Dragging My Heels

Okay, I'm not going to lie, this month has dragged on. And I'm afraid the same will be true of many months ahead. I'm having a tough time waiting out this period of pre-move. Waiting on orders, waiting on a reenlistment, waiting on finding out when we will leave here (which, by the way, may get changed yet again, which means some anxiety about the orders we supposedly have in the bag)...I'm hoping it's not all going to drive me insane.

In truth, I think I've dealt with it far better than the last time I had to go through this. I've stayed calm, not thought a ton about it, and just carried on. The place where it shows up is in the day-to-day tedium where I feel like I'm going through the motions in an interminable wait.

This is a frustrating way to live, however, so I'm trying to find things to keep me going. Oscar and I have been hitting the books hard, and he's making good reading progress. We signed up for a free month of ABCMouse to give it a try, and I signed up for a homeschooler forum that is hopefully going to give me a chance to demo (and review here) a new online reading program for three months.

I've also been taking the boys out to the park a lot more. A couple weekends ago, I convinced Wyatt to get on his bike again after leaving it dormant in the shed for over a year. Oliver ran up and down the street with him, and he finally learned to ride it sans training wheels after about an hour of work. He was insanely proud of himself, and both boys have been doing a lot more riding around outside since then.

The boxes for our LEGO sorting project finally arrived, and that's been an ongoing job. I'm nearly done labeling them all, and they are proving a huge improvement over what we were using. Not perfect, no, and they require more maintenance than the old system, but building is leagues better, so it's a win in my book.

Finally, for myself, I decided to go crazy in the kitchen and bake stuff that I've either never tried or rarely do. Last week, I made Soaked Wheat Bread, which was so good I think I might actually switch to making that all the time instead of the wheat bread recipe I've used for a couple years now (I make all our bread - the stuff we get here really is that bad).

Yesterday, I experimented with an eggless cake recipe, trying to make it vanilla, and it was far too heavy. That hasn't stopped the boys from eating through it, though. Apparently, you can slap frosting on just about anything and they will proclaim it fabulous.

Speaking of frosting, I also decided to make cinnamon rolls, something I haven't made in a long time and have never really gotten the way I'd like them to taste. I was all prepared to try several different recipes in the search of one I could love (I really didn't think my family would mind that!), and ended up finding the perfect one on the first try. They tasted so close to Cinnabon while still warm, and were still really good the next day. I can't say what they would have tasted like after that because they barely lasted that morning. There's also no picture because I was too busy eating them to think about blogging about them. Here's the recipe if you are inclined to give them a try. Fittingly, it is named, "Clone of a Cinnabon".

Next up: Bagels (anyone have a good recipe they'd like to share? This will be my first time ever trying these!)