Butter and other things

I made butter today! I pretty much just followed these directions (except I used my food processor), and I have butter! AND it was made from raw cream from the dairy. Very neat. I think Evan was upset that I didn't have anything for supper that would call for butter. ha He really wanted to try it out! So tomorrow I've got to start my bread. I'm completely out, anyway.
I've been trying my hand at sourdough bread lately, but I haven't gotten used to it yet. The last loaf was pretty dense, and we left not too long after I made it, so it got very dry. I stuck it in the fridge to keep it from molding, and today I cut it into cubes and made croutons out of it. They smelled so good baking in the oven! At least I didn't feel like I was wasting! My sourdough pancakes and sourdough pizza crust turned out great, so I'm happy with that.
We are still trying to keep our 15 minutes of "school time" as part of our daily routine, and I think it's going well. I've had to make several changes (banging, stomping, etc. while counting; standing at the refrigerator to go over letters), but he's learning his memory verses and getting very excited about that! :-) I've been looking at some book lists online and checking out books from those lists; the only problem is that they are long books. My vocal chords are going to be calloused by the time he gets old enough to read on his comprehension level! I still haven't found the limit to his attention span when I'm reading to him. My throat starts hurting before he gets tired of being read to. I shouldn't complain, though, because it is honestly a wonderful problem to have. I'm just having to learn to lay down things that aren't so important and make time to read to him.

School?

So, I have begun. I got The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and started going through that with Nathan. The first lessons are just teaching the sounds of the alphabet, so I'm going to go through those and see how I like them. Also, at the end I can decide if we should go on, take a break, or go back through the letters. Or we could scrap the book altogether and decide to try something else. :-) The lessons are very plain, but I think I like that. So far, our "school" consists of prayer for the lesson, memory verse, counting to 30, and the lesson. All of this is usually done in about 10 minutes, which is just about all Nathan can handle. :-) It's funny how he can sit an hour or so at a time to hear a good book, but getting him to ten minutes of school requires at least one "we're almost done, and we're going to finish." I go back and forth on what I think, but for now I think it's good to train him to do something a bit uncomfortable as long as it's short.
I've been battling a sore throat this whole week, and last night my ear started aching. Ugh. So I've been trying to deal with that without going to the doctor. However, if it's still hurting tomorrow I'm going to go in just to make sure I know what it is. I just want a nice weekend! I started taking olive leaf extract today per my MIL's instructions, and I also started putting ear drops in my ears. The ear drops seemed to help quite a bit today. It's amazing how a dull aching pain can really throw one's day off. Anyway.
I'm desperately trying to go through my freezers and make a master list of the things I have in them. I am very thankful for my chest freezer in my laundry room; but if I were to give my opinion to anyone, chest freezers are very hard to dig through, especially when one is short.
Noelle has been drinking about 4 ounces of goat milk a day for the last few days. After being exhausted then getting sick, I think my milk supply was really off in the evenings, which was causing Noelle to wake up more at night. I started giving her some milk in a sippy cup at supper (nursing her again before bed), and she's been sleeping at night! Yay! Sleep for her means sleep for me, which means more milk, too! ha I'm very happy that she's been taking the milk, though, because when I first bought the milk she didn't seem interested at all.
One more random fact for the night: Noelle got three mosquito bites on her back yesterday in the 20 or so minutes we were outside. I found them as I was bringing her inside, and I immediately went to the internet to see what natural remedies there were. I opted to cut a garlic clove in half and rub it on the bites. An hour or so later, all that was left was little pinprick marks! I was impressed, so I thought I would pass on the info. ;-)