Field Trip Friday

You know it has been a glorious day when you drive home in silence, not because no one has anything to say, but because you look to the side of you and the 13yr old has her eyes closed and you look to the back seat and you 8yr old has fallen to the side, soundly sleeping...hours of morning hiking and exploring has worn my two side kicks out and what a wonderful day it was.

and we get to live this beautiful life together again tomorrow, and the day after that...and so on..

{this moment}

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Linking to Soule Mama 

 School outdoors.....

2 Week Sprouting, Cookies & Sunset

As our sproutlings grow and grow we continue to work outside to prep the ground. Finally getting the last bit of weeds pulled up yesterday afternoon we are on to the next step. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for a bit of daydreaming of a beautiful little space that's filled with glorious food, and no animals or pests bothering it :) one can dream....

Everything has come up except three little artichokes...

Below Pic Source: afancifultwist. blog

Like this little beauty above, white picket fence entering a land of greens....

...or the one below, simple, post logs with some chicken wire.

Above Pic Source: hourzz.com

But for now in our dreaming of a beautiful garden, we work hard outdoors to prep and we research and plan economically as we figure out fencing and garden paths.

Loosing our 'cookie' and baked treats sections in our recipe book- yes who knows where it went, completed removed out of our binder we were at a loss when the kids wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies for an afternoon snack. Quickly scouring the internet for a vegan-eggless recipe- we came across this one:

Camp Payton Eggless Chocolate Chip Cookies

Followed the recipe exactly with one exception- we used half white flour and half wheat flour instead of all white

and she says 3 tbsp of water or black coffee - yes we used the water

Recipe WINNER, Kids and Hubbie both approved of the new cookie recipe!

And as the evening arrived we were graced with a gorgeous sunset in our backyard, proving once more time and time again this life here is beautiful, God is amazing and we are so incredibly blessed.

Egypt, Valentines & Bread

Just as our daughter has been diving into learning about all things Japan for many weeks, months now, our son has just started revisiting Egypt. Studying it a little last year he has decided to learn more now. Reading a book today, doing some 'Mummy Math', decoding hieroglyphics, looking at maps, making a flag and watching a video took up our school day. Our daughter spent the morning writing poetry for Valentine cards and watched the Egypt video with us also and did some of her own reading. A day late, but finally baked our wheat bread loaf for sandwiches for the week- yumm. Warm bread out of the oven, had to keep the kids away so they wouldn't eat the entire loaf right away!

 

 Spending the afternoon with the kids in the glorious sunshine outdoors, until dad comes home...playing pretend, using our imaginations, sword fighting with sticks, making a home made miniature golf course and having wonderful conversations.

A beautiful day.

Nature & Baking

A special breakfast outing to our favorite little doughnut shop started our morning off right. With hubbie starting his new job and out the door so incredibly early, the whole house was up before 6am. Dressing and getting our chores done we packed up and got a sweet treat and momma got some wake me up coffee. Quiet with only an older couple in the store as everyone else was probably at school or work on this Monday morning but there we were, enjoying our Monday together- feeling so blessed to have flexible work at home schedule and be homeschooling these two. A quick trip to the grocery store then we headed off to the Library on onto the park for some nature exploring and of course a lot of play....and sweet sister quickly dove into some of her new books.

Getting home from the park, lunch was made, quiet time was had while momma baked an afternoon snack of chocolate chip muffins and banana bread for morning breakfast.

We adapted the recipe from this one: http://www.bakerita.com/vegan-blueberry-muffins/ 

But we've used it to a T when making vegan blue berry, yumm....

Vegan Chocolate Chip Muffins:

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large banana, mashed (about 1/2 cup)
• 1/3 cup non-dairy milk
• 1 cup Chocolate Chips
• Ours went on 400 for exactly 22 minutes.

 And I vouch that you CAN NOT taste the banana! Our daughter (our picky eater) loved these!

 And my all time favorite banana bread recipe, our son's go to breakfast several mornings a week. (Minus nuts on ours!)

EgglessCooking Vegan Banana Bread

Today's goal is to bake some sandwich bread that I didn't get to yesterday, to explore with the kids, read together- we just got Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (seen the movies but not read the books yet), get some more cleaning done to prep for our 4H meeting tonight and have a great day together.

May joy find you in every moment of your day.