Wordless wednesday

The dreaded braces and a night out.

 Just as teenagers hit that time of insecurity and feeling out of sorts with how they look as they go through various growth spurts, many of them then face that great indignity - orthodontic braces. Anna has now hit that spot and lets just say she wasn't too happy about it. It took a lot of talking through but we tried to persuade her that as it's a phase that just has to be got through she's better to try and accept it and not hide her beautiful smile.
A box of chocolates on the day of fitting also helped!

Why are the descriptions of chocolates always on the bottom?.....

Being Anna she of course shared them with her brothers and sisters and they were pretty happy about that too!

 We also decided a while back that once the children became teenagers we would take them out on their own for a special date after each birthday. This is because as our house is so mad busy and chaotic most of the time it would mean we would be able to give one child our undivided attention and have a conversation without the carry on of the younger ones. With teenagers we feel it's so important to keep the channels of communication open and make sure they feel special and cherished. We also want to talk through their hopes and goals for the coming year to see if we're meeting their needs as best we can. As with all things Anna is our 'guinea pig' trying out our ideas on her as we muddle our way through this parenting journey. We are blessed with such an easy going first child to learn on!
The photo are pretty bad, taken on my phone, but they are lovely memories of a special evening.

All things considered she didn't have too bad a week in the end!

Wonderful woodland walks

November isn't the most inspiring month but we've had some wonderful walks these last couple of weeks;

Long hills.....

But with amazing views at the top!

A ruined castle which we only discovered this week....

Complete with hidey holes to explore...

Then a stream to play in...

What more could you want?

Healthy eating!

With keen bakers in the house and girls who like to help with the Tesco ordering we were developing a habit of having treat foods more often than qualified as 'treat'. Also I have been becoming more concerned about other 'bad' things we eat such as pesticides, hormones, sulphites, trans fats etc. I then spent some time one afternoon reading various articles on the effects of all these things and decided it was time to instigate a few changes.
The first thing I did was research where we could avail of an organic box scheme. I found that The Organic Supermarket in Dublin did just that and would deliver to anywhere in the country. We order both the family fruit and vegetable boxes and they send us a mixed box of mainly seasonal produce plus whatever else they have in stock. These are what arrived this week;

This also means we have to be more adventurous and use what comes, like we ended up putting fennel in with the cauliflower cheese and adding pomegranate to a salad Jamie Oliver style. We have also had to google a few things to find out how to prepare them. Last week we had a pattison squash, we definitely had to google that one, and Eoin and beth made a pattison squash and orange cake.

It had a good helping of icing and sprinkles but it still felt a bit more virtuous!

I had also found out from our friendly tesco delivery man that the day fresh bread he was delivering to me warm had actually come in frozen to store and just been reheated, so we are also now getting organic flour and making it here. One of Beth's chores is to make the bread each day and we have had some wonderful creations. This one she decided she would try to make green by adding wheatgrass;























We also got some spirulina powder but haven't figured out what to do with that yet!

We have four vegetarians, Beth, Eoin, Orla and Tiarnan, and I am constantly trying to make sure that they get enough protein and iron. One trick is to add eggs to mashed potato or to hide crushed seeds or nuts into bread or baking. I also think quinoa is valuable but I failed in my attempts to hide it in both the porridge and when cooking rice. One thing they can never refuse though is chocolate brownies so I decided to substitute it for the flour in an attempt to acquaint their palate with it!
First I cooked a little quinoa;























I then made my usual mixture being generous with some buttons taken from the halloween stash;

So far so good...






































A bit paler than usual but that was disguised with a shake of icing sugar;

and everyone ate them despite lots of comments about texture and consistency!

This week I am experimenting with palm sugar, rice syrup, agave syrup and coconut oil. I think the guys are hoping that Mammy will get over this 'phase' but we'll see....

Mobile phone contract

 This week we celebrated Anna's half birthday.

At fourteen and a half we decided it was time to give Anna a mobile phone, especially as she's now beginning to go places on her own more. We have always been a bit wary of giving children license with too much technology too young. In our home we have no television or gaming devices. The children have laptops but the internet can only be accessed from plug ins at their desks, so a mobile phone is quite a big step for us. As a paediatrician Justin would see children in his clinic almost weekly complaining of headaches and trouble sleeping. Invariably there is a piece of technology, be it a television, computer, phone or gaming machine being used in the bedroom and once removed the symptoms resolve! Also I don't like seeing children surgically attached to phones or gaming devices who can't even lift their eyes to answer you. Not so long ago we saw an elderly lady in a cafe who had treated her two teenage grandchildren to coffee out. The lady sat looking out of the window in silence while the teenagers texted and surfed on their phones, ignoring her.
However we do feel it's important to embrace the technology that is available to us. As home educators the internet is our greatest resource.  Physics lectures from Stanford, guided tour round the Coca-cola factory, demonstrations of science experiments, online tutorials. You name it, we can access it on the computer. However it's up to us as parents to teach our children how to use it responsibly and safely, for their benefit without letting it rule them or become a barrier to genuine human interaction.
We therefore spent some time over the last couple of weeks trying to put together a framework of how we wanted mobile phones to be used in our family. We could envisage a situation, once we have a growing number of teenagers with phones, where every family meal or conversation could be interrupted by phones ringing or bleeping. In our opinion attention should be given to the people we are present with, with phones very much taking second place. To this end Justin and I have also been trying to change a few of our own habits to set the groundwork. We believe that what we expect of our children we should be living ourselves. For example, unless Justin is on-call, we don't answer the phone during meals, that's what the answer machine is for. We also are trying to leave our phones docked in the kitchen rather than carrying them round when it's all too easy to 'just look something up' or send a quick text during the children's bath time for example instead of engaging with them.
For issues such as this in our family we have found that 'contracts' work well. We try to give them due gravitas as indeed any contract will be in the adult world. We sat down with the older guys ( Beth isn't that far behind) trying to take into consideration our expectations and their hopes and worked through content and wording together. This is what we came up with;

I know this isn't a very good photo but Anna was delighted to have her own phone at last!

Candle making

 Well the candle making was actually very straight forward in the end. I ordered soya wax flakes, candle fragrance oil and wicks, all from Amazon. We then made a double boiler from two saucepans of different sizes. We don't have a microwave but if you do have I think the wax can be melted just in a pyrex bowl.

The wax has to be melted and heated to between 175/185 degrees. You then add the fragrance, we used french vanilla, and stir for 2 minutes. Soya wax easily washes off with soap and water so we used our regular kitchen equipment.

Once cooled to about 110 degrees you pour into your containers and add the wicks. Easy!

We left them overnight and then cut the wicks to length.

Beth then decorated the glass and we wrapped it up as a Christmas gift for Nannie and  Grampy.

What you can't appreciate on the computer is the fragrance, they smelt divine!

Christmas crafting

 All of the children's aunts, uncles, cousins and other set of grandparents live in England, so with my parents heading over there next week with a car I have to be super organised and have the Christmas bags ready for them to take.
We decided this year we would try a few different craft projects to make some gifts. For Nannie and Grampy we wanted to try some ceramic painting. First we bought some plain white tableware;

Next we browsed through Debenhams china department online to get some inspiration...

 and started painting!

I did the lines and Beth the flowers.

The paints we used are porcelain paints. Once painted you leave them to dry for 24 hours and then bake for 35 minutes in the oven at 150 degrees.  Simple. No need for further glazing and they are now dishwasher proof too.

 The guys loved the idea so Beth, Caitlin and Orla had a china painting frenzy one morning using our spare china store from the communion last year.

 Orla painted these for the two baby cousins;

Caitlin did these for my brother's children;

Beth painted these for their other two cousins, Grandma & Grandpa and the bowl for my brother's cat!






 Orla decided Nannie and Grampy needed plates with their names on too!

We also had some pebbles collected from the beach and glued on magnets for some seaside themed fridge magnets.

Next we're planning on having a go at candle making...

Birthdays on the beach

Yesterday was Hollys 1st and  Ambers 3rd birthday and Justin had a rest day so we headed to the beach.

We were blessed with glorious blue skies and the beach to ourselves.

It was the puppies first visit. ( we were also minding Codys brother Mossie for our friend ).

 Cody loved it...

As did Mossie...

Holly had all the space in the world to run so she was happy too.

Another day which made me thankful that our children are free from the confines of the classroom and homework, to be out there enjoying and learning from our beautiful world.