All posts by Avivah

Why a family dynamic is constantly evolving

aliyah, Homeschooling, Parenting

My husband looked at a family picture of when we had just six children that was temporarily moved to his desk, and commented, “The older half of our family!”

This past Friday night at the Shabbos table, I looked around at everyone there and thought about how our family has completely changed through the years – not one person sitting there was alive at the time that the above mentioned photo was taken.

A friend who grew up as almost the youngest of a large family told me that her experience growing up in her family was very different from her older siblings. Now I’m seeing for myself how true that is.

Younger and older children in a family will always have a different experience growing up in the same home, with the same parents, because things change over time.

Getting older and more mellow – My husband and I have been parenting for almost thirty years together. We have gotten a lot of experience and consequently are fairly secure as parents, and feel relaxed in our parenting at this stage. We aren’t constantly questioning ourselves and wondering how to deal with different things that come up. We genuinely trust that our kids are awesome people who are going to grow into amazing adults. We know it. We don’t have to work hard to remind ourselves of that, to affirm it, or to agonize over the challenges they experience. We know who we are, what our approach to parenting is, and our relationship with one another is steady and consistent. This is a product of time.

Living in a different country – Not every family will experience the major moves that we did, but moving to a different country has made a huge difference in what our children experience. Growing up in the US provided different opportunities and challenges than living here in Israel. The children who are now teens in our home moved here as young children eleven years ago. They speak an additional language, they interact with different people, and they have different interests.

I could give lots of examples of this! Here’s just one: my two oldest boys were excellent baseball players, the top in their leagues. During baseball season, our family spent hours every week attending their games. This activity has been completely absent from our lives from the time we moved to Israel. While their younger brothers have the potential to be just as athletic, there isn’t a framework for that here.

It’s been interesting for me to notice my homeschooling style evolve, and that has been specifically related to living in Yavneel. Until moving here less than three years ago, I’d self-identified as a ‘relaxed homeschooler’. That meant that we had regular daily academic activities of reading, writing and math, integrated read-alouds of historical fictions, lots of trips and outside activities. This was consistent of our family homeschooling style for almost twenty years, wherever we lived (except the trips – after we moved to Israel we did very few trips).

Now our boys have opportunities to follow and develop their interests in a way they never could before, and my style has evolved to almost completely unschooling. While they periodically pull out a math workbook at my bequest, that’s no longer an important factor for me. I trust not only their own inner desire to learn, but I trust the external framework provides the possibility of them being able to independently pursue their interests. For example, I mentioned my boys helping someone out with his horse a couple of weeks ago. Well, one son has continued working with the horses daily. Where will it go? I don’t know. But there’s the opportunity to do learn and experience much more.

My thirteen year old began traveling locally by bus last year when he took a year long sailing course at the Kineret. He’s now expanding his comfort zone and learning to use public transportation to get to RBS, so he can stay in relationship with friends made when we lived there. When someone can get to where he wants to go independent of being driven by a parent, it opens up possibilities. This is something I’m comfortable with in Israel that I would not have allowed in Baltimore due to safety concerns.

How your family is ‘built’ – Of our oldest five children, three were girls. For years people thought of us as a girl-family, because the presence of our daughters was so significant. When our next six boys joined the family, their presence obviously made a big impact as we had a very busy home with lots of young children. But our older girls remained highly involved and visible in our family life. When our oldest two daughters got married within twelve days of one another five years ago and they weren’t a daily presence anymore, things changed a lot.

It’s been years since anyone has thought of us as a girl-family! Right now the younger boys are 20, 16, 15, 13, 10 and almost 6. We have a lot of male teen energy. I was watching my fifteen and sixteen year old sons wrestling tonight, and remembering how for years I never allowed wrestling in our home. Now I see it as appropriate and healthy.

Parents don’t independently create a family atmosphere and impose that on their children. Children are partners in creating the family with their own personalities and interests, too. For years, we enjoyed singing at the Shabbos table. Then we had a few years when our two middle children were the oldest at home on Shabbos, but they didn’t enjoy singing at that stage (now they do) and we naturally sang together less as a family. Our Shabbos meals became much shorter and more discussion-heavy.

Life continued to evolve and our three teens who are usually home now enjoy singing chazzanus (cantorial music) together when they are getting ready for Shabbos. It’s not my personal style but they enjoy it and it’s a nice thing to hear them enjoying together. Our sixteen year old went to the Friday night tisch of a chassidish rabbi, and heard a beautiful complex tune which he took time to learn well. He taught that song, and another equally complicated song, to the rest of us. Those songs are new to us, but are now becoming staples at our Shabbos table, and we once again have lots of singing at the Shabbos table.

Not only that, our family itself has expanded, with the addition of four spouses and seven grandchildren (so far). Each of these people have added to our family dynamic, too!

So life is continually evolving, even at my stage when it would seem that we’ve been doing this so long and you might expect that it’s the same old, same old!

Avivah

Why my husband cashed in his pension fund

Homemaking

I’m a reader and when there’s something I want to learn about, I tend to dive in deep. So no surprise, when years ago when I was interested in learning about finance and investing, I checked out – and read – every single book on the library shelf. Literally.

My takeaway from all that reading came down to two points: 1) Since very few people can beat the stock market, the simplest approach for the average person to take was to ‘buy the market’ (ie a fund that represents the market). 2) Over time the market goes up and if you do dollar cost averaging you’ll generally do well. Don’t panic during downs, don’t get euphoric on ups, keep your emotions in check and keep in mind the history of the market.

I did different things to help our children learn about saving and investing money when we were living in the US. We lived a very frugal life, but always put something aside a little something to save and invest. That was helpful when we suddenly decided to make aliyah.

When I moved to Israel, I didn’t understand how the financial markets in this country worked, so I put any thoughts of investing to the side. That would have been necessary in any case since we went through a very challenging time financially when starting over here and honestly didn’t have any extra to put into savings. It was a major accomplishment to have stayed out of debt during those years! So my interest in investing money went completely dormant.

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A couple of years ago, I began wondering what the financial consequences of worldwide shutdowns would be on the global economy. I began listening to different financial podcasts, with my goal being to get a sense of how events affect financial markets, and to consequently make responsible choices for my family.

Almost exactly a year ago, I talked to my husband about my concerns – the potential for significant inflation and the possibility of a major stock market correction in the following two or three years – and we discussed his pension funds. We had put our financial future into the hands of some anonymous fund manager that we don’t know, who doesn’t know us, who will get ample compensation regardless of how our funds do.

To answer some of our questions, he met with the contact person at his company for the pension funds. While I didn’t get specific answers to some questions I had (I wasn’t there to ask my questions!), the meeting clarified how much we could expect monthly after retirement. The rep gave us an optimistic number and told us we’d have to supplement our income even in the best case scenario. That wasn’t surprising, seeing that we didn’t start saving for retirement until after we made aliyah.

I wasn’t worried about the supposed shortfall of the optimistic scenario. Those numbers could be doable, albeit tight. What did concern me was the potential impact on our retirement funds if the market took a big extended hit. Was it likely to recover in time for us to benefit? The market has always rebounded, but it takes time. After the Great Depression, it took 25 years until the market got back to what it had been right before the crash. Yes, that’s an extreme example. Despite my understanding of the two key points I summarized regarding the market above, which would lead me to keeping the funds invested and trusting the market to recover, I kept asking myself if we were gambling to let our funds stay invested in the market at our age?

I don’t know if it was due to a gut feeling, being a fiscally conservative person or being paranoid because of all the podcasts I listened to but I felt very strongly about this. We began to talk about withdrawing the funds, but just opening that topic was a scary thing for us to consider. When you have retirement money invested with a professional, it feels like you’re safe, that you’re going to be taken care of. That’s what everyone does and doing what everyone else is doing is reassuring.

However, I haven’t found in any other area of my life that institutions care more about me, or do better for me than I or my specifically chosen representatives can do for me. This opened a thought-provoking and ongoing discussion between my husband and me for weeks.

After a couple of months, my husband was ready to withdraw his funds. He paid a heavy penalty for early withdrawal (I don’t remember now if it was 30% or 35%). It’s not fun to see the original sum be dramatically whittled down like that. A month after requesting to cash out his pension, the remaining pension funds were deposited in our bank account, and I felt a weight had been lifted from me.

In the last couple of months, I’ve seen a lot of people talking about losing 25 – 40% of their pension funds, and now they’re wondering if they should pull their money out and pay the penalty fees on what is left, or leave it in the market and hope it’s going to recover. I don’t know what our funds would look like now if we hadn’t withdrawn them, and I don’t know what they would look like in eleven years if we left them invested. Taking them out could have been the worst possible thing to do with our money, and only time will tell. However, I’m comfortable with our choice regardless of which scenario plays out, and am glad to have pulled them out when we did.

I’m not a financial advisor and not offering advice to anyone. As with everything else I write, I’m simply sharing my personal experience.

Avivah

Baked Oatmeal – gluten free, sugar free

Intentional Spending, recipes

My sixteen year old son baked a few large pans of Amish oatmeal for the yeshivas bein hazmanim breakfast that he organized for the Sukkos vacation and it was a big hit. It’s one of several baked oatmeal recipes that I have – they’re all good but more dessert-like than I prefer to serve for a regular breakfast.

Here’s a healthier version that I jotted down ages ago and finally made this week – I made it the evening ahead so it would be ready for breakfast the next day, but half the pan was gone before everyone had gone to sleep! This has a mellow sweetness that my family enjoys; it’s gluten free and sugar free.

For me this was a very frugal recipe, but please don’t make the blanket assumption that if I say it’s frugal, then it will be equally inexpensive for you. I use a lot of strategies that keep my food costs down that you may not use, and have different resources available that you may not have. And you have frugal resources and options that I don’t have! If the exact recipe doesn’t work for you, take the general principal of frugal cooking – use ingredients that are inexpensive for you to make meals with.

Baked Oatmeal

  • 1 c. applesauce
  • 10 large Medjool dates
  • 4 eggs
  • 4 c. milk
  • 1/2 c. juice
  • 2 T. baking powder
  • 1 t. cinnamon
  • 6 c. rolled oats
  • 1 c. fresh or dried fruit, chopped

Blend the dates with the milk, juice, applesauce and eggs. Mix the dry ingredients, then add the applesauce mixture to the dry mixture. Fold in fruit.

Pour in the pan, and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, you can top with nuts if you like. Bake at 350 degrees F/180 degrees Celsius for 35 – 45 minutes, and serve warm.

My cost breakdown:

  • applesauce – I got the apples free, and cooked and preserved the applesauce when I got them last season
  • dates – free (my son picked them locally)
  • 4 eggs – 3 shekels
  • milk – I used a half of a carton of coconut cream, 7.5 shekels (purchased at restaurant supply store I told you about; at Shufersal I saw it for double the price I paid). Dairy milk would be cheaper.
  • juice – didn’t use it, instead I cut the coconut cream with water
  • baking powder, cinnamon – purchased in bulk bags of 1 kg each, don’t know how much a spoonful would be but let’s say .50 for both
  • 6 c. rolled oats – 6 shekels
  • dried or fresh fruit – I left this out

Total: 17 shekels for a deep 9″ x 13″ pan or two shallow 9″ x 13″ pans; this makes a generous amount for two breakfasts for a family of six.

Avivah

Breeding our goats and saying goodbye to Oliver

Homemaking, Homeschooling

Back when I bought our first two goats in July, I asked the seller if I could bring our females back for breeding, and he agreed. When I called him a few weeks ago, he said it would be better for the male goat to come to our home. He could bring him, but he would have to charge me for that service, and would be glad to let me take him myself for free.

I was very nervous about that, but he assured me it wasn’t a big deal and would help me get him into our vehicle.

When we got there and saw the owner bring it out, I thought, “Oh, my goodness, he’s massive!” and that was an alarming thought, not admiring. But what came out of my mouth was a mild, “Oh, he’s big.”

“No, he’s not big,” responded the owner. “He’s enormous.”

Well, yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. And that was not what I was expecting and it was very intimidating.

The owner and his son got him into our vehicle, and he was remarkably calm during the short drive home. Two of my teenage sons led him into our yard to our pen – or it would be more accurate to say he pulled them both since together they couldn’t hold him back. I had read a lot about the aggressiveness of male goats and was apprehensive about that, but Oliver, as I named him, seemed kind of shy and was actually pleasant to have around.

I was very pleased with Oliver, as the personality of the father is important to what the personality of the kids will later be. In addition a couple of other desirable traits he had, he was a polled goat (born without horns), a quality that I prefer but in Israel this is the minority of goats. All of my goats are polled – and now the kids born will be polled as well. Though many people prefer goats with horns, I’m not one of them, and I’m not interested in having to remove the horns of baby goats.

Oliver spent a couple of weeks here and it was constantly on my mind as to how we were going to get him back in our vehicle to return him. Finally, the day came when it was time to go. The female goats were all sad to see him go and very verbally expressed their feelings as he was led out.

On his way out with ds15 and ds13

Other than my fifteen year old getting pulled to the ground at the last moment when Oliver was startled by a sudden action that was intended to be helpful by my thirteen year old, it was smooth and uneventful.

Arriving back at the farm

The owner told me he’s never allowed anyone to take any of his animals on loan before. (He’s been raising and and selling animals for many years.) I didn’t ask him why he made the exception for us, but I certainly do appreciate it!

I felt kind of bad for Oliver when he was led to his pen back home, as he lives alone there (the two males are separated so they don’t fight) and he clearly enjoyed the fellowship of the does.

Back in his pen

I feel accomplished to have taken care of getting all the does bred. Now we can relax for the next 4.5 – 5 months and wait to see how many kids make their arrival!

Avivah

A deeply enjoyable trip to Kangaroo Park

Homeschooling, Parenting

My daughter-in-law consistently plans nice trips for their family every vacation. This summer, they came to visit us after a day trip to Kangaroo Park, a 45 minute drive from us. She told me she was able to buy tickets for a discounted price using a pass that her work offers everyone there, and told me she’s allowed to buy tickets for extended family members if we were interested.

Since the older boys plan their own trips, and the younger boys are happy to stay local, we really haven’t done many official outings for a long while. Getting tickets at less than half price was a great opportunity, and this is a wonderful place to visit, so I asked my dil1 (my first daughter-in-law) to buy tickets on our behalf. She did, and told me they need to be used by the end of 2022.

Yesterday ds10 needed to stay home for a blood test and the weather was beautiful, so it was the perfect time to use our tickets! The park was very quiet – one of my favorite things about doing trips as a homeschooling family over the years is that we can go off-season when it’s quiet and relaxing. I don’t enjoy crowds at all.

The only negative is that ds13 couldn’t join us, because he had planned his first solo trip by bus to Beit Shemesh for that day. He was away for a couple of days and it was very empowering for him to successfully travel alone to a different part of the country. He enjoys staying in touch with friends there and now he won’t be dependent on me driving him to see them. That’s freeing for me, too! I was so glad that ds15 could come with us.

Right after we got there, they announced that the large parrot aviary was open for fifteen minutes, so we went there. It was interesting but the parrots were shrieking in alarm because they had been given a new plant that they didn’t recognize, and it was very loud.

The docent told me that in another fifteen minutes, she’d be doing a presentation at the small parrot aviary. That was a highlight for us. Usually each participant is given one skewer with a piece of apple to feed the parrots, but we were the only ones there at first (and even afterwards just one other family of three came in), so we were given two skewers each – and then we got a second round with another eight skewers. Each skewer represented an opportunity to have an interaction feeding a parrot, either on a wooden perch or with one of us serving as the human perch. It was really nice.

There are 52 kangaroos in a large grassy enclosure, all of whom are very gentle and used to people. There’s an option to buy pellets to feed them, which was fun but more of our time was simply stroking them and being alongside them.

We took our time there, and sat down next to a group of kangaroos for a long while. It was so pleasant.

This is a mother kangaroo with a joey in her pouch. It was fascinating to me to learn about the birth and development of a joey inside the pouch. He is born tiny, the size of half a peanut, then climbs into the pouch where he literally gestates for months until he’s ready to climb out.

I noticed an adolescent male kangaroo engaging in behavior that the docent said the alpha male wouldn’t allow if saw it. I asked the docent what would happen if the alpha male was there. He told me he wouldn’t have to do very much to show his displeasure, since he has such a dominant presence that the teen kangaroo would quickly stop doing what he was doing if the alpha expressed displeasure.

Even though we have goats of our own, the boys still enjoyed these pygmy goats.

Ds5 saw this water and quickly peeled off his socks and shoes, rolled up his pants and sat down to enjoy swishing his legs in the water.

Ds10 and ds5 were having a great time for a long while running up and down a ramp that led to a second floor structure. At one point ds5 ran down the ramp and didn’t go back up. After waiting several minutes for him, I took a quick look around. I found him sitting across from the pond, watching the black swans swimming. Just being in the moment.

Nowadays our attention spans are much shorter and we expect to be quickly entertained wherever we go, but when in a natural setting like this, gratification isn’t instant and you need to take more time to absorb the experience and let it settle into you. That’s something I really, really appreciated about going when there was hardly anyone there – we could take our time, go at our own pace without distractions and experience the park in the moment.

This space for inner quiet is something that I deeply appreciate, and I’m so glad we had an opportunity for a trip that was a lot of fun, while also giving us together time, and personal inner quiet time.

Avivah

Training a wild horse and teaching a child boundaries

Parenting, Self-Growth

Today my husband got a call from someone who owns a couple of horses. He and my husband went horseback riding a while ago, and at that time the guy mentioned that his horses don’t get enough exercise.

My husband suggested that our boys might be able to help out some time with the horses. Quite a lot of time went by, and finally today the owner reached out to find out if they were available. They were.

When they got back, I asked what they did. The horses have gotten wild from lack of regular riding and need to be retrained. So the boys can’t ride them right away. They spent their time today standing in the middle of the pen, holding the rope the horse was tied to and having the horse walk in a circle around them. The idea is to teach the horses to go when told to go, and to stop when told to stop. The horses have to learn they can’t do whatever they want, but to do what they’re told. It’s been over a year since the horses have done this, and though they were trained in the past, now need to be reminded of what is expected and then practice those behaviors.

Since these horse aren’t learning these behaviors for the first time, they should be able to progress fairly quickly from one stage to the next. Next time the boys will ride them inside the pen, and then progress from there until they are riding the horses freely.

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You know what’s coming, right? I can’t help but see examples of the parenting process everywhere I look!

When a child isn’t used to having clear expectations and boundaries, he’s going to get wild and misbehave. He’ll be really unpleasant to be around. This behavior isn’t a reflection of the character of a child, but a reflection of the lack of regular ‘training’. I feel very strongly that it’s crucial that children are taught to be respectful. Letting kids do what they want and not taking the time to actively guide them generally comes from a place of not knowing what to do, and for many parents, believing that it’s enough to love them.

Yes, love is the critical component, but we show our love with our actions. True love means actively giving children clear boundaries and teaching them to be responsible and respectful human beings. While some kids figure it out on their own in spite of their upbringing, it doesn’t generally happen by itself.

To begin to teach a child who is out of control about boundaries, you can’t begin with major expectations and demands and expect that you’re going to whip them into shape and have them ready to jump when you speak. You have to walk before you can ride. 🙂

It would have been asking for trouble for my son to hop on top of the horse and try to ride him. The horse wouldn’t have been ready to listen to him. Your child has to be used to listening to you with small things before you can expect him to be responsive to you with big things.

What do you do when a child is out of control, wild and won’t listen?

You begin with a teaching process as to what is expected and what is accepted, while simultaneously building the relationship with positive interactions. You start with small interactions as you keep them ‘on a short rope’, keeping them close to you and immediately redirecting them if they get off track. You give them a chance to be successful with the small things, and as they develop self-discipline and respect for what you tell them, you
gradually lengthen the rope while continuing to build the relationship with positive interactions.

When your child is clear about boundaries and you have a relationship of trust with one another, you can give them a lot of independence. I give my children a lot of space. You don’t need to micromanage their activities, though periodic redirection as needed is appropriate. But just as it would have been dangerous for my sons to get on those horses today when they were untrained and resistant to authority, it’s asking for problems to give a child independence before they’ve developed the ability to manage themselves and be responsive to the guidance of their parents.

Avivah

When the pull to buy something you can’t afford is so strong

Intentional Spending

Fifteen years ago we bought a van that was a lemon, and that frustrating experience combined with being very pregnant and knowing that with the birth of that baby we would be outgrowing our van motivated me to buy my first and only vehicle from a dealership.

It was so nice, getting a much, much newer and nicer vehicle. It felt prosperous. I felt on par with all the other carpool moms on the road in their nice passenger vans. Nope, no eight year old van for me!

The monthly loan payment was another story, though.

As the weeks went on, I enjoyed the newness and niceness less and less, and was more and more bothered by that monthly payment.

After three months I made a decision. I got a quote from the dealership that serviced my vehicle to find out how much they would pay if I sold it back. Then I went to our original dealership with that quote and asked if she could do better, after explaining that I would rather have an older vehicle and no debt.

She couldn’t beat their offer and told me to take them up on it – and she also told me how impressed she was with my choice, that it was very rare for someone to be willing to live within their means. (We had an interesting conversation as she shared her experiences selling vehicles and seeing people’s financial numbers when they qualified for loans, and her commenting that for a lot of people it was irresponsible to finance a vehicle.) Although we didn’t recoup the three thousand dollar initial payment we had put on the van, it was worth it for us to be free of that monthly debt.

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This week I’ve thought a lot about that experience, because there’s been a big something I’ve wanted to purchase. It sounds melodramatic to say ‘more than I ever wanted to buy anything’ but it’s honestly way, way up there. I’m not a high maintenance person and having this much desire for something is unusual for me. If I want something, it’s usually small enough and affordable enough that I just buy it.

I don’t have enough to buy it in cash, but I could easily qualify for a loan and have it paid off within two years. As long as my husband continues to be employed at his current salary, we can make the monthly payment without compromising ourselves financially. And I really, really wanted it, so much that I was willing to put aside any of my usual compunctions and debt-avoidance.

However…you know there has to be a ‘however’, right? I have concerns about the direction that the global economy is taking, and as such have been taking steps to tighten up our budget, to create more margin by building savings and reducing the amount we need to live on. It feels particularly important at this time.

Buying something on credit absolutely doesn’t fit into this picture right now. Even if I really, really want it. Even if two people I told about my excitement about this offered to loan me the money. Even if I’m pre-qualified for a loan of that amount and simply have to press a button on the computer screen of my online bank account to have it automatically appear in my account.

I thought about what a relief it was to sell our van back to the dealership, and to buy a replacement van with cash outright, just as we always had. I thought about how fleeing my pleasure of that acquisition was and how quickly the pleasure was overtaken by the pressure of the loan repayment.

Then I thought about this purchase. If life continues as has been for the next two years, we’d be fine financially even if we make this purchase. But what if we experienced a personal economic contraction during that two year period?

I didn’t want to think about negatives. I didn’t want to be fearful about potential downturns in the economy. I wanted to make this purchase!!

Fortunately, I do have a rational brain and in this case, my rational brain was my husband who said he really didn’t want to do it. Despite my resistance to hearing him say that, I couldn’t help but reactivate my own financially cautious brain, which was hovering there at the wings.

The more I thought about this, the more clear it became to me that I need to emotionally step back from this purchase at this time. Who knows, maybe it will come back again at a time that we can make the purchase without going into debt. Or maybe it will never come back but I can focus on the abundance of all that I have, rather than thinking about what I don’t have.

Right now, I’m choosing to simplify, cut costs and cut back in order to create a financial margin for our family. There are significant things going on in the financial markets, and I’ve decided that I’d rather be sitting on the sidelines with fewer expenses and some extra padding in the bank account to weather that instability.

Sometimes it’s really hard to be financially responsible. But along with my very acute disappointment, I have a sense of peace that I’m making the right decision.

Avivah

Easy Buckwheat Chia Bread – gluten free

Healthy Living, recipes

I’ve discovered – and been incorporating – a new ingredient into my gluten free cooking: green, unroasted buckwheat!

I used to buy this many years ago and didn’t know what to do with it other than cook it as a rice substitute. It was kind of gluey but my husband liked it….

Well, in recent months I’ve purchased it once again, and have appreciated how versatile it is!

(About cooking it as a rice substitute…not the greatest use of this. Roasted buckwheat is a much better option for that.)

This is a great ingredient to use for making gluten free breads. We’ve found store bought gluten free breads not to be very tasty, and definitely not nutritious, though I use them for convenience. You can find unroasted buckwheat in the health store in the bulk grain section. There are a number of ways to use unroasted buckwheat for baking; here’s one easy recipe that I regularly make. It requires about six minutes of hands-on preparation time; most of the prep is soaking.

Buckwheat Chia Bread

  • 1 1/2 c. green buckwheat
  • 1/4 c. chia seeds
  • 1 c. water
  • 1/2 t. salt
  • 1 1/2 t. baking powder

Soak the buckwheat in water to cover for a couple of hours but you can leave it overnight if you like. Drain, then rinse.

Separately, soak the chia seeds in one cup of water. Stir it so that all the seeds are submerged in the water. Let it sit for up to twenty minutes until it’s gooey.

Process the soaked buckwheat in a food processor with an S blade. You can process the chia seeds separately and then combine the two mixtures, or just process it at the same time. I generally opt for simpler options so I process it all together. Process until the mixture is smooth.

Add in the salt and baking powder, mix. Pour the batter into pans (I use a silicon loaf pan and a silicon muffin pan). Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/180 degrees Celcius for up to an hour and fifteen minutes. A smaller pan and muffins will take less time. Let it cool completely before slicing.

When I use the extra large muffin size pans, I slice each muffin into four slices.

This lends itself to be eaten as an open face sandwich. Below, pizza wheels were very much enjoyed for dinner.

Avivah

Lifestyle creep and how it happened to me

Homemaking, Intentional Spending

A year ago, my husband got a new job along with a raise in salary. Nice, right? And yet, here we are a year later with hardly any increase in our savings rate.

How did that happen? When we talked about our numbers, we both felt we were being pretty careful financially – we’re not big spenders. We sat down together a few times for financial meetings to go over the numbers, and seemingly the only answer was that our expenses had gone up. It wasn’t until this week that I could finally answer that question more definitively.

Why this week? The first year we were married, my husband was responsible for the finances. I took over the next seventeen years. And then for the next twelve years, my husband has been at the helm. This week I took responsibility for the finances once again, something my husband really doesn’t like but I actually enjoy a lot. (As to why he did it for so long if he didn’t like it, that’s another question, but it was a purposeful decision on both of our parts and we’ve agreed our goal was reached.)

Taking over again is a bit overwhelming because I’m looking at a different system than my own, and I have to wade through a lot of numbers to figure out what’s going on, what money we have coming in and what’s going out, in order to get clarity in my own mind.

Here’s what’s become clear so far: we’ve allowed lifestyle creep to sneak in. For years we were really, really frugal and careful about all of our expenses. We had to be, as our income was on the lower side (my husband’s friends who had similar incomes as well as a spouse’s second income were all in debt) and it was only by very careful and conscious management that we had any possibility to accrue some savings.

As our financial situation improved, we got a little more relaxed, and then a little more relaxed….we stopped paying attention to all the little expenses because the bills were getting paid without it.

And we began to spend a little more money here, a little more money there – nothing major or budget busting that we could point to as to where all the potentially savable money was going.

Now I’m back in the hot seat. The first couple of nights I sat for hours, going through details of months of expenses, trying to get a clear sense of where our money goes. I felt like giving up because it was so frustrating to me. But I stuck with it, and after a couple more nights looking at printouts, am excited and energized to be our financial money manager again. I’m looking forward to seeing how much money we can save and funnel into savings.

That’s going to mean becoming more conscious again about expenses, assessing the value of where we spend money rather than just spending it when it seems necessary. I’m going to be carefully tracking all of our spending – neither of us has been tracking our cash expenditures at all, and all the itemized expenses have to be gone through regularly – and plugging the many small leaks that our budget has sprung. There’s no one big item to point to – yes, prices have gone up, but even more than that, what I’m seeing is a general increase in expenses due to lack of attention.

I’m recognizing lifestyle creep and taking steps to counter it. This is a very hopeful and empowered place to be, and I’ll be sharing about different things I’m doing and how it’s working out for us.

Avivah

Being a goat whisperer, a leader for your children… and it’s all kind of the same

Parenting

My husband was sharing with me some extremely positive feedback on one of our son’s from a teacher, and commented that our ‘don’t push or pull, but encourage’ approach seems to have been very effective.

His choice of words reminded me of an experience I had earlier that same day.

I had an opportunity to take our three goats to a grassy area to graze and help clear the land. I asked my son to help me lead them to the car, holding on to the collar of each, because I was afraid if I let go of them they’d run away. We loaded them in, got to the field and unloaded them, and then holding the collar, I began to walk with the first goat to the grassy area.

She balked. She didn’t want to go any further, which was interesting to me since she’s the only one with any experience walking on a leash next to me.

I couldn’t physically push her to go where I wanted, and I didn’t want to push her.

I assumed she must be feeling uncertain and anxious in the new location, and chose to let go of her collar rather than force her to walk along next to me. I kept walking. I glanced back after a moment and saw her following close behind. Another minute later, I glanced back again and happily trotting in a line behind me were all three goats. So much for my concern that they’d quickly run away and scatter when they had the opportunity to be in a wide open area.

I took them to the grassy spot and they started munching away. I was planning to tie their leashes to stakes and leave them there for a few hours to enjoy the juicy green goodness, but while I was there, let them walk around freely.

Since it was sunny and I had forgotten to bring a sun hat, I went to sit under a shade tree where I could supervise them.

A minute or two later, they had all followed me to where I was sitting, even though it wasn’t a desirable grazing area. They stayed in one spot as long as I was there, and as soon as I left, they followed. This happened every time I walked further away from what they felt close enough proximity to them was. I felt a bit like a goat whisperer. 🙂

I’m the primary caretaker for the goats, and when we were out in the fields it was very clear that I’m the one they feel safe with and connected to, and I’m the leader they want to follow. This surprised me because I had expected the dominant goat to be the leader for them.

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It’s been so interesting for me to experience how principles of respectful relationship are just as relevant with animals as with people.

The principle I was experiencing was that people – and animals – desire to be with and follow those to whom they feel connected.

Lead with love, build your emotional connection with your child, give him room to make his own choices rather than tightly control his actions – and chances are very high that you will be the leader he wants to follow.

Avivah