A Broken Arm, a New Job, and Field Trips

The kids outside Tanganyika Wildlife Park, Uncle Joel hijacked the picture!!

 It's been a busy, crazy, and exciting couple of weeks. I know I have been totally MIA from my blog lately. We are trying to get school done before our trip to Ohio in June, we finished CC for the year, we had 2 field trips last week alone, and have exciting news to share. Tad got a new job with the post office! He starts May 18 and we are so excited! It will be a pay increase, better benefits, and unfortunately, more hours. But God is providing for us, and we are so thankful!

In his splint before he got his hard cast

About to get his hard cast on!

The glow-in-the-dark cast is fun!!

About a week and a half ago our little Judah broke his arm, poor thing! We went to watch his Aunt Naomi and Aunt Charity (who are 10 and 12) do their gymnastics show. When we came home Judah was trying to do gymnastics moves and said "watch, Mom, this is what the gymnastics people do" and proceeded to do a cartwheel type of thing. All he did was run and do a little hop-hop thing that was close to the ground and he must have landed wrong and was instantly crying like he was in a lot of pain. After about 30-40 minutes of nonstop crying, we finally took him to the ER where they confirmed that he fractured his humerus bone right above the elbow. And because it is around 6 growth plates, they usually have to rush right in and do surgery, but he was so lucky (no, it was God!!) that his bones were in alignment when he went in for x-rays 5 days later. So no surgery! They just put a hard cast on it and will x-ray it weekly until he gets his cast off. He picked a glow-in-the-dark cast!!

He is figuring out how to do things even with his arm in a cast! Good thing he is right-handed!!

 We also went on 2 field trips, one to see a bunch of different insects. It was very hands on, and they could hold some, touch some, and just look at others. Not my favorite thing but the kids loved it! Of course Judah was walking around with a little glass jar filled with ticks (in a solution) and dropped it and broke it. Of course!!
 

 
 



Later that same week we went with our homeschool group to a Wildlife Park in Kansas called Tanganyika Wildlife Park that was very hands-on! The kids got to feed birds, giraffes, lemurs, goats, and alpacas!! They loved it! It was such a fun day!

 

Well I can't believe we finished up our first year of CC and it was such a blessing! It was very challenging at times, I'm not gonna lie, but it was also so rewarding! And the things that Maddy learned and experienced this year were totally worth the stress and time commitment!
We are trying to wrap up our school year since we have been out of town so much! The weather is getting so nice, so it's hard to have all this schoolwork! I have realized that Oklahoma's spring is like the summers I am used to up north. Green grass, beautiful temperatures, sunshine everyday. The summers here are the pits! Too hot to do anything but stay inside a lot of the time! So we are trying to get out and enjoy this weather! We went on a compass walk last night as part of our school. We attempted to look at clouds too, but there wasn't really a cloud in the sky!!

Happy Spring Everyone!! 

Classical Conversations Cycle 1 Weeks 20-21

Well, I have gotten quite behind in my CC blog posts. We have been out of town so much in the last 2 months, so I have gotten all my prep and teaching done, but I haven't been on here to update the blog for each week! I like to add each week so my parents can see what we did for that week, other tutors can get fresh ideas from what I prepared (let's face it, we can all use some new ideas!!), so I can document this year so I can look back on it for next year, and for when Cycle 1 comes around again! So, even though most campuses have already covered these weeks, I will get these two weeks in, and finish up blogging for this CC year! Again, I'm sorry I haven't been up to date!

Week 20

Timeline: learned new hand motions and sang song
History Sentence: Hand motions (CC connected) and sang the song
Geography: Used dry erase maps to color in/circle the areas, passports with passport stamps
Latin: Used the mix and match game with the grid (love this!!)
Math: Circumference of a circle: Used the song to the tune of the Wheels on the Bus off of CC connected
Science: Printed off a Parts of the Atmosphere Mix and Match where they practiced labelling the parts and saw if they got them right (CC connected)
English: Played Duck, Duck Goose with the 3 Helping Verbs

Grammar Review:
The games I had planned were:
Burst: Tutor asks a question and the kids squat on the ground. If they know the answer they burst up and the first one gets to try to answer the question.
Tutor May I: We didn't play this one, but you can have the kids line up and ask to go a certain distance or whatever, and then they have to answer a question.

We also had some great Mexican coloring pages for them to do at the end!!

Week 21

Timeline: learned new hand motions and sang song
History Sentence: Hand motions (CC connected) and sang the song
Geography: Used dry erase maps to color in/circle the areas, passports with passport stamps
Latin: Used the mix and match grid game! Boys vs. Girls for fastest time!
Math: Associative Laws: printed out some puzzles for the kids to put together
Science: Major Circles of Latitude: Cut and glue worksheet (Kept them busy!)
English: Made up a sing-songy way to remember the definition of a linking verb, like I have for all the English definitions: A linking verb (pinkies locked together) makes an assertion (both hands firm down by sides) (pause) by joining (one fist to the side) two (other fist to the other side) words (two fists join together.) Trust me, these little things make a huge difference! They always remember the definitions!!

Grammar Review:
 Event Obstacle Course (I will be presenting this in Week 24. I was going to play this game, but we ran out of time since the Mineral Identification went so long, so I decided to play this awesome game as the last end-of-year review game.

They can also mix up the timeline cards and 2 teams (or more) can put them in order the fastest.

Every other week they get to pick out of the treasure box if they were obedient and they also have sticker books that I made with their names on it. They always get to pick a sticker during snack time and sometimes I hide something on the board and the first one to find it gets an extra sticker.

At the end, they are assigned clean-up chores and they all run around getting the room cleaned up!!

The Ultra-Marathon Adventure

Ruthie living it up and being fed breakfast in the big hotel chair!!

 Well, we had quite the adventurous trip to Arizona for Tad's first ultra marathon, which was a 50 mile trail race in the mountains! He was going to go by himself since he was running it with some good friends from college, but then we decided to make it into a family vacation! And it was a crazy one at that! In the last 2 months, we have been on 4 trips! They all happened kind of randomly, but each one was fun in its own way! So, the kids have really learned to be more flexible and sleep in different places. Which is a far cry from Maddy when she was little who could hardly sleep anywhere but her own crib!!

The kids having fun in their hotel bed!

 This trip in particular was a little hard for the kids, because we were in the car everyday, almost all day for about 5 days. I thought the day of the race we would watch Tad start, and then go back to the hotel or hang out in town. But our plans quickly changed when I realized we didn't have the official race map with checkpoints written out. We had friends who had the map and we could follow them to the next spots. We were 45 minutes away from the hotel and I didn't want to get lost and not be able to find Tad on the mountain when we returned! So the kids spent that day mostly in the car as we raced around trying to see Tad at different checkpoints!!

 We took 2 days to drive to Arizona, staying the first night in the infamous Roswell, New Mexico. Alien town!! It was pretty comical. Tad said he didn't want to tell Maddy anything about it because he wanted everyone to be able to sleep that night! But they got a kick out of the aliens that were around!!

 Fast forward to the race. We left the hotel about 4:30 am. The kids were not happy to be up that early, especially Ruth. I felt horrible! We ended up running a little late, and Tad had to book it to the starting line to get his things there by 5:30. The race started at 6 and the parking was about a quarter mile from the starting line, so I hoisted Ruth on my back into the hiking backpack and started down the trail in the dark. The beginning to an absolutely crazy day I will never forget! The crazy ultra-racers started with their headlamps since it was still dark!

 Mind you, this race was in the mountains! Not just an average marathon, or ultra marathon! Hiking! Elevation! Craziness!

 Our dear friends from college were there, Ian and Ruthie. Ian ran the race with Tad and Ruthie and Ian's brother hung out with us for a little bit. It was so good to see them!

 It was freezing in the morning, but it quickly warmed up to crazy warm temperatures for the day!!

 Tad at mile 7. Feelin' good!!

 Coming down the path to the first checkpoint where we could see them!

 Still feeling really good! So good to see them together!

 The narrow mountain drive to the next checkpoint where we could see them! Beautiful views! The next checkpoint is mile 25. We waited awhile there to see them! 

 And it started to get hot! We went from our winter apparel to rolling up our pants and taking off our coats, and I got sunburned really bad!!

 But the kids had fun playing in the dirt!! At least that! Had a little lunch on the side of the road!

 Finally, we went for a walk hoping to see Tad on the trail! Judah, at this point, and it was not a long walk, said "I just can't do this!" Poor guy!

 Ian had to drop out at mile 22 because of his knee and Ruthie and Eric had to go rescue him by car. Tad had to keep going by himself but he was still feeling good at this point! We saw him at the checkpoint, he ate and drank, and changed his shoes, and he was off! And this is where the story starts to get interesting.

We saw him 4 miles later at mile 29. Since Ian and Ruthie had other friends running the race, they drove ahead and watched them. So me and the 3 kids were on our own. I asked some workers at mile 29 how to get to the next checkpoint, since we had no map or directions. He gave me some sketchy directions and said it was mile 33. I said, "I don't think we are suppose to go to mile 33." He said, "I'm not gonna tell you you can't go." So, I thought to myself, "Tad would be really happy if he saw us at an extra checkpoint. We could encourage him. And I already have the directions."

So we started off. But once we made a turn and ended up on a super narrow mountain road, I started getting nervous. The roads ended up being pretty rough, and there was no way I could turn around. We finally got to mile 33, and waited for awhile to see Tad.

 One of the workers gave the kids a book to read. It was pretty warm. I was getting worried about Tad, as he was alone and it was almost time for the checkpoint to close. We hiked up the hill a little and waited for him. Finally, we saw him. He was close to the cutoff point for the checkpoint, so he needed to get through fast. He ate some and was on his way. We got directions to the next checkpoint, mile 40. 7 miles that way. That sounded easy enough. Oh my word. The 7 miles weren't marked well. And the mountain terrain was not meant for my Pacifica. It was treacherous. Judah and Ruth fell asleep. And I'm surprised they didn't get whiplash. I made a couple of wrong turns. I didn't think the car was gonna make it through these rough roads that had deep spots, high ridges, super narrow paths with a cliff on the other side. I was lost. I had no service on my phone. I was responsible for 3 small children by myself. And I was scared to death. I was shaking while driving. I couldn't just stop the car and get out. There was no one around. There were a few people at the checkpoint a few miles away. A motorbike passed me and did a double take. That was before I realized how dangerous the path was. The second motorbike I saw I tried to flag down, and he didn't stop. I was about in tears and I was telling Maddy she had to pray.
We finally made it back to the familiar checkpoint we had been at and just kept backtracking until we were off the mountain.
By this point I just wanted to go somewhere familiar and to find the people I knew. I tried to remember what the camp was called that we had started at that morning. I remembered, "Kentucky Camp" and started seeing signs for it. Phew! Time for the next adventure. There were flashing lights at the entrance. When I stopped, the policeman told me that there had been an accident (of course, right at the entrance to the camp) and that the camp was closed. No one could go in or out. I told him my husband was doing a race and that it was on that mountain. He said I could go hang out in the town up ahead. So we hung out at a gas station where I called my parents and tried to figure out what to do. I passed by the accident several times and they finally opened up the camp. There had been some motorcyle road rage and a truck had creamed someone on a motorcycle. We passed by the mangled motorcycle, the body wrapped up and a pool of blood, and the cop car. I just wanted to know Tad was okay.
We finally hiked down to the camp, we hadn't had dinner. The car was a disaster from things flying all over the place while we were driving through the treacherous mountain. This mommy was spent.
We got down to the camp, and by God's grace, they were serving dinner, frying up hamburgers individually on the back grill, and there were picnic tables to sit at. For free. And our friends were there. What a relief. They said that all the racers had passed mile 46 and it was getting dark. I got the kids their dinner as we all waited for the racers to finish. At one point, as we were waiting, Tad walked up behind us, not where the racers were finishing.
His knee had given out. He couldn't make it past mile 40. He tore his ACL and knew that he couldn't safely finish. He waited over an hour to get a ride back. He was okay. He was exhausted. He was worried about us. But we were all safe and sound and back together. And ready for our beds!! We drove back to the hotel and told stories of the day. And we were thankful that we were all safe!!!

 So, that was kind of the long version. But I am documenting that adventure so I can go back and read about it in the future!! I hope to never have such an "adventure" again!! I am so proud that Tad completed 40 miles! He was bummed that he couldn't finish, but it was 14 more miles than he had ever done! And he is a winner in my heart!!!!!

Book Review: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

I just finished reading one of the most amazing books. I had heard people talking about One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp for awhile, and this summer my aunt asked me if I had read it. She then sent it to me, which was so nice! I picked it up and started it, but it was a slow start to get into the habit of reading again, and finding the time to really get into a book. I'm so glad I decided to bring my book with me on our recent trip. Since there were so many hours in the car, and I happened to not get too carsick to read, I had plenty of time to finish my book! I have to say, I haven't read too many books since having kids! In fact, I have never been a huge reader, so the ones I have read are all big accomplishments! Ha!
So, the book. Oh my, where to start. It's about a dare that the author received to start recording 1,000 gifts, or blessings, or things she was thankful for. She did it because it was a dare. I love how she starts the book in being completely raw and honest about her doubts in her relationship with God. Doubting His goodness. Doubting His plan for her life. Her pain. His choices. Other people's pain. I totally relate to people when they expose themselves and their true feelings and hurts and even their ugly thoughts and feelings. It makes people seem more real. Like they are like me. And it was the very thing that has been between me and God lately, I think. That doubting His goodness in the face of pain. Or other people's pain. The pain around the world. The fear of pain. The fear of loss.
But as she starts to record these blessings, these little ounces of gratitude for things so small and usually unnoticed, her heart starts to change, and the depth of her love and understand of God go to unmeasured depths as it opens up so many theological levels in her relationship with God. She goes beyond 1,000 gifts because the fruit of it is so rewarding and she sees God in a way she hasn't before.

"The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God - even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion - this prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him."

I love that it's written by a stay-at-home mother of six who wants to find the deep things of God among the mundane, everyday life of laundry, cooking, cleaning, raising kids, and even the rough patches of breaking up fights, fearing for their farm, and hard things that come their way. She is real. She is honest. She is human and her realness along with her deep passion and thirst for her relationship with God is inspiring.

"I make soup and I bake bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine sinks and polish through to the realization that trusting God is my most urgent need. If I deep trusted God in all the facets of my life, wouldn't that deep heal my anxiety, my self-condemnation, my soul holes?"

I can find God among the little things. I can still trust Him in the "ugly-beautiful" things in life. Those things that Ann describes that are painful and hard but God uses them to shape us and continue to mold us and draw us closer to Himself. She even labels some of her "blessings" under "ugly-beautiful." That we would be thankful for all things.

"I walk in our back door to candlelight still flickering, hang the keys on the hook, and look around at the steep mountain of laundry there in the mudroom, the shoes scattered, a coat dropped. The mudroom sink is grime ringed. Fingerprints smear across the mirror. I laugh the happiest wonder. In the afternoon's drizzle, I give happy thanks for the daily mess with a smile a mile wide, because this is again my chance to wholeheartedly serve God, to do full-bodied eucharisteo with the hands and the heart and the lips. I can count each task a gift, pure eucharisteo. Grace! This work-the thousand endless jobs-they each give the opportunity for one to become the gift, a thousand times over!Because with every one of the thousand, endless jobs, I become the gift to God and to others because this work is the public God serving, the daily liturgy of thanks, the completing of the Communion service with my service."

(I know that was such a long quote, but it is one of the ones I want to remember. I live my days in the mundane. I get so frustrated by the endless messes and my list that never ends. And when it might seem to be nearing the end, it is the same list on repeat the next day. It is tiring and overwhelming. I so needed this encouragement to be the blessing to others and to let it create joy in me in God. And I try to remember when I wasn't well enough to take care of my home when I was pregnant and extremely sick. If I didn't have my health, I would be wishing for the ability to do those one thousand endless tasks!!!)
 
I was also challenged in her naming the smallest of things to be thankful for. When I think of gratitude, I think of my husband's job, our house, our 3 beautiful, healthy children, our health, food to eat, a warm home. But she goes beyond those things and finds beauty in the smallest of things in her life, and it causes her to see the depth of God's love for us and how He blesses us constantly with all things to enjoy. We just have to stop and slow down enough to notice.
And then, as she learns to be grateful constantly, without ceasing, she also realizes that we are to bless others and be the blessing that God has been to us. To serve without limits. To pour out, to empty, to be filled again beyond measure. It really is such a beautiful book. And completely the opposite of how the world tells us to live. 

"Spend the whole of your one wild and beautiful life investing in many lives, and God simply will not be outdone. God extravagantly pays back everything we give away and exactly in the currency that is not of this world but the one we yearn for: Joy in Him."

So, if you haven't read this book, it's time you picked it up! I will shortly be passing it onto another lady in our church, and encouraging other people to read it. It will change your perspective, and it has already begun to soften my heart and change me. I have started my 1,000 gift list, and I hope to be changed and softened and brought to deep joy in the God who loves me so much more than I can imagine. He is the reason we live. To Him be the glory.

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Classical Conversations Cycle 1 Week 19

Well, if you are wondering why we had a couple of weeks off, we had a normal day off for President's Day and then we had a snow day. Our town was pretty buried with snow and a lot of the town lost power! But maybe it was a good thing we had that snow day. It allowed me to be extra prepared for the week we just had since we were out of town for 5 days and came back late the night before CC!
We had lots of fun stuff planned for Week 19! And I had lots of helpful parents in my class this week! God bless them! It really helps the class go smooth when you have active, willing parents who jump right in there! I'm thankful for them!
So, here's what we did for week 19:

Week 19

Timeline: Learned new hand motions and sand with the Timeline song

History Sentence: Learned new hand motions to go along with sentence, sang with the song

Geography: Used passports with passport stamps, colored in areas of the 13 colonies

Science Project: (We made Borax crystals this week for our Science Project, so while they were gluing their passport stamps, we started a solution of hot water (1 cup) with Borax (3 Tablespoons, I believe) so they could look at it about an hour later at Science time. We also had one that had been forming crystals for about 1 day so they could compare the two.

Science: Found some great CC printables on this website and the kids cut out the different ocean zone sections, glued them onto construction paper, glued their labels on, and then if they had time they drew some oceanlife into the different zones. I also printed out the submarine and put it on some cardboard with a craft stick so they could pretend the submarine was going lower and lower.

Latin: Printed a worksheet of noun endings for 3rd declension and put them into page protectors. They traced the noun endings while listening to the song and then we sang the song while they pointed to each noun ending.

Math: We sang a song to the tune of "the wheels on the bus" for "the area of a circle equals pie R squared, pie R squared, pie R squared, the area of a circle equals pie R squared, for all circles."

English: Had them repeat the 3 new helping verbs over and over, then one at a time they each said the 3 of them. Wrote them on a whiteboard and erased one at a time, but they all knew them anyways. Reviewed some of the other weeks as well.

Presentations: Impromptu (put different topics onto little strips of paper and had them pull one out)

First week of Tin Whistle!! It went well! We flipped our Orchestra and Tin Whistle since our Orchestra tutor was moving away mid-semester.

Grammar Review: Brought 2 nerf guns and drew a kind of dart board on the dry-erase board. They had to shoot it and hit a subject and that's the question they got. The nerf guns didn't work very well, so it made that game kind of difficult.
-Divided the class into 2 teams and timed them to see which could put the Timeline cards from this week in order the fastest.
-We reviewed the Timeline song for weeks 1-6 since our class is doing it for the end-of-year presentations.
-We had some time left, so I had the class divided into 2 teams and had them on either side of the room. They had to run and whoever's hand I felt first (as I held my arms straight out), their team got a chance to answer a question. If they got it wrong, the other team could answer. The winning team got an extra sticker on their sticker chart. It worked out since one team won the Timeline race, and the other team won the questions race.

See ya'll back here for week 19!

Classical Conversations Cycle 1 Week 18

I can't believe I am even blogging about the last week of the third quarter already! This year has seriously flown by! We did some fun stuff this week, but I will say this was one of my "burn-out" weeks where I was running out of ideas for different subjects, and we repeated a grammar review game (the horror!). The kids had fun, though, and we even threw in a little Valentine's Day party during snack/break time. Our campus had the older kids deliver cookie grahams to different classrooms and parents bought them for students, tutors, or whoever they wanted! Sadly, since my oldest who is in my class is allergic to wheat, I got her her own valentine from her dad and I and a chocolate marshmallow heart that she could have! We all had fun, though!
Let me share what we did!

Week 18

Timeline: learned new hand motions and sang along with Timeline song #4

History Sentence: learned hand motions to go along with the song on the CC cd

Latin: My printer ran out of ink and I was going to print off a Latin chart for each of them. Since I only had one chart (I think from CC connected), I showed it to them and that they already knew the whole chart with all 5 declensions, and that we were just reviewing it. I pointed to each column as we sang the songs (just the first 2 declensions, since that is what we were doing for week 18). It was kind of boring but I wanted them to get the idea and visual for what they had just learned the first half of the year and point so that they saw that they went with each of the noun cases.

Geography: Did the same as usual, colored in/traced the new geography, reviewed some of the old geography, glued passport stamps into passports

Math: I couldn't find a worksheet on CC connected for the area of a triangle, so my husband had the idea to just give them a sheet of paper and have them draw a triangle, and then they wrote the abbreviated formula underneath it: A=1/2BxH.

Science:  I found some fun motions to go along with the four types of ocean floor: continental shelf (make a little shelf with one hand resting on another hand down by your knees), abyssal plains (palms down and hands flat at your waist), mountains (put finger tips together in the shape of an upside-down V by your chest), ridges (knuckles from both hands together up by your head)

English: more helping verbs (may, must, might), we said them faster and faster and tried to get them "out" by putting my finger over my mouth and they had to stop quickly, also they handed a ball and each said a helping verb and then passed it to the next person.

Grammar Review: We just did a repeat of a game and did BINGO since the kids really enjoyed that one, and we didn't have much time to play it last time.

 In some of our extra free time, we played musical chairs to the 2 songs for the Presidents, and had the boys against girls to put timeline cards in order from different weeks.

I'm hoping to get this last 6 weeks planned all at once so I'm not last minute trying to come up with ideas. Again this website had a lot of great games, worksheets, links, and grammar review games! Check it out if you are a tutor!!! See you back here for the last quarter!!

If you are a tutor, I would love to hear how your year has gone, games and ideas you have used, or suggestions for links or other things! Let's all share and help each other! God Bless!

Charleston Cheese Dip

Okay, so I'm a little late with a Superbowl post, so I can just call this a "good appetizer" post. I wish I could post some good recipes before each holiday, but I'm usually posting after the fact because I cook it the day of. Maybe I'll get smart and repost some of my old posts for each holiday! Duh!
Well, for the Superbowl this year, I made homemade guacamole, a yummy Charleston cheese dip, sausage hors d'oeuvres, and I brought some shrimp for my poor gluten-free child who is obsessed with shrimp and requested that for her fun Superbowl snack!
The little sausage appetizers and the cheese dip were recipes I saw on Trisha Yearwood's new cooking show. I really like her new show. She makes everything she makes look easy, and she has some great recipes. The sausage hors d'oeuvres were pretty good, but not my favorite. They didn't hold together that well when you shape them into balls, and on the health side, they were just sausage, bisquick, and cheese molded together into balls, so not very healthy. They reminded me of a breakfast sandwich. They were good, just not something I would just have to have. Watch me crave it after writing that!
This cheese dip, on the other hand, was simple and super tasty. You can buy anything to go with it that suits your fancy! You could just do crudite, or I got some bagel crisps, toasted ritz crackers, and just some plain tortilla chips. The sky's the limit!
It's super easy to mix together, and it will impress your guests! You can also substitute the crumbled bacon on top for turkey bacon, which works fine also!

Charleston Cheese Dip
Adapted from Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood (c) Clarkson Potter 2010

1/2 cup mayonnaise
One 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup grated sharp Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese
2 green onions, finely chopped
1 dash cayenne pepper
8 butter crackers, crushed, such as Ritz
8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
Corn chips, crackers or bagel chips, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, mix the mayonnaise, cream cheese, Cheddar cheese, Monterey Jack cheese, green onions, and cayenne pepper. Transfer the mixture to a shallow baking dish, such as a 9-inch pie pan. Top the mixture with the cracker crumbs and bake until heated through, about 15 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and top with the bacon. Serve with whatever sides you would like!!

There are so many ways you could make this a lighter cheese dip. You can use a light mayonnaise, a light cream cheese, swap out whatever cheese you like or prefer (low-fat, or just different varieties), or make it gluten-free by omitting the crushed crackers on top, or just leaving them off a portion of the dip. 

Serve this at your next party and enjoy!!