enjoyed a delicious meal. After lunch we exchanged gifts. The children all enjoyed playing with their cousins and holding baby Davis. I got to hold the baby for a little while too!

Julie and my Daddy

My Mama and Rhett

Clay and Davis


Amanda and Davis

Meme and Julie

Olivia and Jimmy

Wesley and Causey wrestling! I could not get a picture of Wesley while he was sitting still!

Mama, Momo, and Mary Margaret

Sweet Brothers!

Leah--posing in front of the Christmas tree

Sam, eyeing all of his presents!

Causey and Bounds

Sam---still waiting to open those presents!

A big thank you to Rhett and Amanda for having all of us in your home. We had a fabulous time!