Another school year

Finding myself with a brief window of time to do some quick typing and updates on the kiddos, since we started school last week.

Abigail is in eighth grade this year. She has a great group of friends that I just adore, and I love all their parents too so that's nice as well. :-)  Even though they mostly don't have classes together, there's still lots of weekend hangouts so we parents are doing our best to keep these friendships going strong into high school (gasp!!) next year. Our high school is HUGE (5000 students) so we really want to make sure they've got a core group of support! It's crazy to me to think about high school already but when I signed the paper acknowledging that yes I understood that her advanced math classes would be counted on her high school transcript...yeah, suddenly felt very real.



Abigail is taking a lot of engineering electives this year--STEM, robotics, and coding. She's also taking Spanish and advanced ceramics--she absolutely loved her art classes last year and had a real struggle over whether she should stick with art or take the position she was offered by the journalism teacher as an editor on either the school paper or the yearbook. I'm glad she went with art--I did journalism in high school and loved it (did I ever mention that I was accepted into a mass communications graduate program?) but as an adult I find artistic expression much more enjoyable (plus she made some AMAZING stuff last year and I'm really looking forward to what she does this year! She auditioned for the school musical this week and is planning to join the space & rocketry club again, as well as MathCounts. Prepping for her planned career as an aerospace engineer! Abigail is focusing on swimming this fall/winter and doing club swimming to prep for swim team next summer (swimming is a BIG DEAL here with 32 state championships in a row for the high school women's team). And we're on year 8 (!!) of piano lessons!

Juliet is in sixth grade, and she's done so well with the transition to middle school! The poor kid has zero classes with her best friends from last year, but she assured me that she's good at making new friends, and so far, so good. Fingers crossed. :-)



Jules is taking orchestra (violin) as one of her electives, and mixed media, digital learning, STEM, and French as her others. She's also running cross country, which has been exhausting and exhilarating for her! Juliet has by far been the busiest of the kids this summer with orchestra camp for three weeks in June and cross-country beginning in early August. She's also continuing with piano and looking ahead to what extracurricular clubs she'd like to join (coding? Star Wars? Makers?). So many fun choices! And continuing with piano, of course!

Isaac is loving scouts (can you tell?) and having a great time so far in 4th grade--ten of his classmates from last year are in his class, so that was pretty exciting! He had a great time all summer swimming at the pool with his pals, and zips right through his homework, piano, and lunch-packing after school so that he can hop on his bike and go out with his friends (I love our neighborhood so so so much). He's also focusing on swimming this fall (thank heavens because those long baseball games last spring about did me in) and is joining the coding and robotics club, the international music ensemble, and the math club (oh my gosh our school has the best clubs!!). He's doing fifth grade math this year and totally inherited his dad's math brain which is good for us all!



Lukey is in 2nd grade (which is when high ability starts, hurray!) and 3rd grade math. Sadly this little sheep was shorn not too long after the picture was taken, but man did we have fun with Luke's luscious locks this summer, especially since he spent every spare minute in the pool! He's playing soccer this fall and doing the watercolors club and math club. He was also super super excited to find so many friends in his classroom, and is adjusting to piano practice (it's always hard once the initial excitement passes!). Luke thrives with physical activity so soccer, swimming, and ridiculous amounts of scooter-riding keep him happy!




Nathan is one very happy kindergartener--my first one to go full day! I initially approached the school about doing half-day but they were very firm about only doing full day, and honestly, Nathan is SO dang ready for it--he just has endless amounts of energy and never slows down or stops talking. So he has been loving kindergarten! He's the first one up and ready and always has his lunch packed for the next day within five minutes of getting home from school.

Nathan is playing soccer this fall and doing the kindergarten engineering club--lucky boy! He was a little sad that two of his really good friends weren't in his class, but fortunately he DID have one good friend in there, and they all reunited on the playground, so all was well...and being Nathan he knew everyone's first and last names in his class by the end of the week!

And Matthew and I are hanging out all day together! We're finding our groove--lots of stories and snuggling and organizing and tromping around town doing errands. (And lots of home projects and running for me!)

Cheers to another great school year!

Toasted Coconut Muesli with Cardamom, Ginger, and Dried Fruit

things I could be blogging about: I turned 35, we went on a ten-day spur-of-the-moment camping trip to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Utah, Isaac turned 9, the kids start school in less than 2 weeks and the summer is almost over, Isaac started orthodontia, my sister started chemo, our garden is crazy huge, I've been doing tons of home projects, my tumors were benign.

things I'm going to blog about: the recipe for this muesli, because I wrote it up for a friend today and people are always asking for it.

so here it is. 

Toasted Coconut Muesli with Cardamom, Ginger, and Dried Fruit
6 c. old-fashioned oats

1 c. shredded coconut

1 c. pepitas

1 c. sunflower seeds

1/4 c. flax seeds (honestly for this part I just throw in all the seed varieties I have on hand). 

optional: chopped nuts (we like slivered almonds)

Combine that list of ingredients, and then boil together scant cup of sugar, 1/4 c. oil (I like to use coconut oil) and 1/4 c. water. Or you could just do 3/4 c. honey and 1/4 c. oil but I usually end up using sugar because I'd rather save my honey for other things where I notice it more. Then I add a teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ginger, and cardomom (sometimes I throw in fennel or nutmeg or whatever seems good), boil everything until the sugar has dissolved, and stir it into the oats mixture.

Grease 2 rimmed baking sheets, divide the mixture in half, spread evenly on sheets, and bake at 300 for 22 minutes, stopping halfway through to stir/swap sheets' places if your oven doesn't accommodate them side by side. Remove immediately from baking sheets when done so they don't continue to cook.

Then I like to add dried fruit--my kids' favorites are slivered apricots, Craisins, raisins, dates, prunes, etc. 

And voila! Should keep in an airtight container until you've eaten it up (which is about 3 days in my house so I don't know how long it would last otherwise!)

ps I like to buy my spice's from Penzey's. They are awesome.