In the kitchen sits the remains of my lunch, long-forgotten:  Beans in a plastic cup and a letter from a Compassion Survival Project we sponsor.

In the living room, plastic cups once full of granola are abandoned.  With all the granola left lying on the carpet, it’s hard to imagine any made it to the kids’ stomachs.  They ate granola on the floor because by noon, Mama needed a time-out and the only way to get it was to throw some of the 24 cups of granola I’d just made at them and turn on Tom and Jerry.

Next to the granola crumbs is the proof that they did actually consume a lot of oats.  Willa’s tights are abandoned where I removed them in a hurry following a blow-out diaper.  The wipes box only had one wipe in it, so I was forced to “make do” while Sam and Ian did their own rendition of a Marx Brothers routine, running around the house looking for more wipes.  We found some later in the van.  But not before I’d worked my maternal magic with one single solitary wipe.

Three lost toothbrushes lie on the bathroom floor.  I’m not entirely clear why they’re there, but I’m pretty sure it was a direct result of the kids using them to “clean” the walls after their morning brushing.  Do not even think about mentioning the unsanitary conditions of this.  They did actually brush their teeth first, you know.

One of the glass jars on the kids’ table usually holds crayons.  They disappeared today.  I have no idea where.  But I suspect Willa.  And those little checker like Connect Four pieces that are strewn all over kingdom come?  Those were a birthday gift that I’m very grateful for but intend to keep under lock and key until my children are 40 and capable of keeping up with their stuff.

And now all that remains of this day are a headache, the memory of sweet pink baby toes…

… and this.

Nic asked us to talk about what resources we’re using to help us raise our kids.

We’re so very flattered you think we’ve put some thought into this at all!   But before we dig in to practical stuff, we need to discuss The Big Picture.

We think parents who are intentional about their parenting are the ones who are most effective.  So, what are your goals for parenting?  Do you want well-behaved children?  Smart kids?  National Merit Scholars?  Do you want them to be athletic, musical, artsy, dreamers, future presidents?  What’s the POINT of all this effort?

You can’t be intentional about anything unless you’ve got a goal in mind.  It’s funny that I was trying to answer this question this weekend, because here’s what we’ve been reading from the Bible plan this week.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! ⁵You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  ⁶These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. ⁷You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. ⁸You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  ⁹You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

So, um, that’s basically our plan (and Moses said it much better than I could.)

We want to teach our kids to love God and obey His commands.  We want to teach them diligently, all the time.  We want our faith to be totally integrated into our lives.  It’s why we homeschool (I’m not implying you can’t instruct your children about God if you send them to school, I’m simply saying it’s what works for us), why we keep our kids in church with us, why we guard our calendar and schedule so closely… Our goal is that our children love Jesus.  And we want to spend lots of time with them so that we can have a good, honest relationship and when we instruct them, THEY HEAR US.

Whatever decisions we make as parents, whatever resources we seek out, they should help us meet our goals for our kids.  It’s how we discern a good book about parenting from a great book about parenting.  It’s how we define who makes a good mentor for us.

But you can’t get anywhere as a parent if you don’t know where you’re going.  That only ends in frustration.  Your goals serve as your gut-check.  When something isn’t working, the goals are the guide that will help get you back on track.

Soon, I’ll give you some more of the practical side of this:  mentoring, books we like, etc.  But I didn’t want to step into that until I told you what our intent is for raising our kids.

And now that we’re all on the same page about that, what are your goals?  What is your heart’s desire for those ankle biters you’re raising?  To what purpose is all the nose-wiping, book reading, and disciplining in your house?

Welcome to the Weekend, People.

Well, the inevitable happened.  Today, we became the parents of six year olds.  I haven’t decided yet which emotion will win:  the weeping or the high-fiving.

Either way, it’s a “Yay, God!” kind of day around here.

And you all know that when the House of Vitafam celebrates, there will be cake. The boys finally agreed they wanted a bobsled cake (I guess it was all the Olympics we watched when they were sick.)

However, my cake mojo failed me this week.  My first cake fell so dramatically I had to feed it to the kids for breakfast the next morning.  My second attempt was merely passable.  Last night, when I started putting the cake together, it fell apart, slid off the cake plate, and imploded.

There was nothing left to do but turn it into a Bakerella style “cake ball bobsled.”

The next morning, the resulting shape I pulled out of the freezer looked more like a rowboat than a bobsled.  The boys were worried.

Frankly, so was I.

The twins requested a fondant covered cake.  They’re probably the only six year olds in the world who know the word “fondant.”  Once I got the fondant and the decorations on the rowboat, it looked much more like a bobsled.  The boys were just excited to pick which jaw-breaker/helmet was theirs.

That’s a candy racing stripe and runners, by the way.  The bobsled is supposed to be orange, but fondant is ridiculously hard to turn any other color but pastel.

Truthfully, the kids only wanted fondant so they could play with the leftovers.  This was my kitchen island after they wreaked their havoc.

Some of our friends weren’t able to join us as planned, but MeMe and my brothers came and spent the day.  We ordered pizza and then we Did Cake Time.  Each twin got a turn being sung to and blowing out the candle.

This was followed by some sort of testosterone-driven balloon fight.  The Posse plays hard, y’all.

We’ve now all collapsed in a coma of sugar and exhaustion.  It was a beautiful, comfortable, crazy day.  And it definitely felt like a celebration.

Even if we did have a bobsled cake in the middle of Alabama in March.

So are y’all sick of me writing about bread yet?  Me, too.  Which is why I made you some videos…

This first video will show you how to use your scales to weigh your ingredients for the 100% Whole Wheat Bread recipe in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  The video is 6 minutes long, which really just means I talk too much.  Also, if the fact that it takes me six minutes instead of five is the reason you don’t make this bread, then you probably need to settle down.  Also, taking six minutes to mix a batch of dough that will last me about a week and a half to two weeks is a big improvement over 8 hours for a week’s worth of bread.

Measuring 5 Minute Bread from Lora Fanning on Vimeo.

I was pleased to see that adding the extra 3 tablespoons of vital wheat gluten really did made the dough less wet and gooey.  I’m also happy to report that after ten years of marriage, I still had to edit out about 5 seconds of footage of my posterior, so my husband still likes me.  Hooray!

This next video is poorly shot, but it gives you a glimpse into how much time I actually spend making bread on days when the dough is already mixed.  It also gives you a glimpse into how quickly my mornings disintegrate.

Bread Making in the Morning - Less than 5 Minutes from Lora Fanning on Vimeo.

If nothing else, skip to the end and watch what happens every morning with Willa around 11:00.  It is a wonder to behold…

Let’s talk about BREAD, shall we?  I’ve discussed the benefits of whole wheat, I’ve shown you how I make lots of loaves of bread at one time, now let’s talk about the current reality that is my life:  I don’t have time for bread-making.  I have all the tools to do it in big batches, what I don’t have is all the time.  It really would only take me about four or five hours.  But in Kid Time, that translates to 8 hours. You can imagine why.

And the problem is, bread-making isn’t really flexible.  You can only let it rise so much, add so much flour, walk away from it for so long, before you have Mt. Saint Dough-saster on your hands and you’ve got to start all over.

This means that I’ve been secretly buying ONE loaf of whole wheat bread and rationing it out over a two week time frame.  I hated that I was spending money on bread when I had everything I needed to make my own.  I hated that I knew the store stuff wasn’t as good for us.  And I hated that I couldn’t seem to make the time to make bread.

Then Megan at SortaCrunchy did a review of a book called Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day.  I was intrigued.  I tried the recipe I found online.  And then I dug in and did some real research and experimentation.  And I am a believer.

The authors of the book devised recipes that don’t require kneading.  You mix the flour, the water, the gluten, the yeast, and the salt in a big bucket with a lid.  You let it rise, you throw it in the fridge.  When you want to make bread, you pull out a handful of dough, shape it into a loaf, let it rise once more, bake it, and voila - BREAD.  Head over here to watch videos and preview recipes.

Before I sounded off to all of you, though, I wanted to give the recipes a thorough test.  I wanted to prove that this method really was more efficient and just as healthy.  So I took my time working through the book.  I had a friend (we shall call her The Bread Whisperer) test things with me.

Here’s what I love:

- We always have bread.  I can get up in the morning, grab a hunk of dough, and set it out to rise.  (Usually I take two pounds and stuff it in a loaf pan so I will end up with a traditional looking loaf.  The book suggests artisan bread done on a baking stone.  Which is pretty, but not really practical for my gang.)  I throw it in to bake just before lunch and we can have hot bread and butter with honey every day of the week.  I look like super mom and I spent a total of five minutes on it.  Plus, the house smells fantastic.

- The dough will sit and wait for me.  When we all got sick last week, nobody ate anything for days.  When I came back to my dough, it had fermented a little, but that just meant we had sour dough bread for a week!  I don’t even have to wash the bucket in between batches, I can just leave a bit of dough in there and I’ve basically made a starter for sour dough.  (Obviously, if your dough sprouts something green or another groovy color of the rainbow, throw it out.  But it should last for up to 15 days.)

- If I forget to set a loaf out to rise in the morning, I can have hot pitas out of the oven in half an hour.  I kid you not.  Today I started my pitas at 11:30 and by noon, my gang was making sandwiches with these puffy little beauties.  It makes me happy.

- I’ve got instant gifts to take to neighbors in need.  Make a pretty loaf and nobody minds that it’s actually good for them.  Right?

Here’s what I learned:

- If you buy nothing else to start making your own bread, buy a good kitchen scale.  Even if you’re going to use nothing but white flour, buy a kitchen scale.  It will be the difference between dense blah loaves and happy perky loaves.  It becomes even more important if you’re going to use even just some fresh ground flour.  Fresh ground wheat flour measures completely different from white flour.  Even the author of the book has noticed the difference and has suggested that scales be used when using fresh ground flour.  The nice thing is, the book provides all the conversions, so you know how much your flour should weigh.

Now I have a system for weighing everything in one bucket without having to dirty multiple dishes.  I dump it in the bucket on the scale, mix, and jam it in my fridge.  The difference in rise, in texture, in everything, is obvious.

- The recipes all call for vital wheat gluten.  It’s not that hard to find, people.  Order some online if you need to.  Don’t fight it.  Just add it.

- The authors of the book originally wrote Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  They took those recipes, added some whole wheat flour, cut the fat, and called it “Healthy Bread.”  Here’s my issue with that:  I don’t think removing fat makes something healthy.  I think it makes it bland.  I’m one of those healthy eaters who likes my healthy fats.  I think good quality eggs, good quality butter, and cold-pressed coconut oil make the world go round.  So if you’re going to try the brioche or some of the other recipes that call for eggs or butter, grab a copy of “Artisan Bread” and convert that recipe to whole wheat.  Do NOT bother with the brioche recipe in “Healthy Bread.”  It may be healthy, but it’s not brioche.  Add another stick of butter and you’ll come closer to having brioche.  I kid you not, my chef friend took one sniff of my brioche dough and said, “Add another stick or two of butter.  At least.”

I never argue with a chef.  They have really sharp knives.

As the Bread Whisperer, my chef friend, and I perfect making these recipes wheaty yet tasty, I’ll share our modifications with you.  For now, if you’ve ever thought about making your own bread or grinding your own flour, I suggest you start with the methods in this book.  Buy a grinder.  Buy some wheat.  Then don’t sweat learning all about kneading and the “window pane test.”  Get you a bucket and make some bread.  The point is not whether you know how to knead, the point is that you always have healthy bread on hand.

I think at this juncture, a video of how to measure things out quickly would be appropriate.  I’ll try and put something together for you in a day or two.  In the meantime, my apologies for all the verbage.    It’s like Pandora’s Bread Box in my head.  You people should never have gotten me started…

The Rambling Housewife wants me to talk about our General Family Guidelines Concerning Health and Nutrition.  So I’ll just go to the Vitafam Vault, pull out that binder, break the seal applied when we all signed it, and copy that off for you…

Hee.

Our journey down the slippery slope of Healthy Eating began when Adam was a baby.  He was labeled with “failure to thrive” and we were desperate to find something to help our little guy beef up.  I started reading about the benefits of (shhhhh) raw milk.  The next thing I knew, we were making our own formula and were the parents of a FAT BABY.

From there it was just a short stretch to making my own yogurt.  And ice cream.  And butter.  (Things I no longer do, by the way.  But I CAN.)  Pretty soon, we bought a wheat grinder and I started teaching myself how to make whole wheat bread.  Suddenly, I was a Whole Foods Frequent Shopper and I started buying wheat in large buckets.  Now we’ve got a freezer full of grass-fed beef and free-range chickens.  I like to treat my kids’ ailments at home whenever possible and I’m picky about the soaps and lotions we use on our skin.  We do, however, use deodorant around here.  Proudly.  Does that kind of crazy earn me a free pair of Birkenstocks™?  Anybody?

I don’t even know how it happened.  The more I learned about our food and our everyday products, the more I knew I had to make changes.  We’ve been at this for nearly five years, so we’ve had time to take it slow, play with various changes, and decide what works for us.  Our food and health choices are always evolving.  I’m always looking for ways to stretch the budget, keep it simple, and yet keep it healthy.  These are our current “guidelines:”

- We avoid boxed goods and cans as much as possible.  Exceptions:  canned tomatoes and saltines.  I hate cracker-making.  Alternatives:  frozen fruits and veggies, buying beans in bulk, boiling, and freezing in 2 cup portions, making chicken stock in the crockpot after roasting a chicken, granola instead of cereal (although I usually have some sort of cereal lying around the house).

- I make our bread from fresh-ground wheat.  If I can’t get it made, we go without bread.  I will talk about my current method of managing this tomorrow.

- I get my eggs from free-range chickens.  The improved quality is noticeable and I always have a healthy lunch on hand in a pinch.

- I don’t buy deli meat unless it is nitrate-free.  I try to find it on sale, buy it in half pound packages, and freeze it.  This means we eat lots of peanut butter (Confession:  I give my kids the organic stuff but I keep a jar of Jif™ stashed for Mommy) to stretch the meat further.

- I make our baked goods with fresh ground flour.  My exceptions are birthday cakes.  I’ve found that my kids seriously go BUCK WILD if they eat lots of box mix cake.  I think because they don’t get the HCFS and food dyes as often, the affect on them is more noticeable.  I don’t care if they eat it at someone else’s house, I’m not that hard core about it.  I just don’t like having to live with them in my house after they eat it.

- We drink water.  Or milk.  Or, if you’re Andrew or Ellen, coffee.  No juice.

- I avoid parabens, laurel or laureth sulfates in our body products.  Which means I use coconut oil on my face, organic conditioner in my hair, and unrefined shea butter on my arms and legs.  Despite all this, I do NOT smell like patchouli.  Or at least, I don’t think I do.  Come closer and take a whiff…

- We’re not anti-medicine.  But we like to reserve antibiotics and such for when we really need them.  Anything I can treat herbally at home, we’ll try that first.

My friends all make fun of me, but then they’re not afraid to ask me questions about nutrition, so I figure they can mock me all they want, as long as they can admit I’ve done my homework.

And I have.  I’m a research hound, y’all.  I love it.  The problem is, once I’ve researched something, I can’t NOT act on it.  Which is how we ended up this crunchy.  I didn’t set out to be that way.  I tell myself I don’t have time to care.  But I’ve learned that I DO care.

And it’s not just for the kids.  Andrew and I benefit from all the healthy stuff, too.  He’s trying to stay healthy so he can take care of all of us and I’m dealing with the sugar imbalance from hell, so we need the nutrition, too.

So, that’s how we got here.  Rest assured, if you are a Hamburger Helper™ Queen, a McDonald’s™ Drive-Thru Junkie, or a Capri Sun™ Swigger, we can still be friends.  I will not mock your cooking skills or your fast food boxes.  I will eat your food if you offer it.  And you can still feed my kids junk.  They just might have to live with you for a couple of hours til “the buzz” wears off.

‘Tis the season for everybody’s birthday. And today marks the birth of one who still makes me do a happy dance inside when I think about him.

Technically, that “G” he is holding in the picture was meant for my Grammy.  But, just for now, it stands for:

-Gentleman

-Genius

-Geek (He wears that label with pride, people)

-Gardener

-Giver

-Great Coffee Maker (there was no G-word for “He Has the Spiritual Gift of Beverage”)

-Genuine

-Game-player (Nerts, anyone?)

-Grass mower (Although I think he’d hand that one off willingly)

-Garbage man (It is his God-given responsibility as the Man in the Family.  Or, at least, that’s what I’ve always believed.)

-Giggle Master (He tickles like a champ and he can crack us all up with his wit.)

-Guru (He knows a lot of stuff about a lot of things.)

-Gatekeeper (Nobody protects us better.)

-Grunt labor (And he does it all with a smile!)

Mostly, though, that “G” stands for “Greatest Husband and Father the House of Vitafam Could Ever Imagine.”

Happy Birthday, Andrew!  We love you!

My Grammy turned 80 last month.  There’s a big birthday party planned for her this weekend, but, for a myriad of reasons, we aren’t able to make the trip to be there.  So instead, we made her a video.  And when I say it took all week, I mean it really took all week.  We had a ball with it.  And we got to spend lots of time talking about my Grammy and why she’s so special.

Because she is special.  She taught me to love Jane Austen, history, family genealogy, tea, crosswords, and snickerdoodles.  (Which makes her sound much more British than she is.)  She adores her (rather large) family and keeps tabs on all of us.  She even remembers our birthdays.  Which is why it is such a pleasure to remember hers…

Grammy I Spy from Lora Fanning on Vimeo.

And I’m seriously hoping that she doesn’t see this rather low-quality version of it until after my dad hands her the high def version.

I’m counting on her liking to sleep late in the mornings, a quality I’m certain I inherited from her.

All my love, Grammy!  Enjoy your special weekend!

Love,

LL

You people don’t throw many softball questions, do you?

Alright, I’ll tackle the quick ones tonight and save the rest for other posts.

Several of you wanted to know what laundry soap had me so excited I was hunting for laundry to do.  Interesting you should ask… But I can’t talk about it yet.  We’re working on something super fun here at the House of Vitafam and I can’t wait to share it with you.  I could tell you now, but I’d have to kill you.  So we’ll wait…

Abbie asked me what cake recipe I use when we get all birthday happy around here.  (Which reminds me, I’ve still got to pin those twins down on a cake choice.  I’ve got a cake to bake in a day or two.)  I use this recipe for chocolate cake.  I still haven’t landed on a from-scratch recipe that I love for all the other flavors.  And I’ll just go ahead and confess that I don’t use whole wheat flour in my birthday cakes (it makes them too dense).  I figure if I’m cutting out the high-fructose corn syrups and mysterious food colorings, I can stand to give my kids a little white flour every now and then.

If you’re feeling Clicky, you can check out my cake category.  Follow the various links to see which recipes I’ve tried and how they’ve worked for me.  You may come across something there that floats your boat.

Robin asked about our seating arrangements in the car.  We have five kids in car seats.  The twins have Sunshine Kids Radian seats that are nice and thin and fit neatly around Adam’s bulky Britax Boulevard. The girls are in captain’s chairs in the middle, each in a Britax Roundabout. (This picture is blurry, but you get the idea.)  We haven’t loved paying the prices for those Sunshine seats for the boys, but of all of our options, this was the safest that still allowed us to keep all the kids actually inside the vehicle.  (Although there are days when I wish for my own little Granny Clampett rocking chair up on top of the van so I can have some peace.)

When we finish our adoption, we’re gonna need a bigger car.  If anybody has any connections with Chevy, we’d love to “road test” a Suburban for them.  We’d even take it on a road trip, just for some bloggy fodder.  We’re willing to make that kind of sacrifice… for YOU, dear readers.

You people are super fun, I’ve loved reading your questions.  More soon…