Pitter Patter

Sleep in Heavenly Peace, Grandpa

2011-10-11T18:00:00.000-04:00

Carroll Ray D____

2/23/23 - 10/11/11

If I were to point to any human person as a hero to me personally, I would have to choose my grandpa. I remember spending summers at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and the fun we used to have. We did plenty of playing in the house, but we also had great fun outside with Grandpa. He had a terrific garden, a barn full of all sorts of “treasures,” and their close proximity to a lake inlet only added to the charm of their house. I remember him taking my brother and I fishing on the lake or exploring one of the small islands in the bay. Sometimes we would go hiking in the woods, other times we’d help him in his garden or help get the firewood stacked in the basement through the small basement window. On summer evenings we would sit on their front porch and Grandpa would play his guitar or saw (Grandma would play her accordion) and we’d sing while watching the sun set over the lake or the lightning play tag with itself. Once when we were visiting, a small tornado came quite close to their house while we stood watching from the barn door. The transformer across the house blew from the force, but because Grandpa was there with us, we weren’t afraid.

Grandpa had such an upbeat personality, loved everyone, and had a great sense of humor. He would often remark at mealtimes, “My stomach’s beginning to think my throat’s been cut” and at the end of the meal he’d comment,“It’s a good thing I ate when I did because now I’m not hungry.” He also claimed he would never retire, only retread.

He was a hard worker and in his later years (after many years as a colporteur), he did a lot with his hands (carpentry, plumbing, etc.). Sometimes his hammer would miss the intended target and he’d smash his thumb or finger. Every time, after the pain had subsided some, he would say something to the effect that he was glad he had a thumb to hit. He tried to find the positive in everything, definitely a “glass is half full” kinda guy.

In the autumn of his life he and Grandma (and my great grandma who was living with them) went to live near my folks. It wasn’t too long after moving there that Great Grandma and then Grandma closed their eyes for the last time (till the resurrection). Not too long after that Grandpa started showing signs of Alzheimer's, becoming more and more forgetful. During one winter ice storm he forgot that Mom had told him to stay inside and went out on the porch to take his little dog potty. He slipped and broke his collar bone. The bone jutted out into his skin and never healed together and he seemed a bit subconscious about it. Unfortunately there was nothing that the docs could do about it in its location. Finally my parents moved him into their house to provide better supervision.

It’s been so hard to seem him slide into decrepit old age. He was always so strong, but his last few years he’s been getting weaker and more feeble. Recently my parents made the decision to place him in a nursing home so he could be monitored 24/7. Ironically, less than two full days after he was admitted, he fell and broke his hip (or broke his hip and fell, not sure which). He went through surgery for that (replacing the ball part of his femur), but he had some complications after the surgery (aspiration pneumonia, food from feeding tube not assimilating…). He was in much pain and weakening. My mom and sister finally decided that it was time for hospice care. He was kept on morphine most of the time to handle the pain.

This morning around 1:00 a.m., he stopped breathing and fell asleep in Jesus. I’m sad that such a great man is no longer in this world, but I am glad that he’s not in any more pain or discomfort and the next conscious thought that he has will be Jesus coming to wake him up and take us all home. “Grandpa, it’s not ‘good-bye’, it’s ‘see you soon!’”

Pattern Sale!

2011-10-04T19:39:00.001-04:00

I bought a bunch of McCall's patterns the last time they went on sale for $0.99 each and have been waiting what seems like eons for Simplicity patterns to follow suit. Well, it appears my wait is over! :) Joann Fabric is running a $0.99 sale on Simplicity patterns this coming weekend (Friday, Oct. 7 – Monday, Oct 10) so I have made out my list and am checking it twice. I’m mainly going to get costume patterns (historical type outfits which might come in handy for homeschool situations) with a few doll clothes patterns thrown in for fun. Now for some time to sew…

PDFTK4ALL

2011-10-01T21:39:00.001-04:00

In searching for a program that could join and split pdfs easily, I stumbled upon PDFTK http://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/ (stands for PDF ToolKit). I am sure it is very functional and a power workhorse of a program since is runs from the command prompt, but wishing for something a little user friendly, I was very happy to find PDFTK4ALL. This program offers a GUI which makes the tasks of splitting, joining, extracting, rotating, etc., a lot simpler. So if you need a free solution for these tasks, I recommend you give PDFTK4ALL a try.

Flying Again

2011-09-29T20:13:00.000-04:00

I tried FlyLady when I was a mom of 1 little and did ok until I was a mom of 1 slightly bigger little and morning sick with little #2. Then things started falling apart. I guess I fell off the wagon and took about 9 years to find my way back on. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m fully flying yet, but I’m taking some steps in that direction, I guess I’m in flight training :).

I’m kind of doing it all wrong by not starting with her babysteps, so maybe I’ll have to check in and make sure I’m not getting off track any. But I think I have the main bits together.

I made Control Journals for me and the rest of the littles (including the 2 yo). Sticking with our kid colors, Gigi, miss pink, chose 2 cute fairies (cleaning fairies) on a pink background, the boys wanted something more guyish so we went with the firefighter theme (putting out “hot spots”) on blue and green backgrounds. I found another cute fairy princess for Missy’s journal (against orange) , and of course, mom’s had to be FlyLady on a purple background, lol. I figured it would be a tiny bit harder to lose them if they were brightly colored. Some have still somehow managed to go missing since I made them a couple of days ago.

The insides are 1/2 sheets encased in plastic report covers folded in half. This keeps the pages safe from tearing or being spilled on and also makes the pages easy to turn. The very first page is the Morning Routines, then Evening Routines, then Daily Routines, then Zones.

Geo and Gigi have school control journals in the very back part of their control journals. Our school schedule pretty much recycles each week so that part is in plastic with one sheet with specific assignments out of plastic so they can check things off as done.

Everything else can be checked off with dry erase markers or grease pencils (haven’t tried these yet, but I think I might). They seem to have a problem losing their pens so I might have to put a pencil case in each journal for the pens to live so they won’t wander away as easily.

The numbers in the boxes are estimates on how long I think it should take them to do each chore. It can give them a goal to beat with a timer.

My morning and evening routines are probably too long for right now, but I’ve highlighted the ones that I want to make habits at first (5 each) and will build from there (so I don’t feel bad if I don’t get to my whole list just yet). I don’t want to crash and burn like I am so prone to do.

Encyclopedia Interactica

2011-09-29T18:09:00.001-04:00

I’ve always been a fan of the French children’s site Poisson Rouge and was happy to see that they are trying to find ways to illustrate educational concepts as well as their mainly entertainment oriented content. I do see more room for growth, but I’m so far pleased with what I see. There are math, science, and music applications along with a few other ideas.

Gimposition PDF Booklet Creator

2011-09-29T17:29:00.001-04:00

I rarely pay for software if I can find free ways around all the features of the pricier versions. One example is .pdf booklet creation. Adobe Reader is supposed to handle it just fine, but for some reason, it kept messing up a document I was trying to print yesterday. The pages were all mixed up, 17 on one side of the page 53 on the other. It was just not working. So, after trying everything I could think of doing, I went hunting for a free booklet creation solution and happened upon Gimposition. It is so intuitive, it’s not funny. You just load in the .pdf document you want to bookletize, tell it where you want the output file saved, and in about a second or two, the brand new booklet is waiting to be printed. It gets my vote!

My “This Can’t Be Sourdough Bread” Recipe

2011-05-18T17:44:00.001-04:00

Since I started my sourdough journey on March 12 when a friend of mine showed up at a church social with a jar of starter for me (not something I had asked for, but I’m so glad she did!), it’s been a bumpy ride. At first it just sat in my fridge waiting for its weekly feed. One week I thought for sure I’d killed it because I let it go longer than a week between feeds, but I started feeding it again and it came right back to life. I’ve since learned that wild yeast isn’t that easy to kill and I could have neglected it for a few weeks and it probably, with some coaxing, would still have returned to its former glory.

I finally got brave enough to attempt a loaf of sourdough and used the recipe from S. John Ross’ Sourdough Baking – The Basics website. I actually did make some fairly decent bread to begin with and then the urge for more sourdough experimentation took over and I started trying other recipes and techniques (like baking inside my deep cast iron skillet with a lid on to trap steam), but either the taste (too sour), or the crust/crumb (too tough) weren’t just right and I started to feel downright deflated. My kids were pining for the fleshpots of commercial yeast bread . Also, my starter started to look a little peaked and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. It wasn’t doubling in 4 hours like I thought it should, it was starting to separate which didn’t look like the Google pictures that I had seen of lovely, vital sourdough starter.

But, I’m not one to give up a fight easily. I had read some interesting reports on the nutritional value of sourdough bread over commercial yeasted breads and I wasn’t wanting to throw in the towel yet. I tried adding a little pineapple juice to my starter which did help some, I also ordered a food scale which, as soon as I started using it, seemed to have an amazing effect on my starter. I realized that I hadn’t been keeping my starter at 100% hydration like I thought, more like 120% or more. When I mixed equal weights of water and flour, the result was more like a wet dough, much less like a thick batter. It was almost hard to stir.

Finally my starter was doing better and I was now on the search for a non-sour (or mildly sour), soft, thin/light crusted sourdough. I tweaked John’s recipe to include an egg (lecithin), milk (dough conditioner), and baking soda (acid neutralization). I also took his advice of lower temps as I’d been baking at much higher temps and the crusts were always so crusty.

I’ve made this recipe a few times now and my kids have stopped wishing for the “old” bread and are quite happy with Mommy’s new wild yeast bread. Geo even got so into things that he’s started his own starter (we’re calling it a science experiment, lol). So, without further ado, here’s my 50%+ WW TCBS bread recipe:

2 c. (500 g.) 100% hydration starter (mine is almost 100% white)

3 c. (400 g.) whole wheat flour

1/4 c. (80 g.) honey (or molasses)

1 egg + milk = 2/3 c. (1 egg + milk = 160 g.)

Autolyze (rest dough) for 30 minutes, then add:

1-1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 Tbsp. oil

Add more bread flour if needed.

Mix in bread mixer for 5-8 minutes or knead by hand for 8-10 minutes (ok, guessing here, lol).

Place in a greased bowl, coat both sides, cover with plastic wrap (or a plastic shower cap) and let it rest in a warm place (i.e. in the oven with the light on) for 30 minutes to an hour. Punch dough down, knead in bowl till dough firms up a bit. Cover and let rest again. Aim for 3 or 4 punch ‘n’ kneads (or stretch and folds) during the first 4-5 hours. Then turn dough out onto greased surface. Cut dough into half. Place one half back into bowl, take other half, cut side down, on your work surface. Roll out with rolling pin into a long, semi-rectangular shape. Flip bread over so cut side is now facing up. Begin rolling bread at top, rolling toward you all the way to the bottom. Pinch seams. Place seam side down into greased bread pan. Repeat with other 1/2 of dough. Place shower cap (or plastic wrap) on top of each bread pan. Let them rise in a warm place for 2-3 hours, till top of dough is at least 1 inch above top of pan. With a sharp knife or razor blade, slash top of bread in whatever designs you would like. Heat oven to 350°F and bake for 20 minutes. Let bread cool before slicing. Store any bread that’s left in plastic bags like these to keep the bread moist for a few days (if it lasts that long). If you don’t like heels and no one else wants them, they make great breadcrumbs after they’ve been dried.

Note: I aim to have my bread in a pre-cooked dough state for at least 7 hours to give the phytates in the wheat time to neutralize. I personally don’t like my bread to go much longer than 12 hours before baking as that increases the sour taste and we’re not fans of that at this point. I generally aim for 7 hours total dough time, but lately, with the weather being as unseasonably cool as it has been, my bread has inched up closer to the 12 hour mark. Unfortunately for me, the light in my oven is blown. Lately I’ve been mixing the dough first thing in the morning (around 8 a.m.) and then into the loaf pans around 12 or 1 and bake around 3 or 4. It would also work to mix it up before going to bed in the evening, then shaping into loaves in the morning and bake 2-3 hours later, but you’d have to do without any punching down of the dough which I think helps develop the gluten strands.

Keeping dictation shorter

2011-02-09T17:02:00.000-05:00

I have the hardest time keeping my children on task during our Riggs dictation. They can turn a 10 minute spelling or phonogram test into an hour if I let them. I admit that I’m easily distracted by the youngers and can tend to lose track of time so I’ve been on the hunt for a free timer program that would help keep us on track, but the ones I had used would always restart at zero and I wanted one that would let me restart back to 30 seconds after each phonogram or word as the case may be. I finally found what I was looking for! :) It’s called TimeLeft and its basic version is free.

I chose to keep it down to its bare bones and do without the title, headers, play/pause and restart buttons. This allows me to have a very small timer which remains on top of all windows, but which can easily hide in less used parts of my screen. There are easy to remember keyboard shortcuts for start (ctrl+s), pause (ctrl+p), and reset (ctrl+r).

Here’s how I use it. I get the timer window active, press ctrl+s to start it, then say the phonogram or word that is being tested on and press ctrl+r to reset it back to 30 seconds (or however much time I’m allowing for each item). Then if they beat the timer, I say the next thing and press ctrl+r again. If they don’t beat the timer and it dings, they leave that space blank (and subsequently get it wrong) and we move on to the next phonogram/word. They really don’t like having to skip one so they try real hard to beat the timer.

Is it a D or a B?

2011-02-09T14:24:00.001-05:00

I’ve seen several other helps to remember the difference between a lowercase b and d. Here’s my own take on the ol’ “D vs. B” beginner reader quandary. Click here to download.

Our Workbinders distilled down from Workfolders which are a spinoff of Workboxes…

2011-02-08T20:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, I could not think of a decent title, but the point is that my Workbinders are inspired by Jolanthe’s Workfolders which are derivative of Sue Patrick’s ubiquitous Workbox system.

I tried traditional workboxes a couple of years ago with Geo and they went well with the downside of taking too long to load each night. I always felt like I was forgetting something. It was enough to make me go slightly batty. I took a year off from workboxes and this year decided to give them another try after reading about Jolanthe’s workbox twist and revision. It seemed like it would work so well with the Gs so I set off to imitate it (please feel flattered, Jolanthe).

I saw the folders that Jolanthe said she got from Wal-Mart, but they were a bit more expensive than these tabbed pocked folders by Avery.

My math failed me and I bought 3 packs not realizing till later that I’d only need 6 dividers per kid if I wanted them to have 12 pockets. I ended up with a bunch extra but it didn’t turn out to be a bad thing after all as you’ll see.

I decided not to do a separate weekly grid for all the tabs, my kids would just lose them anyway.

Instead I put 12 velcro dots on the inside cover of the flexible poly 3-ring binders that I have the workpockets in. I put one tabbed divider (from a pack of these, again from Avery) in front of the pockets and I put more velcro dots on both sides. The front side is for their completed activity/subject cards and the back is for extras or activities/subjects that aren’t assigned on that given day. On the right tabbed divider you’ll see a smaller (older) card which says, “I’m ready to work!” I made (and had laminated) a lovely school clock-in / clock-out setup , and they just don’t use it :( So this way it hopefully will still give them the idea that before they get started on the other stuff they should “clock-in” in their workbinders at the very least.

I had originally thought I would use all 3 dots on each pocket for the subject, a place for them to match up the subject card from the front cover of the binder and an extra one for a “with mom” card. But since it’s easier for them to just move them from the binder cover to the tabbed divider, we’ve just been doing that. It also makes it easier for me not to have to hunt down the cards on several different pockets.

Like Jolanthe, I have a week’s worth of assignments for each subject that gets assigned, then in the evening, all I have to do is to reload the front cover with the cards for the next day and we’re good to go. I only put papers or very small/thin books in their workfolders and the rest of their books are in their “workboxes” (I love our Trofast setup by the way!).

I put workboxes in quotes because I’m not using them in a typical workbox way in that the boxes aren’t numbered, but have labels for their category. So, for instance, I have Geo’s reading books in one box, Gigi’s in another. Geo’s reading comp. and grammar books share a box. Their workbinders share a box and my teacher’s books get their own box. It’s nice because the kids know where to go to get the things they need, they know exactly what’s expected of them from their workbinders and my job of refreshing them each evening is a breeze.

Oh, and the extra pockets? I made my own workfolder and in it I put my daily routines, weekly schedules, monthly calendars, my little notebook for jotting down things I don’t want to forget, our Keys for Kids devotional, reward stickers, a knitting pattern, memory verses, and whatever else I want to put in there. It has helped me get a lot more organized too and that’s always a good thing.

Printing PDF books in booklet format

2011-01-10T15:02:00.000-05:00

(for binding your own books)

Spurred on with my daughter flying through her first grade reader and needing something else to assign for reading (and also because of an old reader which my husbands grandmother had given him, which we found to be superior to most, if not all, modern readers), I went on a search for some good, old school readers. I found a slew on Google Books and a few others at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s book archive site.

Then I got to wondering if there was a simple way to print them as “booklets” so that I could bind them with my spiral binder. Well, Adobe Reader’s help page on printing booklets was helpful, it got me started, but it took me a few tries to find what actually works.

Go to File > Print

1. Under Print Range, select your page range

2. Click on “Reverse pages”

3. Under Paper Handling > Page Scaling, select “Booklet Printing.”

4. Choose “Back side only” for Booklet subset.

5. Print.

6. Repeat process with same print range, but this time:

7. Uncheck “Reverse pages”

8. Choose “Front side only” for Booklet subset.

9. Put your 1/2 printed pages in your printer (for my printer, they go in without being rotated and face down), print.

Then all I have to do is cut the sheets down the middle, don’t get the pages mixed up, punch them and bind my book. I was afraid I might forget this process so am sharing it for your edification and my personal future reference.

KISS Grammar ♥

2010-11-29T20:53:00.000-05:00

Our New Grammar Program

I found this lovely and free grammar program while searching for something else and at first was quite turned off by the user unfriendliness of the website. But, I decided to download everything and take a gander, and I’m so glad I did.

It comes with complete, printable workbooks through at least the first few levels, and the rest are available online. I decided to print the first level out along with the teacher’s manual and answer keys and spent several days just reading about the method. It seems a bit different from what I remember from school, but I think it makes so much sense. It starts out slow and gradually builds from there, adding things slowly in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the student. There are about 10 problems to do every day it is scheduled (it is suggested that it not be done more than 2-3 days a week*). Because the lessons are so short, this fits in well with Charlotte Mason’s and Ruth Beechick’s schools of thought.

I intro’ed Geo (9) to it last week and … HE LOVES IT! He can’t get enough of it. *I can’t get him to just do 10 problems a day, he wants to do 2 or 3 pages a day, lol. I think at first that’s fine, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to slow down eventually, but it’s fun to see him finding this so enjoyable.

I highly recommend it in spite of the less-than-terrific website layout; the program itself is awesome!

That’s the Ticket!

2010-10-06T21:29:00.000-04:00

I got around to reading my That’s the Ticket! book last Monday night, late, finished it in one sitting (it’s a big book but not a long book) and started trying to implement it the next evening (well, at least I introduced it to the kids to mixed reviews). I decided that since I had kids on different levels of abilities, likes/dislikes… I’d make my own “playing boards” or lists of “Ways to Win” and “Rewards” in Excel so each child has their own. Geo and Gigi’s boards are pretty similar with a few more things on his as he has a few more things to work on that aren’t issues for her. Here’s a sampling of some of our Ways to Win:

SCHOOL / HOMEWORK	+	-
Finish school within time limits	3	3
Use good handwriting on your spelling test	1	1
Have a good-attitude school day	5	5
EVERYDAY HABITS
Be ready for School on time or early	2	2
Say, "Yes Mom" or "Yes Dad" when we call you	1	1
Practice Piano for 30 minutes	10	10
BEHAVIOR / ATTITUDE
Be kind and considerate to your family No bossing, bullying, pestering, taking things, hitting, pinching, kicking, being rude, being mean, annoying, taunting, stealing, arguing, throwing…	3	3
Include youngers in activities	4	4
Obey cheerfully and promptly and long-term (don't disobey, whine or argue)	2	2
To resolve a conflict, use kind words, then get help if you need it.	5	5
Be respectful to Mom and Dad	5	5
Respect each other's privacy	5	5
CLEANING UP AFTER YOURSELF
Rinse your plates after meals	2	2
Clear your place at the table after meals	2	2
Clean up any messes you make	3	3
HELPING OUT / CHORES
Do a chore cheerfully when asked	10	10
Fold a load of laundry	5	-
Put a load of laundry away	5	-
Empty or load the dishwasher	5	-

Our actual list is quite a bit longer, but it’s stuff our kids have heard for years so now it’s just a matter of putting it into practice.

The value in seeing the game boards (to me) were the ideas that they gave me that I hadn’t thought of before to add to my Ways to Win list. So, the book alone is not sufficient if you are looking for ideas in this area like I was. The book has ways to play the game, but not a list of all Ways to Win or Privileges, that’s on the game boards.

In the fashion of PocketMod, I created little books for the kids with all their Ways to Win along with their Privileges to chose from so they have easy access to them. I also have them posted on the side of the refrigerator and on the wall beside my desk, plus they get reminded of what is expected of them each time they win points or have to relinquish them.

The book suggests giving them a couple of days head start before you start taking any of their tickets and only reminding them of what is to come, but I wanted to jump right in so I gave them 300 points up front for doing nothing and we got started.

At first I printed out some tickets, 1 point tickets on white paper, 5 point tickets on green paper, but it got so hard to figure out how many points each kid had that I decided to come up with another way.

I had some colored paperclips in 6 different colors so I made yellow = 50 points, orange = 20 points, white = 10 points and Geo’s 1 points are blue, Gigi’s are red and Eli’s are/were green (he’s out of the game until he decides he’s a big enough boy to start earning more points than he’s losing; he’s only 4 and I’m thinking the game is best started at 6 or 7, we’ll see when he seems ready).

Since I started using the paperclips (which get tangled up easily), I came across these plastic links from Oriental Trading and I think they’ll work even better (though the 1 point links will all have to be the same color). This method makes it very easy to figure out how many points each child has and to carry out transactions. I can also wear several around my neck for easy access so I don’t miss an opportunity to reward good behavior. Also if the kids wear theirs, their points won’t get lost and I’ll know where to go to collect “tickets” if necessary.

Part of our day includes chore time (I’ve moved it to the morning and school to the afternoon because I just didn’t have the energy needed for zipping around the house cleaning in the afternoon. I’m usually feeling like a siesta come 2 p.m. so doing our chores in the a.m. has helped a lot.) and I made some nice little chore charts with rotating chores so that the kids won’t get too bored with the same ones week after week. They do have the same chores for 1 week, then I’ll print up another, different list. (Let me know if you’d like a copy of my chore list system and I’ll e-mail it to you).

There’s a place at the bottom of their list where I add up the # of chores they did, properly and on time, and figure how many points they’ll get. They get an extra 5 points if they finish all of their chores correctly and on time, plus they get 2 points each for each correctly done/on time chore. But… if they aren’t all done on time, they lose 5 points, and lose 2 points for each chore not done correctly/on time. So, yesterday Geo got 33 points because he did them all on time and decently. But, today he only got 19 because he said he did a couple, but didn’t really do them at all (should have got him for lying too I guess).

I suppose it’s a little more work on my part, trying to keep track of points and every little things they’re supposed to be doing (and catching them if they don’t), but the difference in attitudes alone would make it worth the money and I’m starting to see a change in the house and how the kids relate to each other too (and this is only the first week). So far I’m very happy with this program and can’t say enough good things about it :) It’s truly been a God-send to me!

SonLight Education Ministry Homeschool Curriculum

2010-10-06T20:30:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned, this is our homeschool curriculum for the next 15 or so years (if the world lasts that long). Recently I received a letter from them stating that they are closing up shop due to personal and financial reasons. However, because they believe in their curriculum and have put so much time and effort into it, they will be offering any of their self-published products for free starting December 31 of this year. I’m not positive because I haven’t checked with them yet, but I’m pretty sure this would include their Bible/Worship/Nature/Character Development curriculum they call Family Bible Lessons as well as their 2nd-8th grade unit study based SonLight program.

It is a conservative Seventh-Day Adventist curriculum and the Bible is woven into every aspect of study (including math!).

We haven’t used the 2-8 program yet, but will hopefully be starting that in January. I can speak to the Family Bible Lesson, though, as we’ve been using them for almost a year. I really like them, they have memory verses that you learn along with the lesson, character traits which are emphasized in each lesson (a different one each week), Bible selections to read for each lesson, then an overview with comprehension questions and finally a nature nugget which ties into the story and character trait with some ideas at the very end of each lesson on how to make what you learned practical in real life.

There is also a companion book of stories, poems and activities that go along with the lessons. There are activities for several levels of development plus applicable poems and interesting character building stories. There’s a wealth of information in each lesson, it’s not a wimpy Bible curriculum by any means. So check them out, the website is a bit basic and even the curriculum is black & white only (laser printer friendly), but my kids haven’t seemed to mind.

Homeschool 2010-2011 - Unabridged

2010-09-22T20:46:00.001-04:00

This year has been interesting. I started eclectic homeschooling (i.e. doing my own thing based on Ambleside Online and then oldfashionededucation.com) in 2007 mainly because we didn’t have much money to pour into a curriculum.

I researched a bunch and was at one point drawn toward KONOS, but what I really wanted was SonLight Education Ministry’s unit-study-based curriculum (not to be confused with the ubiquitous and well-known Sonlight). It’s an Seventh-day Adventist Homeschool curriculum that weaves Biblical themes and character traits throughout every topic you’re studying at any given time. From 2nd grade on, you can school your upper grade children together as there are different levels of questions/activities at the end of each lesson for them to complete. Anyway, to get everything I’d need for 8 grades of school, it was going to cost a pretty penny (which we didn’t have) so I just let it go.

But joy of joys, this last Christmas, my parents decided to bless me by buying it for us. As soon as it came (mid January), we started with the Riggs Institute’s Writing and Spelling Road to Reading and Thinking (which they recommend for 1st Grade) since I hadn’t done an official LA program with Geo and I felt he had some things to learn.

We’ve been plugging away at it all year and will probably finish it some time around the new year. It’s a great program (very thorough, lays a strong foundation in spelling, grammar, composition, phonics, reading…) and I don’t regret getting it, but it doesn’t seem to be melding with Geo’s personality (or maybe it’s his age). Whatever the case, this year hasn’t been my most fun or rewarding. I can’t wait till we’re done with Riggs and can start the actual SonLight program. We are already using the Family Bible Lessons (the Bible part of the curriculum) for worship and nature study and that’s going well.

In addition, this year, we’ve been going through Book A of McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading (will finish tomorrow!), he’s in his 2nd year of piano lessons, he earned a Bible from Kid’s Time Kids Club by reading a year’s worth of Bible lessons and passing all the tests in less than 1/2 a year, and we’ve been trying to keep up with the kids’ Sabbath School Lessons (My Bible Stories, My Bible Lessons and My Bible First).

SonLight adheres to the “Better Late than Early” school of thought so they don’t suggest starting school till at least age 8. They also believe in waiting on math until at least grade 2 (they have many studies showing how beneficial it is to hold off on math till middle school) to let the right side of the brain develop more fully and better allow faith in God to develop during the early formative years.

Not knowing this, we’d started math in first grade, first using MEP (challenging, free, British math curriculum), then Math on the Level (which I will use again to supplement SonLight’s math next year). MEP was good, but there were so many problems to be solved every day and Geo was balking at the amount. When I came across MOTL, I was intrigued by the 5 problems a day method and Geo took to it right away too. I love the record- keeping and the math problems to chose from. All this to say that as soon as we read their reasons for delaying math, I stopped it to focus on Riggs.

Gigi started doing a little bit of homeschool last year (reading, math, writing, Bible, nature study…), but after I got the SonLight curriculum, I have backed her off to light reading, her recorder lessons, early phonics (in anticipation of Riggs which she will start as soon as Geo finishes), and Bible/nature study. We will let her start Riggs a little early (when she’s 7 1/2) because she is really anxious to start it. I will probably take it a little slower though and aim to complete the program in a year and 1/2 so she’ll join Geo in SonLight for 2nd grade.

I’ve had a bit of a hard time figuring where to place Geo as far as grades. The way we were going before, he would be entering 4th grade this year (August). But since he’s 9 and we’re just doing the first grade level of SonLight with him (catch-up), I’m not sure whether to say he’s 2nd since he would be if we’d waited to start him at age 8 and that’s how the new program goes, say he’s in 1st because he’s doing the first grade year of the SonLight program, or to say he’s in 4th this year (doing 1st grade catch-up work?). For now I’m saying that, because we got started on Riggs at an odd part of his 3rd grade year, that his 4th grade year won’t start until January. I figure since it’s a unit study curriculum, that he’ll easily be able to jump to the right grade level once we start the SonLight program. I also am not sure if it would be discouraging to him to be told that he’s not in 4th grade like he thought he was, that he’s really only in 2nd grade (at least according to the new system). Boy, things can get confusing. With Gigi, it won’t be such a big trouble, she’ll start first grade when she starts Riggs and since she doesn’t have a firm grasp of time and how long it should take to complete a grade, likely won’t catch that she should be going into 2nd this year instead of staying in first.

Oh happy day :)

2010-09-21T20:37:00.001-04:00

Well, for the most part it’s been a frankly crummy day. Attitudes have been in the gutter (no mine, although I was somewhat effected), energy has been pent-up (definitely not mine), dog has been pestered (poor Lucy), school dragged on. So I’m so very glad that this day is almost to an end.

But… all wasn’t lost :) One more wall in our school/office/play… room got painted and it’s starting to look really good.

Also, the other thing that I’m rather excited about is this new game I found online called “That’s The Ticket.” It’s normally $44.95, but is currently on sale for $29.95. However, I found the complete game on Amazon for $4.99 (+s&h) and I’m doing a happy dance :)

It’s supposedly “teaches your kids how to empower their lives” in “a fun, interactive, motivational game” that helps to empower “parents to inspire their kids to WANT to:

Set clear goals

Complete specific tasks

Build positive habits

EARN the things they crave.”

All in a hopefully fun game disguise. We shall see, but for that price, I didn’t figure there was much to lose and the reviews that I’ve seen have been really positive. Even my child-rearing mentor, Kevin Leman, promotes it.

So… after a day like today, there’s a lot riding on this working because nothing I’ve tried so far has been terribly successful. Tonight I was SO fed up by everything that had happened today that I sent the kids to bed early. I just needed some quiet, decompression time, sans kids. Now, don’t get me wrong, I totally love my kids and can’t imagine my life without any of them, but sometimes… sometimes I just want to run and hide somewhere. So a quiet evening will hopefully be just the thing for this frazzled soul.

They once were lost, but now are FOUND!!

2010-09-16T09:23:00.001-04:00

The keys, that is. We searched and searched inside the house (everywhere the kids had been playing, under beds, under and behind couches…) and quite a bit outside yesterday, but with no luck. This morning I sent the kids outside for recess and to get their wiggles out and told them to keep an eye out for the keys. A little while later I heard excited pounding on the carport door, which was locked, and saw 2 little heads jumping up and down outside the window, rattling a set of keys!! :) Yay, got my thumb drive back, van key, house key, fire safe key… Thank you Lord!

Lucy lives!

2010-09-15T13:13:00.001-04:00

Our doggy is going to get the “life-saving” surgery (as in she probably would have been put to sleep if not for this surgery because of finances) she needs to live a hopefully long, hopefully happy, hopefully healthy life. At least she has a chance now. All because 2 very dear, generous, benevolent, caring individuals who have a certain close grandparently tie to 4 certain little kids and who also probably didn’t like knowing how torn up I was getting… decided to pay for the whole kit and kaboodle and get the surgery to fix her foot, complete with pins for proper alignment of the bones. God is good! (Thank you Mom and Dad ;)

Oh where…

2010-09-15T08:30:00.001-04:00

are the van keys?

Oh where are the van keys?

Oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where, oh where,

oh where, oh where, oh where….

are the van keys?

Eli was playing with them or took them out when he went to play yesterday and he can’t remember what he did with them… they haven’t been seen since. I’ve checked in the tree house, under the tree house, by the swings, by the picnic tables, around the yard, on the back porch, down the stairwell, in all the bedrooms, behind the couch, under the couch… everywhere I can imagine I would put keys if I was 4. We we were supposed to go to Nina’s homeschool music class today but it doesn’t look like that will happen. :(

Could this be good-bye?

2010-09-13T22:07:00.001-04:00

Our little dog Lucy broke all 4 of her metatarsals in her front right foot this morning. She was chasing a swinging child (yeah, one of ours) and somehow her foot collided with the swing (wooden porch swing type). I saw the x-rays, they don’t look good.

Our choices are: 1) splinting the foot and hoping for the best ($200+ for all care), 2) amputating the leg ($500+), 3) “doing it right” and having surgery to put pins in the bones so they will grow together the right way and hopefully insure years of pain-free dog life (~$900), or 4) euthanasia ($13). We’ve already spent $130 just to have her checked out and x-rayed. Aye!

DH and I are NOT leaning toward just splinting the leg, but there’s no way we can afford surgery either. So it’s a difficult choice. Do you put a dog down because she broke 4 bones or do you become indentured servants to pay for surgery? I really don’t know what to do. She is spending the night there so we can pray about it and try to figure out what to do. It was a sad day for me :( I didn’t think it would hit me so hard, but whenever I had to talk about her, I had to fight hard, let me tell you.

Crawling out from under my log

2010-09-13T08:42:00.000-04:00

I admit I’m not much of a blogger, life gets so much in the way sometimes and just takes over. But I’ve been feeling the pull to express myself lately so here goes again. This time I’m messing around with Windows Live Writer since I have a sort of mental block about having to log in to Blogger to post to my blog each time. Maybe this way it’ll mentally not seem like such a chore (not that it’s really that difficult, but I’m that way with webmail too [I use Thunderbird] and if I could get onto Facebook without logging on to the website, I probably would). Ok, so anyway, I’m baaack! (at least for awhile ;o)

How to get most of your kids to stay in bed at night.

2009-11-04T19:47:00.005-05:00

Not too long ago I was pulling out my hair because my kids wouldn't stay in bed when I tucked them in. They were like super rubber bouncy balls, I'd tuck them in and ... booooiiiinnnnnggggg, they'd bounce right back. All evening long I was listening to "Mooooommmmmmm, Geo came in my room" or "I can't sleep, Eli is bothering me." Multiply that by a hundred or more creative variations of reasons not to stay in bed and you can see why I was starting to get a little stressed.

Out of desperation I went searching on the net and found something I thought might work. It suggested giving your child 3 tickets that they can use for coming to see you, if they want water (and didn't get it before going to bed), they can use one ticket, if they're afraid of the dark, they can use one and come see you, if they just feel like getting up, they can use one more, but then after that, they have no more get-out-of-bed-free coupons. If they get up any more times after that, they don't get any tickets the next night (I was SO hoping my kids didn't just say "so what?").

To sweeten the deal I decided to throw a reward into the mix so I told them that they had 3 tickets to use how they wanted, but IF they didn't use any of their tickets, they would get a sticker on a chart the next morning and when they filled up the whole line (10 stickers) they could have an ice cream cone after lunch, (if they were sick, they would get an ice cream rain check to be used as soon as they were sufficiently well).

Well, that really motivated them! My older 2 said "Mom, this is easy, it's easy to stay in bed." I wondered to myself why, if it was so easy, hadn't they done it before? Anyway, they haven't been down one night since I started it about 20 days ago, we're still working on Eli, he only 1/2 gets the concept that if he even uses one of his tickets, he forfeits his sticker, but he really is getting better.

My evenings are more peaceful, I'm less stressed, much happier; they stay in bed, go to sleep sooner, get more rest. ♥☺ Of course your mileage may vary, but I just had to share what's working for me.

My Thanks For The Day

2009-11-04T19:07:00.003-05:00

The last two days has had me fighting with my computer, trying to get my new OS to play nice with my old(ish) Epson printer. I got the HP online, no problem, but I really wanted to get the Epson up and running because it takes cheaper ink. (When I finally run out of ink, I'm going to try a continuous ink system, but for now I have some cheap ink I've had for several years that is still good).

I spent the equivalent of about a day on the computer chatting with 3 different tech support guys. The first guy was quite helpful and got it working for awhile, but then it stopped printing again. The second guy was hopeless, basically told me "hopefully Epson will come out with a driver soon, ... I was happy to help you." Ha! He was no help!

Then I connected with just about the best tech support person ever. He tried every trick in his play book. We installed, uninstalled, restarted more times than I can count, he took control of my computer for awhile to try to figure it out, finally (I think as a last ditch effort), he had me reinstall the OS over the existing OS installation to try to repair anything that might be damaged and ... drumroll ... my printer still wouldn't print.

So then I went online and started searching for reasons why documents would go into the printer queue and not go any further and definitely not print. I tried restarting the print spooling, read a little further and read that if the printer is out of ink, it won't print. It also said that if the light on the front is solid red, that means the printer is out of ink and won't print. Um, yeah, you guessed it, the light was on and yep, it was solid red. I had known that my ink was low, but I was expecting the printer software to tell me that it was time to put in a new cartridge (I think my other printer does that), but it never did. So I put in a new cartridge. I clicked print... it started printing and I just started laughing. What else could I do? I felt so foolish and so relieved at the same time. I needed my printer and it was finally back and for that I was so glad, but it was also pitiful how much time I spent trying everything but the actual solution. But, it's finally back up and running and I am SO thankful to have my printer back. And that's my thanks of the day; and the moral of the story is, if your printer ever quits working, check the obvious, is it plugged in, is it connected to the computer, does it have enough ink? 'nough said.

MOTH to the rescue

2009-11-03T21:47:00.002-05:00

No, not a flapping-winged fluttery thing, MOTH stands for "Managers of Their Homes" and is a "duh" sort of common sense approach to managing all the little details in a homeschooling-mom-of-more-than-a-couple-kids' life. I have always balked at the idea of a rigid, by-the-clock kind of schedule, but a dear friend of mine suggested I try it for a month or so and just see what it might do for me. Well, I'm always one to try a new challenge so I opened up my friendly Excel, made a bunch of tables and started populating all the little cells. I have a column and so do each of my kids. The schedule starts when we get up in the morning and ends when I go to bed at night. It has actually helped our days to flow much smoother, the kids seem happier knowing what to expect, they are pretty much guaranteed a nice bit of free time in the afternoon, the house stays neater because I have something planned for them one way or the other all day. Either it's meals or chores or school or playing/free time, ... and having something to do keeps them out of trouble and keeps the messes to something like a minimum. I don't have the book, but as soon as I can, I'm going to get my own copy, I've heard great things about it. But till then I'm implementing it as best I can imagine how with a few pointers from my friend. It's going well, really well and now I can truly say I love my strict, line by line, 1/2 hour by 1/2 hour schedule! I'll get a sample of my schedule up asap.

My Busy Life

2009-11-03T21:31:00.002-05:00

I feel too busy to blog, but I DON'T like to see "inactive account" wallpaper on my page so I'm going to post to get rid of it. I've been meaning and meaning to post on here, maybe this is the feet-wet-again that I need. In the last year I've had a baby, added a new student to our homeschool and those two things have been enough to make everything else slide a bit. SO, now that Ana is almost a year old, I have started to get more organized and get a handle on things. Thanks to a friend who challenged me to try out a MOTH (Manager's of Their Homes) schedule, I went way overboard and now have one for every day of the week (and they are constantly changing, though I hope that eventually we'll settle into a nice routine and they'll stay put for awhile). I'll post more about MOTH in a separate post. Basically I'm making baby steps in the right direction so follow along, hopefully I'll have ~~interesting~~ things to say real soon.

A Frog Story...

2009-01-26T13:08:00.005-05:00

Geo just brought me the next installment and since I know you'll all be dying to read it, here it is...

Once a pon a thme ther lived a frog He was so ciwet. He lived in a log. He in vidid his frends to come over to his hose. One day wen his frinds wer playing he sed dos eney of you want to wath a movy Thay sed yes so thay sat down to wach it the video. It was polor express, now the part wen the track went into the warder came up the kids wer scard thay tride to stop it but thay wer happy.

becomes...

     Once upon a time there lived a frog; he was so cute. He lived in a log. He invited his friends to come over to his house.
     One day when his friends were playing he said,"Do any of you want to watch a movie?"
     They said "Yes," so they sat down to watch the video.
     It was Polar Express. Now the part when the track went into the water came up. The kids were scared, they tried to stop it but they were happy.

A Cat Story...

2009-01-26T12:10:00.004-05:00

Geo (my second grader) wrote a story and I just had to post it...

Oncea pon a time in the woods ther lived a cat named Chesey[.] She was so small and so cewt. She oftin sed "Mew mew, I sed to her Here cidy cidy cidy, now a snake herd me say Her cidy cidy cidy and the snake was hungrey He sed Mmm cat wood be good to eat The cat herd the sawnd and mewd so long she made the snake deth He codent here at all the cat tot the snake a lesen and you better be good and not to try a lisson and if you her a cat don't eat it.

Grammatically correct translation:

     Once upon a time in the woods, there lived a cat named Chesey. She was so small and so cute. She often said, "Mew mew."
     I said to her, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."
     Now a snake heard me say "Here kitty kitty kitty," and the snake was hungry.
     He said, "Mmm, cat would be good to eat."
     The cat heard the sound and meowed so long she killed the snake.
     He couldn't hear at all. The cat taught the snake a lesson.

     And [the moral is:] you'd better be good and ... ? ... if you hear a cat, don't eat it!

Fancy feet

2009-01-07T20:56:00.004-05:00

I'm so jazzed by my new shoes! I found them at a quaint little thrift store on top of a mountain in the middle of a freak snowstorm. Thankfully the snowstorm only lasted a few minutes and I got my shoes (3 pairs of Clarks leather clogs [or maybe they're called mules(?), I'm not really up on shoe terminology]). I looked them up when I got home and depending on the site they ranged anywhere from $30-$60 a pair, so I got anywhere from $90-$180 worth of shoes for $11. Yeehaw, that's the way to do it! I love these shoes because they are really comfy, easy on/off, and will go nicely with the skirts I've been wearing more of lately. I had been wondering what kind of shoes to wear with skirts as my ratty tennis shoes just wouldn't do and I didn't want to wear my church shoes out; these will do quite nicely!

Diapers from flannel shirts

2009-01-07T19:09:00.008-05:00

Here's how I recycle a flannel shirt (this one was 50 cents from a local thrift store) and turn it into a cloth diaper (Rita's Rump Pocket in this tutorial).

1) Cut sleeves off of shirt.

2) Cut collar off and cut along seam between neck and shoulder.

3) Cut front panels off from back section.

4) Sew front halves together where they were cut from back piece (to make outside piece). Or (in the case of this shirt which happened to be huge, I was able to align and sew one of the front panels on to the back after I carefully lined up the stripes. I 3-step zig-zagged them together, then zig-zagged the seam flat to the back of the diaper.

Cut out pieces; If there is a wrong and a right side, make sure that the prints are facing the right way.

5) Sew up diaper.

I'll be placing the seam on the outside of Missy so as to minimize chance of irritation.

Fleece Mittens tutorial

2009-01-04T22:00:00.005-05:00

My kids needed some mittens and I figured I could make them some from some fleece scraps I had "lying around." I found another tutorial online for fleece mittens and I really liked them. But I looked at a pair of store bought fleece mittens that I had and I liked the way they were constructed a little better so I altered their pattern to work the way the store bought mittens did and I really like the results.

You don't have to use this pattern, but it will give you an idea of what it's supposed to look like. I actually made patterns for my 3 older ones by tracing their hands, drawing an upside-down U about 1/2" all the way around their hand (fingers together, not spread out), marked where their wrist was (for the elastic placing), and finished the pattern using this as a guide.

The original tutorial said to enlarge the patterns till the grid was 1 inch square (for adult size), maybe 3/4 inch square for a child's hand. Play around with the sizing, find what works for you.

I trace the hand 1/2 inch in from the fold (on a piece of paper folded lenghtwise), make the upside-down U, fold it in half again and cut the rounded part off the top (to make sure it's nice and even on both sides). Then I fold the thumb side in half to the middle fold to get the thumb width. Fold the paper in half from top to bottom to find out how far the cutting line for the thumb should go. Then about 1/2-way from the top of the thumb cutting line to the bottom of the mittens, start drawing the curve for the thumb-tip. Fold the paper in half again from edge to thumb cutting line and cut the curve for the rounded thumb-tip. Fold the thumb part up and make the pattern piece for the thumb. Make it a little longer than it calls for, then cut down if need be. I discovered that the thumb pattern piece runs a bit short.

To cut out the pieces, fold over a piece of fleece, line the pattern up on the fold, and cut the rest out. Then open the fleece, lay the opened pattern on top of it and cut out the thumb flap. If there is a right side and a wrong side to the fleece, make sure to flip the pattern over when cutting out the other thumb flap.

To sew, line up the thumb pattern piece with the thumb flap, sew from the notch around to the other side of the thumb. Stop. Line up the long edge of the thumb piece with the long part of the main mitten piece, and sew together. Sew some elastic to the wrong side where the pattern indicates (or where you noted the location of the wrist). Place right sides of mitten together and sew mitten together. Hem the edge. Turn inside out, enjoy :)

CDing again

2009-01-04T21:11:00.012-05:00

I had planned to cloth diaper Missy, but really wasn't looking forward to having to do an extra load of laundry ever 3 or so days. I used 'sposies for the first few weeks to get me back in the groove again and still use them for overnight (till I get my courage up, lol). But getting back in the CDing saddle again wasn't as hard as I anticipated. It's really rather fun to cloth diaper and you get to be so much more creative than you can be with "go 'n throw" dipes (which really have zero room for creativity). And while babies are 100% breastfed, you don't have to "scoop-the-poop" as there are no solids, everything gets nicely washed away, so it's really no trouble. I wash about every 3 days, and have an ever revolving supply of soft, fluffy non-landfill-clogging diapers. And as far as the creativity side of things, here's what I've gotten to do so far:

The diapers are made from a large, soft sheet using the Rita's Rump Pocket pattern (I managed to get 10 from one large, flat sheet; queen or kin size, not sure). They were so fun to make and super easy too. This tutorial helped immensely when it came to adding the elastic. I can't wait to get a hold of some more flannel to make some more! I'd like another couple of sheets' worth at least. I stuff them with a trifolded small prefold (I have used premium diapers as stuffers too, but they're kinda big!, might be good for overnight) and they aren't too too bulky, easy to get on and off (just use one pin), I love 'em!

Update, here are a few more:

The pink (acrylic) diaper cover is my rendition of a Flapper Bottom soaker which turned out nice, but I still don't like it as well as the Warm Heart Woolies plain wrap that I made from recycled red wool. It's so pretty and so easy to get on and off, also is a good fit (this pic is so far from doing this soaker justice it isn't funny. It's a much deeper, darker red in real life and the color is nice and even, not faded looking like in this sub-par photo).

I also made an Ottobre soaker (.pdf; the Ottobre is my favorite pull-on soaker, very quick and easy to make, easy on/off, contains wettness well...) out of some chunky recycled wool which is my bullet-proof diaper cover (the blue and green one above is an Ottobre soaker, but the one I made most recently is a cream color). That with a premium stuffed RRP might be the ticket for night time when I run out of disposables.

She's here!

2009-01-04T13:47:00.003-05:00

Ok, admittedly I'm VERY very behind, but all truth be told, I've been just a tad busy lately :).

The 23rd was indeed the day; I had contractions almost all night (got an hour's sleep a couple of times) and they gradually got stronger and stronger toward morning. I got up at 3:30 to eat some breakfast and was still very able to manage the contractions as they came. I kept track of them in my Palm with a program specially for that. Finally around 5:15 I was so drowsy I thought I'd try lying down again so I went and lay down on the couch in the family room. Dh got up to use the restroom a little while later and came looking for me. So since he was up, I went back to bed. I got a little more rest (the 2nd hour's sleep I think) and woke up when Eli did just before 7. I got up and helped Eli get breakfast and dressed...

Then around 8 I went in to take a shower and suggest that Dh start inflating the pool (we set it up in the family room). I had a banana with p-nut butter to eat and a glass of milk. Then around 9 a.m. I was feeling tuckered out again so went to lie down on the couch. I had called my midwife at 7 a.m. after what I thought would have been at least 9 hours of sleep for her, but turns out she had to be at another birth the night before from 12 midnight to 6:30 a.m. so she had just gotten to sleep (I felt bad). So then I called the other midwife and she said she's be on her way. She and the apprentice got here around 10 and by then things had gotten more serious. I was quite uncomfortable during each contraction, but they were still not real long at this point. She checked the baby during a contraction and she was doing fine. I was dilated to 5cm and -2 station at that point.

I was given the green light to get in the pool if I wanted to and oooooh, it felt SO good to get in. The water was delightfully warm and my contractions did slow down a little bit and were much more tolerable. At least at first... Then around 11 the contractions started getting downright painful. I couldn't help but groan thru them (though I'm always very ladylike if I do say so myself, LOL; Dh says I make it look easy... whatever!). I kept thinking "I can see how women want epidurals"... and "I just wanted this to be OVER!" There weren't many positions that were comfortable for me. And then at one point I had to get up to empty my bladder and had several contractions on the trip to the bathroom and back, which was NO FUN. I finally managed and back to the pool I hobbled.

Sometime around noon, I started feeling like I was getting close to transition and/or pushing stage. I checked myself and could feel quite a bit of head, still in the sack. I couldn't tell if I felt cervix or not. I asked the midwife if I could start pushing and she said "listen to what your body is telling you." So I started trying little pushes for the next 3 or so contractions. Then I got serious and on the next contraction (about 12:15 p.m.) I gave one good long push and out popped her head. Dh said she was blinking her eyes under the water :) Then on the next contraction I pushed the rest of her out and Dh caught her and confirmed right away that she was a SHE :) (She was born at 12:17 p.m.) The kids got to witness her entrance into the world from the doorway of the next room (they didn't really see too many details tho!).

Missy (short/nick for "Miss Magoo", lol) was covered in vernix and looked little. I didn't think she was a 9 pounder like I had been expecting. She didn't have a lot of hair, but 5 fingers, 5 toes (per hand and foot that is, lol), 2 adorable little ears, 2 pretty eyes (which we still don't know what color they'll be; kind of a dark grey/brown/blue/green color right now, lol, could be anything but for now I'll put my $ on brown), chubby little chin and knees..., and a precious little face. She cried as soon as she was out of the water, but then settled down. I kept her warm in the water and tried to stimulate her a little just to hear her cry some more (and clear out any wetness that might be in her lungs...). She had passed some muconium at some point in the past, but she never appeared to be in any distress, though we watched her carefully. After just a few minutes she showed signs of being open to nursing so I helped her latch on and she did great. Because she was nursing so well, I stayed in for a while longer. Then Dh cut the cord and took her so I could get out and take a shower. After I got dressed I came back in and nursed her some more. Then the apprentice did the newborn exam and she checked out beautifully. I caught it all on tape.

Here are her stats:

20.5 inches long
8 pounds, 9 ounces
born at 12:17 p.m. on November 23 (her due date :)
after 10 1/2 hours or so of labor (but only 2 minutes of pushing and 2 pushes to get her out)

I was SO glad when she was out, let me tell you. I was NOT having fun the hour or 2 before she was born.

After she I was born I basically felt fine, though a bit tired and a little "peekid" feeling. The midwife estimated my blood loss at 4 cups so I made a point to eat iron-rich food the few days after she was born to help me feel a little more perky. I felt shaky right after getting out of the pool and was a little unnerved by that, but that didn't last long and went away after a few minutes. Dh had done well to keep me well hydrated with electrolyte drinks all during labor. I ate a good lunch after the midwife and apprentice left, then tried to take a nap as Missy was zonked out after her trip; however my brain was so hyped up that I couldn't drift off. But I guess I did get some rest. Gigi held the baby the whole time I was "napping" which was a little over an hour. She didn't want to get up until I got back and my mom started talking about going to Wal-Mart for a few things we needed ("Can I go, please?!?" lol).

We were so pleased with the outcome, another little girl (awwww) making our tribe an even Boy/Girl/Boy/Girl. We couldn't have planned it better if we'd tried (we did sorta try for Gigi, but the rest... no). I think everyone was secretly hoping we'd have a girl so that Gigi could have a sister. I was also very relieved to see that she was normal and in good health as I'd had that "irrational fear" all during pregnancy that something might be wrong. This was partly fueled by the knowledge that I had been exposed to x-rays when I was holding Eli for his arm x-rays (this was before I knew I was pregnant) and also because I'd used a heating pad on my back one night when I was newly pregnant (also before I knew). So I am very grateful and thankful that our little girl is fine.

Since then we've been battling thrush/yeast which has been no fun at all. I'm taking probiotics to help my body fight it. I thought that I was over it, but now am feeling shooting pains in my milk ducts (a sign of ductal yeast) that I'm hoping is not yeast. Also Missy's tongue does have white on it that won't wipe off which is a sign of thrush so I don't know for sure that it's over. I may have to start my grapefruit seed extract regimen again (groan!)

Missy started smiling around 3-3 1/2 weeks, and is developing really great head control, she doesn't like it when we try to put her head down on our shoulders, she wants to be looking around. She started making little cooing noises last week which is really too cute.

This is the day! (I think, I hope)

2008-11-23T05:09:00.000-05:00

I've been having contractions starting from about 4 yesterday afternoon (light ones then) to somewhat stronger ones in the evening and during the night. They've been averaging about 3 - 5 minutes apart lasting a minute or a little less. At around 3:30 I got up for something to eat and they didn't slow down any, but they aren't lasting quite as long. I'm SOOOO sleepy tho, thank goodness I got a bit of a nap yesterday afternoon. I'm using the dandy little Contraction Timer program for my palm to keep track of my contractions. Makes that part of tracking things so much easier! Still trying to let the midwife and hubby sleep as long as possible (of course in two different houses in two different parts of the state! Whew, just wanted to clear that up!). Can't decide if 7 hours is enough sleep for the midwife as she was planning to go to sleep at 10. Hmm. DH on the other hand didn't come to bed till after midnight so he'll need a little more time if I can manage it.

Ooooh baby baby

2008-11-14T18:25:00.000-05:00

I'm still infanticipating... Things are good, I'm still able to get around just fine, I can get down on the floor no prob, up is a bit more of a challenge, but not bad. Still somehow managing to keep up with housework, taking care of the kids, Geo's homeschool, and my school. But I'm mighty ready for this baby to be here already! My ribs are hurting from the baby pressing against them, it's sometimes hard to get comfortable when I'm trying to sleep at night, and I've been fighting to get completely over a cold I caught a couple of weeks ago. The midwives say that the baby's head is still quite floaty and hasn't started dropping yet so it'll probably be another week or two. I was hoping I could somehow, through the powers of suggestion (and I've been suggesting very loudly) convince the baby to shave some time off of the 40 week duration thing, but apparently this baby has other ideas (want's to keep up with the Jonses of his/her brothers and sister, being fashionably late by a few days). But I know it won't be much longer now. Just have to somehow manage to stay patient and ignore any "What!? you're still pregnant?" comments which will invariably come my way in the next couple of weeks. I've already made it through the "Are you sure you're not having twins?" comments so this would just be gravy, lol.

My school progress

2008-11-14T18:16:00.000-05:00

For awhile it was slow going because I let myself get bogged down in the grammar module (so many rules to try to remember!), but I finally got through all the reading, zipped through a computer module, and on to medical terminology. Then after that my pace picked up considerably and now I'm on module 9 (grammar was 3 btw) and having a blast. Every module now has sentence clips where I can practice listening to medical jargon and trying to type it. I am getting better and certain grammar rules which keep cropping up are getting nice and ingrained in my head through all the repetition. I almost feel like a detective sometimes, especially when I'm faced with an odd-sounding word that I can not find in my medical dictionary or in Google... Then I'm forced to get creative to try to figure out what else it could possibly be. It's fun. I had set a goal of one module a week, but I'm finding that I can get through at least 2 so that's nice. I know things will really slllloooowww down after the baby's born, but for now, to help keep my mind off of wishing he/she was here already, I have my school which is a whole lotta fun :)

Get your ePatterns here!

2008-11-06T22:25:00.000-05:00

Remember the graceful, flowing gowns from such movies as Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, and Emma? Well, they can be part of your wardrobe (if you know how to sew, if not learn!) thanks to a very cool website called (aptly enough) Sense and Sensibility. There are so many awesomely awesome patterns there for the most feminine and lovely dresses ever and I have long drooled over and dreamed of owning one of the Regency patterns for my own. Well, now it may be within my reach as Jennie (the owner) has added a new product branch to her site... ePatterns! And their price is very reasonable. Go check 'em out, drool over the many offerings and make out your Christmas wish list. I know I will :)

Full House...

2008-08-30T08:43:00.001-04:00

For the last 2 weeks we've had a FULL house; DH's mom, sister and 2 kids, aunt, 2 cousins and 1 friend, and another aunt, uncle and cousin. At highest capacity we had 16 people staying in our house! Yikes. The friend went home last week so now it's just 15 which is still quite a few sardines to squeeze into our modest 3-bedroom. We and our 3 are crammed into our bedroom (older 2 sleeping in the closet, lol), DH's mom, sister and kids are in Geo's room, aunt & uncle are in Gigi's room, other aunt, her two kids and cousin (from other aunt and uncle) on the floor in the living room. It really hasn't been too terrible except that the first week we were almost all hit with a nasty stomach virus. I think our nephew brought it with him because he was sick early Sunday morning (they got here Friday night). Then Monday night Gigi and I both were dealing with it, then DH, etc., and one by one the dominos began to fall. It was not a fun time between not feeling great, laundry mountains every morning to deal with (bleugh!), and having to try to keep the house somewhat moving (washing dishes, feeding people who felt like eating). I really hope to not repeat that any time soon!

Hurricaine Gustav had the majority of our company in a tither because it was heading straight for their island (Grand Cayman), and with Ivan still a recent and terrible memory, they were right to be a little concerned. But thankfully it is just a category 2 (at the moment) and, according to our favorite carribbean hurricaine tracking website, the winds were high, but no storm surge (or very little) and limited damage to buildings and vegetation. They seem to have weathered it well. It still remains to be seen whether or not the relatives will be able to leave Sunday morning as planned or if they'll have to wait for flights to get up and running again.

School starts on Monday. I'm not at all sure I'm ready, but that's the plan for the moment. I registered Geo for 2nd grade and was very pleased indeed to find out that the local education department will let me email his attendance this year instead of driving or mailing it in. YAY!!!

I had quite a bit of success reclaiming images from my SILs messed-up drive. I didn't get nearly all the pics she had had on there, but according to a computer shop she had taken it to, the pictures were not retrievable so I guess I showed them! I used PhotoRec to get as many pictures as it would find for me and now, at least, my SIL has pics of her daughter when she was a brand-new baby (they were lost before), and lots of other pics which were supposedly "gone." I just wish I was able to get more... Oh well, some is better than none!

Next on the docket is to do one last pass of my hard drive (probably with PhotoRec) to make sure I didn't miss anything, then reformat it and begin the rebuilding process. After that I need to retrieve stuff from our backup drive, then work on DHs crashed hard drive (likely a casualty of our network "bug"). Then (or maybe sooner) I'll set up backups to make sure my data doesn't get lost again! People, for your sake and because I wouldn't wish this on anyone, please back up your files!!!

My school progress is slow but sure. I was about to start on Module 5 when my books arrived so now I'm doing the book readings that I missed for Module 3. It's all about grammar and it's an awful lot of stuff for my brain to absorb. I've read through it all, highlighted lots of things and now I'm typing my notes into my handy-dandy KeyNote software. It will be much easier to find things there, if I need to review, than to try to find things in the book! Then I'll be back on to Module 5 (with bits of Mod 4 here and there when I feel like it. It's all about computers and so far has been booorrrrinnng so we'll see). We had a Medical Transcription trivia constest on our last Thursday night chat and I came "this close" to winning against an advanced student so that made me feel pretty good. It was right that she won over me tho, it would not have done for a wet-behind-the-ears newbie to beat her! (But I did come close, lol). With all my computer problems I haven't been able to practice my Colemak keyboard layout lately so for now I'm still only qwerty. Oh well, maybe soon.

Crash!

2008-08-10T19:32:00.001-04:00

Went my data hard drive. Grrrr! It was working fine one minute and the next it was giving me an error that a file was corrupt or something so that I couldn't access the drive. Then when I rebooted, Windows told me the drive wasn't formatted, would I like to format the drive, Yes/No. Nooooooo!!!!! So all day I've been researching ways to get to my files that I'm sure are all still there. Not sure what happened. I don't think there was a power surge or blip, the computer wasn't dropped or otherwise damaged... All I can think is maybe a virus did this, but I do have an AV program on my computer and it's up-to-date. Sigh. The drive is listed in the Windows Explorer tree but doesn't do squat when I click on it. Just gives me the "not formatted" error.

So I'm running a free program called TestDisk and it has finally told me that my boot sector is bad. I'm in the process of trying to repair the boot sector. It also told me that my backup boot sector is ok so if this doesn't work I'll try to copy the good boot sector over the bad, see if that works. I just want my files, people! A word of caution to the wise (let them who have ears hear!), please back up your data! I was "this close" to copying a zip backup of my important files to a dvd when this happened. Wish I had gotten around to this sooner! If I lose everything on my disk I will be very discouraged. I did backup the documents a few months ago, but I've made a lot of changes to files and created new files since then, I would really hate to lose those. I'm praying that this works!

For backup, I'm using Back2Zip to backup my important files to .zip every night (or at least once a week!) and Cobian Backup (or I will be when/if I get my files back!) to back up my zipped files to an off-site FTP server. We do have a backup disk, but it is somewhat out of commission as well at the moment.

Moving Thunderbird

2008-08-04T10:23:00.001-04:00

I tried just backing up my profile and then replacing everything in the new profile folder with everything from the old profile folder, but that didn't work. Finally (and for future reference) what did end up working was the advice given here. I copied my old profile into Documents & Settings/user/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles, then opened up the profiles.ini file and redirected it to look at the name of my old profile. Then I was able to delete the new profile. Et voila! It's all there :) Whew!

Dry night

2008-08-03T07:17:00.003-04:00

This morning I heard noise in the bathroom and I just thought it was one of the older kids going potty, but DH told me that Eli was trying to go potty. So I got up and sure enough, he was standing on the step stool, turning on the light. I helped him get out of his one-piece jammies and took his DRY(!!) diaper off and he ran over to the toilet. He wants to be able to pee standing on the ground (not the step stool) just like his big brother so he tried and tried, but I told him he's not tall enough yet. So finally he listened to me and stood up on the step stool. The last wet diaper he's had was Thursday morning. Not bad!

The other funny thing that he did this morning was to go around singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," except he only says "twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle" but it's very obvious what he's singing by the tune and timing.

To reformat or not to reformat, that is the question.

2008-08-02T23:05:00.002-04:00

My computer has some major issues, possibly virus related, we're trying to rule that out (i.e. I can't load McAffee, Adaware crashes when I run it, the keyboard layout that I installed is gone and I can't reinstall, can't do a windows update...). If DH can't find the cause, I'll probably be facing a reformat tomorrow. Lovely.

A good day

2008-08-02T22:57:00.002-04:00

Eli did really well today in the potty training arena. I put him in regular undies for church and took some dipes and extra pants in case of an "oops." I took him potty before Sabbath School and then again just before church. I also had to take him out a couple more times during the service and once after church, before potluck. He peed every time and pooped a couple of times. He kept his diaper dry during his nap and then sat (for a long time) on the potty after he got up and ended up peeing and pooping a very nice amount (isn't it funny how we moms can get so excited about stuff like this?). Then he kept his pants dry and clean the rest of the afternoon. Oh! and he kept his diaper dry last night too. I hope tomorrow goes as well.

Hiccups

2008-08-01T22:33:00.002-04:00

I noticed the baby hiccuping for the first time yesterday :) I've also in the last 2 or 3 days felt the presence of relaxin which I am not too happy about. My hips and joints (especially when I sit too long) get to really hurting! It's about right I guess, the first 3 months are, in a word, Bleugh!, the middle 3 are smooth sailing, the last 3 are pain riddled months with decreased mobility thrown in to boot. Oh well, it's all for a good cause!

2 steps forward, 1 step back

2008-08-01T14:52:00.002-04:00

Yesterday morning Eli woke up with a dry diaper which I thought was a pretty big deal. But then he proceeded to poop on the floor later in the day so a big step back. Today he had one #2 accident (in underwear this time, whew!), but one really good on-the-big-potty success and he's been dry consistently during the day for the past few days so we are making progress. He also does well when we're out and lets me/us know when he needs to go potty. Potty training is not for the weak of heart, let me tell ya!

Computers, bah Humbug!

2008-08-01T14:39:00.002-04:00

Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely sure that I could survive without my computer (well, I might be able to, but there would be some serious withdrawals), but sometimes they get on my last nerve. Last night after a reboot, my computer got to the black "loading Windows" screen and stopped, said there was an error with a file in the system32\config folder, "corrupt or missing." Uh-oh, that didn't sound good. I didn't really know what to do so I tried calling DH who was working, but he didn't answer his phone. I popped in the Win2000 disk and attempted a repair, but it didn't seem to do any good. DH worked on it some when he got home, but I still had to do one more fix this morning before it would finally boot again. But a lot of my drivers were gone so they had to be reinstalled. Our internet was down for a couple of hours this morning so I couldn't use that to aid in reinstalling drivers. Plus, there was something wrong with my computer and even after the internet came back up, I still couldn't get online. Finally, after powering down the modem and router for a loooong time and shutting the kids' and my computer down completely and restarting, internet was back. But there have been other weird gliches and it might take me into next week to get them all ironed out. Grrr. If I had the money, I'd be gettin' me a mac!

A messy day

2008-07-30T20:59:00.001-04:00

Every so often I have "one of those days" when messes just abound, like some kind of invisible mess machine gets delivered to my house and I don't know it till I'm in the middle of the myriad of messes. It seemed like the messes today would never end.

Let's see, I had to contend with 5 or 6 (yikes!) "steenkie" diapers, most of them Eli told me about right away so they weren't ground in, I could just dump the contents into the potty, clean him up in the tub and we were off and running again. One time, though, it kind of squished onto him so it was a bigger chore, but the worst one of all was the one he tried to clean up himself. Groan, sometimes independence is a good things, other times, however... anyway, he took his undies off, dunked them into the toilet, managed to get poo all over the toilet seat, the hall floor and even his hands and face (GROSS!). It took me quite awhile to get that mess cleaned up.

Then there was the flower water that got spilled not once, but twice on the family-room end table, Gigi's supper that got dumped on the floor, Geo's juice that got dumped all over the table, his chair and the floor by Gigi, milk dribbled on the floor when Gigi was mixing it (that was this morning, forgot about that one), something, probably applesauce trailing across the kitchen floor, the mess from Eli dropping the potty as he was on his way down the hall to "dumpit."

I'll toss in the crumby dining room floor and the soaking wet bathroom floor for a bonus. I'm sure there are more, but they are all just starting to run together. You ever have one of those days? I can't possibly be the only one... can I? Kinda glad the day is done, I can start tomorrow fresh and hopefully it won't be "one of those days."

Gj;ukd... I mean typing on a new layout

2008-07-29T11:41:00.001-04:00

I've been doing a bit of reading on alternate keyboard layouts and how they can increase speed and productivity while cutting down on errors and reducing hand fatigue. I compared a bunch of alternatives including the second most popular Dvorak layout, and after much thought, I've decided to try Colemak. I don't think I'll go cold turkey as I would like to retain my qwerty ability; ideally I'd like to be able to type in both formats as needed. I do expect my qwerty speed to go down as a result, but in the long run I think it'll be worth the effort in light of my future career in medical transcription and all the typing I'll be doing. So far this is my first attempt at typing in Colemak and it's taken me forever to do, but I can also see it's getting a little easier as I go along. And my fingers are doing a lot less traveling (my backspace key is getting a workout, that's for sure; trying to get used to the new "backspace key" [the old Caps Lock key]. I'll have to remap the Caps Lock key to a seldom used key (such as "right Windows key" or "Scroll lock.") I'll let you know how it goes.

Added 7/30/2008... I just tested my speed and was able to type an agonizingly slow 18 words per minute, but this was without looking at the keys (99% of the time). I'd love to see it up to 30 wpm by next week. We'll see.

Last night...

2008-07-24T09:58:00.001-04:00

...was not a very good night. At 3 a.m. I woke up to whimpers and cries coming from Gigi's room. I went in to investigate and she said "my tummy hurts!" I picked her up and shuttled her across the hall to the bathroom in case she needed to empty her stomach in the toilet. She didn't want to and didn't want to, ad infinitum.... but finally she gave in and did. I was hoping and praying that that would be it and she'd be able to go back to sleep, but no sooner had I gotten myself settled in bed and had been comfortable for about 10 minutes than it started up again. I was the one to deal with it since DH had to go to work today and he needed his rest for that. I can always (theortecially) get a nap but he can't. So every 10-15 minutes after getting her and myself settled, I'd hear the whines again and get up to go help her clean up when she was done, give her water to swish out her mouth... It went like this from 3 till when I finally got up around 6:45 (Eli woke up and said he was "stinky" so I had a diaper to change). I got 4-5 hours of sleep last night and I'm really really tired today! My brain is in a fog. I've already established that we're having a nap time this morning, any time now really, I was just making sure that Gigi's stomach could tolerate it first. She seems to be doing fine and might even say she doesn't need a nap, but I know better! She was very willing last night to agree to a nap, that's for sure. I really hope that Eli can be convinced to take a nap too so I can get some sleep. I may go in Geo's room instead of my room as I hear every toss and turn coming from Eli's crib and it negatively affects my sleep.

Oh the joys!

2008-07-24T09:44:00.001-04:00

I've started potty training Eli and it's going slow. The first day we had both #1 and #2 accidents, yesterday he didn't have any pee accidents (I don't think) but had about 4-5 pea-soup poop accidents in his underwear (the kind that dribbles down legs and trickles down on the floor/carpet, whatever). Yuck! He was so hesitant to even sit on his little blue potty that I finally resorted to ~~bribing~~ rewarding him with "sweets" when he does manage to do anything on the potty. He gets about 3x as many sweets for #2 as for #1 since the former is less frequent and also he seems to be more hesitant in that department. So.... this morning after I got him up I had him sit on the potty and, whatd'ya know, he pooped! A small pile, but it was something. I was very happy, clapped my hands, got real animated and gave him a small handful of sweets (raisins, carob chips, stuff like that) as a reward. I really do hope that starts a nice trend in that direction. He also went pee in his potty all by himself this morning, without my having to remind him so that was pretty cool too. I saw him in the kitchen trying to move a stool over to the counter where the "sweets" are kept so he could reward himself. I didn't catch on right away, but finally did see his deposit in the potty and paid him his dues. He's keeping dry for at least an hour between pees, maybe more, so he's doing well with that. I'm hoping to have him mostly trained by the end of this week. We'll see. I will still probably put him in pull-ups for going out, but for now, at least at home, he's in big boy pants and seems to be finally catching on.

Potty Training?

2008-07-20T11:02:00.001-04:00

I'm being very lazy about potty training this time around. Eli has shown little signs like he might be getting ready, but I just wasn't ready for the accidents that come with training so I've been procrastinating. But today I decided to put some "big boy pants" on him right after I changed a stinky diaper (so hopefully he won't be doing any of that in his underwear) and he stayed dry for about an hour or so. He wanted to go outside with Daddy so I told him he had to pee in the potty first so we went to do that. He decided he's not ready to pee like Daddy yet (standing up) and wanted his potty seat. When I sat him down, he tried and, sure enough, was able to go.Woo hoo, that's my boy! Now, I'm not harboring any grand ideas that this is some huge milestone or anything because he's gone in the potty before, but it's the longest I think he's kept his diapers dry in a long time, and he's always peed in his underwear in the past so dry undies is a good thing. I'll take what I can get!

Home (not) Alone

2008-07-19T10:11:00.003-04:00

Geo started telling me yesterday afternoon that he was feeling like he was getting sick and sure enough, in the middle of the night, both he and Gigi work up with sore throats. Geo asked for some Tylenol to help the pain, but Gigi just went back to sleep. I decided it would be best to keep them home from church today (don't want to expose all the other kids) so it's just me and the kids today till DH gets back from teaching his Kindergarten Sabbath-School class. I'm sure he's planning to stay for church too. Eli is entertaining himself trying to sing along with some Kid's Time Praise videos and the older two are off being creative with the play food. I'll probably read their lessons a little later and review their memory verses... It won't be quite the same as Sabbath School, but... oh well, I can only do what I can do.

On at OT school note, my books came Thursday! That was just about 2 weeks from when I joined MT Advantage :o) Not bad, not bad at all. They came just at the right time because the couple of days before were spent decluttering the bonus room (slash office/school room/craft, toy and other storage/laundry launchepad/ironing station/filing room...) which was a tremendously huge job, but it's done now :) well, mostly and it's SO much nicer. But I'm kind of glad my books didn't come earlier in the week because I would have wanted to delve into them instead of cleaning which was very very necessary! I'd like to continue on in this fashion (cleaning) so that the house is presentable for the baby when he or she arrives in November. The bonus room was the biggest hurdle so the rest of it should be a piece of cake, right? LOL Here's a pic of my nicely arranged storage closet shelf complete with MT books :o) Notice how nothing is spilling out all over the floor in front of the shelves (like they used to). Everything fits on the shelves and if there ever gets to be too much, then it'll be time for another purge! I think I might go thru all the boxes in 6 months or so and see if there's anything else I can let go.

Back to my books... there's a set of 1000 flashcards of medical terminology (words, prefixes, roots, suffixes...) that I have to have learned by the end of the course, so I've started plugging them into my handy-dandy jMemorize program. I have about 120 keyed in so far and that was just in about a day so I think I could have them all in in a month or less (I hope!). Interseting medical terminology tip of the day (and something I remember from A&P): acetabulum (hip socket) literally means "little vinegar cup."

Flashcard update

2008-07-14T11:33:00.001-04:00

I did some snooping online and learned about the Leitner System for learning things for the short as well as the long term. Basically what it does is it remembers the cards you get wrong and you see them more often until you start to get them right. Then the ones you get right come back again in a week or two or three to see if you still know them (refresh and strengthen your memory). I found several freeware or open source programs that were based on the Leitner method and after trying out 3 or 4 have decided that my favorite is jMemorize.

Pros:

Free
Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows
Can arrange flashcards in categories
Text formatting on cards (very simple tho, no highlighting)
Attach images to cards
Has nice charts to keep track of progress

Cons:

Doesn't allow sound attachments
Doesn't allow highlighting of text

All in all, not too many drawbacks. There's another one called Memory Lifter which I think I will use to practice typing commonly misspelled words. Memory Lifter has a function for adding sound where you can either add a sound file or you can record a sound, so I can just speak them into the microphone and off I go. The con for me with Memory Lifter is that it makes you type out every answer, doesn't just take your word for it, but that will actually be a pro in regard to my misspelled words list.

I'm in school!

2008-07-12T22:02:00.002-04:00

Yup, after years and years in the real world, I'm finally in school again and lovin' it. Uh-huh, I'm a nerd, a bookworm, what can I say, I love school, or probably more accurately, learning. And I've never stopped learning, but now I'm officially enrolled. I'm going to be a Medical Transcriptionist when I grow up, lol.

After much research and indecision, trying to decide whether I'd go with the cheepest of the "big 3" MT schools, or choose another school which seemed to offer as much and more, if not the designation of being one of the "big 3." In the end, due to prompt replies to all of my emails and honest answers to all of my "difficult" questions, not to mention an awsomely awsome discount which brought it within range of the other school I was considering, I chose MT Advantage (Medical Transcription Advantage Career Center) and I'm so far very happy with my choice. The school boasts a 100% job placement rate which is very encouraging and so far, in working thru the lessons, I really feel that there is a lot there for me to learn. I feel that I'll come out with a lot of knowledge and practice that will translate well to the real word. It will probably take me at least a year to complete, what with homeschool, a new baby and the possibility of my having to pick up some part-time-at-home work while DH is in school, not to mention just staying on top of the running of a household... Sometimes I think I bit off too much, but I'm having such fun with this program and the good thing about it is that it's a do-at-your-own-pace course and they are fairly flexible about how long it takes you to finish. Right now I'm just trying to perfect my grammar, spelling, and my attention to detail (or occasional lack thereof), finish a few non-required, but helpful computer classes and improve my typing speed... I just found my old Harbrace College Handbook so I'm going to look thru it and hopefully pick up some helpful pointers in the grammar department. I don't think I'm horrible, but I think I definitely could use some improvement. And MTs generally have impecable grammar and spelling.

For note taking I'm using a dandy little feeware app called KeyNote. It's a wonderful little notes program that supports tabs and an unlimited tree structure within each tab. It's marvelous; I'm sad it's not being updated anymore, but I'm really mostly fine with it how it is.

Also, I downloaded a flashcard freebie called CueCard which will help me drill myself either online or via the printed version of the flashcards (will do either, or so it says).

So far I'm on Module 4 of 30 that are in the course and I've been given the green light to start Mod 5 if I want (since Mod 4 is about computers and is not graded or required, but helpful and so far [for me] boring as all get out). I'll have to skip back to Mod 3 when I get my books (in 3-5 weeks, sooner I hope!), but at least I can keep up the forward momentum. I'll keep you posted as to my progress.

20 down, 20 more to go

2008-07-12T20:01:00.001-04:00

Weeks that is. Actually I'll be 21 weeks tomorrow so slightly less. I made it to the halfway mark! Things are going well with this pregnancy so far. A few weeks ago I was having early morning mid-back pain that would force me up at 6:00 a.m. or so. But that has recently eased up, not sure what has changed, but I'm not going to complain! My belly is getting to that slightly uncomfortable, makes-it-hard-to-breath stage, but the baby isn't so big yet that it's kicking my ribs or my bladder so I guess I can be thankful for small blessings. Also, thank God, the relaxin hasn't kicked in yet. I hope it waits for a good while! The baby is probably close to 12" long now and wiggles now and then. I love the wiggling part :)

Sore Throat finally gone!

2008-07-01T21:36:00.001-04:00

I'd had a sore throat for the last week or so and couldn't shake it. Normally all I have to do is up my water intake, suck on a zinc lozenge, and try to get extra sleep and that does the trick. But not this time. After a day or two it started getting very sore on my left tonsil and it hurt like crazy when I stuck my tongue out. So I got this wacky idea to "paint" my tonsil with hydrogen peroxide. I put some on a cotton swab and dabbed it on a couple of times. It burned for awhile and I drank a bunch of water to try to dilute the burning. And here comes my word of warning... I don't think that was the best thing to do. My tonsil did indeed stop hurting initially, but the hurt came back and it seemed to be worse and I think it may have caused it to last longer than it would have on its own. So next time I won't be doing that!

So my next weapon was... da da da daahhhh! garlic. My dad suggested a garlic/tomato sandwich so I diced up a clove, put it on bread with mayo on it, then slices of tomato, salted. It wasn't too bad, but it was spicy and stroooonnnnngg. But it did seem that after each dose of garlic, the soreness abated for awhile or felt a little less severe. I had 2 sandwiches one day, none the next, 1 the next (I think, as I recall). Anyway, it was almost gone yesterday and today I truly feel free. Hooray! So glad to be done with that! Oh, I forgot, I also tried gargling with cayenne in water which ended up being too spicy for me, but I also put it on my food which did seem to have a positive effect.

Medical Transcription

2008-06-30T21:59:00.001-04:00

I've recently gotten a bit of a nudge from mi Papa RE: taking a medical transcription course online so I've been looking into it. I stumbled upon a terrific blog devoted to MT and have been having great fun reading thru the first few posts. It does rather sound like a lot of work (the coursework, the actual work work), but I also think it's something that might be right down my alley. I'm interested in things medical if just from a distance (couldn't actually be a nurse or anything like that), I type decently enough (I was the typesetter for my college newspaper for a year; incidentally I learned on a very old manual typewriter in eastern Africa), don't mind sitting on my computer for hours on end and have a love of the English language. Check back in a year or two and we'll see what comes of it all, but for now, I'm having fun investigating the prospect of it all.

Too tired for words (no not me)

2008-06-29T21:08:00.001-04:00

The other day l'il bub was woken up from his nap by dad because he'd "slept long enough." Then dad and the older two went to run a quick errand and left Eli at home with me. Well, after a few minutes things got REALLY quiet and I went to investigate. I walked into the family room and this is what I found:

Then going around to check the other side of him:

Nothing sweeter than sleeping babies. Cracks me up the position he chose to cat-nap.

Projects

2008-06-29T19:14:00.001-04:00

Here are a couple of my fairly recent projects that I hadn't had a chance to blog about yet. The first one is the bible cover I made out of old jeans for Geo's 7th birthday. I stayed up into the wee hours of the night the night before finishing it. Gigi has already requested one, but if I do, I'll start it months in advance, lol.

The next is the Cinderella Topsy Turvy doll (a la Jean Greenhowe) that I made for Gigi's 5th birthday. I'm really happy with how she turned out. Still need to make some little flowers to go around her bun, but otherwise she's done.

Here are a couple that Geo made for his sister's birthday. The bunny finger puppet was knit in the round using the magic loop method (ears knit by me, whiskers added by me), The pink bunny was knit in the round (magic loop) too, I think I did the ears for that one too, but pretty much everything else he did.

Sleepy Days, Restless Nights

2008-06-29T16:36:00.001-04:00

I've had a bit of a revelation that if I don't get enough sleep I can't function the next day (now why is this news? LOL). Anyway, I guess the revelation was that I need to make sure we eat lunch between 12 and 1, eat supper at 5 and have kids in bed before 8 so that I can have some time with DH before I need to hit the sack between 9 and 9:30. One of the reasons for this early of a bedtime is that my back is starting to really bother me in the morning (mid to upper back). No matter when I go to sleep, I wake up between 6 and 7 and can't stay in bed past that time because my back hurts so bad. It stops hurting when I get up so it's a very good alarm clock. Also it's getting much more uncomfortable to sleep at night and I do quite a bit of tossing and turning till I can finally fall asleep. But if I don't get enough sleep the night before, it sets me up for complete exhaustion and inability and total lack of desire to do any of my routines and as a result the house falls apart. SO... this is the new plan in hopes that I'll be able to maintain a certain amount of functionality. We can hope. Next stop, relaxin and aching joints. I hope that stop isn't for awhile yet (like 2 or 3 more months at least!).

Revamped My Routines

2008-06-29T16:27:00.001-04:00

Awhile back I decided that my visual side really needed a bit of a crutch when it came to my FlyLady control journal which lists my Morning, Afternoon and Before Bed routines as well as weekly chores and space for To-Dos and the like. I had it to where I liked it, ... for awhile anyway. But I've decided that it's time to simplify my routines a little so I redid my control journal. Here's a snapshot of my Morning Routine:
It sits in a sheet protector and hangs on my fridge where I mark off each task as it's completed with a dry erase marker. I even made the kids their own routine sheets (great for when they actually look at them, lol).

Biblical Womanhood

2008-06-29T16:18:00.001-04:00

For awhile I've known about Crystal's (of MoneySavingMom blog fame) website about Biblical Womanhood and in the past I never gave it more than a cursory glance. But I have had the opportunity to read a few of her recent entries and I'm totally and completely impressed by her maturity in the light of her tender age (in her 20s with 2 little ones). I probably have 10 years or so on her and I feel that I am way behind where she's at. But I feel God is leading me to be more deliberate in my attempts to live out His directive for my life (Titus 2:3-5 talks about how older women are supposed to teach younger women [where I find myself at the moment] how to be sober, love their husbands, their children, be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands so that the word of God be not blasphemed). I feel that this is my true and highest calling and I will walk in faith as I attempt to do the best I can with God's help and pray He fills in all my inadequacies (of which there are many).

Part of Biblical womanhood includes modesty in dress and speech. I have felt a calling toward more modest dress for awhile now, but have no means to achieve that end at the moment. I would like to wear more skirts, but for now my swelling belly regulates me to whatever I have in the maternity department which is mostly pants and shorts. But after the baby, I'd love to get into making more of my own clothes, lots of pretty, feminine skirts and simple tops to match, some pretty and functional aprons for working around the house (and eating, lol) to keep my clothes tidy. It will of course be more practical when/if I'm able to cull a good portion of the extras that have been hanging around this house and the last like a millstone around my neck. I'm working on decluttering a little each day to achieve that eventual goal. I really would love to live a simple life... no TV (or very limited), just a few good toys for the kids, fewer clothes for everyone (means less laundry, water, soap, work for me...) and just the things we need or love allowed in our house. Someday...

Father's Day

2008-06-15T09:38:00.002-04:00

Happy Father's day to all you deserving dads out there and most especially to my DH and my dad. The kids made cards for Daddy today and I found a simple little poem for Elliot to repeat after me and pulled it into Audacity to edit out all my prompts. I think it came out cute if fairly unintelligible. The text is as follows:

Daddy, I love you
For all that you do.

I'll kiss you and hug you
'Cause you love me, too.

You feed me and help me
Learn how to pray.

So smile 'cause I love you
On this Father's Day.

I'm baaaaaaccckkk!

2008-06-13T13:24:00.002-04:00

Yeah, ok, I've been absent for quite awhile now, about 3 months, and in my defense, wasn't feeling great for most of those months. Why you might ask? Well let me go ahead and spill the beans all over the place.

Very shortly after I stopped blogging in March, dh and I found out that we were expecting baby #4. When I got a positive within seconds, it was almost too much to be believed. Dh and I were still sort of living in the fantasy that my cycle was just being a little crazy this month, it would come. But it didn't and, well, after the initial shock of it all wore off and we had mulled over what bad (in our minds) timing this was to be having another baby, we decided to leave it in God's hands and accept it as a blessing that God's Word says that it is. Now that I'm past the almost constant feeling-like-I-majorly-overate-and-need-to-relieve-my-stomach feeling, I'm actually really looking forward to the rest of the pregnancy and for the next addition of our not-so-little-anymore family.

Imitation = Flattery; the ER

2008-03-21T07:50:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I heard Eli "do-do-doing" in the kitchen, kind of singing a song and I happened to glance in there to see what he was doing exactly and there he was with a piece of pvc pipe (I use it to wind my yarn) and was pretending to play it like a flute. And he was holding it fairly correctly too. If I didn't think he'd move or clam up, I'd have gotten a pic, but it didn't last long. It was very cute while it lasted tho.

At some point in the evening on Tuesday we noticed that Eli wasn't using his right hand like normal. Geo was the one to pinpoint the cause of Eli's crying, not sure why I didn't catch it. I had tried to change his diaper and give him a snack thinking he needed changing or was hungry, but sure enough, his hand wasn't doing much, he wasn't wanting to use it. We didn't know what might have happened. I didn't think he could have fallen hard enough to hurt it and even if he did, it was odd that it was his right hand since he's apparently left-handed. So we gave him some Tylenol and hoped he'd feel better in the morning.

I wrapped it up in an Ace bandage to try to keep it still in case it was a sprain or something like that. Well, he did better on Wednesday, but still wasn't using the hand and was complaining if we touched his hand or fingers... so finally after lunch I got us ready and off to the ER we went. There weren't that many people there at that time of day so maybe was a good time to go. We got in to triage and then a room very quickly.

Once in the room we had to wait a little longer between being seen, but Eli had fun and entertained himself by peeking outside the door every time the automatic doors down the hall opened or closed; he also enjoyed playing peek-a-boo with the curtains and thought that was a riot. The lady who saw us was a nurse practitioner and couldn't have been nicer. She said from what I told her that she suspected "Nursemaid's Elbow" where the radius bone gets pulled away from the ulna and humerus enough so that one of the tendon's holding the bones in place can slip down behind the bone and gets pinched and hurts! Poor baby!

So she tried to pop it back in place (simple procedure), but it didn't want to go back in. After 2 or 3 tries of this she decided to rule out anything else going on (a fracture or anything like that) and ordered x-rays. Well, the x-rays, thankfully, came back normal so she tried the procedure again and this time she said, "ah! there it went, I felt the pop." So we just watched him for a few minutes, tried to get him to pick up stickers or keys or my cellphone... He finally was able to hand me my keys which was the most he'd used his hands since the day before. After that he did some baby signs with that hand and then it was a very steady and quick improvement till, by the time I got him to the car to buckle him in, he was pretty much back to normal.

Apparently, one of us had taken him by the forearm and pulled a little too hard, or maybe he fought/resisted us while we had him by the arm (could have been me, DH, or Geo for that matter; he's bad about fighting diaper changes so I'll have to be careful with that). So we had a family meeting and I told them that no one should pull him by the hand or try to pick him up that way... only picking up under both arms or by the upper arm. So, all in all, I'm glad it wasn't worse, glad he's back to normal, and glad we know what to do to make sure it doesn't happen again!

My baby turned 7, sniff

2008-03-12T21:12:00.002-04:00

Geo had his 7th birthday today. Even he is feeling the rush of time I think because he kept insisting that he was still 6. I think he's afraid that he'll grow up too fast and have to move out of the house. I tried to reassure him that that wouldn't happen for many years and that for now, this is his house, he lives here with us. When he gets older, he'll get the urge to get out on his own (well, hopefully, lol). But for now, he's still a kid and he doesn't have to worry about any of that. He still didn't seem too impressed and will probably be 6 for a few more days till 7 gets more normal sounding. He did try to use 7 in his defense yesterday, though. He told me that he was old enough to watch Polar Express even thought I was sure it would be too intense for him. He said that it wouldn't be too scary for a 7 year old. LOL So we let him watch it, and you know what? He watched it all and swore up and down that it wasn't scary. Guess he is growing up. We didn't have a big party but we did take a break from school in honor of his day, we did an egg hunt in the front yard (enjoyed the lovely weather, he really picked a good time of year to be born!), ate cake and I gave him a bible cover that I had stayed up late the last two nights wrestling with. Now Gigi says she wants one, but... I don't know. Geo's was a real bear, not sure I want to tackle one again any time soon. I think he had a good day, hope so :) But back to the grindstone again tomorrow!

107 years, one amazing woman

2008-03-12T21:04:00.003-04:00

My 107 great-grandma, great-great-gran to my kiddos, passed away yesterday afternoon. She had had a heart attack the night before but it wasn't caught till yesterday morning. Apparently she was somewhat alert and talking till her very last breath, and then very quietly, she was gone. We are all very much at peace with her passing because she was so ready to go and she had lived a long long life. She had lost her eyesight a few years ago and became more and more dependent on my grandpa (her SIL) for assistance (as my grandma has health problems of her own). So I say a fond good-bye to my "grandma" and I know that her very next thought will be the 2nd coming of Jesus, so for her this quiet resting time will seem like the blink of an eye. Rest in peace dear lady.

The day's happenings

2008-02-26T21:59:00.002-05:00

My plan was to wake up this morning early so the younger two and I could get over to the health department (for WIC recertification) and beat the rush so we wouldn't have to wait a million years to be seen. But, I ended up staying up till after midnight (my new bedtime is supposed to be much closer to 10) getting everything together (finding birth certificates, getting proof of income and address..., getting clothes out for the kids, getting things together for them to do if we had to wait...) so I really was not in the mood to wake up at 6:30 in the morning. We didn't manage to get over there till 10 a.m. They don't make appointments for anything there anymore, it's first come first served (I hate the new policy!!) so we sat and sat and Gigi got bored and more bored... About an hour later, they called us in. I had to sign some things, answer some questions, then we had to wait in another waiting room for awhile. They they called us in for weighing, measuring and hemoglobin check (for Eli only, Gigi was rather relieved!), then we waited some more, saw the nutritionist, waited some more, then finally got our vouchers. They really make you earn them I tell ya :) Oh well, an hour an a half later, we were free for another 6 months when Eli will have to be re-certified (Gigi will by then be too old). So that took up all of my morning.

After lunch Gigi and I went out for a mother-daughter jaunt. I thought she would like it, feel important... but all she did was grip and complain about one thing or another so I think maybe the concept is lost on her. I suppose she'd rather do other things so I won't be in such a hurry to take her anywhere in the future! We went and got some things laminated for DH for his Sabbath School class (class rosters and memory verse charts...), then we popped over to a nearby thrift store. I had very little money on me, but was able to get several really large, huge, gigantic dresses that I'll be able to take apart and re-purpose them into something for me :) I'm thinking lots and lots of aprons because I really have the bug to start wearing pretty things more often, less jeans and sweats and I don't want nice clothes to get dirty so lots of pretty and functional aprons will be nice! Here are some of my favorites: ruffly, paisley, apron from dress [pdf], slightly bizarre but functional "Lady Artisan", cute, not free, halter apron, slight ruffle apron, Christmas apron.

I went to CVS last Saturday night to take advantage of a diaper deal they had going on. Actually there were a bunch of things that were part of the deal. If you purchased $30 worth of the items, they would give you $15 back in ECBs. Good deal, but when I added $6 in diaper coupons and $1 battery coupon and a $4 off CVS coupon and $9.98 in ECBs, it was a really great deal. The only problem is that when the receipt printed off, they only gave me ECBs for the 5 Boost Smoothies that I had bought (because they were free after ECBs). So I asked the lady about it and she tried to tell me that because my coupons took the grand total under $30, that was why the ECBs hadn't printed. She even got another manager to agree with her. I didn't think so, but I walked out with my stuff, rather upset because I was sure I was supposed to get those ECBs. When I got home I looked more carefully at the receipt and it said that the amount that I had credited toward the reward was $26.97 which was the exact price of the diapers. So I saw that they hadn't given me credit for the batteries. I was elated when I figured that out because I was sure that I would be getting my ECBs :) So I called customer service and I must glow and wax complimentary about CVSs customer service. I got a really nice lady who, when she looked at my receipt on her end, saw what I was talking about and she said that my ECBs would print on my receipt the next time I shopped at CVS. So thank you CVS, it was pleasure doing business with you, I hope you get lots of business and have many happy years.

The breakdown of my transaction goes like this:

cost of 3 packs of diapers	$26.97
batteries	$5.29
subtotal	$32.26
coupons ($7.50)	$24.76
CVS $4 off $20 coupon	$20.76
used $9.98 in ECBs to pay	$10.78
get back $15 in ECBs	$-4.22

Not counting the ECBs that I used to pay with (because I had to build them up in the beginning with real money), I got 3 packs of dipes and 1 pack of 8 AA batteries for $5.76. Not bad say I!

Mount Washmore Nomore!

2008-02-21T21:50:00.002-05:00

I'm finally getting to do some laundry!! It's been, what... a week? More maybe. But DH hooked up a sump pump to the gray water in our septic tank and is running it over to another septic tank that is on our property (was there for a trailer that the previous owners had). This is a very temporary fix, but it's allowing me to get caught up on my laundry and it couldn't have come a moment too soon. Eli was out of pocket dipes and our towels were all dirty. So I'm on my way and very relieved!

I decided that I'm very much a visual person so I found a bunch of clipart to coincide with my Flylady Control Journal and I just check off the images of what I'm supposed to do as I do them, I think that might work better than me just looking at a page full of text (yes I can read, lol).

I slept in this morning because I got to bed a few minutes later than I would have liked and then Eli woke up once and Gigi came in and said she had bad dreams and didn't want to sleep in her bed. She got in our bed, but she was too wiggly and I wasn't getting any sleep so I made a little bed for her on the floor and went back to bed.

I was really hoping that DH would go with Geo to his dentist appointment this morning, I wasn't sure how I'd handle seeing Geo in pain... but Mr. Sleepyhead decided that he'd stayed up so late last night working that he didn't want to wake up that early so I got to go... yipee [sarcastically clapping hands, jumping up and down while rolling eyes].

We didn't tell Geo that there would be shots because that would have sent him thru the roof. He would have stressed over that so much and would have made things much worse. I'm glad we chose this route. When we got in, they put the laughing gas mask over his nose (he chose orange scented) and after several minutes was starting to feel rather giddy. The dentist came in and was real friendly, donned his orange flavored rubber gloves (what they won't think of next!) and put some numbing gel on his gums. Then, while the nitrous mask was blocking his view, he snuck the syringe in and numbed him all up without him even really knowing what was happening. He did say that it was hurting, but he didn't flinch or anything.

So after a minute or so his mouth and cheek started feeling like it was falling off his face and he couldn hardly talk or swallow (it was funny in a sad sort of way). So he and I started conversing in sign language (to a point, he needs a bigger vocab) and the spit vacuum was employed so that took care of those two things. Then he started getting bored so the dental assistant went and got him a Bible Story Book from the waiting room to look at.

Finally the dentist came in and chit-chatted with him a little more. He checked the numbness of Geo's cheek and lips and introduced him to the drill (that whistled and had headlights). Well, as soon as he started drilling, Geo tensed up and said it hurt so they put the nitrous mask on again and gave him some more nummy juice and after a couple minutes tried again.

I could tell that it either hurt or was bothering him because he was tense, but then again, I am too in the same shoes. The doc reamed out a good sized hole (I didn't look too much, rather icky) and then put some medicine soaked cotton inside to kill any infection going on (he said there was drainage, I guess from some kind of infection?). Then he put the filling putty in. It was soft at first but hardened up and after an hour Geo could chew on it. He gave me some more antibiotic for Geo to take for the next 4 days and we were done with this installment.

We'll have to go back in a month or two to get a stainless cap put on. But I was so proud of Geo and I'm so happy that he won't have to worry about a hurting tooth any more! Praise God for that! They asked him if he wanted a sticker and he said he wanted three because he had a baby brother and a sister at home. They thought that was so sweet so gave him 3 little toys and 3 stickers. They really were so nice :) I thank our pastor's wife for referring them.

I have a diaper deal that I'm planning at CVS (as soon as some money that I'm expecting gets here). If all goes as planned, I should be able to get a package of dipes for $3.50 or less (that's with ECBs and coupons driving down the price). Not bad. I've gotten my mom into CVSing too and she's doing the diaper deal as well to help me stock up on some for Eli. I like cloth, it's great and all, but my dear MIL has decided that it's her mission and her passion to see her little grandson in slim and trim 'sposies. I have to say I'm not totally against the idea because my diapers have an odd smell in them that I can't get rid of and I'm tired of it. And the less laundry I have to worry about at the moment, the better. I plan to start potty training in the spring so hopefully this won't be a problem for much longer! So thank you so much Mama D, it's truly sweet of you and really appreciated!

I do feel that I had a productive day today. I got everything on my list done except for cleaning out the van (cleaned sink/counter/stove, swept floor in kitchen, made my bed, cleaned the bathroom counter and toilet, cleared off my dresser and dusted, folded and put away a load of clothes, took some clothes that I weeded out of my shirt drawer and bagged them up, got them out of my room, folded up some blankets from Gigi's makeshift bed and vacuumed our floor, did several loads of laundry, washed/put away dishes...) I have some clothes I need to fold, tho, so I'd better get to that before it's time for me to head to bed.

Just another septic Thursday

2008-02-15T21:50:00.003-05:00

We had the septic tank pumped again yesterday so we'll be ok for the next few days (we are limiting our water usage as much as possible in the time being, covered the septic hole with a tarp...) till DH can figure out if it's the holding tank from the septic tank that's blocked or if the field lines are damaged. He'll probably rent a backhoe to make the process infinitely easier. I can't wait, can't wait till it's back to "normal" so that I can start doing laundry again. I have learned my lesson, though, that I shouldn't do laundry back-to-back-to-back like I did last week. Stresses the system. This has really served to highten my awareness of how much water I use on a daily basis and I think I'll really try to cut down when possible. My mom gave me a great idea of saving the water that usually gets wasted when waiting for the hot water to get to the other end of the house (for showers...) and use it for other things (the garden in the summer, watering house plants, flushing toilets, adding to the fish tank...) so I may try doing that.

My CVS Coup

2008-02-15T16:46:00.001-05:00

Ok, so it's not all that much to look at, but I was rather proud.

I managed to get all 3 toothpastes and the Gatorade G2 for $0.27 out of pocket! Not bad :)

I paid $1.88 each for the toothpastes, and $1.29 for the Gatorade, but I had a $1.50 off of one and a $1.00 off of 2 coupon for the toothpaste. I paid for it with about $4.49 in Extra Care Bucks and earned back $4.29 in ECBs. That's the way to buy toothpaste!

Whatta day!

2008-02-13T20:23:00.002-05:00

Well, I really thought I was going to bail ship and head over to Mom and Dad's, but we stuck it out here. It didn't rain an awful lot last night so we were able to flush the toilet 2 or 3 times and shared water for baths (sorry if that's tmi, but desperate times called for desperate measures and, as DH said, they used to do that in the "olden days"). I opted to wash my hair in the sink as I just don't do well washing my Rapunzel locks in a bathtub. It actually worked pretty well.

DH found out that before we can do anything to the septic system, we had to get a permit from the county health department. He called them and filled them in on the problem and they sent a guy out to check it out and bring the permit. He thinks the field lines might just be blocked because damaged lines would cause pooling on the surface and there isn't any. Who knows what the problem is, I just know it's a big problem. All my lovely Flylady routines (well not all but a lot) are going down the tube. The biggy, shining the sink and keeping dishes out of it has been steamrolled over because we're cautious to use that much water (especially after 20 or so gallons of bathwater). I had thought about doing all my laundry at the laundromat, but DH is going to try to rig up a way to get the water from the washer out the window via a garden hose. Not exactly sure how that's going to work yet, it remains to be seen. He'll be my hero (not that he's not already) if he makes that happen!

Today I was able to empty one box of junk and then took that box (plastic tote really) to Eli's dresser and pulled out some more of his clothes. I took out at least 1/3 of what was there and was able to get rid of another tote of clothes that were sitting on top of his dresser. All in all (since the beginning) I've managed to get rid of 4 large plastic totes of clothes 18m-2T! (Ok I admit it, he had way way way too many clothes!). I still need to get into Galena's room and do that to her clothes. I know that will be a blessing to her as her clothes are in terrible disarray.

Hmm, I got the kids computer settled into it's new home, redid my laundry area, weeded out the kids clothes, it's time for me to decide what my next mission is. Maybe taking down the Christmas tree? (Ok, slightly less bad than it sounds, but only very slightly, lol). Eli pulled the tree down after it had been up only about 2 days and I knew that if we put it up again, it would just come down again. So it's sitting in a jumbled heap in the corner and I've been ignoring it because there were "more important" things that I wanted to do first (and really, who loves taking the tree down?). The lights wires are going to be a headache to get untangled. If I had the money, I'd be tempted to cut them off and buy new ones. I think we'll have to figure out how to get the tree put back up so I can then disassemble it properly. That might not happen tomorrow since DH is going to have bigger fish to fry so maybe I need to have a plan B mission just in case. Um, I guess I'd really like to get my sewing corner organized and I had the thought of turning the bookcase that's behind my head so that it's back is to the wall which will open up the space. I don't know if that will be a good thing or not. I suppose if it's not cluttered, it will be ok.

Amendment

2008-02-13T07:28:00.003-05:00

I'm making an amendment to my blog-a-day challenge. I finally decided it wasn't "loving myself" to feel so guilty about not posting so now I'm going to post as often as I can, hopefully every day, but if I miss a day, I'll just try to get it the next...

Yesterday DH told me to hold off on doing any more washing because our septic tank was full again! The field lines aren't wicking away the water from the tank like they're supposed to and so the tank was full and any water from our house really didn't have anywhere to go. That fact became grossly apparent after Geo had taken his shower last night (thankfully not during his shower) and I was washing a very small load of diapers (gotta have diapers) and the spin cycle go to be too much for it and sewage started backwashing into our lowest area which is our bathtub (gross, yuck, bleugh, ad nauseum!). Since we won't be able to do much toilet flushing today and knowing how kids are, I think I'm going to take them and flee to my parents' house in the mountains and I'm taking my laundry with me, lol. I think DH might stay here and try to get the situation fixed. First the tank is going to have to be emptied again, then he's going to rent a back-hoe and dig out the field lines (leach beds) and replace them. He'll also dig up the rest of his garden for spring and move some bushes from around the septic tank to the perimeter of the yard. Their roots seeking out moisture during the dry summer probably played a big role in the field lines' collapse. So that whole area needs to be de-planted so this doesn't happen again.

I thought I had Eli's clothes pared down to a reasonable amount and then heard Flylady saying that kids shouldn't have more than 5 pairs of play pants and a couple of dress pants. Well, that was eye-opening seeing as Eli probably has 20 pair of jeans alone, not counting corderoy, khaki and church pants. Um, I think I need to go back and try again, lol. Maybe I could do 6 pair of jeans (I like even numbers), 1 khaki, 1 tan corderoy, 1 blue corderoy and 1-2 church pants. And his shirts are another thing altogether. But if I wash every day (which won't be a chore if my loads are smaller and more manageable), I should be able to get by on much less. I'm trying to instill in the older 2 the idea of getting more mileage from their clothes. If they aren't too dirty after a day's wearing, I've told them to lay them out by their beds to put on the next day. That will also really help with the laundry. I'll see if I can't get our water bill down yet! :) And clothes that aren't washed so frequently last longer so that's good too.

Last night the kids needed to use the bathroom (the kind where you can't get by without flushing, lol), so, since I needed to run some things by the library anyway, we all bundled up and went over there and took advantage of their plumbing. I think we're going to need to get out of here pretty soon today so we don't tax the water system any further.

Oops, I did it again...

2008-02-11T13:57:00.000-05:00

(didn't post yesterday) Well, um, I was in super hyper cleaning mode yesterday, I got something like 6 loads of clothes folded and maybe 8 loads washed, tidied the kitchen, shined my sink, did some dishes..., and culled a bunch of clothes out of Geo's overly crowded drawers. We are truly blessed to get hand me downs from their older boy cousin, but we just almost have too much. Flylady says that if the drawers are too full, it's not fun to put clothes away so I'm just keeping the nicest shirts (plus 2 really grubby ones so he can use them to paint in or play outside in the mud...) and mostly blue jeans or khaki pants and a few corduroy. I'll put them up out of the way for awhile just in case we run out of clothes between washings (like we have in the past when I wasn't FLYing) and if we don't need them, I'll put them in the "to sell" pile. Reminds me, today DH looked at a shirt I had washed last night and said "Is this clean? I just put it in the dirty clothes yesterday." I said "I washed it." He sniffed it and got a funny, surprised, happy look on his face. That was a good feeling.

Last night I went and picked up a Sunday paper and was mightily disappointed by the wimpy bundle of coupons that was in there. I hope my coupons didn't fall out somewhere. Then I folded some more clothes before bed, put food away, shined my sink, and got everything ready to take our cat in to the vet today.

Which leads me to the huge blessing of the day yesterday! I got a call from the vet that I've been talking to about having our cat Charlie spayed. There were no openings till the end of March and I was despairing at the thought of having Charlie cooped up in our laundry room for a month and a half. The lady asked me if they'd booked me in yet and I said no, but I was starting to think that I should. She said "Would you like to bring her in tomorrow? Someone cancelled." Would I??!!? Where are you located and where do I sign? LOL I was so happy.

So, after a very sleepless night (Eli is still sick and wasn't wanting to sleep as much as he usually does), I woke up at 6:30, got dressed, ate, and was out of here by 7. I thought it would take a little longer to get there than it did, but I got there at 7:30. I wasn't supposed to be there till 8. There was a mass of people bringing their pets, maybe 18-20 people crammed into the medium sized waiting room. It was rather a mad-house. But the workers seemed really nice and treated the animals with compassion. I'll have to go there again tomorrow morning, this time they want me there at 7:30 so I know that if I leave just a little before 7, I should be good (as long as there are no traffic snarls on the way).

DH told me yesterday that a lady from our church was coming over to test her air mattress in our pool to try to find an air leak. And something like that would have sent me into a tizzy in the past, fear that she might come inside my house, but this time I looked around, realized I was "only 15 minutes from clean" (a Flylady-ism) and what a great feeling that was!

Another terrific thing that happened yesterday was that I found Gigi and Eli's birth certificates. I'd misplaced them (or so I thought) and had searched and searched for them with no luck, but decided to look in a place I was almost sure they weren't and there they were. Praise God! That was an answer to prayer.

Yet another great and happy thing that happened today was that I just discovered that we're eligible to join the larger library system for our state. We used to be part of that system before we moved, but where we are right now, our library system is 2 counties wide and just doesn't have all that much. So, now we'll have access to our little local (and super convenient) library as well as the full fledged mega library system. And the closest library is only about 20 minutes away which is not all that bad. This honkin' library system is the one that my knitting buddy is a member of and I'm always jealous of the great knitting books she can get. Well no more! Hehe, doing a little happy dance.

Picture of the Day

2008-02-09T23:49:00.000-05:00

Ha! Like I have a picture of the day, but this was a cool picture I took of an ant this summer. He actually moved this Kix ball an inch or two through tall grass. Ants really are very hardworking creatures, aren't they?

Chagrined

2008-02-08T22:39:00.000-05:00

How could I drop the ball and forget to blog yesterday and Wednesday? I was doing so good. Here's what happened (it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)... I went to a Pampered Chef demonstration last night at our pastor's house (his wife was hosting) and had a really nice time, but didn't end up getting home till close to 10. Then there were some stuff like laundry and cleaning out the sink (gotta leave that sink shiny, Flylady says, lol) and I just plain forgot. But hopefully it was just the one time. I have no idea what happened Wednesday [shrugs shoulders].

Today was lovely and sunny and beautiful and is supposed to be that way for the next day or two, nice! I managed to get most of school done even tho my night schedule (going to bed at 10, up at 6:30) was really messed up by Eli waking up a couple of times to nurse ("Baba, Baba... [very plaintively] Baba"; tho he actually started saying Mama and Mommy today which was so exciting to me. He also started saying Nanana so he's trying out his Ms and Ns now [from Bs and Ds]), and Gigi waking up crying around 11:00 or so because she was coughing and it hurt. I rubbed some Vicks on her feet, not sure if it worked, but I had to try, then I let her go to bed in our bed (DH was still up working) till DH came to bed and then he moved her to a little makeshift bed on the floor. So I didn't make my 6:30 wakeup time and that kind of threw my whole day off.

I did manage to do Kelly's Mission of the day (it's another Flylady thing) which was sweep and mop the kitchen floor. I also did the dining room floor as it was in dire need. I tidied up in the bonus room some, made a little more elbow room, did some vertical stacking of boxes so that things weren't spread out all over the place. I also moved the laundry sorting bins out of site (well 1/2 of them anyway) and moved the ironing board to where they were so it's not in my way when I come out of the laundry room anymore. The bins that show have lids on them and stack so they don't look too awful. Geo got into the cleaning and started sorting his toys. I think I'll introduce him to Riley's Challenges (yet another Flylady thing), see if he can get on board with that. I think I'm going to start listing the school subjects we need to cover every day on the white board so he can see what to expect and how much more we have to accomplish before we're "done" for the day and he can go do something else. I asked him if he'd like that and he said "yes." We finished reading a book about Ben Franklin today and I learned a lot that I never knew before. He was a very interesting fellow.

It was so much easier to clean up for Sabbath since I'd been keeping up with things every day rather than saving things till Friday afternoon. The bathroom, hallway, family room and kitchen aren't too bad. Now I need to start branching out to other parts of the house, but it's very gratifying to have those places staying fairly decent on a regular basis.

For the last little while, maybe a month or two, Eli has been jumping with both feet off the ground which is very cute to watch. He has good balance too for a little squirt.

Wednesday we went to the dentist because Geo has cavities. He had some acid reflux when he was around 3 or 4 (gone now) and it played havoc on his teeth. One of the cavities was so bad that it was giving him pretty bad toothaches (which we treated with oil of oregano & olive oil on a cotton swab which he bit down on, and tylenol) so now he's on an antibiotic as the cavity went all the way to the root (ouch!) and they want to make sure there's no infection before they take care of it. He's going to have to have a pulpotomy (what they do instead of a root canal for baby teeth) in a couple of weeks. I don't look forward to that!

Yesterday the septic guy came and took care of our septic problem and now we're good to go again. Still have a plugged toilet in the laundry room, tho; he hadn't been told that we wanted him to do that and he didn't have any tools with him. That toilet is being a sticky little thorn in my side.

Our cat is in heat and the cheapest clinic around ($20 to spay a cat!) is 2 months booked out. We've been keeping Charlie (our cat, and btw, she's a she [the kids named her]) in our laundry room as there were so many boy cats hanging around the house and we didn't like the odds. But I can't imagine keeping her in there for 2 months! I'm not sure what we're going to do. I wish I'd called a long time ago before she went into heat, but it's too late now. We can't afford a regular vet so we may not have any options. We like our kitty so it's not like we want to get rid of her or anything, but we also don't want kittens (or more accurately we don't want to have to try to get rid of kittens). Poor Charlie is talking to me right now, sounds like she's saying "Hello? Hello?" as in "is anyone out there?" Poor li'l chickadee.

Plumbing woes

2008-02-05T21:42:00.000-05:00

We've known almost from when we first moved in here that the plumbing was not quite there. The toilets seemed sluggish and finally one of the toilets refused to flush altogether so we haven't used it in quite some time. Lately the toilets have been bubbling and needing to be plunged frequently and when we are plunging the toilet, water bubbles up in the sinks (gross!). So we finally had a septic guy come check it out and he said that our field lines (that drain the water off the top when the tank gets full) are needing to be replaced. So... DH is going to see if he and a couple of guys from church (one has a back hoe) can handle that part of it and some septic guys are coming out tomorrow to pump it out which will, at least for now, allow us to resume normal water consumption (washing clothes, dishes, showers, flushing toilets... we've been doing some of this, but at least then we'll have no worries and things should work much much better!). I really can't wait to have multiple working toilets that actually flush like they're supposed to. Yehaw!

Sansa Cozy

2008-02-05T21:29:00.000-05:00

I wanted a way to carry my mp3 player around with me so that it was accessible for me to pause it as needed, and also to keep it safe so I knitted a quick cozy. I cast on 20, knit st st in the round, till I was about an inch from where I wanted to end, then I switched to 2x2 ribbing. I attached a belt loop on the back as well as a belt loop loop (if I'm not wearing a belt, I can still loop it thru my belt loop and button it on, if that makes any sense at all). Here's how it turned out (I should have a pic of me actually wearing it):

A day at Grandma's

2008-02-04T22:33:00.000-05:00

DH and I had a meeting we had to go to down in the big city so we took the kiddos to Grandma's for the day and did they ever have a ball. They didn't want to leave and wondered why we weren't just spending the night there, lol. I'm glad they had a good time.

I got a new toy today :) I "bought" a new mp3 player (mine is refurb'ed so much cheaper than list price!) on scarf credit (meaning as soon as I get a scarf made and sold to cover the cost, I'll pay my parents back for it). It's something I can put Geo's composer study music on so we can listen to it for school, books in mp3 format from Librivox, and it's also something that I can put a whole bunch of motivational (home organization, home economizing, homeschool, kids, family, marriage, devotional...) podcasts on and listen to while I blitz around the house beautifying it and removing layers, trying to get rid of some of the evidence that a passel of kids live here. (LOVE the kids, hate the mess!)

Oh too, my mom said she went down to her local paper and asked about coupons and the lady said she could come on Thursday and look thru what was left before it got hauled away. Mom was pretty sure they have coupons in them. I'm so excited about that! I think I need to check with our local paper and see if they'd do the same for me. And my loving brother gets a free paper that has some coupons in it which he's saving for me. I'm on my way!! :) (Thanks for everyone's help!)

Coupon glee

2008-02-03T22:36:00.000-05:00

I waited all day to run down and pick up a couple of Sunday papers for the coupons. I ended up with only 3 coupon flyers, 2 SmartSource and 1 Valassis. I'm not sure if that was a mistake or not. Hmm. I've decided that for now I won't cut all the coupons out, I'll just to to the pack that I need a coupon from and get it from there (Couponmom.com makes it easy to find coupons, as does MoneySavingMom.com). Eventually I'd like to put together a coupon binder like some I've seen on other blogs (using trading card sleeves for my see-thru coupon organizational pouches). Unfortunately it seems that all the good CVS deals are calling for coupons from a few weeks back, before I was getting coupons so I'll just have to wait a few weeks till I have amassed enough of my own. I spent $3.50 on 2 newspapers, we'll see if that was a good investment or not, I think it will pay off eventually by creating overages at CVS. I think my CVS day will be Tuesday altho I did hear a rumor that CVS might be clearancing and reorganizing their makeup on Thursday so maybe I should also check then. It's thought that some of the makeup could me marked down to 90% off. That I could handle! I also heard about Cheerios coupons being back by the blood pressure cuffs at certain stores (not just CVS) and since we do eat the Honey Nut variety, they would come in very handy. Hey, if I'm going to be buying them anyway, why not pay less? Sounds like a plan to me!

My mom sent me a post about putting Vicks on feet helping with annoying coughs (which Geo is afflicted with at the moment) so I tried it, I'll see if it makes a difference come morning.

Well, it's past my bedtime, gotta run.

Where did THAT come from?

2008-02-02T22:18:00.000-05:00

We were all doing fine, healthy, happy, (minus a broken arm and toothache pain) when out of no where Eli got a runny, stuffy nose and Geo is dealing with a cough. Can't think that we've been around anyone who was sick. It was so sudden and unexpected. Poor Eli can't breath well at night so he didn't sleep well last night and hence, neither did I. But I did get a lovely nap this afternoon to make up for it :)

Fire?!? No, Thank God!

2008-02-01T21:35:00.000-05:00

After I brought a very soggy baby Eli into the bonus room to dry him off after his bath, I noticed a strange smell, but couldn't pinpoint it. Geo distracted me with toothache pain (we can't get him in to the dentist till Wednesday, poor little chickadee!), and when DH came in a little later, he said "what's burning?" I said I didn't know, that I had smelled something funny too but couldn't place it. He checked the stove, nothing there (rice cooking but was ok), then he went back into the bonus room and happened to glance at our space heater plug which had gotten half pulled out of the outlet and the outlet was starting to flair up. He caught it just in time, praise God! It's a scary thought about what a few more minutes could have done. All night, all day, Angels watching over me, my Lord... Whew!

It's potluck tomorrow at church so I made some guacamole out of some 33 cent avocados (can you tell I think that's a good price? LOL) that I had bought from Aldi last week sometime. They were lovely! Hope the guacamole does them justice.

Happy of the day: My friend Wendy came over for a visit, haven't seen her in awhile and it was nice to just stop what I was doing for awhile and chat. Got my house relatively straightened (swept, vacuumed, things put away, lots of clean folded clothes put away, sheets changed...) for Sabbath which is always a nice feeling. Learned a little more about CVS and started getting my plans together for next week's shopping (after getting the Sunday paper & coupon inserts of course, lol). Did a couple more rows on my shawl, knitting's always nice :)

Grr of the day: Seems like the kids were determined to hurt each other today, it was always something. First Gigi hauled off and clocked Geo in the head (accidentally of course) and he made a terrific scene about it too. Then later the 2 olders were playing and Gigi kept running into things and hurting herself (once she hit her head on a doorknob [still can't figure that one out] and other times she hurt her legs running into things in the living room).

I looked high and low for a newspaper recycling drop-off place, they were all over the place where we used to live, but, alas, none around here. I was hoping to score a few coupon booklets.

This morning I tried to get Eli to go back to sleep when he was done nursing (around 6:45 a.m.), but around 7:30 or so, a groggy DH came down and asked if Eli could just get up since he had no intention of sleeping. I said ok, but that always means I can't get as much done (folding clothes with a toddler who wants to "help?" You must be crazy!). Later he wanted to know why I hadn't emptied the dishwasher and I told him I was trying to stay as quiet as possible (knowing he can hear a pin drop in Chicago). He told me it wasn't a big deal, if it was a problem he would say something about it, that it's fine. So that part isn't actually a grr because it's cart blanche to do whatever I think needs doing in the morning. Kinda nice really. Thanks sweetie :)

New Schedule

2008-02-01T06:51:00.000-05:00

I've been trying out a new schedule and so far I really like it. It would work a lot better if my house was better sound insulated, but it's still good. In the past I stayed up way too late, upwards of 12 or 1 a.m. and then I'd sleep in as long as the kiddos would let me which would sometimes vary. Sometimes Eli would wake up at 7:30 and that would be it for the morning, no more sleeping. And this is on top of him waking me up several times during the night to nurse.

Well, now I'm going to bed as close to 10 p.m. as I can and waking up at 6:30 to nurse Eli, then putting him back in his bed for some more sleep and getting up, going to the other side of the house, folding any clothes that need folding (have to keep my tasks quiet as DH has bat ears and can apparently hear thru walls! and he works late into the night so I try to let him sleep in a little), eating my breakfast, maybe doing some filing or sorting in the bonus room... Then when the kids get up around 8:00 I can start in with school, reading Bible to them while they eat their breakfast, then after breakfast, on to nature study and math... The 2 days that I've actually been doing this have gone so well. I love not having to do school ALL DAY because we didn't get started till 9 or 10. I think Geo is more motivated to plug right along because he knows if we get school out of the way in the morning (to very early afternoon), then he has the rest of the day to "play" (play on the computer, ride his "new" bigger bike [18" wheels up from his 16" bike], crochet or knit, play piano, play with his sister...) and he really does like that. And I like it because I have the whole afternoon to do more housework (Flylady stuff, right now I am just babystepping tho, not quite flying yet, but soon!), knit, shop, whatever I feel like doing. It's great :)

Blog-a-day challenge

2008-01-31T19:57:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the Thing-a-Day challenge, and not feeling like I could actually create a new thing every day of the month but also feeling very bad at my lack of posting for the last eon, I've decided to take on a Blog-a-Day challenge and make myself blog at least once a day for the next month (hopefully I'll develop a good habit and it'll continue).

GRR #1 for the day: my yarn going to my Shetland Triangle shawl (a pretty example pic here) got broken by some little native so I spit-spliced it back together, ... all better :) (at least until GRR #2 happened and another little native or two pulled out my knitting needle out of half of the shawl and causing me to drop a stitch somewhere. Oh where oh where did that stitch go?)

Happy for the day: I learned about using CVS Extra Care Bucks to my advantage. I messed up by buying an extra toothbrush and toothpaste that didn't give me ECBs (because I didn't look at the offer closely enough, I'll keep better notes next time!), but I ended up spending a little over $14 for 12 rolls of TP, 2 tubes of toothpaste, 2 toothbrushes and some maxipads. I used two different CVS coupons that I found which came to $5 off my purchase, I got over $12 in ECBs which I can use toward my future purchases, and I have a gift pack coming in 8-10 weeks which will include 2 boxes of Cheerios, Colgate Total toothpaste, CVS brand pain reliever tabs, Benefiber, Execedrin Migrain sample, a pen and a pill sorter so I think all in all I did pretty good. I can't wait to get next month's sales flyer and start figuring out what goodies I can get next.

Geo went and picked up a free personal pan pizza for the Pizza Hut Book-It program. He read a whole book that wasn't part of school this last month. For February I'm going to have him read a few more books or a bigger book. We got started a little late in January and since it was the first month I tried that, I went a little easier on him.

He is really progressing in piano, he has started playing Away in a Manger and when it get's to the word Manger, he inserts a B flat in the left hand (no one showed him how) to make it sound nicer. He's really got an ear for it.

Eli has started calling me Baba. I say "say MMMMMM" and he goes "mmmmm." Then I go "ahhhhhh" and he says "ahhhhhh" and then I say "Mmmmmmaaaaaaaammmmaaaa" and he says "Mmmmm Baba!" He insists on calling me Baba even though he can make the sounds in Mama. What a funny monkey he is. He is also jumping like a frog, jumps pretty high, both feet off the ground, lands well, amazing.

Gigi is doing great with her cast. We have her bath routine downpat. I wash her hair in the sink (she lies on the counter and leans her head back into the sink). This way her cast is in no danger of getting wet. Then when her hair is dried off, I move her to the bath, wash her body while she keeps her arm raised so the cast doesn't get wet. I use a bucket to pour water over the soapy parts and quick as a flash, she's done and getting out again. This is not to say that I really look forward to the day that cast is taken off! But all in all she's doing very well. Hasn't slowed her down one bit. She has also start tinkering on the piano. She's learned how to play Jesus Loves Me on the black notes, and twinkle twinkle on the white notes. So it won't be long before she's rivaling Geo. She wants to learn how to read SO bad so she can get a free pizza too. I told her that I'd enroll her next year when she's in Kindergarten and she's excited about that.

Ouch!

2008-01-08T21:43:00.000-05:00

Our poor l'il girl broke her left arm (she's a lefty) yesterday. Geo decided it would be fun to try to rig up a teeter totter of sorts out of a 2x4 and a rope that he got caught up in a tree. In the process of trying to get on this very tottery seesaw, Gigi fell and tried to break her fall with her arm and the fall ended up breaking her arm. I hear the scream, looked out the window and took off for the door where I saw her running to the house. I could tell her arm just didn't look right (that was a sick feeling let me tell you!). I had her sit on the couch and rest her arm on a pillow, then I grabbed a bag of peas and rested it next to the arm. I called DH who was out shopping with his uncle (his uncle is visiting and doesn't have a way to get around) and he left everything immediately and came home. I had to try to keep the brothers away from her so they wouldn't bother or injure her. She was crying but not as bad as she had a couple of nights before when she suffered from a migraine (when it rains it pours). That was something else! But this time she was wanting Mommy so I sat with her and tried to comfort her. When DH got home, we tried to get things together for her trip to the ER (finding her SS #, gathering some snacks, water...). I made a splint out of cereal box cardboard and a kitchen towel (rolled it around her arm and secured with tape) to keep her arm as still as possible. DH took her to the ER and they waited for about 2 hours before being seen. A PA confirmed our suspicions that it was broken and ordered x-rays, then they splinted her arm with a temporary-sock-material-encased-fiberglass-2-piece-splint that they wrapped around her arm and taped up. It allows for swelling since the sides are open, but mostly keeps her arm stationary. She also has a little sling to hold the splint in. She was such a trouper, DH commented after they got home (around 9:30 pm, the fall happened at around 4:45 pm) that she was very brave and she said "Yes I am!" But today she said she was ready for her broken arm to fly out of her and she didn't want it any more and dissolved in tears when I told her it might be awhile before it's better. Poor little girl! That was this evening. All day tho she acted like everything was perfectly normal. I kept having to tell her not to do normal kid things (she wanted to ride her bike, kept running and fighting for supremacy on the chair in the kitchen that big brother had brought in to reach the sink, that sort of thing). And bathing her was a major challenge. I will be really glad when we get past these next few weeks and she's out of her hopefully pink cast (which she won't get till Monday).

Here's a pic of her x-ray:

My dad the doc said that it looked pretty good (bones being lined up rather than separated) and it probably wouldn't need setting per se, just mobilization (a cast) and time. The breaks occurred near, but thankfully didn't involve the growth plate.

Away in a manger

2007-12-01T20:08:00.001-05:00

This year I'm starting something new with the kids. I'm doing my version of Advent and I think it will help to put a little more of Christ back into our Christmas. We didn't get off to a great start tonight because I just downloaded a bunch of stuff to read about different ways to celebrate it last night and haven't found much time to read it yet, but so far I'm planning on having a growing knitted nativity scene (more to follow), a Jesse Tree with ornaments and verses talking about the ancestry of Jesus, candles (in an Advent wreath or not, not sure about that one yet), and the kids will have mangers that they will fill up with yarn or hay or something like that for each little kind deed that they do leading up to Christmas and a little doll in their mangers on Christmas morning. I'm very excited about it. Tonight I made the manger for the nativity set. Baby Jesus will be the last one knitted (unless I choose to have the wise men come some time later). I found a patter for a knitted nativity set (I'd LOVE to get my hands on this one or this one), but it didn't have a manger so I made one up. Basically what I did was:

Cast on 14, Starting with a knit row, st-st 7 rows
Row 8: Knit (makes a purl bump which will help when making up the manger)
Row 9: Cast on (knitted cast on) 6 stitches, knit across
Row 10: Purl
Row 11: Cast on 6 stitches, knit across
Row 12: St-st 6 rows
Row 18: Bind off 6 st, purl to the end
Row 19: Bind off 6 st. knit to end
Row 20: K
Row 21-27: starting with a knit row, st-st 7 rows
Row 28: K
Row 29-40: K
Bind off. Make a cardboard box (with no top) for support (something along this line):

Set down in manger, stuff lightly, sew up manger. Add crossbeam embellishments with yarn needle and extra yarn. Geo crocheted a few pieces of hay for me :)

Knitted Chicken Egg

2007-11-06T08:37:00.000-05:00

I'm knitting up a bunch of eggs for play food for the kids for Christmas and here's the pattern I came up with. I wanted a knit version of the cute Egg Babies (crochet). It's roughly based on the Curly Purly Egg pattern, but I found that that pattern knitted with worsted weight yarn on size 7s or 8s was giving me a goose egg size rather than chicken so I adjusted it slightly.

Cast on 9 stitches over 3 double pointed needles (3 st per needle), use a 4th needle to knit in the round.

Row 1: K
Row 2: K1, M1 (lifted bar increase), K2 (repeat for remaining 2 needles)
Row 3: K
Row 4: K1, M1, K1, M1 (around, will have 6 st per needle)
K in stocking stitch for 9 rows, begin decreases

Decrease Row 1: K1, K2tog*, K1, K2tog* (around)
Row 2-3: K
Row 4: K2tog* (around)
Cut yarn leaving a long tail, thread it onto a large yarn needle, weave through loops on needles, remove needles, stuff egg, pull thread snug and sew up tightly. Hide ends. Shape egg with needle.

* I think I might have invented an "invisible" decrease, or at least slightly less obvious decrease. Slip 1 knitwise, move that stitch back to the left needle (purlwise), knit 2 together thru back loops.

My journey into Ubuntu

2007-10-31T22:06:00.000-04:00

My dad turned me on to Ubuntu (operating system) the other day, was raving about how cool it was, so easy to install. Mom had been having problems with Windows on her computer so he decided that they didn't have anything to loose in trying it and installed it on her computer.

The more he talked about it, the more I was dying to try it too. I've always been smitten by the idea of trying an alternate OS, but was always way too scared, felt totally out of my element so never did anything about it. But this time (since I knew he was there to help hold my hands), I got brave and decided to give it a try. I installed version 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon (I think they might have released an "H" version in the last little bit, not sure).

I had to burn the .iso file to a disk, then boot to the disk to get it to start up. Ubuntu lets you test drive the OS (without making any changes to your hard drive) to see if you like it or not. I was mightily impressed with what I saw so after a little hesitation, I started the install. I got a little nervous when I got to the hard drive partitioning part, probably should have done a little more research because I did something wrong (I think I was supposed to do the Manual partitioning, but I didn't chose that) and now Windows doesn't recognize my hard drive (a 2nd drive, not with Windows installed on it, just a data disk). Windows thinks I need to format the drive. But Linux sees it just fine. Strange. I tried to format the drive twice in Windows but it said it couldn't both times. Luckily I had backed everything on that drive up the night before so it wasn't the end of the world.

Linux is a whole 'nother animal from Windows so I had to do a fair bit of asking Papa for help and searching around the net for directions on how to install programs (one of the major differences between Windows and Ubuntu) and other various commands I had to do from terminal (kind of like DOS prompt).

Ubuntu is awesome in that it detects almost everything that it should. I was immediately on the net, could see all my drives and all the files in them (even on the drive that Windows thinks is toast), my display was lovely...

I now don't remember everything I did, but I started figuring that if this was going to work for me, I'd have to be able to run certain Windows programs in Ubuntu (or therabouts). Dad told me about a commercial virtual machine program out there that would allow you to use Windows software (actually run a virtual Windows session while in Ubuntu), so I looked into it, installed the trial, wasn't too impressed.

I searched a little more and found a free gem of a VM program called VirtualBox. While it's not perfect and it does have it's little things here and there, it's so far working GREAT! I created a VM, installed Windows 2000 onto it (at first I was worried that when it said it had to format C: that it was actually going to wipe out my C drive, but not to worry, it just thinks the .iso image file "partitioned" for it is C drive, what it doesn't know won't hurt me), got it on the net (with a lot of help from DH), and I'm now in the process of Windows Update, then on to installing all the drivers I still might need, and then some of my most needed Windows software (Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Word, Excel & Publisher, (sorry OpenOffice and Gimp, you just didn't do it for me)). Then I will be in hog heaven with access to Windows and Linux software and a super little OS to run the Linux stuff on...

...my kids' computer is next, bwahahaha!

Pros:

Ease of install
Lovely desktop theme right out of the box
Some neat visual effects (lots actually, wrapped up in a thing called Compiz, and they are SO fun!)
Price - Free!
The project is alive, it's constantly being developed, updated, issues addressed
Lots of free software to chose from
Not a huge learning curve coming from Windows

Cons:

Firefox for Ubuntu doesn't have the "copy image" command
Can't get the Flash Player to work in Opera
Wish Windows programs would work without any extra stuff needed
Potentially not as bug-free as non-free OSs
Back everything up, anything could happen during install

Favorite Linux programs so far:
Gparted - graphical partition editor, again you burn the .iso to a disk, then boot to the disk to edit the partitions. I think I should have done this even before installing Ubuntu, maybe my drive wouldn't have confused poor Windows so badly.
VirtualBox - Run Windows from Linux, access both without needing to reboot. Another little plus about VBox is that Windows loads so bloomin' fast compared to the old way of actually having to reboot the whole computer. Windows restarts in it's little VM window so I don't have to stop what I'm doing in Ubuntu just to restart Windows. Nice.

Yarn Harvesting

2007-10-24T23:54:00.001-04:00

Yarn harvesting, sweater recycling, whatever you call it, it's great fun (at least for this nerd) and super thrifty. I have a thrift shop near my home that sells sweaters for $0.25 each on Thursdays (1/2 off day) and I can usually get 5 or 6 skeins worth of yarn from one sweater. I never measure the yardage, but you can make a pvc niddyy noddy or rig up any of several other ways to figure the yardage if you want.

The first thing to note is the seaming of the sweater you are looking at. There are two ways that sweaters are seamed, one is the material is knitted on a machine in large sheets, the pieces are cut/serged and serged together (like any other article of commercial made clothing). The other way is the sweater is knit on a machine, but with a precise pattern and one long piece of yarn is used (going back and forth up the sweater) and this long piece can be unraveled and wound into balls.

Here's what a serged seam (not useable for yarn harvesting) looks like:

And here's a chain stitched seam (what you want to look for):

The chain stitch is similar to the type of stitching that is done in the top of dog food bags that allows you (if you can find the tail) to rip the string right off the top of the bag and open it easily.

Here's a drawing of what to look for when getting ready to separate the pieces of your sweater. Find the side of the chain where the rounded part of the chain is closest to an edge. Slide a seam ripper under one of the chains and cut it (try not to nick the sweater yarn). You may have to loosen one or two more chains before you can start to pull the string from the other side of the seam and rip the whole seam out. Sometimes as your ripping it out, the chain might snag, just give a quick tug to both sides of the sweater and it should break free and you can continue ripping out the seam.

(more to come as I have time)

Make a center pull ball with a homemade Nostepinde

2007-10-23T22:13:00.001-04:00

What is a Nostepinde, you ask? Well, let me tell you all I know which is really just very limited reading on the internet. I believe they are traditional wooden yarn winders that have been around for eeons, and, while they might not be as fast as a ball winder, they are a lot cheeper and really get the job done very nicely. Here's how I use the Nostepinde method with a piece of PVC pipe.

Start by holding the tail of the yarn with your thumb and fingers so it won't run away on you.

Wrap a 2" (or so) section on one end of the pipe (any dowel shape would work actually so don't feel stuck if you don't have pvc, you probably have a wooden spoon, right?). You'll be wrapping the pipe toward you and winding away from you (clockwise). When you have it well covered (maybe 1-2 layers of yarn), start winding from bottom to top on more of a diagonal. I've made a very exaggerated first wind to show what I mean. At first it won't want to go that direction and your first few diagonal winds will be rather shallow, but keep at it and it will get better.

Keep winding and winding, turning the pipe/dowel/stick... toward you as you wrap. Eventually the ball will cover all the first couple of rows of yarn and if you wind it right, you end up with a ball that is flat on top and bottom and won't go running away on you. Tuck the tail in with a crochet hook and slide the ball off the pipe. Et voila, a wonderful, center-pull ball.

How to wind a center pull ball

2007-10-23T21:19:00.000-04:00

First take the tail of the yarn and hold it, tail pointing down, in your non-dominant hand (for me that's my left hand).

Start winding in a figure-8 motion between thumb and pointer finger while continuing to hold the tail with your last 3 fingers.

Pull the figure-8 off your fingers and fold it in half, then continue winding over it.

I keep my thumb over the place where the tail comes out from the ball so I don't wind over its escape route. See the little hole my thumb leaves?
As I'm winding, I turn the ball to the right and keep wrapping around. At first I'm almost going from south to north pole, but after there's a bit of a ball, I turn the ball a little off its axis and begin winding from the bottom right hand "corner" of the ball, (ha, is that an oxymoron?) to the top left of the ball which serves to make the ball a little more flat on top and bottom which is great for keeping the ball from rolling all over the place when it's finished being wound.

When I'm done, I tuck the tail in to the ball with a crochet hook. Notice the tail coming out of the center of my center pull ball.

See how nicely they stack (well if you tilt your head, lol)?

What the kids are getting (hope they don't read my blog!)

2007-10-18T09:10:00.001-04:00

Christmas is coming, the goose is overeating, and I'm feeling the crunch to get some toys made for the kiddos in time. Inspired by the adorable cuties at Little Cotton Rabbits, I thought I would try my hand at knitting some bunnies, bears and maybe monkeys, (not sure I'll get them figured out tho). Currently I'm working on the feet and trying to make my own pattern using short rows for the heels (like a sock with an extra large foot). I've done short rows before, but never for socks so I searched and searched for a tutorial that would explain it on a Knitting-for-dummies level and I found it. Jo from Microcrafty has a very nice, very understandable tutorial that held my hands quite nicely till I came up with a decent prototype, tho probably not my final one, have some more tweaking to do. But at least now I have a clue.

For Eli: Lots and lots of knitted (and crochet) balls, balls and more balls. Also maybe a bear or a monkey.
For Geo: Knitted finger puppets, and a knitted bear, probably some balls too
For Gigi: A knitted backpack, knitted doll, knitted rabbit, finish the quilt I started 2 years ago (!).

The list will probably grow, at least for things I'd like to make, we'll see if I have time.

Back in the saddle again

2007-10-01T21:54:00.001-04:00

I'm so glad to be back to school this week. We were off last week due to moving the last little bits out of our old house. I think Geo was ready to be back to school too, he really did really well, flew thru math which is rather unusual for him, was no more distracted than usual by his sister and baby brother. The weather was wonderful this morning, crisp, lovely. We spent awhile outside, observing and trying to draw nature. It was so nice, I may just move school out of doors while the weather permits.

My l'il boy is growing up

2007-10-01T08:40:00.000-04:00

Eli will soon be 17 months old and what a fun little guy he is. He loves to play, has to be right in the middle of whatever is going on, he's inquisitive, curious, imitative ("talks" on the cell phone, tries to "take something apart" with a screwdriver [with us right there supervising of course], tries to turn on the stove burners, glad there's a trick to it!, tries to turn on the stereo, tries to use my computer mouse move the pointer around, tries to feed himself (messy!), is starting to try to go down stairs like a big boy, tries to play guitar...), spins around in circles until he's too dizzy to stand, he's a climber, he's fearless (kind of a bad combo)...

His favorite or at least his most used vocalization is "Dah!" like the first part of Daddy. He uses it for "Daddy," "look," "Mommy," "hey, where is everybody?"... He has kind of a low sounding voice for a baby and his plaintive "Daaahhh" is such a funny, sweet sound.

He isn't saying much at all (bah for ball, Dah), but he signs: baby, bird, dog, cat, down, more, please, eat/food, bread, banana, milk, shoes, and he meows like a cat :) That one's kind of funny. It sounds like "wow," with the word slightly drug out and the mouth wide open for the vowel part of the word. It does sound rather like a cat, but much lower than our cat's dainty and high-pitched "meow." Signs I keep trying to get him to learn are: Mommy, up, thank you, tree, diaper, bath, nice/clean, good, water, cereal, ball...

In mourning

2007-10-01T08:38:00.000-04:00

Well, it's official (I think), my old faithful palm pilot is kaput, no more. She had been refusing to charge properly and now she won't even power up. Sigh, sniff. We had a good run, old friend, may you rest in peace.

My Christmas List

2007-09-02T20:30:00.000-04:00

Ha, I know it's way early and what business do I have in posting my Christmas List, but there's one particular thing that's eating away at me, I'm trying to figure out how I can beg, rob or steal (no, not really! just joking, lol) to get my hands on one. I'm thinking the days are numbered for my faithful, but old, Palm M515. The charging base seems to have a bad connection in it so sometimes it doesn't want to sync or charge the battery. Also, there's not enough space on it for the things I want to do with it (lots of ebooks for school, for example) and I'd really like one with more memory (mine only has about 15 MB, and the 1GB card that I had extra to go with my other Palm that was stolen sadly doesn't work in the m515). So I'm looking at the latest, greatest Palm offering, the T|X. Pretty snazzy with 100MB of useable space, a much faster processor, and a bigger screen area. There is some concern that not all of my programs will run on it, but I have already determined that my favorite palm database, Handyshopper, will run on it so I'm good. About the only other thing I use it for is books for school and Bible+ (guess I'd better check on that one). They are going for under $200 new/lightly used on Ebay so I need ideas of what I can do to come up with that much money (well, a little more because I'd also like a keyboard so that I can type narrations during school). Any ideas?

I make silhouettes so if anyone wants any (kids, grandkids?), I'd be happy to do some for a small (to generous) donation . Oh, and calligraphy, I've done that for pay before, maybe a saying that is special to your family, nicely penned and framed to hang in your home? I also make straw stars (Christmas ornaments), I can knit, I learned how to do stitching cards so I could make some of those to sell...

I posted an ad on Craigslist to type handwritten documents or do any other data entry needed, we'll see if I get any nibbles from that. I've also applied to a few other data entry companies, but haven't heard back from any of them yet.

I probably just need to have a yard sale, which we plan on doing in October when the weather starts to get bearable. If I could come up with something that would even just pay me an extra $50 a week, that would be great, at least it wouldn't be too long before I could get my next "baby," just having a hard time figuring out what that might be. Oh, I do have some earrings and knitting stitch markers I could sell if anyone wanted anything like that. I think they're rather pretty.

I had thought about designing and putting together homeschooling and home organization forms and selling those either as a download or as a book and I still may do that, but that would take a good bit of time so have to figure out when I'd do that.

I think I've developed a nice system for putting my Ambleside Online schedule on my Palm into Handyshopper format so that I can check off items as a I do them and I can see in detail what I'm supposed to be doing in each time slot. That makes life very easy for me. Wonder if that would be worth anything? Probably not, but hey, it might be worth a try. I'm really just brainstorming here.

Sigh :)

Let's see, is there anything else on my "Christmas List" or am I really just rabid for a new Palm?

Um, there are some school supplies I'd like to get (Nature notebooks, a few books that I can't download for free from the web, glue, pens, colored pencils, math manipulatives, paper, ink for the printer, supplies for other handicrafts down the road, downloads of the music we need for Composer Study)...
I would like another camera as I'm not sure how long ours will last, but for now, it's probably one of those things we'll have to save up for. At least they are coming down in price (since we bought ours 6 years ago), and we'll likely be able to afford many more megapixels when we do get another one (ours is only 3 megapixels).

Please pardon my blubbering. :)

Another use for ramen noodles

2007-09-02T20:23:00.000-04:00

My dear hubby happened upon this lovely way of gussying up the ever budget friendly, but very basic, ramen noodles. Here's what he does:

Take 2 stalks of celery (cut in chunks), 2 carrots (peeled, cut up), 1/2 to 1 onion, and he's either used fresh asparagus on one occasion or mushrooms on a couple of others (I also made it with just celery, carrots and onion and used Buddha's Delight gluten & vege/mushroom mix and it turned out decent too). Cook these up with some salt or seasoning salt till the carrots are nice and soft. Blend everything in the blender to make a nice "gravy." Add one of those small cans (I'm guessing 8-10 oz.) of Chinese Braised Gluten or Mock Duck or some such thing (I think you can get them in the Asian section of the supermarket), mix with about 3 packages of cooked, drained, ramen noodles (minus the seasoning packets), and there you have it, a yummy meal (cheap too), and sure to please all eating.

Meal Planning

2007-08-28T17:13:00.000-04:00

I've never been great about this and in the past would find myself about 11:55 am scratching my head wondering what was for lunch. Day after day that gets to be really old fast. So I gathered up some of my/our favorite recipes that were also really simple and easy to make (and pretty inexpensive too) and threw together a menu plan. Fwiw, here is my 8 week cyclical menu plan (I'll try to post recipes for some of these when I get time in the future (lol):

Week 1

Sunday: Spaghetti (make bread)
Monday: Biscuits & Egg &/or mushroom gravy
Tuesday: Egg salad sandwiches, Soup (Broccoli, potato, or tomato)
Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
Thursday: Haystacks (taco salad/tacos/tostadas/burritos)
Friday: Mac n Cheese ( like the Tofu Rarebit recipe), Green beans, Corn on the cobb (or frozen corn)
Sabbath: Special K (or Cottage Cheese) Loaf, Green Bean Salad (or just green beans and/or salad), Mashed Potatoes

Week 2

Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
Monday: Shepherd's/Pot Pie, Mashed P&G
Tuesday: Egg & Tomato, Sandwiches, (Soak beans for tomorrow)
Wednesday: Black Beans & Rice
Thursday: Curry (Egg, potato/chickpea or lentil...) & rice, Chipaties
Friday: Muffins, fruit & soup (usually a supper, not sure what to do for lunch, leftovers?)
Sabbath: Potato/Tomato Galette

Week 3

Sunday: Spaghetti, Make Bread
Monday: Tater tot casserole
Tuesday: Egg salad sandwiches
Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
Thursday: Haystacks
Friday: Mac n "Cheese", (make extra cheese), Asparagus, (Soak beans)
Sabbath: Conch Stew, Rice & Beans

Week 4

Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
Monday: Shepherd's/Pot Pie, Mashed P&G
Tuesday: Tomato Soup, Grilled "Cheese" Sandwiches (Cheese leftover from Mac n Cheese), (Soak beans)
Wednesday: Cornbread & chili, Salad
Thursday: Chicken a la king, Broccoli, Salad (tomatoes, lettuce, mayo/catsup /soymilk dressing)
Friday: Lunch: Perogies w/ "Nice Spaghetti Sauce," Peas & Corn

Supper: Muffins, fruit & soup

Sabbath: Special K Loaf, Green Bean Salad, Mashed Potatoes

Week 5

Sunday: Spaghetti, Make Bread
Monday: Something with rice (make extra rice)
Tuesday: Egg salad, sandwiches
Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
Thursday: Fried Rice (add broccoli, scrambled eggs, onions, slivered carrots, frozen peas...)
Friday: Mac n Cheese, Brussels Sprouts
Sabbath: Pierogies

Week 6

Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
Monday: Biscuits & Egg gravy
Tuesday: Egg & Tomato Sandwiches, Soak beans
Wednesday: Black Beans & Rice
Thursday: Haystacks
Friday: Supper: Baked Rice Pudding
Sabbath: 1 Dish Meal, Salad, Bread (rolls?)

Week 7

Sunday: Spaghetti, Make Bread
Monday: Tater tot casserole
Tuesday: Egg salad sandwiches
Wednesday: Patties (Gluten, potato/egg, rice /potato/egg/tofu...)
Thursday: Chicken a la king, Broccoli
Friday: Mac n Cheese, (make extra cheese), Spinach
Sabbath: Special K Loaf, Green Bean Salad, Mashed Potatoes

Week 8

Sunday: Pizza, Make Bread
Monday: Shepherd's/Pot Pie, Mashed P&G
Tuesday: Tomato Soup, Grilled "Cheese" Sandwiches (Cheese leftover from Mac n Cheese)
Wednesday: Cornbread & chili, Salad
Thursday: Fried Rice
Friday: Supper: Muffins, fruit & soup
Sabbath: Pierogies

Alternatives: Alternatives:

Spanish Veggie Rice
Tofu Stuffed Shells & Sauce
Sloppy Joes
Polenta
Mexican Lentils & Rice
Taco Style Lentils & Rice
Tomato Rice Pilaf
Meatloaf

Soup Ideas:

Lentil Soup
Potato Soup
Tomato Soup
ABC Soup
Cream of Broccoli Soup
Vegetable Soup with Dumplings

Once a Month Treat:

Banana Bread
Dilly Bread
Cream of Wheat pudding
Fruit soup (breakfast)

Homeschool Progress

2007-08-26T08:46:00.001-04:00

We will be going into our fourth week of homeschool tomorrow and so far so good (-ish). I seeing some improvement so that's at least good. I decided on AmblesideOnline (a la Charlotte Mason [CM]) after much reading and determining that it's at least as good as everything else out there and it's FREE! I'm also adding some of the books from Old Fashioned Education (OFE, another great site, also free!). Charlotte Mason was a strong believer in "Living Books" (engaging and interesting books on a wide variety of subjects written by one author who is passionate about their subject and draws the reader in as opposed to a committee of writers as for a dryly written textbook) and "Narration" (telling back what the student heard or read), in addition to Nature Study (another huge component and beginning science in the early grades), Bible, Art, Music, Copywork (handwriting), Dictation for grammar and spelling in middle grades, Poetry, History, Foreign Language, Geography, Literature, Handicrafts (learning to make useful things, things with a purpose or beautiful things to be given as gifts as opposed to useless arts and crafts that just sit around collecting dust). Classes are kept short so as to not bore the student causing them to "check out" and stop paying attention. School is usually wrapped up by early afternoon leaving the afternoon for free play, chores, free reading, child-led learning if they want, art, music, ...

My schedule as it currently stands:

Bible/Character Training: MW we read an OT story, TTh an NT one, and Friday we review both stories. Will start adding in memorizing family rules, Sabbath School memory verses and discussing the importance of developing a good character and manners, etc.
Nature Study: MTW Nature walk, Observation, Nature Journal (when I can get one put together for Geo), and read about Mammals. Thursday, read from one of the Among the (Forest, Meadow, Farmyard, Night...) People books. Friday, either a science DVD from the library or a science experiment from a book we have.
Math: We are doing the Math Enhancement Programme from the UK, Year 1, but I'd like to get caught up to Year 2 so will probably go a little faster than the plan laid out at OFE, or at least we'll go year round and eventually get caught up that way.
Drawing (Drawing with Children by Mona Brooke, we'll also be watching some of Jan Brett's drawing videos)/Artist (Leonardo da Vinci) /Composer (Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov) /Folk Song (Go Get the Ax) /Hymn (Children of the Heavenly Father) /Handicraft things (for this term we're going to be working on/perfecting knitting. Right now Geo is getting pretty adept at finger knitting) will be scattered throughout the week.
Literature: Scheduled reading from assigned books MWF with Free Reading (from grade appropriate living books not assigned for this year's reading) on TTh
Phonics: M-Th (McGuffey's Reader & Speller, & Word Mastery per OFE schedule)
Sign Language: M-Th, Friday we review all known signs or at least quite a few.
World History: M
American History: TW
Book of Centuries: TF Collect entries from week's readings, compile with pics and blurbs from the web, print out and glue in Book of Centuries.
Geography/Social Studies: TTh Paddle-to-the-Sea (a story about a little model canoe that makes a journey through the great lakes region from just north of Lake Superior all the way to the Atlantic Ocean), F Seven Little Sisters... from OFE schedule (I'm guessing it features little "sisters" from each of the seven continents)
Mapping: We map things on Google Maps whenever we read of a notable place.
Copywork & Memory work: M-F

I'm very excited about the coming year. I'm scouring every CM resource I can find on the net so I can fully grasp her philosophy of education. I need some help getting Geo to pay attention and narrate back to me what he heard (if he even listened). I may play around with shortening lesson times and bringing back the lesson later in the morning if needed. I think I will be adding lapbooking to our narrating in that I want to turn each narration into a little book to go into a larger lapbook (maybe 1 a month or 1 a quarter?). Need to save my pennies so I can get a little recorder so that Geo can narrate into it and I can type it out later (or use DH's laptop for dictating narrations).

I have been able to get 85% of the books required free from the net as most of them are now in the public domain. The rest of them I plan to get from the library or substitute with a suitable free alternative (Project Gutenberg and Baldwin Online are my friends :). I've put the free books I can get onto my Palm Pilot so I can just pretty much pick up and go and I think that's pretty neat.

Splintzell Sprouts

2007-08-26T08:42:00.000-04:00

Gigi calls Brussels' Sprouts Splintzell Sprouts and I think it's the most adorable thing (she loves them btw) and I don't want to forget it so I'm blogging about it here.

Oh, also, while I'm jotting things down (and was very remiss in not getting the exact days), Eli cut his incisors about a month ago (yeah, all of them at once), and his molars came in about a month before that.

I'm a speller, I can spell ([What about] Bob's in my head saying "I'm a sailor, I can sail")

2007-08-26T08:33:00.000-04:00

A couple of double letter words tried to trip me up but in the end I was victorious, bwahahaha
Give it a try, it's short and kinda fun :)

I Scored a 100%!

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