A long, busy day

So we spent half the day out and about.  Well, it felt like it!  After getting a few things done in the morning we needed to go out shopping.  The last of the month is the time to stock up.  This month was going to be a bit different.  We've had a situation arise here that is going to take a lot of our attention to address.  Because of that I was trying to think of ways to make myself more available to address any issues that come up (with the children that is).  Preparing food is a major business in this household.  And although I truly want to be eating high amounts of fresh fruit and veggies, and soak all our grains and what not, that takes a LOT of my time.  Time that I will not have this coming month, and maybe even into the next month.  So I sat down the other day and made up the menu for the whole month of July.  I made all of our dinners and most of our breakfasts things that could be frozen.  So we will have two or three bulk cooking and freezing days coming up so that all my cooking time can be done now, to save me that time during the rest of the month.  This made for a major shopping trip, shopping for the whole month in one day. 

We started out by stopping at the gas station to fill the tank.  Then to the nearest grocery store to grab some muffins and milk, for our breakfast, that we ate in the van.  A quick run to the bank for our grocery money.  Then off to the sporting store for new sneakers for me.  It's been a couple of years and I have been getting sore shins and knees when I am walking with my current shoes.  We then needed to pick up the book that Isa will be doing a group study with some other teens.  We ordered it on ebay but got a notice that it was out of stock and wouldn't be in stock till July 20th, close to the end of the entire study!  The funny thing was that when we got home today, the book was in the mail!  Oh, well, Jeremiah and I had already decided that we wanted another copy around the house anyways.  Thankfully a few of these stores were in close proximity.  Our next stop was BJ's.  We filled our cart to the brim.  I made sure to bring a big cooler and grab some ice so that our cold things would stay cold for the remainder of our errands.  After BJ's it was off to get a haircut for Moira and I.  I'm not exactly happy with my haircut.  I had wanted them to do the same thing they had done with Isa's hair a few months ago.  The stylist that cut her hair is no longer at this salon.  Bummer.  So when I explained what I wanted I was told that they couldn't do that.  Seriously, I was in no mood to try to find another place that could and got a cut that was sort of like what I wanted.  But it's not what I really wanted, and I have to resign myself to the fact that I am not meant to get a haircut that I really want.  It's a long story, but me and haircuts just don't mix.  Ok, after that it was on to Walmart.  We filled two carts to overflowing.  At the checkout I had Isa grab another cart to make refilling them a bit easier.  Our van was full, full, full.  It was way past lunch at this point and I was truly amazed at how all the kids were handling themselves.  So off to get some lunch before we went home.  I had everyone eat quickly as we had defrosting food in the van!  By then I was ready for a nap.  And I have to say that the prospect that we had to *unload* all of this food *and* put it away was a wee bit overwhelming to me.  Thankfully Isa's brain was working still and she suggested that we back up the van to the back gate.  That would save us all from going up and down our 12 steps in the front of the house.  Good thinking!  It took a while to unload and put everything away, but we got it done.  I think when I looked at the clock it was 5:10 when it was all said and done. 

I am very thankful that my brain was working the day before and I had managed to think of buying some frozen pizzas to cook up for dinner on our shopping day, knowing that I would be wiped out.  I almost forgot them, but as we were walking out of Walmart I realized I forgot our dinner!  The lines were all long and I was afraid that *I* was going to have a meltdown, ha, ha!  But I survived!  After all of this I was sooooo tired.  I laid on the couch for about 30 minutes.  But I can't say it was very relaxing.  The boys had been sitting all day, in the van, in the stroller, or in a cart. So they were active, active, active.  That meant Jonah in my face, or Jed crawling up over me, or Jonah crawling on me, or a sword fight gone haywire....you get the idea.  Then Jed really wanted me, and only me, to read him a book.  This took care of the crawling all over me, but didn't help that my eyes were as heavy as one ton lead weights.  Finally, someone asked the dreaded question.....when's dinner?  Dinner?  Are you serious?  Surely you jest.  Even the thought of popping pizza into the oven was overwhelming.  I had one of the girls prep the stove and unwrap the pizzas.  So really I just had to pop it in and set the time on the timer.  I gained back some momentum and was able to carry on for the rest of the evening.  It helped that the kids went out and jumped on the trampoline a bit.  But playing outside makes for some dirty kids.  So I needed to wash up the boys before putting them to bed.  And now, now, I am heaving a sigh of relief that all is done and I can relax a bit before I hit the hay. 

Phew!

Tomorrow is Jed's fourth birthday!!!  He's going to be four!!!  Unbelievable.  The girls made up his birthday sign.  Let's just say that future birthday sign designs will need to be preapproved :-)  Lots of dinosaurs and swords, oh and dragons too.  Don't forget the stick man people Isa says.  Jed has really been into things dying.  He will take one of his toy cars, make it crash and then proudly say to me, "Mama, a die." Or, "Mama, dead."  Then he will tell me they had ouchies and then miraculously they rise up from the dead.  He obviously doesn't comprehend the meaning of 'dead'.  Although.... Isa found a dead mouse today.  Hey, at least it was dead!  Anyways, she had a string wrapped around its tail so that she could 'escort' said mouse to the trash.  Upon seeing the dead mouse, Jed started crying and pointing at the mouse saying, "a die, a die!"  Poor guy.  Anyways, all this to then say the girls put a few dead guys on his birthday sign.  I know that sounds morbid, but it's quite funny how they drew the dead guys.  Ok, I'm probably sounding totally insane, I guess I will have to show you when I get a picture of it.  Anyways, you can see why all future designs will need my approval!  Ha, ha! 

Well, it is getting late, and I really need to get some sleep.  I still need to tell you all about the book Isa is reading and the authors' site.  Isa really loves this book, and that is a good thing :-)  Maybe tomorrow, if I have the time. 

Finally, an updated video of Jed's speech

Don't have a lot of time to write, but I wanted to get this video up of Jed 'reading' a book with me.

Chicken happenings

Yeah, I'm sure you are all very interested in our chickens :-)  But I just had to share this story.  We've had most of the expected chicken experiences.  Raising them from chicks, cleaning out their bedding, learning why there is a reason for the bird sayings that exist in our language, having our dogs kill the chickens (a few), chicken droppings on the porch, being chased by a rooster and there are a few more I am sure.  One that I am very glad that has not happened is for a wild animal to get in and take more than a few out.  I guess our dogs figured they'd give us that experience themselves.  There was one other chicken experience that I was hoping we would never see, but we did the other day.  I can be very thankful for a couple of things.  One for size and the other for nonvenomous.....yes we are talking about a snake!  The girls went out to milk the goats, feed the animals, and then pick up the eggs on the way in.  Except they didn't even get to the milking the goat part because as they were heading into the goat side of the barn one of them looked over into the chicken area to see a very large black snake hanging out in one of the nests eating an egg!  How dare he!  Or she, I certainly wasn't going to figure that one out.  The girls came running in all excited (not in fear) telling me how there was a 20 foot snake in the chicken barn.  Twenty feet did you say? I do think we need to talk about measurement at some point in math :-)  So what to do, what to do.  I made Jeremiah promise me before we moved south that he would be the one to kill ALL bugs.  Trust me to this day I have been known to throw something over a bug and wait till he gets home to deal with it.  But by golly who knew I needed to throw in snakes to the promise!  Granted I'm not afraid of snakes like I am of bugs, but snakes have *teeth* ya know.  So I called Jeremiah and he told me to contain the snake and that he was heading home (it was close to the end of the work day anyways).  So I went to get something to contain him in and headed out to the barn.  On the way out I saw the girls coming in....hmmm not good.  They told me that the snake got under the flooring in the storage room.  Ugh!  So we stood guard for about an hour to see if he/she would come out.  But no luck.  Where did it go?  Maybe it lives under there.  I am sure we will see it again sometime.  I was thankful that is was so large because I have heard stories of people reaching their hands into the chickens nest only to be greeted by the slithering beasts.  You couldn't miss seeing this fellow 50 feet away.  I wasn't able to get a picture of it, but Isabella did on her camera.  When she uploads it and posts it to her blog I'll let all of you who are just dying to see the creature know :-)

Besides chickens we made huge progress in the moving furniture department.  We got the boys room in and the computer room out, having to divide the furniture between other rooms.  I am very glad that is done.  Although I wasn't the one to move any of the furniture!  But there was a whole LOT of cleaning to be done.  Who knew there was a 'black' hole under one of the desks that sucked in a lot of the things we have been looking for!  I will make sure to take pictures at some point to show the differences.  But we still have a few more things to clean up. 

That's basically it, not much else that we've been doing.  I decided to make sure to stay home for a few days in a row to see if what I was experiencing was really what I thought it was.  So far it appears to be so.  I don't have a bunch of time to go into the nitty gritty of it all, but in short wireless activity has an effect on homeopathic remedies, and not for the better.  Wireless radiation antidotes the remedies making them ineffective.  I couldn't figure out why I had a whole week of absolutely no heart symptoms, but then this past week I started having small bouts of it.  Until I realized that the small bouts came after being out of the house.  Thankfully our house gets poor reception.  We used to think this was such a burden, but now I realize that it is a huge blessing.  I'm glad that the bouts I've had have been minimal, but still not pleasant.  So I made an effort to stay home the past few days....and no heart symptoms.  It will be interesting to see how I feel after church tomorrow as they run wireless.  Last week I had to lay down after church because of my heart pounding. 

Well I must be going.  I will be sharing a great site that I was told about.  Actually I was told about a book and when I looked it up I found the authors' website.  A must read for anyone with teens or upcoming teens.  Seriously you must check it out.  But I'll write more on that later.

What's been keeping me busy

So besides the norm...dishes, cooking, cleaning, diaper changes, bathing dirty little children, more cleaning, etc.  I have been busy making up some speech therapy games for Jedidiah.  These are not my ideas!  My brain doesn't work at the current moment :-)  So I take my ideas from people whose brains are working.  A lot of these are in the finishing stages.  Some are already done and we have been using.  We are hoping to buy one or two speech therapy books coming up soon.  One happens to be the book that his therapist uses.  However, being specialized books, they are not cheap (think 40-50 dollars per book!).  One of my ideas below came from a book that we had borrowed from one of his speech therapists in the past.  Again a 40 dollar book, but I made one up myself for much less. 



Can you guess what these are?  Anyone?  Look below if you can't figure it out:




They are paint chips from the local hardware store.  Read, "free".  Ha! The funny thing was that the girls kept asking me if we were allowed to take this many.  Well, there are no signs saying there was a limit.  I was hoping to go in and grab a bunch and head out unnoticed.  But something tells me that a woman with six children does not go unnoticed.  Not to mention I had a couple little ones excitedly (loudly) tell me about their finds!  Oh well.  So how are we going to use paint chips for Jed's speech you ask?  Keep reading.




Oops, one more picture of paint chips first.




Ah, there we go.  I got a pack of perforated letters, in the scrapbook section at Walmart, to add to the cards.  I was hoping to get the fancy colorful ones, but they didn't have any.  Oh well.  I wasn't about to travel way out of my way to the arts and craft store for some. These will have to do.  So these cards will be placed on here:




Here they are on the foam board. 



One set of the above paint chips were all textured.  Before I went in the store to grab my stash, I thought about getting some fine sand paper to make some letters for Jed to trace with his fingers.  It is important for him to learn all of this through as many senses as possible.  I was worried though that the sand paper might be too much texture for him to deal with.  But these textured paint cards are perfect, the texture without the scratch. 




Those ABCs will be put on paint chip cards as well (just got that done actually).  He can then trace them with his finger and say the sounds at the same time.  Then he can match them to the ABCs on the foam board.  Many children with apraxia have difficulty in reading and writing.  At first I was a bit concerned about this, but then realized that one of the reasons that 'they' are concerned for the children being behind has more to do with these children being in the school system.  So now I am not concerned anymore.  But I still realize that Jed may need more help than our other children with reading and writing and I am hoping with these added games we can give him a good start.




These are the hand motions that go along with the sounds for the letters. This came from his therapist. It is important that we use the same motions at home as he does in therapy.  I have to say at first I was skeptical that these hand motions were really going to help in any way, but they DO!  I'm not sure if it just gets him to focus on what he is supposed to be saying, or what, but when he keeps omitting a sound adding in the hand cue helps him get it out.




These big foam letters will be glued to wooden dowels.  I plan on using them to in many ways.  One being sticking them in the ground outside and asking him to find the 'b' sound. Then he would have to run around to find it.  Getting in some gross motor along with the speech.




These are some of the other games I have done.  One is a turtle in a pond game. He has to match the turtles with the same vowel sound.  The other is a paper doll game. We can work on some of the words he has been working on in speech (off, on, his, hers, names of clothing etc.).  The sheets at the top are his word cards from his therapist.



This one is hard to make out.  They are used with the book, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?"  I don't actually have the book, but we use the words, which just repeat for each page.  I also added in photos of all of us in our family since Jedidiah has a hard time saying our names.




This is a simplified version of "Going on a Bear Hunt".  With each page there are sound effects that you are to make, that I thought Jed would have a lot of fun with.




And last is the word flip book that I am making.  There are three of each card.  With apraxia children have a hard time with sequencing.  So you first start with the first set of cards.  Saying 'bee', 'bye'. 'bow', etc.  The beginning letters are the first letters that they say to start with as they are the easiest for kids with apraxia to say.  Then after they master being able to say the first set of cards, you add in the second set.  First starting with 'bee', 'bee'.  Then you work on two different cards, 'bee', 'bow'.  Then as they progress you add in the third set.




Here would be an example of using all three decks of cards.  The beginning sounds are 'b','d', 'm', 'n', 't', 'h' and maybe one or two more that I can't think of right now.

Phew, that's a lot of paper and laminating being used!  So that is what I have been up to in my *free* time. 



Here are two cute pictures of the boys taken pretty recently.  Feeling ill I've not been using my camera much at all.  Unfortunately for Jed the camera or his positioning makes it look like he's pretty filled out, but that is not the case.  Although with the discovery of being able to make our own custard ice cream that might change!!  I haven't made homemade ice cream in a couple of years.  We pulled out our ice cream maker and I finally got around to making some.  It's easy to make, but you have to let the custard cool before freezing it.  I would always be ready to make it come evening, not giving us the time to make it up.  I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but my oh, my it tasted just like our favorite ice cream store's custard.  It was divine.  And Jed thought so as well and wanted to eat more and more and more! 



This has been the boys favorite hide out, in our entertainment center.  They pull up a chair to get up in there and take turns closing the doors on themselves.  Too funny. 

Ok, off to work I go.  Well not really.  We have lunch then we plan on heading out to the children's museum, which we haven't been to since we got our membership!  With a high 90 degree day, what better way to spend the hot afternoon (not that we aren't living in AC luxury anyways, but still, too hot to be outside).  Then I am hoping to get some of the items off my 'to-do list' tackled.  We'll see though. Right now I am having good days and bad days.  Or good mornings and bad afternoons, and I can never tell which it will be until the end of the day :-)  Soon, very soon I should be past the bad days altogether and I *can't wait*!!!  Have a blessed day.

Busy

I've not found time to get anything 'real' up on here.  I did make a video the other day of Jed talking....and it looks like our camera's card needs to be reformatted because I couldn't get it to upload to our computer.  Ugh!  I will see if Jeremiah can do something with it before I make another one. 

Today we went to a free movie.  Regal movie theaters are having their summer kid movie festival.  Each Tuesday and Wednesday at 10am they are showing two free movies.  You have the choice of a rated G or rated PG movie.  I found out about it just an hour before we needed to leave.  I wasn't going to go, but then the kids were highly motivated to get ready quick, so we went for it.  It was neat, and by golly cheap :-)  Save the gas money to get there, but still worth it.  So check out the website to see what theaters in your area are participating.  Go Here!

After the movie I decided to take the children to the airport observation park.  The movie theater was close by and it was a treat to go. Hot, hot, hot out, but everyone had fun.  The boys were awed!  I'm not sure if Jonah knew what to make of it all.  He was kind of stunned into silence.  After that we drove home.  Nothing like driving in 95 degree heat.....very humid heat at that, with no AC.  At these temps and humidity the blowing wind from the windows does nothing to cool you off.  I just keep reminding them and me that we still have it far better than Laura and Mary (Ingalls) did :-) 

I have been feeling much better these days, as far as the cardiovascular issues go.  I still have some nausea, not too bad, but  I;m really looking forward top feeling normal again.  Unfortunately for me eating does help with the nausea.  With not being able to exercise and the extra eating....lets just say I'm a bit plumper!  It's time to lace up and get moving (slowly to be sure).  Right now I seem to have a good day then two bad days, then a good day or two then a bad day.  For now that means we are just barely keeping up with things, but it will be getting better.  I just wish I had a bit more time before I got sick to make up those frozen dinner meals, as that would have saved us a ton of money on our grocery bill!  Yikes!  But these things happen, and like my sister and I were discussing, we need to just pick up the pieces and move on.  Keep moving in the right direction.  Talking about picking up pieces we also discussed about being the first generation to homeschool, and eat healthy, etc.  She is asking people for their input on what saw them through being the first in their families to tackle new territory.  We find it hard to keep on the path, we are always slipping.  Granted we always get back up, but how we would love to keep on the path.  So please check out her post and offer any advice you may have.

That's it for now.  Hoping to get that video up in the near future.

An Awesome Give Away!!!

All you Charlotte Mason fans make sure to head on over to Modest Mom's give away!  She is giving away a 4 DVD set, the all day Charlotte Mason seminar!  I wasn't able to attend the conference that is held here in NC this year, and this would be the next best thing.  As most of you know we are embarking on this new endeavor in homeschooling by switching from all textbooks to the Charlotte Mason approach.  I'm excited about it.  These DVD's would come in handy as we set off on our new adventure.  Don't delay!  Go here to enter:
Charlotte Mason seminar give away

The ultrasound said....

It's just one wee little babe in there :-)  So no 'good' reason for my very nasty symptoms.  I've been taking a remedy from our kinesiologist, and it seems like I am feeling better in the mornings, but the rest of the day is still yuck.  I suppose that is better than all day!  However, one of the not nice symptoms I am having seems to be a lack of a digestive enzyme.  This makes eating a normal size meal feel like I just pigged out on a huge Thanksgiving meal, with extra dessert as well!  And I feel that way for at least 5 hours!  That makes it very difficult to eat my next meal.  But eat I must or my blood sugar plummets.  Ugh.  So I was told I would have to go totally fat free for three days (eating only veggies and fruits) and going dairy free for two weeks.  However with my insane food cravings, there is no way I can possibly do that.  So I decided it was time to call our homeopathic doctor.  Although both systems of 'medicine' work on some of the same premises, there are differences.  I had my appointment with him this afternoon.  He said I should be feeling significantly better in three weeks.  Trust me, I'll be counting down the days!  It appears that there isn't anything wrong with my heart, just something messing with my cardiovascular system in general.  So he says I am in no danger, although my symptoms can be quite scary at times.  Not to mention that it has affected every aspect of my life.  Seriously.  Putting in a ponytail never left me breathless and my heart pounding before...ever!  Nor did I ever have to lay down to rest after unloading only half of the dishwasher. But alas, that has been my life for the past four weeks. 

The whole clan got to see our cute little blob :-)  This was the first time that we had an u.s. this early along.  The earliest before this was at 18 weeks, when you can see the arms, legs, face, etc.  So I made sure to prep the girls so they wouldn't be freaked out!  I told them it would look like a blob, or a large jelly bean.  And that is just what our babe looked like, how cute.

I wish I had more to write about, but seriously, there hasn't been much going on around here due to my 'couch rest'.  We were able to get to a picnic on Monday, and the day before we had spent two hours at the lake.  Once I start feeling better we will need to brush off some laziness that has infiltrated the ranks :-) When mom goes down, little people try to see what they can get away with.  Little Mr. Jonah was ever so surprised to see that I was feeling better today!  Ha, ha!  Now I catch him looking back to see if I am looking before he dives into trouble.  Hey, we're headed in the right direction now. 

I would post the u.s. picture, but I don't know where it is at the moment.  I'm ever so organized you know.....please don't laugh so hard.  I am hoping to be up to taking pictures again soon.  I did get a few of my children being really, totally silly.  They are on my facebook, and well, I'm too lazy to post them here too!  

Our week, and the official announcement

Sarah, no I have not read that book, but I will most certainly be checking into it!  Thank you for the suggestion.  I am so excited to be embarking on this new to us way of homeschooling.  It is also a little scary!  We printed out the  list of books that we need to get and are looking into ways that we will be able to take the online books with us on the go.  Ambleside Online does a great job in linking you to all the books on the booklist that are found on the web for free.  That really, really cuts down on the cost of things.  However, I am not always at the computer to do school.  So we are looking into other options at this point to make it more portable.

Thank you Lisa for playing my patterns game!!!!  You were right about the patterns and what they mean!  Yeah!  I wish I had a prize to send you :-)  In case any of you missed it, or were not interested in 'playing', I made up a little game in order to announce the news that we are expecting our seventh child.  However, my sister thinks it will be our seventh AND eighth children.  Hey, Trac, just a heads up, I increased my water intake a bunch and I am not having such a hard time with the blood volume or sickness issues.  So maybe I was just dehydrated!  Of course that still does not explain why my body is trying to increase it's blood volume this soon, but dehydration does indeed affect it.  I think I will have to post a poll to see if anyone else thinks we are having twins.  Just for the fun of it.  I am totally convinced that I am only having one baby boy this time around :-)  But I suppose I could humor my sister!  Ha, Ha!!  Love you bunches my favoritest sister in the whole world :-)  She assures me she is going to hound me about this twin thing, so I have to get her back some how. 

This little peanut is proving to be persistent in making it's presence known :-)  It started only two or so days after we found out I was expecting.  I wasn't expecting any pregnancy symptoms for at the very least another three weeks.  This has made tackling my to do list very much impossible.  Between being green, or my heart pounding due to my blood volume trying to increase (much sooner than its supposed to), or that I fall flat on my face by 3 PM every day....well it makes things difficult.  Drinking a bunch of water is helping some.  I'm not so green, and my heart isn't pounding when I stand, sit, raise my arms, lay down, or basically do anything else!  I'm still tired though.  The due date is January 7th, 2011.  That still gives us some wriggle room for this baby to fall into the even year pattern we were in.  It's a lot easier to remember that way. I am indeed wondering what the Lord has planned for the extended gap between this baby and Jonah.  It was very apparent that the Lord was ever so gracious in giving us a larger gap between Moira and Flannery.  As my longer time readers may remember, Flannery was a very difficult baby, and toddler, well for that matter child!  Ha! So that has made me a bit nervous to wonder why the bigger gap.....of course if could be for no reason at all, only time will tell.  We are all very excited about the new baby coming.  The girls are thrilled and haven't stopped talking about the new babe to be.  I already had my to do list swirling around in my head, but when I saw the blue line pop up (and it popped up really quick!) I made sure to put those thoughts onto paper.  I have a renewed sense of urgency to get these things done, way before baby is due.  I would really like to get the boys into their own room very soon as I know there will be an adjustment period.  Plus, I really don't want to be doing a lot of work right before the baby comes.  I would like those few weeks before to be relaxing.  Ok, I just about laughed out loud after writing that, but it would be nice wouldn't it?

I just found out the other day that Jed will not be having speech therapy during the summer!!  Yeah! Phew!  I was really looking forward to a break for a spell.  Having speech mid day just breaks into our 'groove'.  And I find it hard to get back on track when we get back home.  His therapist will be sending us some packets of materials to review with him over the summer, so we will still be working on speech, just not having to leave home to do so.  His last day of speech for this 'school year' is June 9th, so just a couple more weeks. 

This week was a doozy!  Between the normal stuff (speech, church during the week), we also had to get the van fixed, which took longer than expected.  One of our goats almost died, had to give both of them medicine which means we have to now wait to be able to consume their milk.  I got one milking out of them before they got the medicine and I am very excited to say that their milk tastes great!  I am so relieved.  Some goats will have funky tasting milk, or their milk will taste goaty when put into things.  I was able to use it in some recipes with no notice.  And the girls were thrilled to be able to have free reign of drinking milk...although very short lived!  But by next Tuesday we should be up and running with drinkable milk.  We also had the privilege of having some visitors yesterday.  I made homemade pizza and some cookie bars.  She made a fruit salad and a green salad (that came from her garden).  Scrumptious!!  The extreme hunger that I usually get early in pregnancy has not hit, but my taste buds are on in high gear.  The simplest things taste divine.  I find that so funny.  It's happened pretty much with all my pregnancies and I find it so amazing that our normal, no frills, baked potato now tastes gourmet!  I have to be careful not to over eat because food tastes SOOOO good.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my Saturday.  I obviously wanted to knock off some things from my to do list, but I woke up in slow motion mode.  I need to find that switch, so that I can control it :-)  I just kind of puttered around.  I did go out to clean out the van.  I was thankful that we had leftovers for lunch.  And now it is 3 o'clock and my eyes have been growing heavy.  So after a little rest I do hope I am able to get on the ball.  The oldest three girls have just left to go to a friends house, leaving us with the three youngest.  It is always amusing that years ago when we only had three it seems soooo hard.  But now, when we are left with only three children, I feel like I have a vacation.  How time and number of children can change your perspective! 

I haven't really taken any new pictures, and I still haven't been able to get up the pictures that I told you all I would.  Hopefully some day.  In the mean time enjoy your weekend.  Maybe I'll be back with a poll.

Big changes in store...

So I briefly wrote that we had some changes in store.  At the end of each school year I like to take an inventory of how our year went.  Are we still heading in the direction that we had planned or hoped for?  This year I was a bit troubled by my answers.  At the same time I happened to read some articles that brought me back to my original ideas of homeschool and lifestyle that I had when Isabella was but a mere thought and up through toddler hood.  As it stands right now we have children who, when they graduate, will be able to read, spell half way decent and crunch some numbers (this is only educationally speaking, although it is hard to separate education from the rest of life).  That is not what my goals were when we began this homeschooling venture.  I wanted children who would turn out to be thinkers, not followers, and would look outside the box when it came to life.  And right now we are not headed in that direction.  Right now we have a bunch of followers, who think like everyone else around them.  Yes, I know they are still young, but we are not fostering their independent thinking by our educational methods or means.  Our society is filled with non-thinkers, who don't look past the end of their noses when it comes to the future.  The decisions they make are only made for their comfort in the here and now.  I don't want my children to be like that.  I want them to have a voice and use it to wake people up to the reality that society is crumbling around them.  Phew, that is some challenge!  And so with those realizations I set about to rethink this thing we call homeschool. 

I do not make any claims that my way is the best way, far from it!!!  Homeschooling is so much more than what curriculum you choose to use.  One hundred families could all be using the same curriculum, but their homeschool day would each look totally different because of how they *use* that curriculum.  So the changes I talk about here are only what I feel will put my family on the path we believe that God has for us.  For starters we plan on getting rid of a lot of *stuff*.  The children's computer time and movies being two of them.  Although we will see how they do with a once a month movie night.  It has become overly apparent that the only things going through my childrens' heads are foolish, and silly replays of movies or of comic books that they have read.  Oh, so put 'twaddle' books on the list of things to go as well.  Seriously, not one meaningful thought comes out of my childrens' mouths, and I am not exaggerating.  What goes in, is what comes out.  And so it will be my job to find the good, and meaningful things to put in.  We will be going with the Charlotte Mason approach to schooling.  But I see it more than just a curriculum, I see it as a lifestyle as well. 

Part of that lifestyle will be simplicity and beauty.  My house is a mess.....ALL the time.  Now we do get it cleaned up at times, and can even keep it clean for a little while.  But even when it is clean, there is no beauty.  This part has been hard for me to wrestle with.  On the one hand I think of the people in this world that have nothing.  I look at our family and I know we have SOOOOO very, very much.  But with that abundance has come the lack of thankfulness and the lack of taking responsibility for what we have.  Does that make any sense?  I mean if you have 20 coloring books, who cares if five get messed up because you spilled something on them?  A simple, simple illustration, but I hope you see my point.  My children take everything for granted.  They do not take care of their belongings or other peoples belongings (like library books).  So I plan on doing some major, major paring down.  My goal is to bring order, beauty and peace to our household by making our home free of the over abundance.  At the same time I am hoping to add beauty by getting around to painting. Also by getting rid of what I call our "junk furniture".  And if not get rid of it, then paint it in hopes that it adds some beauty instead of looking like we picked it up off the side of the road :-)  I know that I can not think straight in the middle of chaos.  Which means that I have not done much thinking over these past twelve years :-)  How can I expect my children to be able to think in the midst of clutter.

This is going to mean a LOT of work...a lot of work.  I made up a list of what needs to be done, and it's quite long!  The good thing is that we just finished up the school year. I plan on taking the rest of the month off to tackle our list.  Jed will still have speech though, and depending on how much that interferes with the work that needs to be done than we may take off June as well.  I plan on schooling year round, so plans are to get us up and running by the end of June at the latest.  How our days will run is still in the planning stage.  We are not sure yet about which book list/s we will be going with.  We may take the 'some of this and some of that approach' or go with something like Sonlight.  Although I love that Sonlight gives you everything you need in one bundle, you PAY for it!  So we may just gather a few books at a time. 

The girls are not exactly thrilled with all of the changes.  I can't blame them.  It is so much easier on the brain to be handed your thoughts (movies, computer games), or easier to read 'junk' books, which only require you to be able to read - no thinking required.  I suppose their little minds might actually physically hurt for a bit, as they work out those brain muscles :-)  But my goal is that they actually start thinking about what they read, about what they see, and about what they do.  I am hoping that I will spend more time focusing on our relationships than on 'school'.  I also am hoping that with simplifying we will have more time to do other things than clean all day.  What those other things will be I am not certain at this point.  I am hoping that we will tackle some gardening, and put some time into making our outside surroundings more useful and beautiful.  I am hoping that the girls will find more time to pursue their desires.  For example I know Isabella would really like to train her dog in agility.  We don't have the money to do things like horse riding lessons, or piano lessons, nor do we have things we could barter/trade to do so.  But possibly with our new found time we could start to learn on our own (piano) or learn to make/do something that we could barter lessons for.  If they really want it, they can learn to work for it (with our help of course).  I should look into 4-H, as I really think our girls would love it.  The possibilities are many, we just need to find the ones that the girls are interested in and that we can handle financially.

I think I will put up my 'to do list' on the side of my blog.  If only for accountability!  Plus I won't lose my list, which I am very prone to doing.  Once I get an idea of how I would like our days to run I'll put that up.  And I'll write about more specifics once they happen (like what other types of things I get rid of or add to our life).  Before I go I'd love to pass along a post on homeschooling that helped to solidify some of my thoughts.  I think some of you may really enjoy the series that this group of women are doing.  I'll link you to one post, and at the beginning of her post will be links to the other ladies blogs.  So far they have had two posts each on the topic of homeschool. The first was about their philosophy on homeschooling and this past week was on which curriculum they use.  I really love Raising Olives thoughts on this, and I would recommend that you read her 'background' posts that she links to.  One of the other women in the group told us about how her teenage daughters wanted to take some college courses in history.  The professor was so impressed with their ability to *think* that he then invited them to take a few more classes he was teaching....for FREE!  And these girls had never written a paper before.  Again, it's getting our children thinking and analyzing what they read/hear/see/do that I think is the difference.  So if you are not worn out reading my seemingly never ending post do stop by at Raising Olives.

I will try once more to upload my pictures in the hopefully near future.  I know you are all dying to see me in a sack race with my kids :-)

What a day!

We spent the day at an old fashioned picnic.  They had a bunch of fun old time games to play.  And play we did!  It was sooooo hot out.  We were all worn out by the late afternoon.  When we got home, the van nap the boys had was enough to re-energize them, so that they wanted to go right outside when we got home.  Um, no, I don't think so.....maybe when the temps go down a bit.  Jonah was not taking no for an answer, which resulted in much crying.  But there was no way on earth I was going to take that child outside! 

I uploaded a bunch of pictures from the past few weeks.  Hopefully they will load the way I entered them.  Blogger has updated some of their features.  One of which is queuing up photos, letting you just keep adding, and adding to your list. The only thing is that it still takes forever to load!  Oh well.  So as I wait for my pictures to load I would like to play a little game.  A pattern game.  See if you can tell me what the patterns are and make sure to fill in the last one.

Pattern Game:
Pattern 1:
1.  Monday, even, ~8:30 AM
2.  Monday, even, ~8:30 PM
3.  Wednesday, even, ~1:30 AM
4.  Wednesday, even, ~1:30 PM
5.  Saturday, odd, ~6:30 PM
6.  Saturday, odd, ~6:30 AM

Pattern 2:
medium
small
large
medium
small
large

Pattern 3:
summer
summer
winter
spring
summer
summer
___________ (fill in blank)

Leave me a comment to tell me what you think these patterns mean.

Meanwhile, my photos are still not done.

Alrighty then....it took FOREVER to (supposedly) load a ton of photos only to find out one got on my page.  I will have to try again later.  After two attempts at loading pictures I'm in no mood to try for a third.  The pictures you see above, which I also had no inclination of trying to rearrange, are of Saoirse's birthday.  And yes,what you see for cake, is indeed, real sugar laden stuff.  We fell off the bandwagon there for a bit.  I just spent two weeks on the phase one of the Maker's Diet (no sugar....at all) and I'm just coming out of that.  I am hoping that will give me the incentive to stay on track.  It is very hard to keep everyone on track when we are bombarded with junk on all sides.  Sigh.  But I will keep trying, more so now than ever as we have a very big reason we need to remain healthy this coming winter.  In order for us to do that we need to keep our diet healthy all year long.  OK, off to tend to the boys. 

Dynovox...

So I opened our BCBS mail today to find out that they did indeed deny our request for the Dynavox.  It was expected.  So I made a couple of phone calls, because I didn't remember where we were to go from here.  The Dynavox rep told me that his company got the news last week and they already put in a request for a review to the "people higher up" in BCBS.  We are supposed to hear back from them next week.  Mr. Rep said that they have built some relationships with the higher up people, so we may get our "yes" from them and be able to proceed to getting the device.  If not, then we have to file a formal appeal.  Although they have had good success from their appeals, it just means more waiting.  And waiting is hard when Jed will not continue talking to me, once he's got my attention by calling out 'ma', until I look directly at him.  That includes while we are traveling, while I'm in the middle of tending to something in the oven, etc.  He does that because he knows that I can understand him better when I am looking at him, seeing any additional signs he makes to go along with his words.  The thing is he won't stop calling my name until I look at him, even if I am driving the van!  I try to explain, every single time, that when mommy is driving I can't look back at him or we could crash.  Doesn't matter.  I'm hoping that the Dynavox will help in those (and many, many other) situations.

I have some big posts coming up, but we've been in the middle of year end testing here, so they have been on the back burner.  Lots of changes planned to take place.  Once the testing is out of the way (we have two girls that need to take one more part tomorrow morning, yes on a Saturday...we're so cruel that way :-)) and I make some headway in getting my house back in order, I will write.  Until then have a great weekend, and if you think of it, say a quick prayer that Jed's Dynavox comes through.

Busy, busy week/weekend...

Oh, my I have a lot to write about.  Not sure how much of it I will be able to get on here, it is late, but I find it ever so much easier to type with two hands than with one, or with a toddler crawling all over me :-) 

I had separate posts running around in my head for days, but now they need to get all stuffed into one.  I was really bumming that I did not bring my camera with me this past Friday when we ran errands.  We needed to get out to do our big shopping.  I planned on leaving early, but our departure was delayed because we realized that our dog, Kayla, was not able to walk!  It's a long story, but she had a broken leg as a puppy that went unnoticed and it healed wrong.  Due to her having to walk at an odd angle she has developed arthritis.  And apparently she was having a very, very bad day!  The vet gave her a cortisone shot and it took about 24 hours to really make a difference, but she is up and walking. She had never had any episodes like this before, but the vet told us to expect it to be more of a regular occurrence.  So after Jeremiah came home to take the dog to the vet, the rest of us, minus Isabella, left for the stores.  It may sound odd but I have been hoping to take some pictures of the gas station we frequent.  Like I said, odd, I know.  But nowadays with these new gas stations with the videos playing at every pump I just have to take a bunch of pictures of our rural gas station.  They do not even have electronic pumps...Gasp!!  You actually have to walk inside to pay!  And unless they know you, you have to prepay!  I am glad to say we go there often enough, and our van is recognizable enough that I don't have to prepay.  Yes, that makes me feel very special (I'm just kidding about that).  Anyways, I wanted to snap some shots of the old place.  Well there I am on Friday pumping my gas when one of the guys who runs the place drives up in a really, really old tractor to get gas!!!  I kid you not!  Talk about the small town feeling! I really need to keep my camera on hand for things like that.

Saoirse had her birthday on Wednesday.  I will make a separate post for that, because that's just what I do for birthdays :-)

Oh, yes, on Friday after all of our shopping we had come home and rushed to eat a late lunch.  The girls were invited to be a part of a book club!  How neat is that?  The three older girls were meeting with the other girls and the rest of the gang hung out in the backyard at the host's house and played with their younger children.  Their first book they will be reading will be, "Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm".  And it's a good thing for us that we have that book already, and it was on my list of books to read for the girls! 

Come Friday evening Isabella had her first game of the season end soccer tournament.  The did very well and won their first game.  They did not do so well in the fall, and they had improved for the spring season.  But I must say I was suprised at how well they were playing.  I could tell a huge difference in their game!  We only stayed for a very short time due to a certain child having some issues.  Oh well.  I knew she was going to have two other games the next day so I just packed the gang back up and left for home.  I was very glad that I did a lot of food prep on Friday night because that made Saturday go so much easier!  I got to Isabella's second game late (oh, what a surprise!).  And by golly they won that game as well!  Both games they won, 3-0.  We had a good hour before their last game was scheduled so I decided to take the five younger kiddos with me to Walmart to grab some cold food product....hey, it was hot out!  Well we never made it there.  Not half way there there was a police check point, where they were checking for your drivers license. And wouldn't you know it, I didn't have it on me!!!  We started taking out cash to pay for our groceries. So the beginning of each month I go to the bank to do so.  I didn't have my check book on me so I gave the teller my atm card and my ID.  She gave it back to me in the little white cash envelope, which I then put into our special grocery pouch.  And I forgot to take it out!  So that took a while as he was looking up my info.  He told me I had to go to the police station within two weeks to show it them.  I told him I lived only five minutes away and could I just run home and get it?  He said yes, and that is what I did.  But that meant we didn't get to Walmart, AND we were late for Isa's last game!  UGH!  It was a close game, but they won 2-1.  That meant that they made the final!  WOW. The championship game was a tie, 1-1.  All the kids were so worn out.  Not to mention that one of Isa's team mates had broken his collar bone and arm in the previous game!  The officials were figuring out what the rules were for a tie...did they have a sudden death?, OT? or what?  Well, as they were figuring it out their teammate with the broken bones, came walking on the field, straight from the hospital to try to catch the end of the game.  Just then the officals called over the coaches and had a little talk, and the next thing I know our coach is jumping up and down.  He runs over to tell our team that they won the championship.  Come to find out their rules state that if there is a tie, the team that had the least goals scored against them during the tournament wins!  And that was our team.  How very neat for Isabella.  The coaches took all the kids out for pizza.  I had the privalege of transporting the whole team in my van!  At the end, the coaches handed out their trophies (all the players get them just for playing in the league).  It was really neat that Moira got one as well as she had played in the fall season.  It came as a surprise to her to hear  her name get called.  We went home and I got the younger kids washed up and they all zonked out promptly!!!! I'm zonked as well! 

I know there were other things I wanted to talk about, but it will have to wait till another day.  As a matter of fact I plan on posting the soccer pictures later as well.  Blogger takes forever to load pictures.  And uploading just a few could take up to a half hour! So soccer pictures and birthday post coming soon :-)

lots-o-pictures

So here are the rest of my weekend in pictures.  I also took a lot at soccer practice, well it was actually the soccer practice that wasn't.  We signed the girls up late and hence we are not on the coaches email...and apparently I didn't get the memo that practice was canceled.  Thankfully it was a beautiful evening and I spent some time taking pictures of the kids playing.

Isa and Saoirse with some chickens.  The chickens all have names.  And the girls know which chicken is which!  They all look the same to me.  Saoirse is holding one of our chicks, which is growing up quick.



Hey, my picture got put off center...got to love blogger.  Here the chickens are playing 'baby'.  I truly never knew how funny chickens + kids were!

Jonah LOVES, LOVES, ***LOVES*** the baby animals.  I think they are pretty fond of him too :-)


Lightening getting so big.  He's such a cutie.

More silly chickens.  I will someday have to get the list of names for all the chickens.  I know a few of them are, Mrs. Blockhead, Miss Blueberry, Teensy, Tiny, Biter.....Hey, I didn't name any of them!

Jonah decided to play with the hose for a bit.  I'm smart enough to stand far away...ask me how I got so smart.



Oh, look more chickens!  Hey we only have 19 to choose from.

The goats and Jonah get along really fine.  They have something in common....the love of food!  Here's Lily giving Jonah a kiss.  They were disappointed when they realized there was no food in the bin (we just moved the food out to other bins).

Jonah is a hard worker.  He was out there moving things around to where he thought they ought to go.

Here are some tops for those pails.

Um, Jed, you have something in your hair...

Well, yes that might get it out...

Not too happy with the outcome!  Actually he had no clue he had hay in his hair.  He just loves, LOVES, ***LOVES*** playing with water.  The nozzle got stuck and he got drenched!

yours truly.

Jed and I having a chat...and getting our picture taken.


Saoirse just being Miss Photogenic.

Take a close look, and you'll see the baby goat has his tongue sticking out!  He's giving her a smooch!

More baby goat kisses, although they make Flannery giggle.

As soon as we got to soccer practice tonight Moira plopped herself on some nice green grass and resumed her reading, that she was in the middle of during the ride over.  Scratch that, she's been in the middle of reading all day!

Saoirse and the boys played with some toys I brought along.

Jonah being a cutie pie.

Jonah being....um....weird? 

Saoirse picking long grass to hide her plastic animals.  It became a game of her hiding them and I was supposed to find them.

A boy and his tractor.

Being silly!

Saoirse and Jed found a lovely dead beetle.  Here is Jed checking it out.  Both boys are afraid of bugs.  Poor Jonah looses it if he sees one, or if he sees a spider web! 

Afraid of bugs, me, Mr. tuough guy?

All smiles.

Hiding her animals on me.

"You can't find them, Mom."

Moira, reading, and reading.  Here is a before and after I did in Photoshop Elements. 

More reading!

She did take a break, however, to give her little brother a hand.  (Of course I had to tell her he needed helping, because she was a bit absorbed in her book :-))

He needed help with his shoe falling off.

Back to our regularly scheduled program of stick finding.

Jed, looking like a big boy these days.