The New Orleans Snoball

David and I were introduced to snoballs on the day we arrived in New Orleans, exactly three years ago today.  Our landlord arranged for some people from his church to help us move in.  It was a huge blessing, since Mary was two and I was 35 weeks pregnant with Maggie. Before Jason offered to provide this service to us, we planned on hiring people to help, since I really couldn't carry anything and David certainly couldn't move everything himself!  Well, the moving truck couldn't park in front of our house (he brought down a telephone line trying to!) Instead, he had to park two blocks away.  The guys had to unload all our belongings from the moving truck into pickup trucks and drive everything over to our place and unload again!  And did I mention that New Orleans in July is like unbearably HOT?

Afterwards, some of the guys that helped us moved said that they were going out for snoballs.  We had no idea what they were talking about, so we decided to tag along!  What a wonderful introduction to a New Orleans summertime treat!  A snoball is like a cross between a snocone and an icee: shaved ice with flavored syrup that you can drink with a straw or eat with a spoon.  Even better than the snocone or icee, that have very limited flavor options, the snoball comes in just about any flavor imaginable, traditional flavors like strawberry or raspberry, richer flavors like chocolate or chocolate malt, and local flavors like king cake or hurricane!  They are sold at stands, little shacks really, which are just as prevalent as Walgreen's.  You definitely should know exactly what you want before you get to the window, though!  The snoball stand is about the only place in New Orleans where you'll find quick service and if you're too slow, they'll get upset with you!

This week, I have been on my deathbed.  Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I have been ill.  David's job and I really have a love-hate relationship.  I don't like that he has to work so much, but I love the flexibility that he has.  He was able to work from home all week, so that I could rest in between feeding the hungry boys!  Everyone took wonderful care of me.  Mary had the brilliant idea that a snoball would really help my throat feel better.  The budding thrifty shopper even showed David where I had stored a B1G1 coupon.  So, David and the girls went out to get snoballs for Mama.  Mary chose cotton candy. David and Maggie shared pink lemonade.  I had clear strawberry.  YUM!  It did help my throat feel better for a little while at least.  (I think Mary enjoyed hers, too!)

Homeschool Resources We Love - Pattern Blocks

Another resource that is well loved in the Mobley home is this set of pattern blocks.  Just like the teddy bear counters, this set came with the Saxon  K-3 manipulatives kit.  It includes 250 1 cm thick plastic shapes in six colors:

• yellow hexagon
• blue parallelogram
• green triangle
• orange square
• red trapezoid
• tan rhombus

This set is a very tangible way to teach your children their shapes. I have found it to be far more meaningful for my children to actually hold and explore a triangle with their hands than to just look at a triangle drawn on a piece of paper.  You could achieve the same effect by cutting out different shapes with construction or card stock paper (the important thing is having something tangible).  In our house, though, even the laminated pretend money for the cash register gets bent pretty easily and can be nightmarish to clean up.  These pattern blocks, on the other hand, are easy for little hands to pick up.  This is yet another manipulative that Maggie plays with while I am working with Mary on her math lesson. 

Beyond just a basic understanding of the different shapes, the Saxon Math program uses these pattern blocks to teach children patterns.  For example, you ask the child to place a stuffed animal on the floor.  Then, you make a fence out of two different pattern blocks to teach an AB pattern.  From that starting point, you can proceed to teach more complicated patterns.  Similar to with the Mighty Mind shapes you can also teach the beginnings of geometry by having children cover designs with these pattern blocks.  As children become more proficient, you can challenge them to cover a design with as few shapes as possible or to cover one design in two or three different ways.  Just exploring these on her own, Maggie has learned that she can make a hexagon with two trapezoids.  She doesn't necessarily know that a hexagon is a hexagon or a trapezoid is a trapezoid, but she is beginning to learn that two equal parts make up a whole.  (And in adorable fashion, she can identify a "parawelogwam.")  As you can see from the picture, the girls also enjoy making their own designs: faces, kitty cats, trees, houses, cookies!  I love their imagination! 

This Week's Frugal Failure

Guess what I stocked up on this week?  Rite Aid had cereal on sale for $1.88 a box, plus I had coupons which brought them down to 88 cents a box, so I bought 10 boxes! You detail people who are counting the boxes in the picture, you're right, there are only eight.  Just keep reading.  Ten boxes of cereal for under $10 after tax!  Awesome deal, don't ya think?  I thought so.  The kids were super-duper-excited because I had not bought cold cereal in a very, very, very long time (not since those Kellogg's Special K coupons in December or January). 

So, how could this possibly be a frugal failure, you ask?  In two days, David and Mooter-Tooter (a.k.a. Maggie) ate an entire box of Raisin Bran!  Yep, you read that right.  An entire box.  Two days.  My husband and a not yet three-year old!  (Mary chose to stick with raisinless Corn Flakes, so those lasted until this morning.)  Next time, I think I'll stick with our standard fare: good old fashioned oatmeal!  It only costs $1.99 for a container that feeds our family for at least two weeks (and it's probably better for us anyways).  Oh well, I guess it's good to throw some variety in the mix every once in a while!

Here she is, our Raisin Bran fan!

Picture Books We Love-Chrysanthemum

My girls love Chrysanthemum and other titles by Kevin Henkes.  Chrysanthemum is a little girl, well a mouse actually, who is super-excited to go to school for the first time.  Until she gets there, that is.  At school, Chrysanthemum's classmates (classmice?) make fun of her name.  It's too long.  It doesn't fit on a name tag.  It's the name of a flower.  Up to this time, Chrysanthemum loved her name.  You can imagine the devastation!  Her parents are able to cheer her up at home, but then every day she goes back to school and the teasing continues.  Each day, Chrysanthemum wilts more and more until the students learn that their favorite music teacher, Mrs. Twinkle, also has a long name, one that will not fit on a name tag, and is the name of a flower.  Suddenly, all the other girls want to be named after flowers, too!  Chrysanthemum BLOOMS!

Some books/characters are so treasured in our home that they are given the honor of having a stuffed animal named after them.  You guessed it. We have a Chrysanthemum.  It's actually the Think from Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Thinks You Can Think, but we have imagination around here!


We really enjoy many books by Kevin Henkes.  He has a witty writing style accompanied by humorous illustrations.  Below are a few that we have checked out of our local library, which you also may enjoy:

A Netflix-Free Existence?

After Mary was born, our evenings changed dramatically!  Homebound after 8pm, we didn't really know what to do with ourselves at first.  So, we subscribed to Netflix.  For five years now, we have been on the unlimited DVDs, one at a time plan.  Because we could only watch a little bit of a movie each night before I would conk out, it would take us several days to finish even one movie, so it didn't really seem like we were watching very much tv!  Plus, there was the break between when we would mail movies back to Netflix and when we would receive the next one. 

When Netflix started offering the streaming capabilities, we started watching more and more movies online.  Still, for the girls watching a movie was definitely a treat reserved for special occasions.  Even so, when we would watch a movie with the girls we tried to select ones that were educational (there are so many great documentaries available on Netflix)!  But, this year with a twin pregnancy, I went through several periods of different forms of bedrest, so much that I think I spent more of the pregnancy on bedrest than not.  Being able to put on a short movie for Mary and Maggie to watch was definitely beneficial for all parties concerned!  It kept them occupied and gave me a chance to put my feet up, which was good for the babies (and me)!  After Matthew and Jonathan were born, I continued to allow them to watch one video after their quiet time.  The rare occasion had become a daily routine.  We exhausted the Blues Clues library on Netflix. Thank you, Steve, my girls now think that any paw print is a clue!  We also exhausted the Dora library on Netflix, but the girls CAN count in Spanish!  So why end such a symbiotic relationship?

On July 12, we received an email that the cost for our current level of service would increase from $9.99 to $15.98, effective September 1.  YIKES, that's a 60 percent increase!  Such a big increase caused us to reconsider how much we value Netflix.  I want to encourage my children to engage in activities that require them to use their imagination and creativity, like reading, playing dress-up, making birthday cakes out of sand, coloring.  How does Netflix fit in with that goal?  We concluded not very well.  Plus, David and I each have growing "to read" piles and really want to spend more time reading.  Not having Netflix is going to encourage us to choose to read rather than watch a movie.  By canceling our Netflix subscription, am I saying movies are bad and we will never watch one again?  No, not at all.  We'll probably occasionally borrow movies from the library or use free Redbox or Blockbuster codes.  What I am saying, though, is that for our family a movie will definitely be more of a rare occasion than part of our everyday routine.

MacArthur on Perseverance

 As a recovering quitter, I was encouraged by this quote by John MacArthur in The Quest for Character:

Perseverance clearly doesn't mean that we will never fail; it means that when we do fail, we should seek the Lord's promised forgiveness, learn from our failures, and persevere anyways...[Peter] did not succumb to discouragement; he did not abandon the faith; and he did not repeat the same mistakes over and over.  He learned from each mistake and thus drew strength even from his failures.

An Extra Special Celebration

Yay for Mary!  She lost her first tooth this morning!  Ever since we read One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey, she has been eager for this moment to come.  I offered to pull the loose tooth out with pliers.  She said no.  I offered to do the string tied to a doorknob trick.  She said no to that, too.  She did what every reasonable and sensible five-year old would do.  She just waited for the tooth to be ready to come out.  (Where did she come from, really?)    So, it actually was pretty uneventful.  No pain.  No blood.  No swallowed tooth.

We are not doing the whole tooth fairy bit, but we do want to celebrate the first lost tooth for each of our children.  I asked Mary how we ought to celebrate and she asked for Xtra-Special Celebration Cake.  What a MOBLEY!  I am glad that she understands at such an early age the integral link between chocolate and celebrations!

The recipe comes from the Alpha Bakery Children's Cookbook, which was my husband's when he was a boy.  I ordered one for a birthday gift for a friend a few year's ago, but it doesn't appear that this book is in print any longer.  Wow, we have a collector's item!  The book has a recipe for every letter of the alphabet.  The recipes in this book are actually quite tasty and my kids really enjoy making them.

Xtra-Special Celebration Cake
3 c flour
2 c sugar
1/2 c cocoa
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2/3 c oil
2 t vinegar
1 t vanilla
2 c cold water

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare pans (either two round or one 9x13).
Mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.
Mix oil, vinegar and vanilla.  Stir oil mixture and water into flour mixture real hard until well blended.  Immediately pour batter into pans.
Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.  Let cool 10 minutes.
Remove from pans.  Let cake cool completely.  Fill, frost and decorate cake as desired.