This week is going to be fun for us. I decided over the weekend that we needed to change how we do our lessons, so we start this week with a new weekly schedule. Monday was our housework and errands day (good thing too, as I had an appointment yesterday afternoon and needed to go to the grocery store in the morning) and then we do lessons on Tuesday through Friday. Saturday mornings will be electives or catch-up time, as Scott typically works on Saturday mornings (this week he isn't though, so he is taking the girls to Home Depot for the monthly workshop and then maybe to the park if weather is good, that will give me time to grade papers and get some things planned out, plus go grocery shopping for next week if I want to or even take a nap).
Since today is Tuesday, I thought I would go ahead and share what we are going to be studying this week in our lessons. I'm really excited about this week, knowing that we're going to have some real structure to our days.
Our big study this week is on the state of Alabama. I have a Scholastic book that I'm going to use for this, and my "Lapbook Any State" set from Hands of a Child ready to go. Each morning I'm printing off 4 copies of the day's minibooks so they can do them, and we're going to glue them onto cardstock in binders. We are going to do all 50 states this way. I have all the basics of the state obviously planned, but one really fun thing we're going to do is spending Friday learning about Helen Keller. She was born in Alabama, and I thought it would be a great little addition. I have a couple books on her for the lesson (1 picture book to read to the younger kids plus two biographies for the older girls to read and fill out a report sheet on her) and I found a braille book at the library that I checked out so I can show them firsthand how the blind read. We're also going to try being blind and deaf by using ear plugs and a blindfold then navigating our home and doing simple things like eating a snack. I want this to really come alive for the girls so they can see her struggles and what she overcame in her lifetime. Later we'll revisit Helen Keller and spend some real time learning all about her, but this week is just an introduction to her for the kids.
In math, the girls are working on lapbooks for math facts. Missa and Liddy are working on multiplication facts, as they are both in Math-U-See Gamma, while Kimmy and Jordan are doing addition facts to go with Alpha and Beta. Once they finish the lapbooks this week, I plan to have the girls do a timed math drill sheet for their facts each morning before they review and practice their facts with their lapbooks daily. By the end of the next few weeks, hopefully the girls will have their facts memorized and can move on to the next one (division or subtraction).
And through all this, I'm going to be one-handed so the girls have to be my helper. I tried last week to teach Missa how to do a proper push-up and managed to hurt my left shoulder. Having it in a sling wouldn't be such an issue if I wasn't left-handed, but we're working with it and making things happen. Missa gets to do more cooking while I supervise, and a lot of the chores are not getting done as I would prefer because I have to get the kids helping a lot more. Hopefully it heals quickly, as the compromise in chores is driving me batty.
Then there is next week. Next week Scott is on vacation so he'll be home all day. We're going to take a break from formal lessons and focus instead on the more fun stuff. We have our annual portfolio review this week, and we plan to go to the Columbus Zoo and get our annual membership (the membership costs almost as much as one visit with a family our size, and this year we're doing the one that admits 2 guests as well so I'll be able to use it a lot more since I'm not comfortable taking all 5 myself during the week, maybe my wonderful cousin will come a couple times with us). We also have plans to get the gardens going here, all the flowers planted (hopefully!) and the garden dug for my veggies. I told Scott that if he thinks we need to wait for next year to plant so that this year we can prep the garden that I'm ok with it, but I'd really rather get something planted (peppers and tomatoes at a minimum, we go through sooooo many of both those things!). We are really looking forward to the opportunity to spend an entire week working together as a family.
Well, that about sums up my next two weeks, so I'll see you later. I'll post on Friday with a summary of how this week went, complete with pictures hopefully, and then next week I'll try to post some pictures of our trip to the zoo and working in the gardens and stuff like that. I'm just hoping that I don't spend all of next week in a sling to go with it, I hate being pretty much useless like I am right now.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
homeschooling as a lifestyle
This is something I've been thinking about lately, as I've been looking up regulations in other states just in case I get my way and we can move to a more homeschool-friendly state in the future. Ohio isn't too bad with the regulation, but I'd really rather have even more flexibility with the non-reporting states simply so that I don't spend 2-3 weeks stressing and preparing for portfolio review (which I'm in the midst of now, our review is in a little over 3 weeks). Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between living life and educating your child, especially when you tend to fall more on the unschooling end of the spectrum like we do. Everyday activities carry many educational opportunities, such as making a meal or preparing our front garden for this year's flowers. It also means that we start early with learning, introducing our little ones to counting, colors, shapes, and books as soon as possible.
This is a perfect example of early introduction of educational things. Preston will be 14 months old this week, and right after he woke up from his nap I decided to get out a beautiful picture book to share with him. This book is "Noah's Ark" and is a 1978 Caldecott Medal winner, and it happens to have NO words beyond the first couple pages. It fully illustrates the story of the Great Flood, and is one of those books that the kids love, His sisters have spent MANY hours looking at the pictures and retelling the story to each other, imaginary companions, or favorite toys. Today I got the joy of introducing Preston to this lovely book. We only made it through about 3 pages of pictures before he lost interest and slapped me in the face to get the book away, but that 1 minute was perfect for him. In time he will develop the same love of books and reading that the rest of our family has. This book will be the one we use daily with him in story time for the rest of this month, and possibly all of next month as well, before we move to simple story books (think beginning readers and board books).
Reading to Preston is a critical step in his speech development, but it does so much more. A book like this especially, with beautiful detailed illustrations, develops his attention span, increases vocabulary, introduces different animals to him, and can also be used with motor development as he begins to try turning pages and pointing at different animals in the illustrations while I tell the story. We got this book when Missa was in kindergarten and I purchased Sonlight's core P3/4 in a desperate attempt to get her interested in books (no kid can resist great picture books).
With the oldest kids, as I sat with Preston reading, they were working in the front flower garden to start getting it ready for this year's planting. Scott had to dig to find our sewage cleanout access last month, and the first thing the girls did was fill in the holes he dug to find it before they started removing debris and cutting down the ornamental grass for this year's growth. There is a lot left to do still, but we'll get it done this weekend hopefully so that we can start planting soon. I actually am hoping to expand the garden out front this year to the driveway loop in one area over the next few years, so there will be a lot of work ahead for us this year with digging and preparing the land, on top of placing decorative border bricks and a path to the loop from the front walk beside the garden area. It is going to be lovely once I finish it, if we can get it really going.
All these things are so full of educational opportunities. There is the physical activity in digging the new garden, research to select plants that complement each other and will grow well in our garden locations, patterns that may be created with border stones, even math in figuring out how much stone we need and the area of the garden for topsoil and how many of each plant and the spacing.
Like I said, homeschooling isn't just a method for my family. It is truly a lifestyle, and the lines can often blur between education and living life. That makes it very difficult at times to create an adequate portfolio for reporting to our district. Thankfully, I have found a wonderful lady who does assessments for families like mine. She understands the value in these rich opportunities at living and learning, and doesn't require just workbooks and things like that to show what we've done. Sure, I have a couple lapbooks and the girls' math workbooks to show that we've done academics, but I also have many pictures and great experiences to share that tell so much more of the bigger picture of our learning lifestyle.
This is a perfect example of early introduction of educational things. Preston will be 14 months old this week, and right after he woke up from his nap I decided to get out a beautiful picture book to share with him. This book is "Noah's Ark" and is a 1978 Caldecott Medal winner, and it happens to have NO words beyond the first couple pages. It fully illustrates the story of the Great Flood, and is one of those books that the kids love, His sisters have spent MANY hours looking at the pictures and retelling the story to each other, imaginary companions, or favorite toys. Today I got the joy of introducing Preston to this lovely book. We only made it through about 3 pages of pictures before he lost interest and slapped me in the face to get the book away, but that 1 minute was perfect for him. In time he will develop the same love of books and reading that the rest of our family has. This book will be the one we use daily with him in story time for the rest of this month, and possibly all of next month as well, before we move to simple story books (think beginning readers and board books).
Reading to Preston is a critical step in his speech development, but it does so much more. A book like this especially, with beautiful detailed illustrations, develops his attention span, increases vocabulary, introduces different animals to him, and can also be used with motor development as he begins to try turning pages and pointing at different animals in the illustrations while I tell the story. We got this book when Missa was in kindergarten and I purchased Sonlight's core P3/4 in a desperate attempt to get her interested in books (no kid can resist great picture books).
With the oldest kids, as I sat with Preston reading, they were working in the front flower garden to start getting it ready for this year's planting. Scott had to dig to find our sewage cleanout access last month, and the first thing the girls did was fill in the holes he dug to find it before they started removing debris and cutting down the ornamental grass for this year's growth. There is a lot left to do still, but we'll get it done this weekend hopefully so that we can start planting soon. I actually am hoping to expand the garden out front this year to the driveway loop in one area over the next few years, so there will be a lot of work ahead for us this year with digging and preparing the land, on top of placing decorative border bricks and a path to the loop from the front walk beside the garden area. It is going to be lovely once I finish it, if we can get it really going.
All these things are so full of educational opportunities. There is the physical activity in digging the new garden, research to select plants that complement each other and will grow well in our garden locations, patterns that may be created with border stones, even math in figuring out how much stone we need and the area of the garden for topsoil and how many of each plant and the spacing.
Like I said, homeschooling isn't just a method for my family. It is truly a lifestyle, and the lines can often blur between education and living life. That makes it very difficult at times to create an adequate portfolio for reporting to our district. Thankfully, I have found a wonderful lady who does assessments for families like mine. She understands the value in these rich opportunities at living and learning, and doesn't require just workbooks and things like that to show what we've done. Sure, I have a couple lapbooks and the girls' math workbooks to show that we've done academics, but I also have many pictures and great experiences to share that tell so much more of the bigger picture of our learning lifestyle.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
homemade convenience foods
With a bigger than typical family, I like convenience foods. They are a super simple way to provide a meal or snack to my kids when we are running a little too fast in our lives, or if I'm sick and can't keep up as well. Unfortunately, our budget doesn't allow for the purchase of these foods too often, and neither does our dietary limitations (I have a dairy allergy, Missa is red dye allergic, Liddy has Celiac, and Kimmy is soy sensitive and Celiac). So I have the joy of doing a LOT of cooking from scratch to make good meals that the whole family can eat.
As you can imagine, with so many limits I decided to cook to the children's allergies for the main meals, then if the meal has dairy in it I'll make a dairy free alternative for me. With having a soy sensitive child (she was soy allergic, now she's just intolerant but we are still avoiding it 100% whenever possible in hopes that she may outgrow the allergy since it is getting less severe) it makes things a lot more interesting to work around the Celiac, but it is totally possible to do so.
In case you aren't familiar with Celiac, it is a disorder that can be pretty nasty. What it boils down to is that Liddy and Kimmy can't have any wheat, rye, or barley products at all, or any other products that have gluten in them. Oats are still iffy, as technically they do have small amounts of gluten, but they don't seem to have any effect on the girls so we do oatmeal and granola once in a while. When a Celiac eats something with gluten, the gluten damages the villi in the intestinal tract. Those little villi do not repair themselves very easily, and are how your body absorbs nutrients from the food you eat. Too much damage can be deadly if left unchecked for too long. The only way to repair the villi is a STRICT diet that is completely void of all possible allergens to give the intestine a chance to heal over the course of several months (I told you they don't heal easily!). I do a lot of label reading at the store, which means that I RARELY shop with all the children along unless I am after a couple very specific things. Did you know that Twizzlers even have wheat in them? We don't buy them often because the obvious red dye in them, but when we learned of the Celiac we had to completely quit buying them because the company uses wheat to bind the stuff together to make the Twizzlers.
Obviously, cooking is interesting in my home at times, and I do get tired of it sometimes. I use rice flour to make my pizza crusts, which eliminates gluten (my recipe is yeast free, which my Celiac girls seem to react to as well) and by using 100% rice flour I can ensure that there is little to no soy present. I need to get a grain mill so that I can grind my own rice flour, as it is fairly expensive. We use the pizza crust dough to make homemade hot pockets regularly. On busy days I can just grab some sandwich (or pizza!) pockets from the freezer and toss in the microwave to warm up while the kids put shoes on, then they have a tidy sandwich that they can eat in the van. It costs around $10 for a box of 12 hot pockets, or I can spend about $6 for the ingredients to make 12 homemade ones and toss them in the freezer after baking (that cost includes fresh cut meat and cheese from the deli and parchment paper for my baking sheet since we can't use cooking sprays). Do you see the savings?
Yogurt is another one we have to be careful of. Most brands at the store have artificial dyes and/or soy in them so I generally avoid them. I was reading labels for a long time until a friend posted on her blog about making yogurt in her crock pot. I tried it once and was hooked, and have been doing it since. I don't regularly make it though, so we don't always have some left over yogurt on hand to activate the new batch. But with the small amount needed to do it, I don't read labels for the starter cup of yogurt. I just buy Oikos greek yogurt, it is the only single serving cup I've found that comes in plain with no sugars or anything. It is SUPER simple to make yogurt, as long as I keep an eye on the times the crock pot does 99% of it and it turns out perfectly.
Bread is another thing here. Out of the 7 in my home, 5 of us can have regular wheat bread no issues. So, I buy a couple loaves of bread each week for sandwiches and toast, and the 2 that can't have bread will use either a corn tortilla to do a wrap or they will do roll ups. To make a roll up, you take your lunch meat and some cheese and then roll a strip of the cheese up in the meat.
We also happen to LOVE pasta. Now, I used to make 100% of our pasta fresh but since the Celiac diagnoses I've struggled with finding a recipe that won't fall apart when I run it through my roller. So we buy rice pasta at the store. It is really expensive, so when I do that I make just enough of it for the Celiac girls and the rest of us have homemade regular pasta.
Juicing also helps. We really enjoy fresh fruit juices, so I try to get out the juicer regularly and juice fruits and veggies that are in season. I always sneak a little carrot into our juices, and sometimes celery or something else. It is especially easy to sneak in the stronger flavored veggies when I do fruit juices that are stronger flavored, like with berries. The remaining pulp either gets composted or, depending on what fruits it is, goes into a cake.
Then there are those awesome Souffer's lasagnas and such. Those are my weakness, as I love being able to just pop it in the oven and forget about it until the oven beeps. These are meals that my kids can make even, and I've often had one of the oldest kids put one in the oven when I'm fighting a migraine or in the midst of pregnancy sickness. Lunchables and TV dinners also fall under this category, along with frozen pizzas. So I just automatically double all lasagnas I make, or make an extra pizza to stuff in the freezer, or something like that. When I go shopping, I'll take some time that day to chop up part of the fruits and veggies so that I have ready-made snacks that just require me to make the veggie or fruit dip (a really good fruit dip is a block of soft cream cheese, whip it in your mixer to fluffy, then add 1/2 cup of brown sugar and some vanilla to taste and whip the snot out of it until its really light and fluffy, goes great with ALL fruits and takes under 10 minutes to make). For homemade tv dinners, my mother taught me this one. Get some sectioned plates with lids, you can get them almost anywhere now (they even have Gladware ones!) and dish up leftovers after supper into proper portions in the plates and snap the lid on and pop in the freezer. Poof, tv dinner made with no effort!
Ialso make my own seasonings whenever possible. I make my own taco seasoning, which works well to double as chili seasoning. Gravy I almost always make from scratch using corn starch. Ketchup and mustard, well those I always buy. One of the only things that I'm a real brand snob on is Miracle Whip; I will NEVER use any other brand and yes I really can tell the difference. I'm nice and don't say anything when not eating my own cooking if they use a generic or real mayonnaise but trust me I'm cringing inside.
If you like Rice-A-Roni (which I totally do!) you can make your own real easily. Take your rice and then break up a little spaghetti into small pieces and saute' until the pasta is browned (I use olive oil instead of butter), and then cook it in the broth of your choice. I keep chicken bouillon on hand at all times for this, beef too.
Fried rice is easy to make homemade too, but it isn't really a soy-free food since you need SOY SAUCE for it. There are millions of great recipes online for it that you can use so I won't share how I do it here. But it makes a great use for leftover rice, veggies, and meat with minimal effort made. I have one skillet that is just for making fried rice so that I can avoid cross contamination for Kimmy and her soy issues as much as possible (it is also the only pan that I never put in the dishwasher, yes I wash my pots and pans in the kitchen slave, life is too short for me to hand wash dishes).
I used to spend a LOT of money on the convenience foods at Whole Foods that would fit our dietary needs until our 5th child was coming. That was when I decided it was time to clean up my act and just make it all myself. There is a little more effort to assemble 2 or 3 lasagnas at once to freeze some for future use, or time to make 3 or 4 dozen homemade hot pockets when I make them fresh for lunch one day, but it really is worth the money saved for my family. If I get a grain mill to grind my own rice flour, then we'll go 100% gluten-free across the board and I'll work harder at finding recipes that will actually work for pasta and some other things we've skipped. It will definitely save us more money considering the outrageous price of rice flour compared to plain rice.
As you can imagine, with so many limits I decided to cook to the children's allergies for the main meals, then if the meal has dairy in it I'll make a dairy free alternative for me. With having a soy sensitive child (she was soy allergic, now she's just intolerant but we are still avoiding it 100% whenever possible in hopes that she may outgrow the allergy since it is getting less severe) it makes things a lot more interesting to work around the Celiac, but it is totally possible to do so.
In case you aren't familiar with Celiac, it is a disorder that can be pretty nasty. What it boils down to is that Liddy and Kimmy can't have any wheat, rye, or barley products at all, or any other products that have gluten in them. Oats are still iffy, as technically they do have small amounts of gluten, but they don't seem to have any effect on the girls so we do oatmeal and granola once in a while. When a Celiac eats something with gluten, the gluten damages the villi in the intestinal tract. Those little villi do not repair themselves very easily, and are how your body absorbs nutrients from the food you eat. Too much damage can be deadly if left unchecked for too long. The only way to repair the villi is a STRICT diet that is completely void of all possible allergens to give the intestine a chance to heal over the course of several months (I told you they don't heal easily!). I do a lot of label reading at the store, which means that I RARELY shop with all the children along unless I am after a couple very specific things. Did you know that Twizzlers even have wheat in them? We don't buy them often because the obvious red dye in them, but when we learned of the Celiac we had to completely quit buying them because the company uses wheat to bind the stuff together to make the Twizzlers.
Obviously, cooking is interesting in my home at times, and I do get tired of it sometimes. I use rice flour to make my pizza crusts, which eliminates gluten (my recipe is yeast free, which my Celiac girls seem to react to as well) and by using 100% rice flour I can ensure that there is little to no soy present. I need to get a grain mill so that I can grind my own rice flour, as it is fairly expensive. We use the pizza crust dough to make homemade hot pockets regularly. On busy days I can just grab some sandwich (or pizza!) pockets from the freezer and toss in the microwave to warm up while the kids put shoes on, then they have a tidy sandwich that they can eat in the van. It costs around $10 for a box of 12 hot pockets, or I can spend about $6 for the ingredients to make 12 homemade ones and toss them in the freezer after baking (that cost includes fresh cut meat and cheese from the deli and parchment paper for my baking sheet since we can't use cooking sprays). Do you see the savings?
Yogurt is another one we have to be careful of. Most brands at the store have artificial dyes and/or soy in them so I generally avoid them. I was reading labels for a long time until a friend posted on her blog about making yogurt in her crock pot. I tried it once and was hooked, and have been doing it since. I don't regularly make it though, so we don't always have some left over yogurt on hand to activate the new batch. But with the small amount needed to do it, I don't read labels for the starter cup of yogurt. I just buy Oikos greek yogurt, it is the only single serving cup I've found that comes in plain with no sugars or anything. It is SUPER simple to make yogurt, as long as I keep an eye on the times the crock pot does 99% of it and it turns out perfectly.
Bread is another thing here. Out of the 7 in my home, 5 of us can have regular wheat bread no issues. So, I buy a couple loaves of bread each week for sandwiches and toast, and the 2 that can't have bread will use either a corn tortilla to do a wrap or they will do roll ups. To make a roll up, you take your lunch meat and some cheese and then roll a strip of the cheese up in the meat.
We also happen to LOVE pasta. Now, I used to make 100% of our pasta fresh but since the Celiac diagnoses I've struggled with finding a recipe that won't fall apart when I run it through my roller. So we buy rice pasta at the store. It is really expensive, so when I do that I make just enough of it for the Celiac girls and the rest of us have homemade regular pasta.
Juicing also helps. We really enjoy fresh fruit juices, so I try to get out the juicer regularly and juice fruits and veggies that are in season. I always sneak a little carrot into our juices, and sometimes celery or something else. It is especially easy to sneak in the stronger flavored veggies when I do fruit juices that are stronger flavored, like with berries. The remaining pulp either gets composted or, depending on what fruits it is, goes into a cake.
Then there are those awesome Souffer's lasagnas and such. Those are my weakness, as I love being able to just pop it in the oven and forget about it until the oven beeps. These are meals that my kids can make even, and I've often had one of the oldest kids put one in the oven when I'm fighting a migraine or in the midst of pregnancy sickness. Lunchables and TV dinners also fall under this category, along with frozen pizzas. So I just automatically double all lasagnas I make, or make an extra pizza to stuff in the freezer, or something like that. When I go shopping, I'll take some time that day to chop up part of the fruits and veggies so that I have ready-made snacks that just require me to make the veggie or fruit dip (a really good fruit dip is a block of soft cream cheese, whip it in your mixer to fluffy, then add 1/2 cup of brown sugar and some vanilla to taste and whip the snot out of it until its really light and fluffy, goes great with ALL fruits and takes under 10 minutes to make). For homemade tv dinners, my mother taught me this one. Get some sectioned plates with lids, you can get them almost anywhere now (they even have Gladware ones!) and dish up leftovers after supper into proper portions in the plates and snap the lid on and pop in the freezer. Poof, tv dinner made with no effort!
Ialso make my own seasonings whenever possible. I make my own taco seasoning, which works well to double as chili seasoning. Gravy I almost always make from scratch using corn starch. Ketchup and mustard, well those I always buy. One of the only things that I'm a real brand snob on is Miracle Whip; I will NEVER use any other brand and yes I really can tell the difference. I'm nice and don't say anything when not eating my own cooking if they use a generic or real mayonnaise but trust me I'm cringing inside.
If you like Rice-A-Roni (which I totally do!) you can make your own real easily. Take your rice and then break up a little spaghetti into small pieces and saute' until the pasta is browned (I use olive oil instead of butter), and then cook it in the broth of your choice. I keep chicken bouillon on hand at all times for this, beef too.
Fried rice is easy to make homemade too, but it isn't really a soy-free food since you need SOY SAUCE for it. There are millions of great recipes online for it that you can use so I won't share how I do it here. But it makes a great use for leftover rice, veggies, and meat with minimal effort made. I have one skillet that is just for making fried rice so that I can avoid cross contamination for Kimmy and her soy issues as much as possible (it is also the only pan that I never put in the dishwasher, yes I wash my pots and pans in the kitchen slave, life is too short for me to hand wash dishes).
I used to spend a LOT of money on the convenience foods at Whole Foods that would fit our dietary needs until our 5th child was coming. That was when I decided it was time to clean up my act and just make it all myself. There is a little more effort to assemble 2 or 3 lasagnas at once to freeze some for future use, or time to make 3 or 4 dozen homemade hot pockets when I make them fresh for lunch one day, but it really is worth the money saved for my family. If I get a grain mill to grind my own rice flour, then we'll go 100% gluten-free across the board and I'll work harder at finding recipes that will actually work for pasta and some other things we've skipped. It will definitely save us more money considering the outrageous price of rice flour compared to plain rice.
Monday, April 08, 2013
hooray!
This week is turning out so far to be much better than last week was. I called to schedule to get the installer back out here to finish hooking up my dishwasher (yes after 3 weeks!) and they will be out tomorrow to do it. I had to stand my ground and not take no for an answer when they tried to push me into Thursday and go up the chain of command to a supervisor and stand my ground some more, but I got my way for the most part (I was trying to get them here today, oh well tomorrow is close enough).
Now let's just hope the installer knows how to treat women with respect, unlike the last guy who was RUDE to me and sweet as sugar to my husband. If he isn't, there will be issues......
Now let's just hope the installer knows how to treat women with respect, unlike the last guy who was RUDE to me and sweet as sugar to my husband. If he isn't, there will be issues......
Friday, April 05, 2013
Thinking out a few things
I've been letting the girls decompress and learn how to get along again for the last few months since bringing them back home from the charter school, which has been quite the adventure. We've managed to do some schoolwork with them in math regularly and sporadically in grammar, science, and history until last week. Last Monday I had decided to give them that week off for "spring break" so no lesson material at all for them, then we were going to pick up again this past Monday. Of course, on Thursday last week the dog almost died, so we began the 8 day journey to struggle to figure out what was wrong and heal her before I gave up yesterday when the money ran out and the credit line we got for it was maxed out. The vet decided not to charge us at all for yesterday's testing and meds, and even is covering her cremation and return of ashes for free because she feels so badly for missing the obstruction. The kids are doing pretty good considering, and already asking when we can get a new dog. Of course, it helps that they don't know the whole story and probably won't know it for many years.
Which brings me to where I am right now. I'm in a funk over having to tell the vet to euthanize Tinkerbell. I know it was the right choice and I feel no guilt over the decision, only peace, but I still managed to work myself into a funk over it nonetheless. Even buying new homeschool supplies and working on lesson planning for us to get into things again Monday isn't helping me get out of that funk (I'm a weirdo, I enjoy planning things out and making lists and scheduling, coming up with projects, and creating the sample pages for the girls' binder that we're going to be doing with our 50 states study).
Since today is payday for us, I am able to make purchases for supplies we need. I bought the State by State: Lapbook Any State! Curriculum from Hands of a Child on sale (if you look under the freebies and specials tab they have a code for 25% off good 4/4 through 4/7, I got this eBook for $6 instead of $8 today). I printed off the schedule and activities instructions already and looked through each one, marking off the ones I don't want at all (4 activities) and then marking the ones we'll definitely be using for every state (10 activities) and the ones that I may or may not use on a state by state basis (11 activities). Tomorrow I plan to buy binders, cardstock, and printer paper (I'm thinking I want colored paper and cardstock so I'll likely just order those online if Scott is ok with that and use what I have here and locally purchased 2" binders). I also hope tomorrow to go to the library and pay off my fines that I never got around to dealing with, and get some books to use so that I can introduce the kids to our nation as a whole for the first part of our US binders. Stay tuned next week for pictures and details on how that goes for us. :) I need to search for some free templates to use for the "Our Nation" part that can't be covered by what I have here already on my computer.
Tomorrow Scott is picking up our new sofa and loveseat too. We had to cancel the purchase of the sectional and ottoman that we'd originally chosen, and instead did a sofa and loveseat that is quite lovely for about 1/3 the price. Later we may buy the matching sectional, as having a bigger family does call for more seating than a typical family has (especially when we have friends over to visit!). After we get the furniture here, we are going to start saving up for a Diono Radian RXT for Preston so that he can rear face until 45lbs for maximum protection of his spine while it continues to harden (this happens with typical children around the age of 2-3 years) and decrease the risk of sustaining a serious injury if we are in a crash (notice I said IF here). I just can't decide if I wish to get the red or the blue, I really love the red but I have a feeling Scott would like the blue better since it is for his SON. The girls have pink boosters, and he needs a new seat for my van (the Radian he's in now expires in 2 1/2 years so it will go in Scott's car so I have the option of taking it sometimes instead of the van without moving his VERY HEAVY seat around). I know that the seat we've chosen is expensive, but it is going to be the best option with his height and weight to ensure we can get him rear facing as close to age 3 as possible. Plus I know how to install the seat without any problems in my van and Scott's car, I've timed it and can do it in under 45 seconds with LATCH or a seat belt. This is truly one of the few areas we refuse to scrimp and compromise, our children's safety is that important to us.
Wow that was a lot of random stuff, wasn't it? Whew, it feels good to get it all out of my head where I can look at it and focus on one thing at a time this next few days. Now I think I can print off those template pieces that I'm going to use for every state so that I can build an example set of pages for my own reference with our 50 states study. Having too many things in my brain just causes me to shut down and not function.
Which brings me to where I am right now. I'm in a funk over having to tell the vet to euthanize Tinkerbell. I know it was the right choice and I feel no guilt over the decision, only peace, but I still managed to work myself into a funk over it nonetheless. Even buying new homeschool supplies and working on lesson planning for us to get into things again Monday isn't helping me get out of that funk (I'm a weirdo, I enjoy planning things out and making lists and scheduling, coming up with projects, and creating the sample pages for the girls' binder that we're going to be doing with our 50 states study).
Since today is payday for us, I am able to make purchases for supplies we need. I bought the State by State: Lapbook Any State! Curriculum from Hands of a Child on sale (if you look under the freebies and specials tab they have a code for 25% off good 4/4 through 4/7, I got this eBook for $6 instead of $8 today). I printed off the schedule and activities instructions already and looked through each one, marking off the ones I don't want at all (4 activities) and then marking the ones we'll definitely be using for every state (10 activities) and the ones that I may or may not use on a state by state basis (11 activities). Tomorrow I plan to buy binders, cardstock, and printer paper (I'm thinking I want colored paper and cardstock so I'll likely just order those online if Scott is ok with that and use what I have here and locally purchased 2" binders). I also hope tomorrow to go to the library and pay off my fines that I never got around to dealing with, and get some books to use so that I can introduce the kids to our nation as a whole for the first part of our US binders. Stay tuned next week for pictures and details on how that goes for us. :) I need to search for some free templates to use for the "Our Nation" part that can't be covered by what I have here already on my computer.
Tomorrow Scott is picking up our new sofa and loveseat too. We had to cancel the purchase of the sectional and ottoman that we'd originally chosen, and instead did a sofa and loveseat that is quite lovely for about 1/3 the price. Later we may buy the matching sectional, as having a bigger family does call for more seating than a typical family has (especially when we have friends over to visit!). After we get the furniture here, we are going to start saving up for a Diono Radian RXT for Preston so that he can rear face until 45lbs for maximum protection of his spine while it continues to harden (this happens with typical children around the age of 2-3 years) and decrease the risk of sustaining a serious injury if we are in a crash (notice I said IF here). I just can't decide if I wish to get the red or the blue, I really love the red but I have a feeling Scott would like the blue better since it is for his SON. The girls have pink boosters, and he needs a new seat for my van (the Radian he's in now expires in 2 1/2 years so it will go in Scott's car so I have the option of taking it sometimes instead of the van without moving his VERY HEAVY seat around). I know that the seat we've chosen is expensive, but it is going to be the best option with his height and weight to ensure we can get him rear facing as close to age 3 as possible. Plus I know how to install the seat without any problems in my van and Scott's car, I've timed it and can do it in under 45 seconds with LATCH or a seat belt. This is truly one of the few areas we refuse to scrimp and compromise, our children's safety is that important to us.
Wow that was a lot of random stuff, wasn't it? Whew, it feels good to get it all out of my head where I can look at it and focus on one thing at a time this next few days. Now I think I can print off those template pieces that I'm going to use for every state so that I can build an example set of pages for my own reference with our 50 states study. Having too many things in my brain just causes me to shut down and not function.
Thursday, April 04, 2013
taking a break from lessons
Sometimes, we enter a season when we must take a break from the usual to take care of other issues. This is one of those times for my family. Today we had to say good-bye to our sweet dog, Tinkerbell. The girls are devastated, and I'm giving them time to process the loss of their friend and schoolmate while I try to clean up from trying to care for a dog that was just too sick to recover. We had her at the vet again today and the vet found a mass in her intestine. She was too sick and weak to survive the surgery that would save her life, so I had to make the tough decision. I am going to take the kids tomorrow to pick up her collar.
We'll pick up again with our work sometime soon hopefully, but right now the kids just need to process it.
We'll pick up again with our work sometime soon hopefully, but right now the kids just need to process it.
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