Slices of Life

When my boys were little and we'd take them out to eat I kept a small bag of toys in the car to grab on our way into any restaurant.  That way they would be entertained and a bit quieter while we enjoyed our meal. Now that the boys are older we don't keep a bag of toys handy but we do have few games we use to keep the boys occupied if they start getting bored or squirmy while we're waiting for our food or our check. While there are many phone apps, portable gaming systems and electronic games that could occupy my kids we prefer to use the time together at restaurants to connect with one another and so we tend to play games like: Hangman--   any restaurant that has paper place mats works well for this.  We take turns picking  a word and drawing our hangman stand then take turns calling out letters and seeing if we can solve the puzzle.   Tic Tac Toe-- This works best with pen on paper place mats but we have played making a grid with butter knives ...

Ian is starting a new film study unit in our homeschool.  He loves watching movies and when I found the Thinking Tree Film Study Journal I just knew Ian would love the opportunity to watch movies as part of his homeschooling day. I set to work writing up a list of movies I thought he'd enjoy watching.  These are just some of the movies I found that I thought he'd enjoy watching as part of our history lessons. 1.   Secretariat -- A story about a horse that won the Triple crown in 1973; the first American Thoroughbred to win in 25 years. 2.   Captain Philips - A movie about the 2009 hijacking of a US Container ship by a crew of pirates. 3.  Sully- Based on the "Miracle on the Hudson" this movie takes us through the plane that landed in the Hudson river. 4.   A League of their Own - A fictional story of the All-American Girls Baseball League of 1943 5.   Gung- Ho -- When the Japanese re-open an American auto plant the wo...

It's the first Thursday of the month and time for Share Your Shelf with Dara and I.  I hope you all look forward to this monthly link up as much as I do. I just love getting new ideas for books to read or listen to.   Oh wow did I ever have another fabulous month of reading/listening! I also ticked a lot more books off of my 52 book list (many of which happened completely by mistake-- which is really unusual when I've gotten so far into the list).  1. In Your Dreams by Sarah Adams (When in Rome book #4) -- This was a really cute finish to the series. I enjoyed reading about Madison and James working together to start a new restaurant on James' family farm. James has secretly been in love with Madison for years and had no plans to follow up on his brother's suggestion to open a restaurant until he heard from Madison and knew it would be the perfect way to get her to move back home.Madison barely finished her courses in culinary school and has been dying to ...

Do you remember the TGIF lineups on Friday nights? I can remember planning sleepovers and time with friends around TV Show lineups of our favorite shows... or else trying to set the VCR to record our favorite shows if we weren't going to be home. And through the years I had SO MANY favorites! Growing pains aired in 1985 which put me around age 8 and it stayed on the air until I was 15 or so; I'm pretty sure most people in my age group watched mostly for Kirk Cameron and all his antics.  I still have a soft spot for family sit-coms!  The Facts of Life aired when I was just 2  and stayed on the air until I was 11 so I'm sure the episodes I remember so fondly were either some of the later ones and then reruns shown later on when I was old enough to watch from the beginning. I think everyone would have loved an Edna Garret in their lives.   Benson another sitcom that began airing when I was just 2 and was done by the time I was 9 (another one I must have watched mai...

My husband makes pulled pork fairly frequently.  I started making pulled pork in the crock pot years ago and we've since tried a few different recipes (like this cranberry BBQ pulled pork ) but it wasn't something I thought about very often.  All that changed when my husband got a smoker as an early Father's day gift a couple of years ago!   Now, I feel like we have been eating pulled pork at least a few times a month (and when I say we I really mean they as I hardly ever eat any at all because I don't like pork or smoked meats).  He'll usually smoke up a few pork butts and shred them both then we eat some for dinner and sort the rest into a couple of freezer portions for easy, nearly ready-made weeknight dinners.  1. Pulled pork sandwiches -- The simplest way to serve pulled pork; everyone just piles the pork and cheese (perhaps coleslaw) on a bun.   2. Pulled pork rice bowls -- I cook up some white rice and veggies and everyone portions out th...