My Little Taste of Holland

Been WAY too long

2008-01-03T10:56:00.000-05:00

I can't believe how long it has been since my last post here. Yikes! I can't even begin to catch up on everything that has been going on. I think it is safe to say this blog is probably not going to be updated often anymore. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

However, you can still keep in touch. :) I still have my designing blog that is updated every so often. I am sure I will start my ramblings there, and I need to be better about updating it more often as it is. So, please come on over and leave me some comments there every so often. And feel free to grab some of my freebies while you are there! LOL I want to know how all of you are doing as well. :)
http://fourcubs.zervona.net/blog

There is also email: cpkmelissa AT gmail DOT com.

Things are going ok. The boys are having a lot of medical issues going on right now, some of which have me a bit worried, but I try not to panic unless I have to. Please keep them in your prayers, especially Joshua. The girls are doing great. My designing career is doing well, and I have been having thoughts of expanding into some other areas. Still not positive on that though. Time is my biggest factor right now. Handbells are a blast, and we have a conference coming up that I am really looking forward to.

So, I hope you will come over to my other blog and keep in touch over there. I miss everyone over here and you often cross my mind. I hope all is well with each of you. :) "Talk" to you soon!

How about some pictures?

2007-05-25T08:52:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since I posted any, so I figured since I have nothing to really blog about, I'd post some pics. :) Just ignore the background. It was laundry day. LOL

Jacob, who turns 8 next week:

Joshua:

Cassidy:

Elena:

Evaluation time!

2007-05-03T15:15:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it is the end of the school year already! I took the boys in for their annual portfolio evaluation. This was Jacob's second and Josh's first. It went great!

Sorry I haven't been chatty lately. In Florida, we have to have the homeschooled kids evaluated one of 5 ways each year. I decided last year to try the portfolio evaluation, and I loved the woman we saw, so we scheduled it with her for today. So, I have spent the week trying to get their portfolios ready and prepare Joshua for what would happen. It's really not a big deal, but he needs a TON of preparation because of his autism.

Jacob is in second grade. He is doing math on an advanced 5th grade/average 6th grader level. As we were leaving he was doing multiplication in his head. No lie! Out of nowhere he tells her that 72 x 4 = 288. I am sooooo not mathematically oriented, so it's nutty to me that he is so advanced in that subject. LOL His phonics is a bit advanced as well (probably third grade) and she was totally impressed with a story he wrote and illustrated, because it had proper punctuation and such. LOL She even gave me the name of a book that shows us how to make our own binded books, because she thinks it would be great for him.

Joshua did well also. She said he is fine to move on to 1st grade next year. Yay! I was worried that I was going to have trouble showing what he had learned, but he willingly went and read a page from a book for her, and she said his reading is "phenomenal". He still doesn't really write, but she reiterated that was what is so good about the homeschooling - I can work at his pace and our goal for next year is to actually have him write on paper instead of on dry erase boards like we have been doing.

Whew! I'm so excited they are doing so well. I can relax a bit now. :) We are continuing through the summer only because I need to keep them on a schedule/routine. I learned my lesson last year! Maybe now I can actually find time to update this blog a bit more than I have been doing lately. :)

How awful am I?

2007-04-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

Yep, I'm a blogging slacker! I have never denied that, though. :P I really believe that I need about 36 hours to my day to get everything done. There is always a huge list of "to do" items on my list at the end of each day.

Things are somewhat improving with Joshua since my last post. He is doing better with concentrating on his schoolwork again, though we still aren't back 100% to where we were before our trip in February. It's crazy how two weeks can totally undo a year of hard work. I'm sure the spring weather is not helping his concentration level either. I think it is getting to all of us!

Jacob has been doing awesome on his math. It boggles my mind how we have struggled to get through adding and subtracting this year, and yet he totally rocks on the multiplying and dividing. I was talking to my little brother, Willie, about it last week and he replied that subtracting is HARD! He and Jacob are so similar in so many ways. Their brains do not work the same as mine, that's for sure! Willie is gifted and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if Jacob were to be tested that he would test highly.

The girls are well. Cassie was backtracking on the potty training after our trip, but I think we are finally back on track.

Silas and I attended a symphony concert last Friday. It was Russian night and they ended their regular program with Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. I LOVE that piece!! So much fun to play, and even better to get to sit and hear the orchestra from the audience. It did get me missing my clarinet though. So I took it out this weekend, not remembering why I hadn't touched it in so long. Turns out one of the pads is missing. Ooops! So, I need to get that fixed up sometime, so I can get back into playing. :)

I will be taking Jacob to his first symphony concert next week. He's excited, as am I. I am hoping to start teaching him an instrument of some sort next year, and maybe this will help him to decide what he would like to learn.

Other than that, I have been designing like a mad woman. My new store is a store I thought was way out of my league and I only dreamed of selling in one day. I was so excited, shocked, and happy when they hired me! I had a CT call and have a group of about 8 ladies using my designs in their LOs. So exciting! I have separated my design blog from my personal blog for many reasons, so if you would like to peek at my designs and/or keep up with me over there as well, just shoot me an email and I'll send you the link. :)

Guess that is about all here. I need to get back to designing some before the kids get up from their naps and rest.

Getting back into a routine

2007-03-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

Well, trying to at least. School has gone well for both boys. Joshua has completely moved on from the Dick and Jane stories and I am trying to find things for him to read that are on his level. He's doing very well. Jacob has been playing catch-up on some things. We finished our measurement unit today and he enjoyed it for the most part. Cassidy and Elena have been keeping each other occupied, thankfully. :)

Since returning home from our trip, Joshua has some of his unusual behaviors return. One of them is turning my lights on and off repeatedly at lightening speeds. He had stopped that one a while back, but for some reason he has gone back to it. The other one that he seems to be doing more and more of is watching a particular blade on the fans and following it with his eyes. Sometimes he will even go so far as to try spinning along with it directly under the fan. He stopped this one a couple of years ago, so it bothers me that it is back. He was doing so good before our trip and even while we were gone. It's not something that he does only once or twice a day. It has been very consuming of his entire day. *sigh*

Other than that, I'm trying hard to get back into some sort of groove. I have been designing some since our return home, and should have a total of five new items in the store by the end of the week. I'm still not finding time to actually scrap some pages, but eventually I will. I need to get some pages done for Wendy's CT.

So, boring update but an update nonetheless. :) I hope everyone is doing well!

Long time, no post

2007-02-23T23:12:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Kim, for checking in on me! That was so sweet. No, I haven't fallen off the planet. I have just been incredibly out off schedule lately.

About three weeks ago we were put on alert that my grandmother in Louisiana was extremely ill. By the end of the week we were told if we wanted to see her, we needed to make the trip. She was in CCU and on a ventilator, and they believe she had one, possibly two strokes. We left on Friday, spent the night in a hotel and then made it to the hospital on Saturday afternoon. From my understanding, she was in multi-system failure.

We only had 4 half hour periods in which we were allowed to visit and kids under 12 years of age were not allowed in the CCU, so keeping the kids occupied was a necessity. Luckily, we happened to be visiting during the Mardi Gras season, so we were able to bring the kids to parades starting that first evening. More on that in a little bit. ;)

On that first Monday, they took Grandma off the machines and she was alert. She told all of us that this was what she wanted. She asked several times for a Coke, and the nurses eventually gave in an let her have it. There were a lot of tears and laughs. Three days later she was moved to a private room. I was happy that my kids were finally going to get to see her after all this time. She had only met my boys once and had never met the girls, so it was good for all of them. She loved seeing them. Jacob didn't know what to talk to her about so he started talking about cars. Grandma was a Nascar fan, so that seemed to fit nicely. Joshua was so silly and cute. He was curious about the oxygen tube in her nose and so we explained that it helped Grandma get some air. He went over to the bed and proceeded to demonstrate to her how to breathe. She chuckled about it, as did we. Cassie was shy, but Elena took to her nicely.

The kidney doctor checked in on her one day while I was visiting and he told us that he felt her kidneys were going to eventually begin functioning again and they would continue dialysis until they kicked into full gear.

I think it was last Friday (the 16th) when I went to visit that I was alone with her for about an hour and a half. I noticed her breathing seemed more labored than I remembered seeing in the days before. She pretty much slept from that day onward. On Sunday, we went to visit after a parade and some lunch, and my aunt greeted us with news that Grandma was running a fever and was not waking up still after basically three days of sleeping. At some point the kidney doctor had come in and said he thought she had aspirated some food. After a short visit with the kids, we went back to my aunt's house debating on whether or not we should go home to Florida in the morning like we had planned. At 11:30pm my mother called and said that Grandma had passed away. They funeral was on Wednesday.

The kids did pretty well with everything. I'm not sure that Josh and Cassidy fully understand that Grandma is gone. Jacob seems to know what is going on, especially since we lost Meemaw only a year and a half ago. I will have to dig up the papers that I read to Jacob back then that answered a lot of question kids have about death. When told them about Grandma passing away, Joshua had a sad look on his face and said "Oh no". Cassie looked sad and hugged me, but didn't say too much. At the viewing, she wanted to go up and see Grandma. We let her and it didn't seem to really phase her too much. Joshua was concerned about the fact that she was wearing glasses, and in the hospital she did not have them. That was all he has really said to me about all of it. On the day of the funeral, as we were getting dressed, Cassidy smiled and said she couldn't wait for Grandma to wake up and see her in her pretty dress. I tried explaining again, but it was obvious she still does not get it. So, we will just keep working on explaining it when she asks questions.

I mentioned our entertainment during the past two weeks - the Mardi Gras parades. Our first one was on the night we got into town. The kids had a blast, but poor Joshua had a complete meltdown. He was tired from the trip, out of his normal routine, we were directly next to a DJ with the music blaring, and it was night, so the police cars and their flashing lights and noise from the motorcycles were just complete overload to his system. He did eventually find a small wagon one of my cousins brought, and he happily sat in it behind the crowd.

As time went on, there were more and more parades. Almost every single time, he would bounce in the trucks that were were sitting in or would run around on some grass behind the crowds, completely oblivious to what was going on. However, at the last parade we attended (the night before the actual Mardi Gras celebration) he let me hold him while the floats passed. The little stinker actually caught some beads. He was so excited, and in typical sweet Joshua fashion, he put them around my neck and gave me the biggest smile. I told him I would keep those since he caught them for me. He later got a toy helicopter and a toy ATV. That completely made his day. He just beamed and kept telling us he liked Mardi Gras now. LOL

Jacob and the girls enjoyed the parades from the start and those kids racked up on so much junk. LOL We have bag after bag after bag of beads, pixi sticks, stuffed animals galore, cups, doubloons, yardstick sized bubble gum, footballs out the wazoo, little purses and flowers for the girls, tons of toys, and who knows what else. We actually had to have my parents take most of it home in their van since we didn't have room for it all. Needles to say, we are giving a ton of it away!

That was a long update, but in all fairness, it has been a long month. We did no school while we were gone, so we will be playing catch-up next week, which should go over great with the kids, I'm sure. :) Hopefully it won't be so long between this post and my next one. :)

We have Reading!

2007-01-08T21:50:00.000-05:00

Joshua is now reading. I could hardly believe it when I took out a book today and he was able to read some of the pages. He has come so far this year, and if he goes no further, I will be satisfied. However, I have no doubt he will continue to progress further than I can imagine. He was so proud of his new accomplishment, and we quickly called Daddy at work to let him know. :)

New year and new kit

2007-01-04T19:43:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year a few days late. It's been a busy few days.

My newest kit is finished and I am super excited! It was totally inspired by my little guy, Josh. "On The Go" includes:

5 plain textured papers
5 patterned textured papers
5 paper clips
2 grosgrain ribbons
1 bus
1 jet
1 truck
1 car
1 wrench
1 keychain

Also recently finished is the add-on t my Classy Cassie kit:

This includes 3 patterned textured papers, 1 tag, 2 heart-shaped buttons, 1 glass tiara, and 3 paper clips.

And now, most importantly, I want to wish my wonderful husband a very HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!! 9 years...how'd you do it? :)

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T19:02:00.000-05:00

Click the photo to see it larger. ;)

Christmas...already?!

2006-12-20T13:51:00.000-05:00

Woah, where in the world did this year go? I can't believe it is only 5 days until Christmas. Christmas, people! I have gotten nearly all of my shopping done. I still have some things I am working on putting together, and have done zero wrapping. I am usually a little bit better than this about getting things done sooner. I don't know what is wrong with me this year. I think the lack of cold weather is doing it. It's kind of hard to get in the Christmas mood when outside it is in the 70's.

My newest kit is finished as of this morning. Let me tell you, it is pretty hard to get motivated to put together a winter kit when the above mentioned weather is surrounding you. However, I did it!

Not much else to report I suppose. Just keeping busy, as usual. :)

Appointment updates

2006-12-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

Jacob's appointment went well. She thinks he has somehow managed to hit his eye with something and hit the vein. I'm supposed to wait a month, and if there is no improvement by that time, we'll see a specialist. Whew! He does have the start of some allergy problems, so she gave us some allergy meds for that.

My appointment was ok, I guess. He listed to the blood flow over my thyroid gland and has determined, based on the bruit he heard and my bloodwork, that apparently my thyroid is putting out not only the antibodies for Hashimoto's, but for Grave's disease as well. Nice, huh? He can't do anything for me right now. We have to wait for my stupid gland to decide which way it is going to go. He believes that it will go to hyperthyroidism for a short time, and then finally settle into hypothyroidism, at which point he will be able to treat me. Right now, my thyroid gland is pretty inflamed and tender to the touch. He said the only thing he can do for that is steroids, and the risks outweigh the benefits quite a bit...so a no go for me. So, basically all my crap symptoms are just going to have to continue for who knows how long. I left my appointment more frustrated than I was before.

The good news I suppose is that even though my BP is up at their office and at every other doctor's office I go to, at home it is averaging 115/70, so he is happy with that part. I know my doctors never believe me when I told them it isn't always up. LOL My blood sugar 2 hours after eating was 92, so another good thing....and that was after having pasta for dinner the night before and my 15 grams of carbs in the morning. And despite his look of disappointment, I did lose 3 pounds. I know it isn't much at all, but given the fact that I had only been on the diabetic diet for 3 weeks and Thanksgiving was thrown in there too, I really don't think that was awful.

Sooo, that's my update. I get bloodwork this month, go back in May for more bloodwork, and then two week after that I will have another thyroid ultrasound and appointment.

Not much else to report. I'm working on my next kit and a collab kit for S2B. Can't wait!

Changes

2006-12-02T22:40:00.000-05:00

Ahhh. A week of changes.

First, I have made th switch to Blogger Beta. So far, so good.

Secondly, I resigned from Scrapbooker's Playground. However, the same day I signed on at Scrap2Basics. It is actually the new site that I was chosen to be on the CT for. LOL The other designers are wonderful, and I think I will learn quite a bit by being there. Pamela Gibson, whose CT I am a member of, is also a designer there. Pretty neat, huh? I am so excited about designing with these ladies and can't wait to get the details of my first collab kit. :)

So, I also have a brand new kit, "Sweet Elena". Wanna peek?

We have a busy week ahead. I have bells on Monday, an endo appointment for me on Tuesday, a TRU sale function to go to on Thursday night, and Friday will be two field trips and Silas' work Christmas party. Thank goodness for weekends, huh? I'm going to need it after this Friday!

Jacob's right eye has got something going on with it now. He looked to the side a few nights ago and I thought he had something in it. I pulled his eyelid down a little bit and he looked to the left. He has this really dark and large looking vein in it. It almost looked at first as though he had a large piece of string in there, but it isn't. I asked if it was hurting or itching...nope. Did he hit it or poke it? Nope. Did someone else hit or poke it? Not that he remembers. Does the light bother him...doesn't appear to. So, my first thought is that something maybe flew into it. Silas had an eye appointment a few months ago and didn't know he had a piece of metal in his eye. There were no signs of it at all that he noticed, but the eye doc mentioned there were veins growing towards it. So, I am wondering if this is what is going on. I brought him to my parents' house yesterday to make sure I wasn't overreacting and that it does look abnormal, and they weren't sure what was wrong with it either. So, if it is still there on Monday, I am making an appointment with the ped to see about getting a referral.

I told him this as the plan and he quickly went to the living room and just sat quietly. I asked him if he was ok and he started crying, telling me he is scared. I don't know what to do about his fear of the doctor. He is petrified. I held him and explained that doctors make a promise out loud to other people and to God, "First do no harm". I explained this means they are supposed to do their best to help people that are sick and do their best to not hurt them. We talked for a little while about it and though he is still very scared, I think he understands that they are not trying to really hurt him. This is one reason we are waiting until Monday to make an appointment. I want him to be seen by our regular ped on Tuesday. He has built a trust with her, and after the last time I brought him in and the new ped sprayed his ear, well, I think we need to do our best to stick to who he feels most comfy with. My heart breaks that he is so fearful that they will hurt everytime he goes in. :(

Anyway, I am off to get some more work done before bed. :)

New kit and a sale

2006-11-23T00:05:00.000-05:00

My second kit is now completed. Want a peek?

I also learned how to do sales tonight, thanks to Wendy! I've been working hard on getting all of my scrapping and kits done.

My secret that I was having to keep under wraps can now be told! I am now on the CT for a new site: Scrap2Basics. I was so excited when I found out! It looks like it is going to be a great store and board! You should definitely check it out. :)

Ok, Im off to get some work done before heading to bed. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Store is ready!

2006-11-18T21:13:00.000-05:00

Woohoo! I finally have my very first product up at SBP. I am SO excited! Here is a preview for you:

It is named after my sweet little Cassidy. I love the colors in this one. It actually is the second kit I made with the intent of hopefully eventually selling, but once I finished this one, it quickly got moved to number one status. My plan is to have at least one kit named after each of my little cubs. ;) I already have the color swatches chosen and am working on them as I get the chance.

I am super excited and motivated now!

News, a trip, and more news!

2006-11-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

Goodness. I wasn't kidding when I said I might have news in a few days. Of course, the news I thought I was going to have became something COMPLETELY different than I thought it was going to be. I'll try to catch up and yet keep it brief...

Ok, I will begin with my fun trip. My mother, MIL, brother's girlfriend Mel (also named Melissa, but spelled differently), and I all headed to Disney World on Monday for a girl's day out. We had a blast! Nothing like going to "The Happiest Place on Earth" without any kids or men. Ahhh! It was a long but relaxing and much needed trip. We even got to see Captain Jack Sparrow in action. LOL The guy had all of the mannerisms down to a science. He was great! We ended the day with the fireworks, which were beautiful!

Now to explain my first paragraph...

When I said I was going to have some news, I was speaking of a collaborative kit I participated in at Scrappin' Secrets in which all proceeds would go to Toys for Tots. Well, I think it was about a day later when I learned that SS will be merging with a larger site - Scrapbooker's Playground. This unfortunately put our kit on hold.

In the meantime, one of the designers, Wendy of Neverland Scraps, had seen my contribution to the charity kit, and behind the scenes was talking me up without my knowledge. I was urged to put in an application as a designer and the wheels have been turning ever since. What a whirlwind! I just finished my first it, but I'm not quite ready to give the sneak peek yet. You'll just have to keep checking back for it. LOL I will tell you it has a boyish feel to it though. :)

On top of that, I learned today of yet another secret involving me in the scrapping world. I can't tell anyone yet though! Heehee! I am so bad with secrets. It's a good one, and I can't wait to share it!

So, would you like to see a few LO's?

I have no idea what Cassie was thinking, but she was definitely in a goofy mood the day that we took this photo. She was wearing her hair in pigtails and decided to put a headband on as if it were a sweatband. And to top it off she would stick a plastic ice cream sundae in her mouth and just grin. Little nut. LOL I used Bella Gypsy's "Zen Calm" kit.

This was Cassie in 2004 at her first Easter egg hunt. She was too cute with the eggs. I used Bella Gypsy's "Glitz" kit on this one. I thought it went perfectly with the photo.

Man, this photo seems like it was taken ages ago, and yet it doesn't really seem like it has been that long. This is Jacob in 2001. My grandparents would put out these reindeer each year that were pulling Santa in his sleigh. Jacob loved them! The expression on his face in this photo was too cute. :) I used Pamela Gibson's "Country Christmas" kit.

I love this photo of Elena. I took it in front of our front door..she was wearing a beautiful fancy dress and she was fascinated with it. The lighting wasn't great, the door has all sorts of scratches and the typical grooves. I decided to play around with the photo a good bit and it turned out so pretty, I think. I got rid of all of the grooves and scratches, got rid of the color and played with the lighting, and what you see is the end result. The kit I used in this LO is Kathryn Mhire's "Field of Flowers".

Ok, enough show and tell from me tonight. I need to get some sleep!

November already?

2006-11-02T12:05:00.000-05:00

This year seems to have flown by. I have no idea where the time has gone! Silas had this great New Year's resolution to get the garage cleaned out. We cleaned it out partially, but it is far from being completely done. It has been so nice out lately, and I am loving the chill in the mornings and evenings.

School is going great. Josh truly seems to have a grasp on his letter sounds now. I figured he would by Christmas. He is doing awesome! Jacob has given little trouble this week, so it has been nice getting through the work this week.

Halloween was fun. We went to my grandfather's place and et them "trick or treat" for him to see them dressed up. He loved it. We stayed for a while just visiting. We eventually headed out to the fall festival at the kids' art class. They were pretty much the only young ones to show up, so Ms. Julia was disappointed. However, they played the games and she helped them make a Halloween lantern that turned out super cute. Joshua was very unhappy about the craft and would not participate, so she made his while demonstrating for me to help Cassie and Jacob. After that we headed to my parents' house so they could TOT there and at Ms. H's house. Once Silas met us there, we took off to one of the local churches to do "Trunk or Treat". That was really cute, and the kids had a blast going from car to car and seeing some of the adults in costume. And my in-laws came over there as well. So, it was a packed day, to say the least!

Scrap news time! Yeah!

Melissa G announced this week that had to step down from designing. I am so sad for her, because she is really good and I really enjoyed being on her team while I had the chance. When I found out, I went searching for another team and came across a call for Pamela Gibson (at Digital Freebies). I was pleasantly surprised to find out I made the team! Woohoo! Her designs are really nice, and I already made my first LO for her using her "Upon an Autumn Eve" kit.

I also found out I was chosen as yesterday's Layout of the Day at Gotta Pixel again (November 1)! I was really excited! They even gave me a cute little blinkie to use. LOL Isn't that neat?! I used Phoenix's "Indian Dreams" kit. Love the colors in that one!

There is so much more I could show you if I had the time. Right now I need to go and feed my kids some lunch. I will have a pretty cool scrapping tidbit for you in the next day or so. :)

My poor tooth

2006-10-28T06:07:00.000-05:00

If you read this blog back in March or so, you might remember I had some issues with my teeth. I worked up the nerve to get into a dentist (I am SERIOUSLY afraid of dentists due to a bad childhood dentist) and had a couple of fillings done. One was temporary and I was told I would either need a root canal or an extraction and told the prices. There were no pros or cons given, just prices, and I have put off making a decision with all of the other medical junk going on.

Monday, while Silas was out of town, I bit down while eating and the tooth with the temp filling actually broke. In one corner, there was no more tooth. I cold actually see nothing but the filling there. I wasn't having any pain, but I freaked out nevertheless, because I knew this would mean another visit to the dentist. I was trying to wait until after the first of the year when I would not only hopefully have the money to get it fixed, but also know exactly what is wrong with me medically. I call my dentist office and the woman that I spoke to was so incredibly rude about the situation. Basically, once again, I was given my options of root canal or extraction, and once again was given my prices for each. They wanted $800 for JUST the extraction, and then according to her I would need to have the tooth replaced with something. This option would run me anywhere from $1600-$2400 depending on whether I got a partial or an implant. The root canal and the build-up and crown would total about $1600-$1800. Oh, and no payment plans for any of these options...the most they would do is split the cost into two parts. And you know we have that kind of cash growing on the tree in my backyard like they do, right? Ugh. I was in tears because I was forced to make a decision before any pain would start and I had no clue what to do since neither option was truly financially feasible for us at this time.

So, when I talked to my best friend, April, that same day, she reminded me that she got her wisdom teeth taken out by the School of Dentistry at the University of Florida. I was willing to drive if necessary, so I spent the next day researching my options. Turns out they have a local dental school here in town that I never even knew about. I called to find out how I could get in and was told I would for an emergency visit, which this would be considered, I would need to be in line by 7:30 in the morning and hope and pray I was one of the first ten people or so to ensure I would be seen.

I made it to the dentist yesterday morning by 6:30 and was the third person there. The first guy, Dr. W., took my pressure and it was 160/103. Ha! I wasn't scared or anything. Yeah right!

They sent in a guy with an extremely thick indian accent to talk about the x-ray and go through the two options I already knew about. I told him that I knew my options and nobody has wanted to give me pros or cons to each, so I didn't really know which would be better. So, he uses dental talk to explain to me and I still couldn't understand half of what he was saying. Something about knobs and removing something, but that was about it. He finally leaves telling me that the guy will explain it again when he comes in to work on me. Silas was actually in the room with me and couldn't understand anything being said either.

So, Dr. W. comes in and goes through the options explaining thoroughly and answering all of my questions. I asked about the whole replacement bit since my other dentist said I would need it done. He said the second molars are basically bonus teeth and if it were a first molar he'd probably say yeah, but it isn't necessary with the 2nd molars and did not have to be taken care of right now. So, I guess that means that my lovely dentist truly was just after money, which is pretty stinky.

Once I made my decision to have it extracted and Silas left, I asked Dr. W. how bad it was goign to be. HE told me if I could tolerate the sights and sounds then it wouldn't be bad at all. Now, after getting me lying back and he and the other guy are basically trapping me I hear him tell me not to worry if I hear a lot of cracking noises because it is perfectly normal. OH MY GOODNESS! NOW they tell me! ACK! They had a lot of trouble getting it out because my wisdom tooth was actually pushing on the molar, which is something he warned might happen. They were having to call for tools they didn't have at their station. LOL I had warned them that the other dentist had trouble numbing me for the fillings, so he said just let them know that I need more anesthetic, which they did have to do in the middle. The tooth pretty much sectioned itself in the middle of them loosening it because of how weak it was. The wisdom tooth is actually visible now, and he said there is a slight chance that it might just grow in and occupy the space. The only major concern this causes is that I may eventually have to lose the top 2nd molar on that side because it might shift a little bit, but no biggie according to him.

So, other than the fact that he dated my pain prescription for today instead of yesterday (which thankfully the pharmacy called and got changed), I would recommend the dental schools to anyone. They were incredibly nice and straightforward in answering my questions. They were as gentle as they could possibly be in this situation.

My mouth was absolutely killing me last night. I am allergic to NSAIDS (Ibuprofen and the such) so they gave me a prescription for Vicodin. I took one pill and it zonked me out for three hours. When I woke up it was past time for another pill, so I went ahead and took it at dinnertime. We had spaghetti and my child-sized plate full took me a good hour to eat. LOL I guess it must have been too slow to eat with the med since I was extremely nauseous the rest of the night. I had to stay in bed in order to get it to be bearable, and my head was hurting worse than my usual migraines. I woke up at 3am and surprisingly my mouth felt fine. I still had a killer headache and decided against taking another Vicodin and instead took my Excedrim Migraine. Awesome stuff! I feel almost back to normal this morning.

So, that's it for now. I have to update on Jacob's ENT appointment sometime soon. For now though, I am off to go to garage sales with my mother, aunt and a couple of cousins. Should be fun!

I'm a horrible blogger

2006-10-26T10:31:00.000-05:00

Goodness. I have not had the time to get this blog updated lately. And I have been horrble about commenting on anyone else's as well. I have been so busy lately!

School is going well. Jacob has been doing well. We have our days where it is like pulling teeth to get him to get anything done, and other days where everything just flows. We took today off since he has some major nerves about his ENT appointment. We are hoping that the tube will be able to easily be removed in the office. Keep your fingers crossed!

Joshua has made such progress the past couple of weeks. He was pretty resistant to doing school for the longest time. I was really starting to have doubts that I was doing right by homeschooling him, but not quite willing to just throw him into a neighborhood school that would likely just "deal" with him and the different challenges teaching him poses. However, I think things are really starting to click with him now. He has been showing me throughout the day that he knows his letter sounds and not just the letters. We have been using Starfall website for phonics work, and it seems to be just what he needed. He is actually makiing the connection now that the letter sounds can make a word. Yesterday he read cat, rat and van on his own.

We went to the mall last Friday so my mother and I could get in some walking. They have a play area and by the time we made it completely from one end of the mall and back to it, there were no kids. It didn't last long though, and it became quite busy. One child, probably about 4 or 5, was pretty hyper and rough. His father fussed a bit, but that was about all. The boy actually came over to Joshua and hit him a few times because Josh was sitting on something that he wanted to be on. Joshua didn't really react the first couple of times, but about the third time he came to me crying that the boy was being mean. I had watched the entire thing and since the father obviously was not interested in taking real action, told Josh that if he did it again he needed to look at the boy and tell him to please stop being mean to him. Sure enough, not even 10 seconds later, the hitting began again and Joshua promptly looked at him and said plain as day, "Please don't be mean to me". All was well until later when they were running around chasing each other and the boy decided to shove Josh from behind. I told him next time to stop running and turn around and tell the boy again to stop being mean. We didn't have another incident, and after about ten more minutes it was time to go. I was proud that he didn't hit back and came to me and then once he was told how to react in the situation, he did it.

To top off the good news with Josh - he spent all day Monday coloring. And HE was the one that initiated it! This probably sounds silly to anyone who does not know Josh. To those that do know him, you know how amazing this is. Josh does NOT like to color or write or do anything that might be messy. My MIL bought him a Disney CARS ColorWonder set for his birthday. He showed no real interest in it once he found out it involved markers and coloring. However, something must have happened when he woke up on Monday....he came to me and asked me to open the package so that he could color. I must have looked so confused when he came to me. LOL He spent all morning coloring pages. At naptime he asked to color some more, so I let him. And then later in the day he shut off the computer in favor of coloring. *shock*

In scrapping news I have been busy creating LOs. Since the last scrap post I have been accepted to a couple of new teams. I now am on Melissa Hiroti's (aka Phoenix) and Melissa Goerke's teams. These ladies have such pretty designs and I am so excited to be designing for them. Once I update my personal gallery I will be sure to post the link. :)

Bella Gypsy are retiring all of their kits at the end of this month. You might want to check them out. Everything ranges from $.50 to $1. So grab them while you can! Here are the links to their stores:

A Cherry On Top and Elemental Scraps

I suppose that is all for now. Hope everyone is doing well in blogger land. :D

Who said Friday the 13th was bad?

2006-10-13T18:05:00.000-05:00

Yes, my little Joshua is actually a Friday the 13th baby. ;) And a planned c-section on Friday the 13th, at that! LOL

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Josh! I love you and am so proud of you!

Credits: Bella Gypsy's "A Boy's Life" kit.

Finally! My endocrinology appointment

2006-10-04T07:58:00.000-05:00

Ok, he went by the blood test and ultrasound results from back in April. That was BEFORE my dietary changes and the huge changes in my cholesterol and such. He has no idea what those results were showing, so everything we are doing right now could completely change after my bloodwork later this month.

I am a pre-diabetic, which I knew. My thyroid is 1 1/2 times the normal size (the goiter) but he wants to repeat the bloodwork for all of that before deciding what to do. The nodules that showed up on the ultrasound are small in size, common, and sometimes not really nodules when you are dealing with Hashimoto's disease (an autoimmune disorder that runs in familes and my mother happens to have). He is in agreement with my primary doctor that this is likely something I have, and it explains why before when I was placed on Synthroid that I would flip flop between hypo and hyper thyroidism. From what he said, if I were a normal person (yes, that is what he said ROFL) then when they would give me the Synthroid my body should have used what it needed of the hormone and then stopped producing any extra, but my body did not. So, mine would simply keep doing it and this caused the hyper-thyroid results. The reason everything balanced out with my pregnancies is that the baby is half dad's genes, so therefore it helps to control my levels and symptoms. Since I am no longer having pregnanices, my body is giving me issues again. Further testing will prove it one way or the other, but the reasoning made perfect sense when he explained it to me.

He did a thorough exam, including some quick neurological testing. I passed with no problem. He checked my goiter well, and then we talked a while.

He believes I have Metabolic Syndrome in addition to the thyroid autoimmune issue. He is basing this on the extremely high cholesterol tests (again, before my changes were made), the high glucose test readings, the way my weight is distributed (mainly my belly seemed to be an issue though I am huge all over). He has put me on Metformin, which is a drug they use for diabetics, but have found it helps people like me. He described two other drugs that we may eventually use as well. This one is supposed to have weightloss as a side effect, but my mother said it never helped her any. LOL Guess we will see. He said that this would help explain why I didn't lose any weight just from the diet changes. He also cleared me to exercise again, so hopefully that will help, and as he mentioned could be a factor in that as well.

I go in next month for a dietician consult and then the beg of Dec I will have another appointment with him and I guess he will decide what to do about the thyroid at that time.

Just before he left he asked about that weird liver test that the lab did and that my doctor never ordered. He said it came back abnormal and that it is a test for cirrhosis of the liver, but at the same time my liver function tests were normal, so he was really quite confused about that as well. He mentioned repeating that test, but they didn't mark it down on my lab slip. I may call to ask about that or wait and see what he says in December.

I think that was about it. Not really anything I didn't know already, and like I said, everything could still change after I get the bloodwork done in a couple of weeks. Of course, the meds being added was new too.

Have you heard the news?

2006-09-19T20:58:00.000-05:00

Tabatha and Lena of Bella Gypsy are having a contest! Here are the details:

Get their new Autum's Artistry kit (only $5 at ACOT) and create a 4x6 recipe card LO of your your favorite harvest season recipe at 300dpi. Email your entry by October 1st to contest@bellagypsydesigns.com with Bella Gypsy Delights in the subject line. Everyone winds up a winner because all of the entries will be compiled, zipped and uploaded, a link sent to each contributor. How cool is that....and oh so very simple!

What are the prizes for this contest, you ask? Well, let me tell you, they sound awesome!

First prize: $100 Gift Certificate to Bella Gypsy store!

Second Prize: One month of free downloads (for Bella Gypsy, that's an average of 6-8 kits!)

Third Prize: 3 kits of your choosing!

Judging will be done by a panel of 10 and will be based 75% on overall design and 25% on your recipe!

For all of the entry details, please visit the Bella Gypsy Blog.

So, since I am short on time, I won't bore you with all of my latest layouts. If you are interested though, you can see them at my RAKScraps gallery. :) Feel free to leave some comments there if you would like. ;) Here is the link: http://www.rakscraps.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=4756

2006-09-19T10:36:00.000-05:00

I figured it was time for a school post again. I am horrible about posting about our school days, which was one of the original reasons I started this blog. Inhaven't had any real cool ideas come to me this year. I sort of became the boring teacher that I didn't want to become. The "Get your math book and do this page...great, now let's do phonics" kind of boring teacher. I don't know what happened after summer break. I lost something. When we went to our school eval last year and the teacher mentioned specific text books, something happened. Something in my brain sort of shut off and the creative side of me went in that direction. We haven't done a single lapbook yet, and our timeline notebook has yet to be started. I really need to think this all over again and get back to what was working so well last year. At this point we are just doing school because we have to, and I hate that. It is so totally opposite of the way it was before.

Jacob is doing great regardless of how boring it likely is for him. We are working in a 3rd grade Math book right now, and he is having very little trouble getting through it. His problem is simply taking forever to actually do the work. LOL He gets bored and then distracted. I'm probably going to start taking random problems off of the pages and actually go through more than one lesson a day on the topics he seems to get with no trouble. Phonics is a breeze as well, but he hates the writing. I can't really take that away though, because he needs to work on the handwriting quite a bit. When he had his 1st grade eval, the teacher said his handwriting was typical for the age, so I am not concerned about it. I think it looks like typical boy handwriting for sure. ;)

Bible lessons are going well. We have been reading about Adam and Eve this week from Jacob's "Kid's Devotional Bible". Then he does worksheets and coloring sheets. He still hates doing word searches, but the true and false, fill in the blanks, maze, and crossword puzzles are huge hits.

Jacob has also been attending a weekly art class with our homeschooling group. So far he has made a pinch pot that he will paint in the next week or two. Last week was a watercolor painting that was based on a story the art teacher read about the seashore. The teacher and I were talking a little and she said if she could get more of the older kids around his age to come than she would love to teach more technical aspects of the drawing. I know he would love that!

Joshua is doing really well also. He does surprisingly well with his math. He's better with subtraction than addition, which I did not expect. I have been taking large addition flash cards this week and laying them on the floor. Then we take a huge basket of cars and he sets up the problems in a visual manner next to the card. He gets the answer almost immediately. He doesn't seem to get that he can do the same thing with his fingers, but I think we will get there in a few more weeks.

We also have been using the magnetic letters for phonics. He is starting to make more reading connections. I take some cards for him to copy a word from. We then make new words with the same sound by changing one letter. After a few times, he reads a word or two on his own. Hopefully it will start clicking sooner with him.

We did a science experiment today on sinking and floating objects. We started off by reading a short one-page story from "Discover and Explore" ( a Timothy Goes to School book). We went in all of the rooms of the house and grabbed some objects to stick in his basket. Then filled the sink and made a chart. He had to choose an object from the basket and tell me if he thought it would float or sink. We'd mark down his prediciton and then mark what actually happened when he placed the object in water. He had a blast since he loves playing in water. He also has been telling me the weather this week, so we are going to make a weather chart later today.

Cassidy has been going to art classes with Jacob and really enjoying them too. She had a blast with the pinch pot, but when we did the painting I didn't think we would ever get to leave. She is VERY independant all of a sudden. We had to wet the paper before painting and she was soaking one little spot and avoiding the rest, so I tried helping her with the brush. You'd have thought I was ruining the thing. I was plainly told she wanted to do it by herself. Eventually I did get the paper wet for her and then she had a blast mixing the colors on the paper. We have both her and Jacob's paintings hanging on the living room wall.

Potty training is going so well with her now that I can't believe it. Cassie even pottied in the store bathroom on Sunday. I am so proud of how well she is doing. I set up a potty chart and it seems to be the final push she needed. The stickers weren't doing any good apparently until she saw them being gathered on a piece of paper.

Elena is keeping up just fine with the others. She makes sure she is included in every activity they are involved in. Her favorite phrase is "Fun-ny" right now. She giggles all of the time. That's one huge difference between girls and boys.....girls giggle a LOT. She pretends to read, plays dress-up, does "school", and still dances up a storm. She freezes when the new Barbie movie commercial comes on - the 12 dancing princesses or something like that. It cracks me up to see her. We got the Barbie Swan Lake DVD from the library a few weeks ago and her dancing reached a whole new level with that one. We have lots of arm movements and leg lifts to go with the spins and sways now. It is so cute watching her, because she is so serious. And there are times where there is no music so she will sing her own little tune to dance to. Absolutely adorable. :) So, there is no telling what she will be doing when she sees the new Barbie movie. LOL

Not much else to tell, I guess. Scrapping has been very slow. I hit a slump and have had little time the past couple of weeks. I've done very little scrapping most nights. I do have a few new pages, and I will post them when I get a chance to do so. I got a Wacom tablet for my birthday, and I am still playing with it and trying to figure out all of the nifty things it does. I have been using the pen as my mouse to try to get used to how it moves and feels. It definitely will take a lot of practice. It seems to be causing some of my tools in PS7 to not work now, so I have also been trying to figure out my way around those issues. I'm sure it is a simple fix that I just need to find time to figure out, but goodness, there are not enough hours in a day to do everything I need to do AND the things I want to do. LOL Maybe this weekend will slow down a little and I can play with it. :)

Jacob update

2006-09-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

The ped called me on Monday to let me know that Jacob's urinalysis came back fine. They were going to go ahead and do a culture to be sure, but she didn't expect anything to show up. I asked why in the world blood showed up in their office, and she said he may have had some irritation down there or it could have even been some ink from their little dipsticks came off and caused it. Needless to say, she could have handled things a little differently, and I think if she had kids of her own she would have done so.

Today I took Jacob in for his hearing test. I need to give you a little background before I tell you what happened today, so you can get the full effect of what we are dealing with here. It will be long, but the info is kind of critical, as you will see.

When Jacob was 18 months old he became severely ill with his first ear infection...it was so bad that the "eardrum" burst. Not the actual eardrum, but something else. For a month the doctors could not get antibiotics to work, and along with the ear never getting better he had extremely high fevers. I continuously told the doctor that I was concerned about meningitis because he just seemed to have so many of the symptoms, but she would move his neck and say she really did not feel that was it. Eventually he was hospitalized because he had a febrile seizure, which led to an ER visit, which led to tons of bloodwork, which led to a blood culture, which led to the eventual hospitalization, spinal taps, other tests, and eventual cure. Thank God, because sepsis can be deadly if it isn't caught soon enough and the symptoms resemble so many other things. So we are released and given an appointment with an ENT the next week and tubes a few weeks after that. We were on a priority list and were bumped in front of kids who had the tube surgery scheduled for three and four months, that is how concerned they were in getting this done quickly.

So, that was done at 20 months of age. Normally, the tubes fall out on their own and cause no trouble. As we all know, things are far from normal in my home. LOL Jacob's tubes fell out and got themselves stuck in wax deep in the canal. So, 3 years ago, we go to the ENT and after a 40 minute or so struggle the guy gets one tube (the left ear - remember this because it is important) out and then refuses to try removing the other explaining the ped can do it in her office.

So, I explain this at EVERY SINGLE VISIT, and my ped tells me it is still too hard to get the thing out, but it appears to be moving further towards the opening and eventually we will get it. She doesn't want to probe too much because she want's to be sure she doesn't damage the ear.

OK...

So, that brings you to last week's 7 year old check-up where I voice my concerns over Jacob's hearing. He just seems to be having more and more trouble. Today we head over to get the whole hearing test bit done and lo and behold he seems to have perfect hearing in the lefft ear and the right tests in normal range but he seems to show some issues with lower tones. My little lightbulb goes off and I mention how interesting that is considering the tube is still stuck in wax in that right ear. Sure enough, wow, mom is right. So the new ped to the office tells me I need to go to the ENT and get them to do it. I told her if they want to send me that's fine, but he refused to mess with the second ear since Jacob put up such a fight and he told me to get the ped to do it, and for three years NOBODY will touch him, so what am I supposed to do? I asked that we be given a referral to a different ENT, she tells me usually the doctor that puts them in wants to be the one to take them out, and I say "Well, that's just great unless they decide to refuse to do it because the child won't stop screaming. For a pediatric ENT he sure as heck was NOT child-friendly, and I don't really care that he put them in, he sure doesn't make me want to go back to see him with my kid. And I know for a fact I am not the only parent of a patient that was far from impressed with his personality and bedside manner." She was a little surprised and decided she would go ahead and try doing it herself.

So, she barely gets the little ear cleaner things up to his ear and the tears start rolling and the screaming like he is being killed begins. She couldn't get to it, takes out another tool and tries again with no success. Then she decides to flush his ears. OMG, if he wasn't already just about to have a heart attack, he was now. He was scared to death and shaking. After 5 minutes and getting NOTHING out, she says that's it, we need to see the ENT. He can't say she didn't try. And then she tells me the worst part-

She said she has taken tubes out in the office before and it is really no big deal. She is afraid that it is so hardened in there and has been in there so long, that it might have skin growing around it now and could cause all sorts of problems if they were to pull it out. OMG, I am SO ANGRY! Can you believe this?

So, we are being referred back to the same jerk that we went to before and we have an appointment or October 26th. Needless to say, he'd better do his damn job this time or else. I don't care if he has to freaking sedate the boy, the tube needs to come out this time.

We also are being referred to a behavioral psychologist to rule out his being on the autism spectrum. I'm ticked about that too because Josh's psych that is so awesome is not covered under the new insurance we will have as of November, and they don't appear to be as willing to work with the single case agreement. So, that is our update - bad day all the way around.

You must be a saint if you read all of that. LOL Thanks if you did.

Rosemary A. Smith

2006-09-10T21:49:00.000-05:00

September 11, 2001. We all remember where we were and what we were doing when we found out what happened on that horrific day. I was home with my two children and had somehow managed to sleep in. I rarely turned on the TV in the mornings, but for some reason I decided to do so that day. I remember flipping through the channels and wondering what in the world had happened. I called my mother who was also in shock. I got the kids ready, picked up my mother and we headed to a church to pray.

I did not personally know anyone who worked in the World Trade Center or Pentagon, but it certainly did not stop my concern, thoughts, and prayers for all of the people who were and still are personally effected.

Now, however, I will never hear about 9/11 without thinking of 61 year old Rosemary A. Smith. Ms. Smith lived with her daughter, also named Rosemary, and son-in-law Kevin. She had two granddaughters, Kyley and Kamy. She was also loved by her brother Charles, sister Georgeanne, and sister-in-law Marianne. Along with those were cousins, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and a host of other acquaintances.

Rosemary worked in Tower One for Sidley Austin Brown and Wood, LLP as a switchboard operator for 12 years. She had been in the tower during the 1993 bombing and had gotten out despite leg and breathing problems. When many refused to go back, Rosemary still returned to work. She was on the 57th floor of Tower One on September 11th, and was the only fatality her firm had.

Rosemary Smith was known for two things: a wonderful smile and her homemade chocolate treats. She even dreamed of one day having her own candy making business. Her chocolates were often requested for holidays and special occasions, and from everything I read, she would have been a huge success. When not making her popular candies, she enjoyed bowling, crafts, and reading, and she adored spending time with her grandchildren. She always looked for the good in others and everyone said she had a heart of gold.

Though I may not have known Rosemary A. Smith personally, I feel very privileged to have been chosen to write about her. I will never forget Rosemary, and her name and the way she touched everyone who knew her will stay with me. Each anniversary of September 11th, Rosemary A Smith will be who my mind turns to immediately. She will never be forgotten.
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Quilt square is from the "United in Memory" quilt.
Sources of info:
Legacy.com
SILive.com
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I am honored to one of over 3,000 bloggers paying tribute to one of 9/11 victims. To see the list of links to other tributes, please click HERE.

More medical issues arise

2006-09-08T21:09:00.000-05:00

I took Jacob to his late 7 year check up expecting for some reason to have it go smoothly like Elena's 2yr did on Tuesday. The only concern I felt needed to be looked into was his hearing.

So, we go in and we talk and I mention the hearing as a concern. She listens to his chest and says that he has a slight heart murmur, but because of the way it sounds she feels it likely is nothing to worry about.

Then next she tells me Jacob had some blood in his urine and so they are going to send it off for more tests because the hearing and kidney problems could be connected. I was sitting there in shock. I don't know what the heck has happened to my routine and quick planned visit at this point.

So, we talk some more throughout the visit about his development and if there are any other concerns I have and I said other than the hearing not really. She asks him questions throughout, and when she gets to the actual ear part of the exam he starts shaking uncontrollably and tears start streaming down his face. He was petrified and I have no idea why other than the fact that he has always had a fear of doctors. So I hold his hand throughout the rest of the exam.

Next thing I hear out of her mouth is "How does he do with other kids? Does he play with toys normally?" I explained that I knew what she was getting at because I have an autistic child, and though Asperger's has been at the back of my mind with Jacob, I also realize that autism is a social disorder and he does not have problems with social skills with other kids...Is he petrified of doctors? Heck yeah, but other kids he is fine with. I even explained how he did at art class yesterday and how he gets along with everyone except his brother. I told her I do see where there appear to be signs and have felt something is going on with him, but because of his social skills I figured the hearing was what could be causing it.

She said she can tell I am intuitive and that I know the warning signs to look for and though the social areas are ok he may still be somewhere on the spectrum since he does have some of the signs and there is a sibling on the spectrum and it tends to be a hereditary link in most cases. However, she wants to rule out all other organic reasons for the hearing problems before jumping into a psychological eval. She said the good thing is at least I know what services are facing us if necessary in the future since I have already been this route.

So, needless to say I am a bit concerned about my sweet guy. We are having his hearing tested at the ped office on Thursday and will get the results of the urinalysis then as well. I'm trying so hard not to worry, but this was a bit shocking to say the least. I've done a good bit of crying today.

To top it off, on the 21st is Cassidy's appointment and I am dreading it something awful, because I do have some concerns. She has always been ahead of the game and is also showing some signs of being on the spectrum. I don't know what in the world we will do financially if I have three kids on the spectrum, because therapy is expensive and we just found out yesterday we are having a change in the insurance as of November. So, any prayers you guys can spare will be gratefully appreciated more than you can know.

Sorry that this probably was jumbled and made little sense. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around everything myself.

The weekly update

2006-09-02T19:50:00.000-05:00

Jacob did a great job on his first math test for the year. He totally aced it, which was surprising given the fact that the day before he was acting as if he had no clue what place value was, let alone how to figure it out. We will be starting art classes once a week this week, and he is really excited. A couple of friends and I have decided we will have our own little homeschool group since our kids are all around the same age range. I think it will be loads of fun. We'll do the art class, the letterboxing, possibly some concerts at one of the local universities....there were lots of fun extracurricular stuff that we came up with.

I have been posting layouts at ACOT for the Bella Gypsy team. I really like it over there now that I am starting to learn my way around a bit. I posted an intro and in one of the responses I was given instructions on how to find their homeschooling board. Someone posted a neat little site for testing reading comprehension: Book Adventure. I had Jacob take a couple of the quizes on books we read last year and one we just completed, and he did pretty good. I saved the pages with the scores so we can print them and stick them in his portfolio later.

I have been scrapping as usual when the kids are in bed at night or during their rest time during the day. I got my CT assignments out at Scrappin' Secrets and completed my first set of layouts yesterday. I used ErinShannon Designs' "Grandparent's Day" kit. It was fun to play with. The first layout is my in-laws. Aren't they cute? :) We took the pic in Disney World when the entire family went. My other layout is Silas' grandmother. The photo was taken at Elena's birthday party earlier this month, so it is recent.

I also did one tonight using Wendy Nelson's "Retro Diva" kit. This kit is HUGE and is so fun to play with! I can't wait to do another LO using it. I decided to use it to scrap a photo of Cassidy's painted toes. She is such a girly girl. My mother asks me all of the time how I got her to be as girly as she is. I have no idea. I think she just has an inner diva. LOL

Finally, I have to show you the LOs I made using some of Bella Gypsy's kits. I LOVE their stuff....have I mentioned that before? LOL If you are wanting some great freebies and to get a little taste of what Lena and Tabitha's stuff is like, make sure you visit the Bella Gypsy blog. Those two are full of surprises and have lots of exciting things in the works.

Credits: Bella Gypsy's "Dressed for School Dude" kit.

Credits: Bella Gypsy's "Dirt Magnet" kit. Template by WDS- Tonje...it was actually for the Technique challenge at Scrappin' Secrets.

This is one of my favorites. I've had this picture of Elena and have been waiting to find just the right kit to use. :) Credits: Bella Gypsy's "Dressed for School Diva" kit.

Lots to talk about today. :)

2006-08-29T18:49:00.000-05:00

Wow! So much to talk about...

First of all, I was supposed to have Cassidy's 3 year check-up. Unfortunately, 10 minutes after our appointment time we were still standing outside and there was nobody there. So, I call to find out if they are hiding in the back or what, only to be told they decided not to open that office today and I should have been called. WHAT?! Oh man, I was ticked. I asked if they didn't have my cell or any of the other 5 numbers on the paper I fill out every single time I go to their office, and she claims no. Ugh. So, now the appointment is set for three weeks from now and mama is not too happy with the ped office.

Silas came home with all sorts of good news from work. I can't talk about a lot of it, but there is a good chance that things may start looking up financially for us. :) The main thing is he is getting all the praise and recognition he has deserved for years. I'm really excited for him. :D

I was tagged by Jane (Jane's World) a few days ago, and I haven't forgotten! I've just been a bit busy. ;) So, without further ado....

rules:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: List 5 weird things about yourself or your pets. Then tag 5 friends and list them. Then those 5 friends need to state their 5 weird things on their blog, listing the rules and then tag 5 more people. Don't forget to let the person know in their blog that you tagged them or we will never find out their weird attributes.

1 - I can't sleep at night unless my pillowcase is a flannel one. I have no idea why, but for some reason my ear just prefers the soft feel I suppose. Weird?.....yeah. LOL

2 - Another weird sleep thing...I have to have my ear on the cold part of the pillow. I will turn my pillow tons before I can ever actually sleep. We have had a post on Scrappin' Secrets a few weeks now about our quirks, and it turns out this is something a lot of people do. So, maybe I'm not completely weird. LOL

3 - Our dog, Abby, is quite the scardey-cat. We had a very young kitten get into our backyard, and she was terrified of it. Nevermind she was at least 10 times the size of the kitten. It was hillarious to watch her whimper and run to the other end of the yard with her tail between her legs everytime the kitten would meow or start to walk around the yard.

4 - I can't stand the feel of cardboard. It gives me goosebumps even thinking about touching it.

5 - Hmmm, one more....I actually LIKE to vaccum. It's the one chore I enjoy. No idea why. :)

Ok, that took a while to come up with that last one. LOL I'm going to tag Lynds, Wendy, Cassandra, Nellie, and Tiana. :) As Jane said on her blog, "blame Kim J", because it sounds like she instigated this. ROFL

Want to see my new layouts? ;)

This photo of Elena was just too darn cute...it just yelleed "SCRAP ME!", so I did. She loves to choose her own outfits now, and this one is a favorite. She also decided to choose all sorts of accessories while she was at it. LOL It was a very...ummm....different look. HA! If you click, you can see it much better and read the journaling. The papers are fromValerie Fowler's "Princess of the Party" and Michelle Coleman's "Simply Spring Mini " (slightly recolored by me). Ribbon and flower charm are also from Michelle Coleman's "Simply Spring Mini" (slightly recolored by me). Doodles and word art from Lauren Grier's "Girl Notes " (flower and heart colored by me).

I metioned in my last post about joining Bella Gypsy's CT. Wow! They are all so great there! I love it! I got to work immediately and came up with two LO's that I really like. The first one is using the Bella Gypsy kit "Elementary". Wow, do I ever LOVE this kit! I had the perfect photo for it too. :)

And the second layout is "Baby Talk". I used Bella Gypsy's "All Girl" paper and embellishment packs. The colors are so soft...I just LOVE it! I also used some stitches from their Berry Sweet kit. LOL The photo is Elena with my best friend's baby. They appeared to have a nice little conversation going on. :)

So, I guess I didn't have too, too much to say. It seemed like a lot more in my mind I guess. Anyone that knows me knows that I can get to talking at times and keep on, and on, and on, and....I'll spare you. ;)

Have a great evening!

Woohoo!

2006-08-26T23:26:00.000-05:00

School has been going pretty well for the most part. I decided to try something new with Jacob. I gave him the entire week's worth of work so he could see what was coming, and I told him that we were going to do all that was on the list by Thursday so we could have a fun day on Friday doing art, digital scrapping, etc. He dragged his feet so badly. He took an hour and a half to do one phonics sheet on Monday and Tuesday, and we never even got to half of the things we should have. So, Thursday we actually had a lot to catch up on, but we did get to everything. I think I will just stick with the daily schedule for now. ;)

Josh did pretty good this week. I am trying to give him work that is mostly play right now. He has a negative view of what school is like because he hates writing. We worked on it a lot last year for therapy. So, this year I am trying not to worry about the writing right now and focus on everything else. We will get to the writing later. We played a game called Train Salesman. We set up a nice curvy track and he sat on one side while I sat on the other. I was the buyer, setting up my own train station, and he had a train yard that I wanted to buy from. We took out all of his Thomas trains and set them up, and I would tell him what I was looking for...for example, a large engine with a green tender. He would then find them in the huge line of trains (which is hard for him to focus on large groups of items), put them together on a track and drive them over to me. I would then tell him my shipping business was doing so well that I needed to either trade in for a new one or buy another. He loved the game.

His other favorite activity was the number puzzles I made. I used index cards....on the left side I wrote the number. On the right side I used glittery puffy paint and made coordinating number of dots. This provided something for him to touch while counting the dots. I then cut them cards down the center in different shapes. He did great. I used the same puzzle idea with the letters to teach him the lowercase letters after he had learned the uppercase.

We also have done a little computer, but not much. He mainly wants to play his car racing game, Test Drive 5, and he does that as his reward after his school is done. He has actually figured out how to manuver the cars a bit now and discovered a track that will actually make him airborne. He also found a spot that is wide enough to make the car do doughnuts. Too many Nascar races, I think. LOL

So, in scrapping news....

I am super excited to say I received an email tonight asking if I would like to join the Bella Gypsy CT. Woohoo! I LOVE their kits, so of course I said YES! I was recommended by Lynds, and after checking out my gallery, they asked me to join. :) In addition to that, I also am now the Scrappin' Secrets CT Apprentice. Eventually somewhere down the road I will be the CT Leader. Woohoo! I'm super excited about it!

I did some layouts this week that I really loved:

I did the sketch challenge at RAKScraps. I was wanting to use a new kit I got by Jeanine Baechtold, and I still had not gotten Joshua's first day of Kindergarten pics scrapped yet, so I decided to put the two together. :) Even though we homeschool, we still do the first day of school photos each year. Stitching is from freedigitalscrapbooking and the kit I used is Jeanine Baechtold's Sophisticated Paisley kit. Isn't Josh cute. He had one of Jacob's Lego cars in hand, of course. :)

Next is a continuation of our ABC album. I used a photo of a huge giraffe we saw at Downtown Disney last October. Everything from RAKScraps May Mega Kit....Papers by: Jeannie Papai and Jane A and the ribbon by Corinne Fragata.

And I saved my favorites for last. I love how these turned out. Be sure to click on these and see them better and read the journaling. :)

Credits: Ginger Thibodeau's Catch Some Coral kit. The journaling is actually lyrics from the Barry Manilow song "I Am Your Child"

Credits: I used Rachel Dickson's Little Man kit. I also used Virtual Photographer on the photo. This one is currently my favorite LO. :)

Credits: Ginger Thibodeau's Catch Some Coral ki

Credits: Papers - Valerie Fowler - Princess of the Party and Michelle Coleman, Simply Spring Mini (slightly recolored by me) Ribbon and flower charm - Michelle Coleman, Simply Spring Mini (slightly recolored by me) Doodles and word art - Lauren Grier ~ Girl Notes (flower and heart colored by me)

ARGH!!!!!

2006-08-21T23:30:00.000-05:00

Ok, this construction in my backyard is seriously going to drive me to the nut house! Let me give you a visual to explain a little of why I am complaining.

This is my backyard the afternoon after a hurricane came through our area in August of 2004. It's a mess, but you get to see what the trees that once existed look like. Notice this is from my garage door, and also notice the blue pipe which was sitting in a large ditch. Note also the amount of shade we received from all of these trees.

Now, here is what my backyard looks like as of week before last. Note the lack of a ditch, because a bunch of nice workers in trucks came and filled it in for us. Notice the bright orange truck that was kind enough to pull up a tree from next to our fence and then almost managed to drop onto my house. Also note the wonderful pile of pulled trees (you only see a portion of the long trail here) that they decided to burn this weekend. The smell of smoke in my house was wonderful (being sarcastic here) and the haze was such a wonderful sight - I really think this is probably half the reason Cassie and Jacob are both quite hoarse since that day. And while you are looking at this, imagine the feeling of the trees being pulled and thrown around like little lincoln logs, but on a MUCH grander scale. My house literally shakes all day long when they are out there working. My dog goes balistic because these workers are literally right at my fence. It's a whole lotta noise and a whole lotta shaking in the neighborhood!

Now, flash to today. I wake up to very low water pressure, which is not an uncommon thing when you have all the construction going on. At 9am it was low enough that I was not able to shower or do laundry, both of which were in need of being done. At noon, I fixed the kids their lunch and discovered we had absolutely NO WATER! Nothing, nada, zip. Nary a drop could be found. I was fuming now. So I call the water company to find out what's up. Nobody had reported a probalem, so the woman was sending out a ticket. I explained I had four small children and no water with them here was a very bad combination. She apologized and said they would send someone out as soon as possible. Here in my city, that is usually translated into a minimum of 2-3 hours before it is even looked into.

Joshua was panicked about not being able to wash his hands, Jacob's imagination was completely running away with him as to what would happen if we turned on the faucet with no water at the house....I have no idea what he thought was going to happen, but he was scared to try turning it on. The girls could have cared less...it meant no bath today, so they were happy. LOL So, I headed over to my mother's house for the remainder of the day. Luckily, we had finished school by the time this happened. The water was fixed by the time Silas got home.

So, now that I have explained a little more what our big complaint is right now, I guess you can imagine what it is like trying to get my highly distractable, autistic child to concentrate on doing school of any sort. I mean, it is hard enough for any of us to think some days with all the noise and shaking, but then for poor Joshua whose senses are extremely heightened...man, I feel for him.

So, hopefully they will finish all of this majorly annoying construction projects soon.

A new scrapper and a new activity

2006-08-19T17:03:00.000-05:00

As a new activity for homeschooling this year, I decided to take a cue from Jacob and let him learn digital scrapping. We had his first lesson yesterday and he LOVED it! I let him choose the photo, papers, elements, and what to write. The main goal of the lesson was for him to learn to move the items he wanted onto the background. He chose 2 papers from Wendy Nelson's Back to School Basic kit and the elements he chose were from Melany Violette's Vroom-Vroom kit. The font was ITC Garamond (we'll cover changing the font later). I think he did a pretty good job for his first time! I even posted his LO at RAKScraps and Scrappin' Secrets for him, where he received quite a few wonderful compliments. (Thanks again everyone!) So now he is asking to do another page. LOL I think this will be a lot of fun for him when we go on field trips and when we study things he is actually able to take photos of on his own.

I've been doing some scrapping myself. I now have my letter F page done. Silas took the photo while out of town on business last month. Everything I used was from the Gotta Pixel Design Team's April kit. Papers by Brenda Miller, Ribbon by Stacy Carlson, Charm by Christina Wall, Glass Buttons by Michelle Pieters.

I love this photo Silas took of Elena. She brought a frame out of my room last week and I had it sitting on a shelf. She decided to be cute one evening and frame herself. LOL Silly girl. The kit I used is Misty Cato's Wonderfully Made.

This next one is a photo of Elena opening gifts on her actual birthday. It's so funny seeing how she knew what to do this year and actually ripped paper to get to what was inside. She was excited about her Crayola dominoes. Star clip and Birthday Girl Word art are by Jen Reed from the BirthdayZ elements kit at Scrapdish, Candles by Krista Mettler from the BirthdayZ elements kit, Celebrate Word art by Melissa G from the BirthdayZ elements kit, Star Background by Lisa West (Zephanee) from her Summer Celebration kit, and Patterned background paper by Robin Cabana from her You Rock kit available at Scrapbook-Bytes.

Finally, I participated in the Ad Inspiration challenge at Scrappin' Secrets and came up with this layout. I have so many photos of Josh with a car or train in his hands. I had to use them at some point. LOL he paper and truck are from Melany Violette's Vroom-Vroom Kit. The fonts I used are Mad's Scrawl BRK, Long Island, and Little Trouble Girl BV.

I received the latest issue of Family Fun Magazine this week and finally got a chance to sit and look through it. I came across a really cool article on Letterboxing. I have been looking for something like this and finally, here it is! It is similar to geocaching, but instead of using a GPS and leaving trinkets, you use a compass and clues to find the letterbox. You then take a rubberstamp (most people make their own) and stamp the logbook inside the box and then take the stamp inside the box to stamp their page. Then you hide the box back where it was found. Jacob is always wanting to find treasure, and this will fulfill the desire, improve thinking skills, get us some exercise, and give us some cheap family fun. There are several in our area and nearby areas, and in our state there are at least 3 mystery boxes. I can't wait to get started. My plan (we know how that goes!) is for Jacob and possibly the others to make their own rubber stamps. There are so many easy options for them that it is very doable.

And the year begins

2006-08-16T23:14:00.000-05:00

We started school Monday. Jacob is in second grade, Joshua is in kindergarten, and the girls are "preschool". I had these great plans of how things would go and my schedule was worked out. Everyone would have something to do throughout the day. The boys would take turns entertaining the girls and the girls would love every minute of it since they adore their brothers. During naptime for the girls I would work on things together with the boys. Life would be nice and school would be fun. My schedule looked so good on paper that it was frameworthy.

Well, as we all know, life has a funny way of taking your plans and laughing at you. Half an hour into trying to get the kids to listen to what we were going to do first, I realized the joke truly was on me. I overhear Jacob mumble that he thought second grade was going to be fun. Uh oh! That's it. Time to rethink this whole thing.

So, with a huge sigh, I proceded to tear up my beautiful, happy schedule and go into my room to rethink the entire thing and how I need to work it out to everyone's benefit, all the while being serenaded by Joshua's drumming on my door. I gave that idea up quickly, and told Joshua he could play in his room while I worked with Jacob. Sweet Joshua actually peeked out his room about 10 minutes later and asked me if I wanted to play Legos with him. WOAH! This is one of our goals that we have been working on - initiating play by asking someone to play a specific thing with him. I was excited, but there was no way in the world I could just drop Jacob's school. So, I came up with a solution and explained that I had to do school with Jacob, but could play later. Until then, would he like to play with Cassidy? Oh yes! Great idea! Score one for Mom! And even better, Cassie was chomping at the bit to get in the boys room and help make a mess.

I decided to try easing into school a bit this year. So, Jacob worked on his Bible lesson and some Math. We are using an old 3rd grade Holt Mathematics book and supplementing as necessary and for the Bible lesson I am using Calvary Chapel Children's Ministry Curriculum. It's nice. It has mazes, crosswords, true and false, fill in the blanks, and word searches. I also have been getting "Keys for Kids" which is a free daily devotional for kids that we receive in the mail each month.

Joshua worked on several things so far. We have been sorting some magnetic letters by color. My letters come in 6 different colors, which is a lot for Josh to concentrate on at once. I had him sort about 100 letters into their proper place and it took him a few tries before he fully seemed to understand what I was wanting. While they were up today he asked me if some of them spelled car. So, I showed him the c, a, and r and explained that they make the word car. He giggled. So funny to see him get excited over something so simple. LOL I then decided to take it a bit further and took away the c and added f. I went over the sounds again with him, and explained the ar sound and how to put the f sound with it and make the word far. Ok, not impressed. So then I did a couple more and came to the letter t. I asked him what sound the t makes, he told me, and lo and behold he actually told me tar spells TAR! He didn't know what tar was until I explained it to him, but he smiled a little when I told him how proud I was that he just read a word by himself.

I also discovered this week that Joshua has a great sense of rhythm. He was playing a Reader Rabbit music game and actually enjoying it. All of the rhythm exercises that he tried, he did awesome on! So, that was exciting. :) Maybe there is a musical future for my little guy. He has always been able to hum and sing a tune amazingly well compared to other kids his age. I remember when he was only one and we were in the car and he was humming. I thought it was Jacob because of how accurate it was. Just amazing.

And he can use a computer mouse. Another thing that amazes me given that until this week he always prefered to watch others do the computer. Now he has one of his own and he seems to have completely taken to it. I'm really glad, because I think that he will benefit a lot from using it.

We did some drawings in shaving cream yesterday. Joshua hated it, but with guidance and my convincing him to draw some cars, we made it through. Even the girls enjoyed that one, though I learned next time we will probably try using whipped cream. Elena was way too tempted by the look of it and kept trying to taste it. Yuck!

So, that brings you up to date for now. RAKScraps has just started releasing their August Mega Kit and the theme is school days! Woohoo! Run over and join the message board to get the links to this awesome kit, and while you are there, why not say hello? Everyone there is great! I plan on trying to scrap a bit this weekend as time permits. I want to get the first day layouts completed ASAP and try to stay up on them for the end of the year, especially since Joshua's portfolio is going to be made up of a lot of photos. :)

Rumble Grumble

2006-08-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

I have been busy, busy, busy preparing for this school year. I'm pretty much ready. Only 4 more days! Yay! I can't wait. :)

Here is my biggest concern right now - the noise. We have some major construction going on, practically in my backyard. What used to be a ton of trees and a ditch on the other side of my back fence, now appears to be completely empty space with the ditch completely filled in with dirt. Now, because the ditch was HUGE and is now full of dirt, obviously we have had work trucks bringing dirt, scooping dirt, dropping dirt....all of this after they already spent a day knocking down trees. They are very close to my fence - so close that their trucks keep bumping the branches of trees in my yard. My house literally shakes ALL DAY LONG. I had a horrible migraine two days ago, and it is near impossible to get rid of it with the house rumbling.

So, now that my grumbling is done, would you like to see my latest layouts? :) I've been busy
making new pages, but have neglected posting them on my blog. In my defense, blogger hasn't been very cooperative for me.

My first three layouts were made using the Pampered Princess kit by Sheri Smith, SheLynn Designs at Scrappin' Secrets. The layouts just flowed once I got started. The first two are of sweet Elena. I used the ShangriLaNFSmallCaps font in the first one, and Scythe font in the second.

My third layout was of Cassidy. Don't you just love that silly smile she had? LOL It was taken on her first real Halloween. She was Sleeping Beauty and was thrilled, as you can tell. :) I used Pea Catherine as the font on this one.

Next is a layout I did for the Ad Inspiration Challenge on SS. I am far from thrilled with it, but I liked the concept. I decided to do a layout on Cassidy's favorite things. What you see is the result. LOL Barbie, the color PINK, Disney Princesses, My Little Ponies, friends, and of course, her Purple Baby, which she never leaves home without. The font I used is Kayleigh, and the kit is Miss Mint's "To My Mother" kit from Peppermint Creative.

What's next? Hmmmm. My Abc Album is coming along nicely. I just finished my letter E page. I just realized I never showed the C and D pages either. Yikes! I am WAY behind!

C always stands for the older princess around here. LOL I'm still trying to get my tears to look halfway decent. I'm not thrilled with how they turned out here, but they will do for now. All of the papers and elements are from Ginger Thibodeau's Softly Shining kit. I love this kit. I have used it on at least 3 layouts and could keep using it over and over. It is a beautiful kit! The font I used is ITC Garamound. I decided right from the start that I was going to use the same font for this entire album to sort of tie the entire thing together.

My D page features a photo of some ducks that I took on Jacob's first fishing trip. The little babies were so cute. They would follow their mother into the high grass at the edge of the lake and simply disappear in it. Do you see the little white duck among all of the brown ones? He is too cute. LOL I used V. Kim Smith's Woodland Meadows 2 kit.

Just as C stands for Cassidy, E is for Elena. Scrappin Secrets has a new Mega kit out right now for free (so go get it - good through the month of August!) and I loved the lightly colored papers in there. I really loved Colleen Shibley's background that I chose to use, as well as the little tag. It just seemed too perfect. :)

Let me see. Wow, I did not realize how long it had been since I posted my layouts. LOL Next is one I did for the SS Quote Challenge. Journaling reads:
"Joshua, you have always had a special bond with Elena. I remember when this photo was taken in the hospital only a few short hours after Elena was brought into my room. You were so proud of your new sister. At that time you were still not very verbal, but the joy you showed us was amazing. Elena is so lucky to have such a wonderful big brother." I used Robin Carlton and Mandabean's Deco Fabulous kit. The fonts are Libby Script, Pea Jennifer, and Kayleigh.

I took part in the lyrics challenge at SS as well. I didn't think I had a single photo to go along with it, which is why I didn't do the same exact challenge at RAKS. While looking through my photos for one to use on the quote challenge, I came across the photo I decided to use. It needed something done, so I played with it a bit. You see the final result. The lyrics are from Natasha Bedingfield's song "Unwritten". The font I used is Apple Chancery, and the kit I chose is Funky Bunches of Flowers by Tania Cordova aka luna designs.

Finally, I made two layouts using Julie Major's Spring Time Kit. The first is A Little Cake. I got the stitching from Atomic Cupcake, and the font is Pea Becky. Gotta love those Pea fonts!

The other is titled Smile. I took this photo on Elena's birthday. She was so cute. She sat on the seat and kept smiling and saying "Cheeeeeeese". What a ham she can be at times. LOL I used Pea Becky on this one as well. Now that I am looking at it, I wish I would have kept her eyes colored when I desaturated the pic. She has the most gorgeous blue eyes. I may redo it one of these days.

I think that pretty much brings you up to date on the happenings and the layouts from this month. I'll try to be better about updating regularly so I don't overwhelm you with the layouts like that. ;)

Angel Madison

2006-08-03T11:25:00.000-05:00

Baby Madison, who I have mentioned a few times here on my blog, passed away this morning. My thoughts and prayers are with Shelli. Madison fought so hard, and she beat so many odds. She just celebrated her 2nd birthday on July 29th - something the doctors did not expect to happen.
She touched so many people across many miles. To read her story, please follow this link:
http://www.memoriesofmariam.com/madison/

Happy 2nd Birthday, Elena!

2006-08-02T23:45:00.000-05:00

I can't believe my baby is 2 already! She is such a joy. Happy birthday, baby girl!

Credits: Mindy Terasawa's Autumn Blossoms blog freebie Font: Antsy Pants

The boys and their growth issues

2006-08-01T13:10:00.000-05:00

Well, if you rememebr all the way back to January, both boys were referred to an endocrinologist because one of them has a low Insulin-like Growth Hormone (IGF) and the other had a high according to the peds office. So, today was our appointment...finally! Nothing like 7 1/2 months of waiting! The endo is wonderful though! I really like her a lot, and the kids do as well.

So, we started with Jacob. He is still in the 5th% for height. His bone age scan (the xray my peds office supposedly couldn't get was miraculously there in the office) shows his bone growth as delayed by about a year. From what she explained, the IGF they tested is not actually a hormone, but a protein that binds to the bones. It increases as you grow. Jacob's isn't actually low like the ped thought...it is actually in the low range, but borderline. She thinks he is what they call a late-bloomer. They start out mid to high on the growth chart and then steadily decline until they level off. He pretty much has leveled off at the 5% now, which is great. She did a full exam and said he is still missing 2 of his 6 year molars which goes right along with the delay in bone growth.

The awesome thing? She said most parents have been told there is a window of opportunity that you need to get growth issues taken care of in. It is not true and we have plenty of time to just observe him and see what happens. Most likely he will stay at this % and wind up a normal height but on the shorter side. My brother stopped growing when he was about 8 or 10 and stayed the same height for 5 years...he is taller than me now. :) She said it is definitely something that tends to run in families, so this isn't really surprising. So, basically he has likely found his place on the growth curve and that's all. Yay!

Joshua had the bone growth x-ray today and we will get the results by the end of the week. The reason he was sent in was because his IGF was high according to the ped. Now, that wonderful office never bothered to send over his test results for some reason (I guess 7 months wasn't enough time to get them over) I told this doc what I was told and that I don't know whether or not it really was high since they weren't correct about Jacob's. She said it wouldn't make sense for it to be high, but she will look into getting the results from the lab and see what they say. So, when I call for the bone age scan results I can get that info as well. She may decide to run more tests. At this point though, Josh seems to be following the same path Jacob did and will likely be fine as well. Yay!

So, we go back in 6 months to check and see if they remain on their paths and will likely go twice a year for a while. I can deal with that. :)

The funniest part was the fact that Josh loved talking to her. She has a GREAT bedside manner and he just took right to her. The questions on paper asked about delays developmentally and I put on there about his HFA. She said she was really surprised he is autistic because he is so chatty and friendly. His eye contact wasn't great, but it is nice to know we have progressed to being able to even fool a few docs now for a little while. ;) He really has progressed a lot socially, so I am very pleased. :)

So, that's it. No hormone shots, so I am SO relieved! LOL 7 months of worry have been lifted off my shoulders in just a few hours time this morning. I'm not even worried about what Josh's test results will show from today because it is likely the same as Jacob and will be ok.

Oh! I also asked about the girls and whether or not we will see the same pattern. She said it might happen, but it is more common in males. Weird, huh?

It's almost that time!

2006-07-24T09:17:00.000-05:00

I'm getting excited about getting back into our homeschooling routine. Josh really needs it, and I am chomping at the bit to get started. I still haven't decided exactly when I am going to start either. It will be sometime in August, but I want to wait until after Jacob and Josh see the endocrinologist on the 1st for the growth hormone problem. After we know what they are going to do, how much testing they are going to do, etc, then I will be able to better judge when to start. There are still some things we need, and things I need to finish preparing a bit, and I am trying to also declutter this house of mine. We have way too much stuff for our little 900-something square foot home.

Speaking of Jacob's growth, he has suddenly shot up! He is now 45 3/4 inches! Yay, Jacob! What is different? I have no idea. Maybe his body just decided it is going to follow its own growth pattern. Who knows? Anyway, it puts him just above the 10% as opposed to the 2-3% on the chart, so he is growing. Joshua, on the other hand, has not grown a bit since November. But, maybe he will follow the same path as Jacob seeing as they are brothers? No idea.

I took Cassidy to the new main library in town. We had never been to the new one, and there was a book I was really wanting to get (I'll tell you about that one in a minute). That place is HUGE! I couldn't believe how large and nice this place is. We parked on the conference level, and walked up some stairs to the main floor. I couldn't find a map, so we headed upstairs...yes, actually up the stairs. Cassidy was hillarious! She wanted to walk up the steps. There is a series of steps, a platform, and then another series of steps. We would get halfway up a set of steps and she would start saying, "We're almost there. Almost. Not much more. We're THERE!" LOL We'd search the floor a bit and then head up to the next level. The children's section is actually on the 2nd floor (our third set of steps) so she was tuckered out by the time we got there. And I think the sheer number of books there was completely overwhelming to her. She found a My Little Pony book and was ready to leave. LOL

There were tons of maps in the children's section, so we grabbed one and found the elevator. We headed to find the one book I went after: "Homeschooling the Child With Asperger Syndrome: Real Help for Parents Anywhere and on Any Budget". I haven't had time to fully dive into it yet, but so far it is wonderful! It is so nice to read what other people have done and what curriculums have worked with their child. It also has some instructions on making our own therapy items, a list of social skills that many Asperger kids have trouble with and idioms commonly used. I can't wait to really sit down and read this one. Though Joshua was diagnosed with High-Functioning Autism, at the time we received the diagnosis, we were also told that the only reason he didn't qualify as having Asperger Syndrome is because of his speech delay. So, I'm hoping this book will be a fountain of info.

Dropped

2006-07-21T06:51:00.000-05:00

Yep! Apparently my bloodwork was too good to continue on the clinical study I was participating in. Hmmm. Good news for me, not so good for them. ;)

My triglycerides went down below 150 to 134, so they can't use me. My good cholesterol went up to 50-something (writing from memory here), and something else went up which wasn't so good...either the total or the bad cholesterol, but I can't rememebr which. Anyway, Lisa (the coordinator) headed over to talk to my doc. He reminded her of how bad my numbers were in April and how by diet I totally turned everything around by June. He is not choosing to medicate me at this time. Instead he wants me to keep on doing what I was doing and go back in a month to see if I qualify for anything else. Even my fasting glucose level was good last week at 83. Woohoo!

I made a few layouts since my last post. I was even chosen as Layout of the Day at Gotta Pixel again! Twice in five days time! Talk about exciting to see! The layout chosen this time is "Loose Tooth Questions". Jacob wanted me to take a picture of his mouth with all of his baby teeth still in "in case he forgets what his mouth looked like with all of them in". LOL He cracks me up! So I figured, what better way to use that pic and write down all of the questions that have been on his mind the past few days. I used Melany Violette's Color Me Happy kit. I had to tweak the journaling strips a bit, but it wasn't hard to do once I dove into playing with it. Fonts are Occidental and First Grader.

I also got to play with one of Tennessa Allen's kits this week. I was so excited, because I have been eyeling her stuff for the past week. I LOVE her Purple Pajamas kit. I am a sucker for anything butterflies, and this kit has several. And I love the colors! SO pretty and feminine! My favorite is the layout on the right. This kit was perfect for the photo I took of Cassidy in her Easter dress in 2005. Those butterflies and hearts are just perfect for my little girly-girl. Check out the rest of Tennessa's stuff. She has a small line of pajama kits, and they are all so cute!

First loose tooth

2006-07-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

Well, it has finally happened. Jacob finally has a wiggly tooth. He was eating lunch and told me that his tooth was hurting a little bit. So I took a peek and checked to see if there was wiggling, and sure enough there was! I told him that he had his first loose tooth and he was really growing up. The look on his face was so cute. It was panic and joy all in one. He even had watery eyes. LOL I asked him if he was scared, and he told me no. How is it that at only 7 years old, males have already learned to not tell when they are scared? Boggles my mind.

So, my little overanalyzer has been asking me tons of questions in the past hour since his discovery. Will it hurt? Will I swallow it? How will I not swallow it? What if I do swallow it? Has anyone ever swallowed a tooth before? What will I do with the tooth if it comes out during the day? Will I put the tooth under my pillow right away or wait until bedtime? Will it have blood? Why? I'm sure there were more, but you get the picture.

I took a picture of his mouth today, full of his baby teeth. lol He seemed relieved to know we have pictures now. LOL I'm going to have to scrap it soon. :)

Speaking of scrapping, I just got my first assignment for the Scrappin' Secrets CT. I'm using one of Tenessa Allen's kits. So exciting!

I also made a couple of pages:

The first is one I made for a friend of mine. I call it Amanda's Garden. It's not my usual style, but I thought Melany Violette's Garden Girl kit was too cute not to use.

I also made the letter B page for the kids' ABC album. I used Melany Violette's Color Me Happy kit.

A scrapping toot and convention to boot

2006-07-15T18:19:00.000-05:00

One of the requirements for the Scrappin' Secrets creative team is that I have 3 galleries off of a particular list. Two of my galleries were already on the list, but I needed one more. Our team leader suggested I go to Gotta Pixel. I always feel so weird jumping into new boards, but I did it. Oh my goodness, the people there are so friendly and supportive. And talk about challenges galore! I love it there so far. I made my first post the day before yesterday and have been slowly adding some of my layouts.

When I got home from the homeschooling convention (which I will talk about in a bit), I checked through the gallery to see if anyone left a somment or two. I like seeing what other people think about my layouts. As I'm looking at the number of comments, I notice that most have anywhere from 1-5 or 6. All of a sudden I see one that has 14. What in the world made that one pop out for everyone, I am wondering. So, I start reading the comments, and lo and behold, My "Simple Pleasures" layout was chosen as the site's "Layout of the Day"! I could not believe it! I was so excited!!! Check it out! http://www.gottapixel.net/blog/

So, that was my big thrill of the weekend. :) I have to say, I was feeling pretty bad about my abilities after being rejected from a few teams, but my confidence is starting to build up once again when it comes to my little hobby. :)

Let's see...I attended a homeschooling convention yesterday and today. Some of the workshops were fantastic! My favorite was on the temperments and how to teach a child with each type. What a great tool for me to have! All of my children are completely different, so it is nice to know exactly what will likely work with them. I also attended one on organization and homeschooling which was neat, but most of which I pretty much had already figured on trying. And then another on teaching multiple ages at the same time was high on my favorites list. So, a very informative weekend.

Yay!

2006-07-13T12:39:00.000-05:00

Woohoo! I got an email today telling me I have been chosen as a member of Scrappin' Secrets new Creative Team! I am so excited and I can not wait for my first assignment. :)

I also realized last night that I forgot to post one of my layouts. This one is for Elena's book. This is a page I have been wanting to put together for a while, but I could never really find a kit I really wanted to use with the pics, until I picked up Ginger Thibodeau's Softly Shining Kit. The lace and papers were perfect, and with a little color tweaking on the pic, I was very happy with the results. I can still remember the moment we told Meemaw we gave Elena her middle name in honor of her. She was so excited. Meemaw had Alzheimer's and though many times she couldn't remember our names, she never once slipped in calling Elena "Frances". :) Don't forget to click the photo to see it better. ;)

Busy week

2006-07-12T17:19:00.000-05:00

We have been enjoying our summer break so far, with this week having all sorts of fun things. It started on Friday night when Silas and I went out. We intended to see Pirates, but they were completely sold out until the 10:45 pm show. WOW! So, we headed to Chili's for dinner and went home. I think we were homw by 8:45. LOL On Saturday my best friend, April, and I went to the local dinner theater for a Mommy's Day Out. We saw Beauty and the Beast, the Musical. It was great! I had never been to this theater, so it was such a neat experience. And it was wonderful haivng time out with another adult and NO KIDS! I love my children, but a break from them every now and then is certainly necessary for my sanity. ;)

Yesterday Jacob had his first fishing trip. He was so excited. One of his birthday gifts was a fishing pole, and he has been chomping at the bit to go fishing with Gramps (my grandfather). One of the local parks has a pond and it is specifically for seniors and children to fish at. In addition to the pond, there is a playground for the kids, so the others were somewhat occupied for a bit. My mother came and she sat with Jacob and Gramps while I brought the other kids to the playground. We had barely gotten them going and my cell phone rang. Mom was ont he other end telling me she was going to switch with me so I could see the fish Jacob helped to reel in.

Now, flash forward a minute/minute and a half and I walk up to a very excited Jacob and Gramps telling me they caught a 12 inch catfish. "Where is it", I ask with my camera ready to click some pics. Gramps replies, "Oh, we threw it back. He was just a little fish anyway". They threw it back before I got up there. I was so disappointed.

I did help Jacob toss a few lines out. We were using hot dogs as bait and some turtles decided to come up and check things out. Jacob got a little concerned that the turtle was going to eat the meat. I told him that I didn't think he needed to worry about it since they hadn't been going for it so far and I thought that turtles don't eat meat. I barely got these words out of my mouth, and what happens? You guessed it! Mr. Turtle decides to take a little dive and get caught on Jacob's line and can't get loose. So Gramps tells me to reel him up and he'll take him off the line. I tried my best, but that sucker was heavy! We got him halfway up and the line broke. That turtle took off. Poor guy.

Naturally, I had to make a scrap page of Jacob's first trip. You can click it to see a large and clear version. ;) I used V. Kim Smith's Woodland Meadows 2 Kit. The fonts are Pea Karynsig and First Grader.

There is a new scrapping site I have been frequenting called Scrappin' Secrets. Everyone seems so friendly and I really enjoy being somewhere new. I have done a couple of challenges there. The first one was the ad challenge. Those are always fun. :) I used photos that were taken at the nursing home garden last year. I have always liked that pic of Cassidy peeking from around one of the columns. I used Zaunwinde Kit by leacindy at RAKScraps. The font is Pea Stacy. I am loving the Pea fonts, in case you couldn't tell. LOL Click the pic for a better look.

The other challenge from SS that I am really excited about is the ABC challenge. I have been wanting to do one of these albums for ages, and I finally have the motivation to get one done. My "A is for Apple" page features a photo Silas took about 2 years ago of Jacob with his cousin, Lark. Silas entitled the pic "Adam and Eve". LOL I think it is too cute! I used the A Lot of Love Challenge Add-on kits by Jenn Patrick and Vicky Shaw. Fonts are ITC Garamond and Kayleigh (another well used favorite of mine, btw).

My last show and tell piece for the night is something I put together for my buddy, Lisa. She sent me three pics of her kids and asked me to put something together for her baby board signature. I decided to use the Tropical kit one of our friends, Lyndsay, put together. I also added some arrows from Amy Wolff's RAKScraps May'06 Mega Kit contribution. I did recolor one of them myself to fit the layout. Love those arrows! Aren't these kids adorable? It made this layout so easy to put together. :)

BTW, you can download Lyndsay's Diva Kit on her blog HERE.

This weekend I am attending a homeschooling convention. I'm excited. It really gets me motivated and ready for the school year. :) I also will probably take part of the lunch break on Friday to pick up the forms to register Joshua. Wow! I can't believe how fast the summer is flying by!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week!

Oh how cool!

2006-07-05T14:00:00.006-05:00

Well, I happened upon Ginger Thibodeau's blog, R U Square?, about a week or two ago. She does rectangular scrapping, which I do occasionally. She has some great sketches, and I used one of them for my Cassidy layout for Silas to print for work. I happened to be sharing the link with my buddy Lynds today and was reading the latest updates. I scrolled down and found out I won something for my Cassidy photo. :) How cool is that?

We went to my parent's house for 4th of July. They had a cookout and then headed out to the fireworks. I wasn't thinking Josh would be able to handle the noise since the movie theater is a bit too loud for him, but he did surprisingly well. Elena was so tired by that point that she was ready to go once they started. I hope everyone had a great Independence Day!

I also did a layout today for Jacob. We bought him a camera for his birthday last year, and he loves using it. Some of the photos he takes are pretty funny, and some even come out really good. I decided to do a layout of some photos he took this weekend. :)

Journaling says:
"You got a camera for your 6th birthday. You love taking pictures with it and it is always fun to see things from your perspective. These are photos you took while waiting for the Space Shuttle Discovery to launch. Unfortunately, the launch was scrubbed, but you had fun regardless. You even got to see the brand new GoodYear blimp. I can't wait to see your next batch of photos."

On the photo of the blimp, I added, "Yes, you turned the camera upside down for this one."

LOL Silly Jacob. I used Melany Violette's Unique Boy kit. Fonts used are Rhumba Script, Agent Orange, Pea Amy, Pea Grethchie Print.

Warning! Scrap Heavy Post Ahead!

2006-07-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

I'm going to attempt to use Bloggers little image adding feature today in the hopes that I can start posting small photos you can click to see larger. I tried it once before and it would not work for me. We'll see what happens. :) I realized this morning that I didn't post my final layouts from the CT call or any of my newer stuff. I was too worried about getting my blog template corrected. LOL

When we received our final kit for the CT call, we were asked to do a double page layout. I don't usually do DPs, but I did do some when I was doing paper scrapping long ago. The kit she gave us to use is so neat! The papers look like water, dirt, grass, etc. Here's what I came up with:I used Heather Roselli's "Boys Love Critters" kit and add-on stickers, both available at thedigichick.com.

RAKScraps just happened to have a sketch challenge that I joined in and decided to use some other papers from the same kit on. I have always loved this photo of Jacob from about two years ago, and the BLC kit seemed so perfect for it.

Soon after, UKScrappers had a sketch challenge in their growing digital forum and I participated. I loved this sketch! I took the photo of Elena the week she turned one. Seems like ages ago in a way. I used Sarah Senior's "Simply Girls" Kit. I think it turned out pretty cute. :)

And my latest project was given to me by my husband. Apparently the most recent photos he had of the kids were from before Elena was even walking. Yikes! So I told him I would throw something together for him to stick in his frames. Here are the results:

Credits: Susan Godfrey's Green With Envy kit, since it is Jacob's favorite color. Font: Cheri

Credits: LizzieGrace's Urban Monkey kit. Font: Knuckle Down

Credits: Ribbit Kisses Kit by Rebecca Gold, Lauren Grier, and Amanda Rockwell Font - Pea Leigh-Leigh Sketch by Ginger Thibodeau

Credits: Kimberly Geswin's Fresh as a Daisy Font: Pea Alesa

My favorite out of the group is the one of Joshua. LOL I love the monkey stamp next to his cute little smile. All of them printed out great at 4x6 and Silas happily has new photos for the office. :)

Alrighty...

2006-06-30T17:11:00.000-05:00

So, I redid the entire template and I *think* (hesitantly saying this) that I got it right this time. Those of you who are using Internet Explorer, could you let me know if it looks correct now? Thanks!

Update time, now that I think the template might be correct. ;0)

I had Jacob's homeschooling evaluation this past Monday. It went excellent! We were in and out in 15 minutes. I apparently was organized better than I thought, and she just flipped through everything and looked at a couple of lapbooks we brought. I was a little disappointed that she didn't have him read out loud for her, but she was really doing well to get him to talk. I told my handbell group it was the quietest I think he has ever been his entire life. LOL He must have been nervous, though he claimed he wasn't.

I found out today that I did not make the CT I was trying out for. I'm being a good sport about it, but kind of bummed at the same time. I'm somewhat hesitant to try out for another one right now. We'll see. I would really love to be on a team at some point. Heather was sweet about it and emailed me letting me know what she based the decision on. I wouldn't have wanted to be in her shoes making the decision. I did email her back to show I hold no grudges and that I plan to stay on the forum.

I think I am going to find another gallery as well. I have three...two where I actually participate on the forums and then a third that I mainly just post layouts at. It's so busy at that one that it is rare to get comments, let alone seen. So many of the calls seem to want you to have 3-5 galleries. So, we'll see.

The new template

2006-06-27T09:12:00.000-05:00

I am so sorry guys! I had no idea until yesterday that this template is not working in Internet Explorer. It looks fine in Mozilla, and whereas I usually check everything in IE, I totally forgot to do it this time. I have played with the settings and tried tweaking it to no avail. I'm going to have my husband take a peek tonight and see if he can figure out where my code is wrong for IE. Hopefully things will look a bit normal soon!

I was tagged!

2006-06-22T21:11:00.000-05:00

Tina from Autism and KC tagged me. :)

5 things in my refrigerator:
1. Salad makings
2. Tea
3. Cheese
4. Jelly
5. salad dressing

5 things in my closet:
1. My clothes
2. shoes
3. presents for elena's b-day in August
4. presents for Josh's b-day in October (yes, I'm a planner LOL)
5. Silas' clothes

5 things in my purse:
1. wallet
2. cell phone
3. brush
4. receipts
5. keys

5 things in my car:
1. seats LOL
2. a CD (not sure which though)
3. 4 car seats
4. double stroller
5. trash bag

5 people I am tagging:
1. Lyndsay - http://cest-la-vie-lynds.blogspot.com/
2. Sarah - http://www.timsellers.net/homeschool/index.html
3. Kim - http://www.dailyrelease.blogspot.com/
4. Captain Tealbird (LOL) - http://tealbeard.blogspot.com/
5. Sunshine - http://letsinger.blogspot.com/

Have fun!

Okies, I think we got it!

2006-06-22T19:54:00.000-05:00

So, I have my three column template now, courtesy of the link you can find on the bottom of the page. ;) How does it look on everyone's screens?

We are still waiting for the official kit for our CT call. Until then, we were given another one to play with. It's so pretty! It's Heather Roselli's "It's a Girl Thang" kit. I had so much fun with it, even though I had a little trouble choosing a photo that wouldn't clash with the colors of the kit. Here's what I came up with:

Credits: Heather Roselli's It's a Girl Thang Kit
Fonts: Kayleigh and Milton Burlesque

Possible changes ahead

2006-06-20T15:08:00.000-05:00

I am seriously considering merging my scrap blog with this one. I think it would be easier to keep up with that way. I'm going to look for a nice 3 column template so the sidebars won't be too crowded and go on forever and a day. ;) So, if you start to see the blog looking a little funny, you know why.

Baby Madison website and Down Syndrome Awareness kit

2006-06-19T14:01:00.000-05:00

I mentioned previously about my board buddy's baby, Madison, and the disease that she is suffering with. Shelli now has a website up that will let you keep up with her progress. I will put the link in my sidebar as well.

http://www.memoriesofmariam.com/madison/

She could really use the prayers right now.

I mentioned previously that I had submitted a small kit to be included in a Down Syndrome Awareness Charity mega kit. Here is the preview to my contribution:

There are 17 very unique kits on all in this mega kit. To find out how you can get them, please click on the blinkie below and it will take you to the page where you can find out all about it!

And I thought I would wrap this up by saying I made the next cut for Heather Roselli's CT team call! I am in complete shock! I never expected my name to show up in Heather's top 9 list. Woah! I am so excited about it though! Can't wait to see what this next round brings. :)

Elena's "bow"

2006-06-17T19:32:00.000-05:00

Ugh, I am pretty sick again. It started with allergy symptoms but has now turned into feeling like the beggining of the mess I had for 4 months earlier this year. I took some Mucinex, but it doesn't seem to be having the same effect as it did the last time. Blah.

I think I have figured out how to post a video. Photobucket has a nifty video feature that I could never get to work...until now. :) So, if you promise to ignore the mess in the background and my horrible voice, I'll let you see. ;) I didn't get the entire spin, and it really doesn't show the drama she usually has, BUT it does indeed have her bowing.

I am really enjoying this audition process for Heather's CT call. We are all getting to know each other through the questions she has been asking and it is very relaxed and enjoyable. I think I will stick around at The Digichick now that the ice is broken. :)

Anyway, Heather decided to gift us a second kit and sent us her Father Knows Best kit. Her stuff is so easy to make pages with. It amazes me! She has some of the cutest elements in that one. I had a great idea, but I couldn't find a template for the main idea and am horrible at trying to draw with a mouse, so I had to file that one away for a while. LOL One day I WILL do it though. I think it will work best as a card.

So, here is the layout I made with the second kit:

Credits: Heather Roselli's Father Knows Best Kit available at thedigichick
Fonts: Chinacat and CongressT

The pic was taken last year. Doesn't Silas look thrilled to be in it? LOL

Also, after posting my Ladybug, Ladybug mini kit (found below), I was sent a request for a bee kit. So, I finally sat down a few days ago and worked a little on it..took a break and finished it up last night. The person requesting it really loves it, so I was happy! I decided to share it with everyone. :)

Here's the preview:

And here are the download links:

Papers 1

Papers 2

Elements

Enjoy!

Elena is a ham

2006-06-15T09:22:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned before that Elena loves to dance. The music barely comes on and she is dancing all over the place. Lately it is dramatic spinning she is doing (think ice skater with no skates), which I could do without. LOL She is really cracking me up lately though because she bows when she gets to the end of her routine. I haven't a clue where she learned that one, but it is soooo funny. I need to figure out how the heck to post a video and let you be entertained.

She also will go to the tile floor and try what appears to be tap dancing and at the end yells "ta da" with her arms in the air. She will only do it when she has shoes on her feet, so I am guessing she enjoys the sound. I always pictured Cassidy as our little ballerina, but it looks like Elena is going to be our little performer in the family.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow, wow, wow! I had so mcuh fun using Heather's kit. She seems like such an awesome designer to work for. She said she never wants us to feel pressure and to just have fun with it. She sent us one of her kits and it is beee-u-teeee-ful! The one requirement she had was that we had to use a black and white photo. This isn't something I commonly do, but I knew exactly what photos I wanted to choose from for this particular kit. So, I went to work. Before I knew it, I had made 2 layouts and it was 2:30am. Yikes!

So, I spent all morning trying to decide which of the two layouts I wanted to submit. Decisions, decisions. There were things I liked about both of them, and things I wasn't too sure about on both of them as well, but overall I was extremely happy with them both.

Here they are:
LAYOUT A:

LAYOUT B:

I finally decided on layout B. It was so hard choosing though! I went ahead and uploaded A to my member gallery though.

There are so many great layouts already from the other ladies that made the cut. I don't think I would be able to narrow it down if it were me having to choose!

Chatter, chatter

2006-06-13T16:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I think I am having some computer issues lately. I haven't been able to get blogger to allow me to post comments consistently, nor have I been able to make a post in a while. And I had a ton of stuff I had been wanting to write about too. LOL

Let's see...last Thusday I went in to get started with my study meds for the research group. They did all the initial checks and an EKG. Everything came back great. Dr. D is actually able to do my checkups when I go in since he is right across the hall. He is so nice. He looked at my numbers from the bloodwork and very sincerely told me how proud of me he is. It has been a rare occurance in my life that a doctor tells me they are proud of me, no matter how hard I have worked. So, that was a great way to start the study. :)

One of the side effects noted about this medication is headaches. I have had horrible migraines for as long as I can rememebr, and all I have been able to take is Tylenol. Yep, lucky me developed an allergic reaction to Advil and those great drugs called NSAIDs, so I basically wind up suffering for a few days until the pain subsides. Lately, they had been improving. I would catch them early enough that the Tylenol actually seemed to work. Boy, did that ever fool me. I started with one on Saturday and it lasted through yesterday. I had to call my mother to come over and watch the kids because I was so severely ill with the pain. I haven't had one like that in a while. She came over, and I headed to bed and stayed there until 2:30pm. It still wasn't completely gone, but I took the generic version of Excedrin Migraine and it seemed to knock it completely out the rest of the way. I really hate migraines.

Speaking of Saturday, Elena was invited over to her buddy Elizabeth's house for a playdate. We went and had a nice time. I tell ya, everytime we get together it is during Elena's naptime and she takes forever and a day to wake up and adjust. By the end of our time there she was fine and actually talking a bit to the other kids, playing, and having a nice time.

I was the first to arrive, and not too long after a woman walked in with her little girl. After we were introduced we realized that we knew each other from elementary school. We were always in the same class from k-5 and the two of us along with one other girl were always the teacher's pets. (Everyone found that funny for some reason, though I have no idea why. lol) So that was just wild running into her. She also graduated from the same high school and in the same class as my husband. Even crazier! It was a neat little surprise. :)

My other bit of news is something I am really excited about. I applied for Heather Roselli's (a scrapbooking designer) creative team on the 9th. She had 37 applicants and narrowed it down to 18. I actually made the first cut! I am so excited! So, now she is going to be sending us an assignment and will then narrow the group even more to 9. From that 9 she will narrow it again and end up with 3 or 4 new members to her team. I really love her designs. She has the cutest stuff for both boys and girls. Honestly though, I am just thrilled to have even made it this far! So, wish me luck!

And now for my scrapping updates (moved from my scrap blog ;) )Ok, I played some more, and I am still thinking there is something missing. I can't figure out what it is though. I think it is getting there, but there is just something else it needs. Hmmm. Anyone? I'm always open to suggestions. :)

Credits: Morning Glory kit from d2D - dedicated2digital.com

This is a scraplift of Patricia/patara's "Capture The Moment" layout found here: http://www.rakscraps.com/photopost/s...00&ppuser=2325

I loved it so much, I had to do a lift!

The quote is by Ashleigh Brilliant and says, "Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?"

Credits:
Pencil element and to do list: by me
Kit used: Mrs. Schmuck's SchweetSchtuff

I love this photo of Cassidy. I think she has the most beautiful eyes and the longest lashes to frame them.

Credits: The journaling is from the song by the same title as sung by Martina McBride. Papers - AnneLangpap from the Nov{peas} Freebie, stickpin by Melanie Greene from the Gingham & Flowers Mini Kit, recolored by me and overlay by Lisa West (Zephanee) from the Bloomin' Country Kit

I did manage to get my newbie challenge kit and scraplift made for RAKScraps. Blogger has been being difficult this week for me. I haven't been able to really comment on anyone's posts nor make any new ones of my own in the past two days. Hmmm. Anyway, I had fun making this once I got past my little mental block. LOL I may even do a little add-on to this one day. Who knows? :)

Here is the preview of my newest mini kit:

And you can download it here:
http://www.savefile.com/files/4210642

If you do download it, please leave me a comment. Thanks!

Summer break!

2006-06-03T17:54:00.000-05:00

I totally forgot to tell you - we are officially taking our summer break! Woohoo! Jacob's evaluation has been scheduled for June 26th, and I am anxious to get it over and done with. The lady we are going to is so nice. She said the only things she is greatly concerned about is math and reading so we need samples of that and anything else he is excited about from this year. No problems there! We have a bunch of photos showing him working on math, some worksheet samples, some handwriting samples, our reading list for the year, resource list, a book for him to read for her. I asked him if there is anything else he would like to add and he wants to add some of our lapbooks. We have to decide exactly which ones he wants to add. He loves those things! Anything else I need? The evaluator will give us the papers that very day for us to fax into the school board office. Woohoo!

I am already starting to plan out next year for Jacob. I want to "plan" out through December for him this month, and then spend next month planning things for Joshua. I already know of some of the things I want to try and do differently this coming year. Instead of our wall timeline which was destroyed by a certain little girl's hands, I think we are going to try some notebooking. Jacob enjoys the lapbooking so much, and actually remembers things he learns with them, that I think notebooking will allow him to retain the info just as much. We also will do more lapbooks of course. I plan to continue with the Magic Treehouse Series. They have such a great range of topics that I think work well for history lessons. We went to the library today and I had him look at the upcoming books. He was really excited about them. :)

I also plan to get Joshua to do some lapbooks this year. He's improved so much with his willingness to touch the "yucky stuff" like glue and playdough and such, that I think he will be able to handle doing them. Of course, this could all very well have to change by that point, and planning is kind of hard to do in regards to Joshua, yet at the same time, everything has to be planned meticulously. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me. LOL

I have been busy, busy, busy lately with my scrapping. I am trying to get pages for my grandfather and other family members put together. I tell ya, it takes me ages to get one page done sometimes. Mostly because I take forever to find what papers and elements I am going to use with what pictures. It doesn't help that I am sooo disorganized with my downloaded kits. There has to be a better system, but I haven't found what will work for me yet.

I attended another newbie chat at RAKScraps. They are great there. I really enjoy posting with a friendly and helpful bunch. 90% of the time my questions have already been answered so I don't have to show them how little I know. heehee Anyway, we have the same assignment, just with a new scraplift. Should be fun.

I also have submitted a kit to be used as a part of a huge kit for Down Syndrome Awareness. Anyone who makes a donation to one of three charity groups will get the kit for free. It is set to be released mid-June, and when it is, I will be sure to add the link and info for you.

Other than that, I don't get as much time as I would like to scrap. I did do the latest RAK sketch challenge though. Here is my page:

Credits: Muted Blue Kit Created by AllS. Font: Arial

Credits: April 06 RAK Mega Kit contributions by Mrs. Schmuck, Jane Atwell, and Ginger Thibodeau

I love this photo of Jacob holding Elena. He was so proud of his baby sister and I feel his love for her really comes out in this photo.

Credits: April 06 RAK Mega Kit contributions by Mrs. Schmuck, CWyckoff, and kmcdonald

Oh! I totally forgot to mention that I actually won something! I did the June Treaure hunt and Gallery Mixer at RAKScraps last night and my name was drawn for a 25% off coupon at d2D. Was I ever surprised by that! I was so excited and after much debating I decided to buy the Morning Glory kit. It is so pretty, and I can not wait to use it! December is so sweet and helpful and I will definitely buy from her again. :)

Here is my first attempt at using this kit...I'm going to play around with the layout a bit more. I'm not totally happy with what I did. Don't you just love those bright colors though?!

Credits: Morning Glory kit by d2D - dedicated2digital.com

Well, to end this, I wanted to post a link to a summer reading program through Build-A-Bear Workshop. The kids need to read 6 books between now and July 31 in order to receive a $5 gift card to their store. Not a bad deal, and very achievable!

Build-A-Bear Workshop Summer Reading Program

Enjoy!

Update on my health issues

2006-06-02T16:16:00.000-05:00

Today was my appointment with the clinical research group my doctor works with. He had requested that I be considered as part of a cholesterol or blood pressure study. I was told what the studies were for and then they took a quick blood sample to test and see what my levels were. At first she was going to go on the labs from the end of April, but I told her I had a complete diet change, so she went ahead and did an initial draw.

When she got the results and compared them to the April bloodwork, she looked puzzled and said "This is very interesting...VERY interesting" and left to look something up. When she came back she said again how interesting the labs came back and said she was going to have the machine checked to be sure it was correct. So I asked her if it was a good or bad interesting. LOL I was getting kind of concerned with her saying that over and over. She said it was really good news for me and wanted to know what I had been doing differently. LOL

Anyway, let me tell you about my levels and what has been going on. I don't think I gave numbers earlier this month, but I am going to tell you now. I was scared out of my mind when I posted about my last appointment. I felt like a ticking time bomb...seriously!

My BP was good today. 130/84. It was apparently 148/100 when I went in a few weeks back. Still not great, but not as high as it has been.

My LDL (the bad cholesterol) was 173 (normal is 0-99 and my doctor said he'd be perfectly happy with it at 100, but he'd like to aim at getting it to 90). Today it was 121!

My Triglycerides were 115 (normal is 0-149) so those were good. Today it was 191, so not good. From what she said, this is because of the sugars and being pre-diabetic I tend to have problems with sugars anyhow. Plus just about everyone in my family has triglyceride problems.

My total cholesterol levels: These were 252 last time (normal is 100-199). Yikes! Today it is 204!

She said whatever I am doing is great and keep doing it, and I DO NOT qualify for the 3 studies my doctor was wanting me to get into. Yay! They went ahead and offered me another to test meds for triglycerides, and I am going to go ahead and try it. It is short - only 16-18 weeks and everything is covered. I'm going to try it out. I think the endo I will eventually see will wind up putting me on meds to get it down anyway, so why not? I could end up with a placebo, but you just never know!

I was looking forward to seeing exactly how much I have lost according to their scales, but they didn't weigh me yet. That'll be next week along with all the other tests, providing my bloodwork doesn't disqualify me. LOL According to my scale, I have lost 12 pounds since my appointment 3 weeks ago. Yay!

So, I am feeling much better about the direction my health is going now. Had to give a good update. :)

In scrapping news, since I am working on Jacob's portfolio, I decided that instead of just printing off a bunch of pics and throwing them in there to show what he has done, I'll scrap them. So, this is the first page I did. Nothing spectacular, but it shows the pic in a nicer form.

Credits: backgrounds by - V. Kim Smith from her "Cool Dude Kit" contribution to the RAK May 06 Mega Kit. Also Jane A's RAK May06 Mega Kit contributon. element by - V. Kim Smith from "Cool Dude"

And another Josh layout:

Credits: Patterned background papers by Jeannie Papai and Kelley Elizabeth McDonald from the RAK May 06 Mega Kit Font: Agent Orange

Happy Birthday, Cassidy!

2006-05-31T07:33:00.000-05:00

I can't believe my sweet Cassie is 3 now. Wow! She woke up this morning and we told her "Happy Birthday!" She got the biggest grin and informed us "Yes, it's MY day" in her soft little voice. LOL

Happy Birthday, Cassie!

Party report and pics

2006-05-29T21:52:00.000-05:00

Well, the party was a success. Everyone appeared to have had a nice time. We grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, had chips, broiled potatoes, and cake and animal cookies. There was no real set theme since it is increasingly difficult to have Jacob and Cassie have the same theme. So we had green napkins and plates and pink napkins and plates...each of their favorite colors. :)

After lunch, the kids opened their gifts. I may have mentioned this before, but in case I didn't, let me explain - every birthday is like Christmas around here. Nobody wants the other kids to feel left out, so all of the kids get gift bags packed with little gifts and the birthday kid(s) get extra. They love it! {they aren't spoiled or anything!} So, the fun began. I missed a lot of what they got since I was being called every 5 seconds to look at what someone had opened. It was so cute seeing them all so excited about their new treasures.

Jacob got a couple of Transformers, including "Starscream" that I have been hearing about for months. Little did Jacob know, I bought it for him back in January and it had been sitting in my closet ever since. LOL We also bought him a Pixter, which he had a blast with. There were also coloring books, a Doodle Monster, stickers, clothes, legos, and some other things that are not coming to this tired mind.

Cassidy made out like a bandit as well. Lots of princess and My Little Pony toys. She got the cutest book - Picture Me Sparkle Princess - which has her photo in it and each page has "Cassie" wearing a different dress. Oh boy, did she ever love that tonight! And she also got clothes, books, a princess game, Barbie Rapunzel movie, a couple of necklaces, hair items, and the list goes on.

Here are some pics:

The cakes:

Blowing out the candles: (check out Elena trying to help LOL)

Opening gifts:

Josh and Elena partying:

Seven Years

2006-05-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

I can't believe seven years have passed since my sweet Jacob took his first breath. In some ways it seems to have flown by and in other ways it is as if it happened yesterday. He and Cassie will be having their birthday party later today. He requested a chocolate blue Lego cake, but when we headed to the store to get the decorations for Cassie's, he decided that he really liked the Spiderman Candy cake decorations, and he really wanted chocolate icing. LOL So we are compromising a little. We are having a chocolate Spiderman Lego cake with chocolate icing. He also requested a number 7 candle. I think he is really excited about this turning seven years old thing. :)

Here is a scrap layout I made for Jacob this year:

Happy Birthday, my handsome boy!

Digital Scrapbooking

2006-05-20T22:13:00.000-05:00

I have been posting some on RAK Scraps (link in the right sidebar). It is such a wonderful and helpful group there, and I love it! I decided I would join the newbie chat on 5/13 to hopefully get a few tutorials and get to know a few of the people in there. I had no idea we would get a HUGE assignment for a newbie. LOL Kim/vkimmycat gave us several tutorials and then the assignment - make a kit with 4 papers (2 plain and 2 patterned) and 4 elements. We then had to make a layout using our newly created kit. We could either do a scraplift or use a sketch that she created for us. I chose the sketch, and this is how it turned out:

Kit by me. Sketch by vkimmycat at RAK Scraps.

Here is the kit. If you would like to download it, the link is below the pic. Feel free to share, but please do not give the link to the download. Instead, send them to my blog to click on the link themselves. Thanks!

Download Summer Picnic Kit: http://www.sendspace.com/file/786zpd

Everyone loved it, especially the ribbons. I had no idea if I did it right or what, but from the feedback I received, I am guessing I did good. :) Anyway, I was so excited when I received a private message from someone saying how good the kit turned out. She wanted to know if I am a designer anywhere and if not I should consider it. Wow! Did that ever make me feel good! She also said she has a site and is currently looking for new a fresh designers and wanted to know if I would like to apply. I told her I would really love to do that in the future, but this was my first kit and I still have so much to learn. I was so excited about it though. So, who knows, maybe one day in the future my kits will be out there for everyone to see. :D
If you do download, please be nice and leave a comment. Just a hello would be nice. :)

In addition to that, Katrina at RAK Scraps decided to post an impromptu challenge for us. She gave us a color swatch and her part of a kit and asked that we do our own add-on kits. So I went to work and got mine done. Here it is:

Papers and elements by me. Font: Scriptina.

Everyone that participates in the challenge will get all of the add-ons and original kit. Fun stuff!

Hopefully on the mend

2006-05-19T10:05:00.000-05:00

Cassidy is so much better today! I am relieved. No fever at all so far...her temp was 97. Yay! So far so good. She even ate 3 crackers and drank without having us ask her to do so. And she has been off of the couch and playing for the majority of the morning.

Medical update (on me and Cassidy)

2006-05-18T22:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, this will be long and I hope it makes sense. I am tired.

Cassidy was not running a fever by the time we got to the peds, which is great, but her lips were dry and she looks horribly ill. The ped said her ear doesn't look near as bad as the chart indicated it was on Tuesday, so she thinks the antibiotic is starting to work. They tested her blood sugar because of how bad she is shaking and it is fine. The urine looked fine and did not seem to indicate that she was dehydrated as of yesterday. She is starting to not urinate as much though so we have to now start watching for the dehydration.

If she has a fever tomorrow then we have lab orders for blood work and a chest x-ray and then we will go in on Saturday to the peds. She will likely have her antibiotic changed if that is the case, but we may have to hydrate her with IVs if she is getting worse...so she is still ok hydration wise for right now. Whew!

We had my appointment to go over all of my results from bloodwork I had drawn and my thyroid ultrasound since my appointment last month. I will tell you about those results in a minute. Once we got home (well after 5pm), Cassie's fever went up. It reached 103.7, so I have a feeling we will definitely be heading out tomorrow morning for those labs. :(

My appointment wasn't too great, but we have a plan somewhat in place. I am pre-diabetic, my cholesterol is really high (total and LDL) and my blood pressure was up, so I am on a strict diet for now. Fresh and frozen only still and then in a month I will go back to be retested and have an even stricter diet given to me. If my cholesterol isn't improved a bit they will likely put me on meds for it.

My thyroid tests all came back fine, but my thyroid ultrasound came back showing that I have 2 nodules and a goiter (knew about the goiter but not the nodules). He thinks I likely have Hashimoto's Disease, which my mother has. They recommend I have the ultrasound repeated in 6 months. Yikes! I'm still a little confused about how you have a goiter with nodules and yet have your multiple thyroid tests come back ok. Unless his theory is correct (see below).

He ordered another test, but my lovely lab decided to do some totally different test. It came back with abnormal results and he has no idea what the test even looks for. That kind of scares me. He was thinking I have a thyroid autoimmune problem, but he isn't real sure. I don't like the fact that something came back in an abnormal range and we don't know what it is. I mentioned about being tested for scleroderma as a kid and that the results came back as inconclusive and he said it may very well have something to do with that but again he isn't sure.

If anyone knows what a weak positive for the "Actin (smooth muscle) Antibody" test might mean, please feel free to let me know so I don't have to sit here pondering what the heck is going on. ;)

Anyway, it all boils down to the fact that I have multiple problems so he is sending me to see my mother's endocrinologist. She said he used to do internal medicine as well as endocrinology, so I think he is bound to get me fixed up.

It seems like there was something else, but I am blanking now. Hopefully Cassie will wake up fever free tomorrow. She is feeling pretty warm right now, so I guess we will see. Thanks for thinking of us. I'll keep you posted. I have a feeling it will be another long day of testing tomorrow. I hate that she is sick like this. :(

Cassidy update

2006-05-18T09:56:00.000-05:00

Well, she is still running a fever (101), so I have an appointment for her this afternoon with my regular ped (thank goodness!). I'm not sure what they will do. She vomitted the meds this morning and had a (TMI) very large bowel movement. That could very well be what she meant when she said "the down" was hurting. Maybe she was constipated? I don't know. I know when we lift her up to change her pull-up she is VERY shaky, so I am wondering if they will just put her in overnight for some IVs.

Then at 3:45 I have my doctor's appointment to go over all of my lab results. I know my pressure will be sky high because of the rushing around I will be doing, the worrying about Cassie, lack of sleep and not staying on my diet at all this week. I am hoping he won't jump to meds as the answer after only seeing me twice, especially since my pressure was fine at the GYN office. Maybe my pressure will actually cooperate for me and be surprisingly low.

Wish us luck! Hopefully we will get to come home and I can update. :)

Cassie is sick

2006-05-16T22:09:00.000-05:00

I brought her to the peds and spent 4 hours there. The last time I saw this particular doctor, she treated Jacob. He was so sick she felt he needed to be hospitalized, but yet she had us sit in her office for 5 hours before she did a darn thing. So, I knew we were going in to a long appointment.

She apparently hasn't changed any. I was ticked. Cassie has been running a 102-103 fever since Sunday WITH Motrin round the clock. She also keeps saying "the down" hurts. I asked her where she is hurting, could she show me, etc, and she points to just above her belly button. I pushed a little all over her belly and she never winced or anything and when I asked her again if that was "the down", she pointed to her privates. So, I thought maybe she has a UTI and I brought her in....the ped thought it was a good possibility as well.

The initial check-up went quickly. We were first after lunch, had a throat culture that came back negative, and her left ear is severely infected. I mean, the ped hardly even had to look before she said it looked really bad. :( Poor baby. She never said a word about her ear hurting until we were pulling into the parking lot, so I had no idea.

Anyway, since the throat culture came back negative and Cassie had mentioned that she hurt a little, the ped decided we should do a urine sample. I brought Cassie to the bathroom and she didn't want to go in the cup. She wasn't feeling like sitting up at all for the past two days, so she certainly wasn't going to be cooperative on something like this. So I told the ped we should probably try the bag method. We sat there for 3 hours and Cassie would not go. They put us in a tiny room with no magazines or anything and one chair. So for three hours I stood there waiting for her to pee in the bag. This doctor also has a habit of jumping to conclusions a good bit. After two hours she assumed Cassie is dehydrated. She's not, she just never potties when we leave the house. She didn't have any signs of dehydration, and she also had been pottying with no trouble until this point. Plus she had been drinking quite a bit, so there was no reason to believe that we needed to give her an IV at the hospital.

So, when the 4th hour came, the ped just happened to come out of one of the other rooms, so I went out and told her Cassie was feeling pretty hot again and I needed to know if I could give her some more Motrin or not. She felt her head and told someone to come and take her temp. It was only 101.6, but she felt like she was on fire and was looking pretty bad again. I told the ped again that Cassie hasn't been having an odd or strong smell to her urine. Suddenly the ped decided that she would just go ahead and treat the ear infection and let us go. Nice, huh? Except that she was going to give her the Rocephin shots and I had to remind her about Jacob's severe allergy in the hospital when she treated him several years ago. According to her, none of my other kids should chance that particular medication. So, we now have Augmentin and I have to bring in a urine sample tomorrow morning.

So, that was my fun day. I am beat.

All Tuckered Out

2006-05-12T12:33:00.001-05:00

Poor Elena. She put on Josh's old tennis shoes which are about 4 sizes too big for her feet. She walked around the house for a while, then stopped at the couch, put her head down, and didn't budge for a good 15 minutes. She was apparently tuckered out and needed an extra nap. A couple of minutes after I took these pics, she fell flat on her tush and woke up. LOL Little nut.

Yes, she is sleeping standing up. LOL

Happy Mother's Day

2006-05-12T12:20:00.000-05:00

I have watched this video about 20 times in the past two days, and it cracks me up every single time. LOL I have two younger brothers and I can totally see them in this. (From YouTube)

Grey's Anatomy

2006-05-08T11:58:00.000-05:00

Who else is completely excited about next week? The season finale of Grey's Anatomy is next week. One hour on Sunday and two hours on Monday! I am so excited! I LOVE this show! 2 nights and three hours next week. I can hardly wait!!!

Oh! And the Season 2 DVD is coming out September 12th. A 6 DVD set. Woohoo!

Did I mention that I really love this show? I really, really do. Seriously!

Baby Madison made the news

2006-05-07T13:49:00.000-05:00

Baby Madison had a news station come and do a story on her. She is so sweet and beautiful, and Shelli is so strong. You can see the video at the following link:

Baby Madison video

Kidnapped Doughboy

2006-05-06T07:44:00.000-05:00

Our local news station did a report yesterday that had me cracking up. Apparently there is a grocery store closing in New Hampshire and someone isn't happy about it. So, they kidnapped the 4 ft. doughboy mascot and send daily ransom notes. Here is a link to the story: kutv.com
And this link shows photos from the ransom notes:
cbs4boston.com

I've scrapping some more. :)

She was just too cute wearing this hat that she has practically outgrown. :)

Credits: Papers - Bold and Chalky Kit by Traci Reed - www.scrapmommies.com
Elements - "Allure Special Embelishment" by Diane Miller, Font - Shelley

An Update on Baby Madison

2006-05-06T07:31:00.000-05:00

They do think the liver failure was due to medicines she was taking. They took her off some of them, including her seizure medicine. So far she has not had any since being off, and we are all praying it stays this way. Each time she has had one, it has caused more damage to her brain and major setbacks. Madison had just reached the newborn type stage since starting therapies about 2 months ago. Her eyes were reactive again, she could hold her head up a little. It would be heartbreaking to see her go backwards again at this point.

They are hoping her liver function continues to improve and she will be able to go home next week, so keep praying!

Stay at home moms

2006-05-04T21:18:00.000-05:00

I was reading Kim's blog, Reality Check, this morning. She posted a link to an interesting article about one person's take on SAHMs. I shared it with some of my mommy friends. Some of them are SAHMs and others are working mothers. The reaction was the same despite what their current employment status is. Not a single person agreed with the take in the article, other than the last paragraphs.

Later, on my June '03 mom's board, someone posted a link to an article on how much a SAHM is worth monetarily. Funny about the timing on this. LOL Here is the link:
SAHM monetary worth

In the article, you will see a link to the Mom Salary Wizard. I bit and tried it out. How much should I be earning for what I do as a SAHM that is "letting down the team" by not working outside of the home? Well, according to the Mom Salary Wizard, my salary should be $176,367. Not shabby, eh?

Baby Madison - in need of urgent prayers and thoughts

2006-05-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

Baby Madison is the daughter of a sweet friend, Shelli. We met on a due date board during my pregnancy with Elena and have posted together ever since. Madison was born with mitochondrial disease. There is no known cure for this, but she has been showing great progress with the help of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT).

Madison is currently in the hospital because she is in liver failure. Shelli posted that this may be because of the medications she os on. They have taken her off of the meds in hopes that she will have her liver begin to function. If not, Shelli said she will not be bringing Madison home.

Please say some extra prayers tonight for Baby Madison and her mama, Shelli. They could really use it. Thanks!

Resistance is Futile

2006-04-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

There are a few things my kiddos can not seem to resist the temptation to do:

Jacob can't resist the urge to run around shooting invisible aliens that are apparently frequently visiting our dwelling. Thank goodness for the invisible laser beams he uses to protect the universe.

Joshua can't resist being a race car. Yes, you read that correctly - he's the race car, not the driver. Even better, he is "the Cheerios race car".

Cassidy can't resist the call to dress up. No occasion is too casual for her to wear a dress. :)

Elena can't resist the urge to dance the exact instant music is playing. CDs, commercials, movie credits, the ice cream truck driving through the neighborhood - she's not picky. :)

I got an Easter layout done yesterday:

credits: Papers and elements from the "Ribbit Kisses" freebie created by Rebecca Gold, Lauren Grier, and Amanda Rockwell. The entire kit was HUGE and absolutely adorable! You can get it at Elemental Scraps.

Happy Birthday, April!

2006-04-24T16:20:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to pop on here long enough today to wish a very happy birthday to my best friend, April! I hope you had a great day despite having to work. :)

credits:
Papers and elements - April '06 Mega Kit contribution by Corinne Fragata
Font - Kayleigh

Easter Pics Part 1

2006-04-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

We had a very nice Easter. We started the day with church. It was a very nice service. Afterwards, we headed home to change clothes. We met the grandparents for a picnic lunch, an egg hunt, and some playground time. :)

Our eggs:

The kids in their Easter outfits:

Easter Pics Part 2

2006-04-17T20:50:00.000-05:00

Our own personal Cingular Commercial

2006-04-15T16:59:00.000-05:00

Edited to add: I found another site that has the clip of one of the original commercials. ;) Just click on the picture to watch the video. http://www.dhadm.com/index.php/dhadm/cingular_bars/

Help for Sensory Integration Disorder

2006-04-10T18:09:00.000-05:00

I truly wish I would have known about this last year when we were having to pay for Josh's OT out of pocket. I hope by posting this here it will somehow help someone else. :) Straight from the SpinKids Website:

SpinKids, Inc. is a not-for-profit, charitable organization that raises awareness of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and provides grants for the training, therapy, and equipment needed to treat SPD throughout the United States.

http://www.spinkids.org/index.html

I also got a Jacob layout done!
Finally got a Jacob layout done. Yay!

Credits:
Papers - Jeanine Baechtold, Independent Digital Designer at http://www.scrapdish.com and http://www.scrapbookbytes.com
Rickrack from ?
Font - Goudy Stout

One year (and 4 days)

2006-04-09T14:34:00.000-05:00

That's how long ago I started this blog. Can you believe it? I totally didn't even realize my one year anniversary of sharing my life through this blog had passed. My posts have been few and far between at times. Life has a habit of getting in the way of everything I wish I could do. I get sidetracked way too easily. LOL

Frustrating week

2006-04-09T12:22:00.000-05:00

You know the kind. One of those weeks where the best of intentions and plans all blow up in your face and there is nothing you can do about it but sit and wish for it to get better.

You read about our field trip and the loads of fun we had there. I'm still upset about the final part of that trip. My letter to the curator is in its final draft now. I included the recall notice for the Magnetix toys, so hopefully they will look into things after receiving it.

Flash to the following day, when Josh was scheduled for speech. Joshua was tired and extremely grouchy. This isn't abnormal for him on therapy days at all. He hates getting up before he is ready, and who can blame him? But you have to do it sometimes. I always give him a bath in the morning instead of night because the water has a calming effect on him and we are usually fine from that point on.

So, the day is going as planned. Josh had his bath and had perked back up to his regular happy and silly self and we head over to my mother's house for her to watch the other kids. We were following our usual routine just fine. I always make a point of getting there at least 15 minutes early so Josh gets the chance to go in and find a car to bring with him. It's his transition object and is something he needs, so we do it and that's that. No questions. I've learned not to question why he needs the things he does...we just do it and life is good, so long as the routine is kept.

We get to my mother's and due to circumstances beyond her control involving an elderly neighbor, she is unable to babysit the kids while I take Joshua to therapy. Unfortunately, I do not know this is going to be the case until 2 minutes before we have to leave. We thought it would be settled by the time I would have to go, so I didn't have time to prepare him. HUGE mistake!

So, I drag all of the kids to therapy with us so my mother can help the neighbor. This TOTALLY threw Josh off. I tried explaining to him on the way to the clinic what was going on and why, but of course, he couldn't get past the fact that he didn't understand why we were taking the other kids. Traffic was horrible, which we haven't had happen in months, so that didn't help matters either. When he wasn't asking me why Jacob and the girls were with us instead of staying at Nona's, I was being asked why we were stopping.

We parked in the same parking space we always try to get. Josh was fine at first, busily showing Jacob everything he looks at each week before we go inside...but then I took out the stroller. HUGE mistake #2. He decided he had to ride in it. I told him he couldn't because the girls had to ride in it...he's a big boy and doesn't need the stroller anymore, etc, etc.

He proceeds to throw a major tantrum over this. All the way up the elevator, the entire time we are in the waiting area. The therapist, came out to get him and he starts screaming and yelling about having to go to see her and he doesn't like her, etc. Some guy actually came from the opposite side of the room to stand in front of us and stare at him throwing this tantrum. It was so embarrassing. I just wanted to melt away to nothing.

This is the first session I have sent Joshua in the room by himself for therapy. I always go in with him to see what she does with him, because Joshua can't understand my questions well enough to tell me what they have done. From what the therapist said, he pitched a fit for about 10 minutes back there. Then they played (with him grouching most of the time) and she only spent a couple of minutes asking him "wh" questions.

I hate that one little thing being different can throw him off so bad. I hate that I have to live on pins and needles all of the time waiting to see if I screwed up a routine that I didn't even realize I had made. I hate the stares we got, especially by the guy that came specifically to watch while Josh was throwing his fit...he watched us as if he thought I was beating him when all I was doing was sitting with Josh on my lap, the therapist right next to me. I hate days like this past Wednesday.

I love Josh so much. It isn't his fault. I still haven't figured out how to make the unexpected changes a little easier for him. Don't get me wrong...he has improved dramatically in the past year, so long as he is given a lot of preparation for the chage. And I am so extremely proud to see the progress that he has made. Now I just have to work on what to do in situations such as the one presented on this particular day.

I spoke to the therapist about us possibly taking a break from speech for a little while to try and regroup and give him a break. She said of course it is always up to me, and it might or might not do any good. I'm frustrated...we are so close to being caught up to where he needs to be, so I worry taking a break may have disasterous consequences. At the same time, I could use a break myself. I am worn out. Anyway, what we decided to do is finish the two sessions we currently have scheduled, and then take about 3 months off to see how he does. We'll schedule a recheck type of visit at that point to see where we're at, unless I feel he needs to return sooner.

In the meantime, I'm going to be looking to see if there is some sort of speech curriculum I can use here at home and sneak it into his school time without him realizing it too much. I have the list I made of what his newest goals are since his re-evaluation, so I am sure we can meet some of those by the time we go back in.

Daytona's Museum - plagued by criminals?

2006-04-04T15:45:00.000-05:00

I took Jacob and the rest of the kids on a field trip to the Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences today. My mom came along to help keep the girls busy while I tried to teach the boys and also because I didn't really want to make the 2 hour drive on my own.

We have a membership to the local museum, and as a part of that membership, we also get deals to other museums. I checked the listing and sure enough, the Daytona museum was covered. We were to get a free membership for all members of the household to their museum...that is the recipricol deal that they have listed in the paperwork and it is supposed to be good through April 30. I printed it off to be sure I would have no problems when I got there.

So, we drive the two hours and I show my card and am immediately told, "Sorry, we don't take that". I brought out the paperwork I printed off and showed her that according to their recipricol agreement, they are supposed to take it...I showed her what the paper said the agreement was. She told me to hold on a minute and showed my card to another person who showed her yes, they do take it, but according to her, the deal is a discounted admission. She told my mother since she was 65 or older she could get the sr. citizen discount (she was a little disgusted about that one seeing as she is not in her 60's at all, and she actually doesn't even look like she has hit 50). And then for Jacob they charged the regular child's admission. I asked her why this was the case and she said it is because it is a special event. So I asked her what special event was going on and she said it was the Egypt exhibit...well, that was exactly what we had gone to see, so I didn't argue with her right then. On the way home though, I looked at a billboard and checked the brouchure. Their "special event" has been going from mid-November and does not end until the last week of May. How the heck is that allowed to be something that will cause us to not get the recipricol admission as stated? So, she rings us up full price instead of the discounted price and I guess I look like I am a real idiot because she tells me the price and I tell her no way is it that much. "Oh, haha, sorry about that. Looks like you are right".

Then I asked if they allowed us to take photographs...She said no, so I had to check my camera at the desk. Ok, fine. But then my mother and I noticed on top of the tons of security cameras, we apparently deserved to have our own personal guard following us around. THAT ticked me off. I felt like a criminal...like we were wanting to take the encased goods? Give me a break! The majority of the things there were models of the actual artifacts and not the real thing.

Then we had a bunch of class tours going on. EVERY single time I would go to show Jacob something, this one tour leader would come directly to the exhibit we were looking at with her mob of kids. Jacob and I even skipped a few of them so we could go back to them, figuring she would go in order. Oh no, she would follow us. Sorry, but we purposely avoided where they were and did not interupt their groups, so we should have been given the opportunity to take our time looking at the exhibits we were trying to see.

Then we went across to the Root Family part of the museum. This family had a special on PBS a couple of months ago, real late at night, but I had no idea that their display was at this museum, so I was excited. They had hundreds of teddy bears displayed and tons of Coca Cola memorabilia. Our personal guard followed us around for a while and then my mom decided to make sure he knew we noticed him following us everywhere, so she asked him if he knew why they grouped the bears how they did. He was rude and said no, but he got the drift and left us alone for a few minutes. As we were walking out of that section, he went back to look around, I guess to see if we had broken one of the cases and stolen one of their precious teddy bears for the kids. {{Rolling Eyes}}

So, want to hear the best part? We go in the kiddie area, and it was ok...the kids had fun and were finally able to touch something, so they were happy. They had a bunch of tables set up for the kids and tons of toys for them to play with. At the second table, I saw the Magnetix toys that were recalled this past week. Keep in mind, there were stories around Christmas about children getting sick, and one child dying because he swallowed two of the magnets and they were so strong that it caused his intestines to close. So, as I am getting my camera back at the front desk, I tell the woman who rang us up that they have some recalled toys in the kids section, and explained that I had closed the boxes for them, but they may want to get them out of there before someone got hurt. So she runs over to tell the other woman who decided to give us the discounted admission prices and do you know what she tells me? "Those couldn't have been recalled. They were handmade". Ummm, yeah lady...and I am sure the legos and everything else in there are handmade too. So, I looked at her and told her she was crazy and even though they were supposedly handmade, it is still the same concept. I explained that it is there liability and they are the ones that are going to get sued when a kid dies because they didn't want to listen. So, she tried to hand me a card so I could talk to the curator of the museum, and I told her she could keep it, because I'm not calling long distance to save them a lawsuit. All they have to do is walk two rooms over and take the toy out of the room until proven safe.

Can you believe the way they acted? That last part ticked me off completely. I am writing a complaint letter to the curator (is that how you even spell it?) of that museum, to our local museum in which we have a membership, and the organization which runs the reciprical membership list (and anyone else I can find that may be interested in this information) and let them know I not only did not appreciate how we were treated, but how disgusted I am at what happened at the end. To sit there and act as ignorant as they did just disgusts me. I know there will be no more patronizing of that museum by us.

Josh's Progress Report

2006-04-01T09:23:00.000-05:00

I spoke to the psych about how Josh did in his socialization classes this time around. He did pretty good, and she noticed improvements in the same areas I did. She said in the beginning there was the resistance that she expected and she attributes that to the fact that most of the kids were older and more advanced, so he had to play catch up and that posed a challenge. He did step up though, and did what he needed to do, so that was good.

Speech was not so good this week. I had my mother bring Josh last week because I was feeling so rotten still. I gave her the entire routine to follow...told her which entrance to go through, where to try to get a parking place, etc. And it went so wonderfully that it was joked that she should bring him every time. Basically, he was ecstatic about riding in my mother's van. He has a ton of family members with minivans - me, my mother, my father, my MIL - yet, the only van he gets overly excited about is my mom's "blue bird". So, it was an extra special day as far as he was concerned, because he rarely gets to ride in her van.

So, this week it was back to me bringing him. It went horrible. He went in ok, and it looked like it would be a great session. He ran straight over tothe OT steps like he does every session...he looked out the window to check on the "fans" (part of the building's air conditioning system) and then we were off to the little speech room. Same routine as every other week we are there.

We walked in and something set him off. He went to sit in the chair but noticed the toys on the shelves were different than he thought they should be. I didn't notice any big changes, but he mentioned a bus was missing. Then he was convinced that Ms. J. had stolen one of the toys from the "duster's office". I explained that he meant the dentist office. I don't think Ms. J. was ever able to convince him that she didn't take it and it was her own.

Anyway, he was grouchy the rest of the time. Ms. J. always starts out by reading a book or two. The first book she read was one they have done a minimum of 4 times now, and he knows what to do. It is "Elmo's Guessing Game". The first page was about Elmo needing to go into the snow and wanting to know what he needed to do so. On the second page Josh was given about 5-6 choices of objects to choose from - I think there was a plant, snow boots, and a few other options. Josh chose the plant and then a few other things that he knew were not the right answer. Another page asked what Elmo needed to walk across the street safely. The right answer was an adult or mommy, and he chose a cactus plant. He has never gotten these wrong before, so it was painfully obvious he was just giving wrong answers on purpose.

It was interesting though that when she was reading an animal alphabet book, he totally showed he knew his sounds. I was shocked. We have worked on this, but he has never been one to show that he has actually learned something without a LOT of probing. She started out with telling him that A was for aardvark. Being in the grouchy mood he had suddenly gotten into, he told her "No it isn't. A is for apple!" I had to laugh, because up until now I had no idea he actually knew that. Later on he also stated that F was for flower and J is for Jacob. He refused to say J was for Joshua...go figure.

So, as we were leaving I asked Ms. J. if she knew what set him off and she said no. I have no idea either. When we left I got in the van and cried. It is so frustrating having a really good week when I am not there. I feel like it reflects on me. He has had good weeks with me there, but it seems to be a growing problem that his mood becomes grouchy when we go to speech. My mother thinks we need a break from therapy for a little while. I hate to do that though with us being so close to being caught up. Plus, if we take too long of a break we will have trouble getting back into the same therapist. I haven't decided what we will do yet. I think I will talk to Ms. J. about it next week and see what she thinks.

Speaking of Joshua, My latest layout was of him:

Credits: Shabby Princess Kit - Sweet Serenity

Jacob's Eye Appointment

2006-03-30T16:25:00.000-05:00

Well, Jacob had his appointment with the opthamologist today. We were told it would likely be a 2 1/2 hour appointment, but thankfully it was only about an hour. Whew!

His eyes are fine. We were referred because back in January he started this really hard blinking thing. I took him to the ped, where we saw a ped that was not our usual one. She checked him real quick and figured it was likely allergies, and told me if it wasn't better by the end of that week we would bring him back in. When I did, she took him off of the drops and gave us the referral to be sure it was nothing, and explained that for some reason kids (particularly boys) will develop a benign tic that they outgrow.

So, today we went in and during the initial conversation about why we were sent there, I brought up the fact that we were given a prescription for drops and handed the box over. Turns out that many peds prescribe these drops without knowing that they have to build up in the system and will not work immediately like so many (our ped included) seem to think they will. They dilated his eyes and did a check. He is fine and she thinks it is just allergies that are messing with him.

She did mention he appears to be farsighted, but said that is very common with kids his age. Apparently we are all born with some mechanism in our eyes that causes many people to be farsighted, and every day the mechanism fades a little bit. By the time most of us are 40 we have the need for reading glasses. She said there is no need for glasses right now, and as far as the future we have to just wait and see how it changes as he grows. It likely wouldn't be an issue until the teen years at the earliest.

We go back in a month. Until then, we are back to using the drops twice a day to see if there is any relief.

When we were leaving, Jacob announced to me he would like to be an eye doctor. LOL Guess we will see. :)

Another layout for you:

Patterned and plain papers and elements by DebF - My Candy kit
RicRac by Daniella Peuss - from DIVA Kit
Font used: Jester and Kayleigh

Baby Einstein - So disappointing

2006-03-27T16:51:00.000-05:00

Anyone else have the latest DVD? You know, the Meet the Orchestra - First Instruments one.

What a disappointment. :( I am soooo not impressed. IMO, it is the worst of the series, and I usually love Baby Einstein. I was really looking forward to it, having been a music teacher.

I think it stinks that she used a lot of synthesized instruments as opposed to real sound clips. There are so many ways she could have done musical examples in a better way. I mean, for Pete's sake, she sold out to Disney, so she should have had access to the Young People's Orchestra they put together every year, and it would have been prefectly fine...and she probably wouldn't have lost a penny to do so.

I also was a little upset that she replaced commonly seen and heard instruments with others that are not found in orchestras...A prime example can be seen in the woodwind section (my section! LOL). She took out the oboe and replaced it with the recorder. Umm, yeah. I can't recall the last time I saw a recorder in an orchestra, let alone the last time I saw it outside of an elementary school classroom. But, I guess they tried redeeming themselves by sticking the oboe in the bonus features section under the Discovery Cards...right along with the accordian, harmonica, and steel drum.

I say stick to "Peter and the Wolf" to teach kids the instruments if you must use a video. ;)

I made two more layouts:

Credits: Patterned background papers and elements by Mrs. Schmuck ~ Sweet Chloe set
Fonts: Kaleigh and ?

Credits: Papers and Elements - Midsummer Swelter by Rina
Fonts - I am horrible about remembering the fonts! I'll get better. :)

School update time

2006-03-22T13:54:00.000-05:00

Well, Jacob and I have pretty much finished our study of Egypt. It's funny how we see Heiroglyphs on TV, games, in stores and in books all over the place now. I don't necessarily notice them until he points them out to me. We are still tentatively planning a field trip to a museum to fully wrap up the topic. I think he will really enjoy that, as will the other kids.

We are now moving on to the food groupings and food pyramid. We've talked about this in the past, but I want something concrete to show that we did cover it. So, we'll spend a couple of days making a chart and some other projects on that. After that is done we will be trying to make an Easter Lapbook or notebook. I'd like to do a lapbook, but we'll see how much we have at the end and the best way of putting it all together.

Joshua just completed his most recent socialization classes. He was sick for two out of the six due to being sick, which isn't great. However, in the four classes he did attend, he got so much from them. He is so good at remembering the steps he has learned in there and applying them. He is doing much better at initiating play with his siblings and adults. He still has to be reminded to actually play once he asks someone to join him, but he will get there soon, I am sure. He also has improved with letting them know when he is done, but the eye contact during this is still a big thing needing work. There is such a difference in him.

Oh! Another thing that Josh did - we had a playdoh day last Friday. The kids have been wanting to do this for a while and I was feeling rotten and thought that would be a good idea. Why, I don't know...we'll just say I was a little loopy from the Tylenol Severe Allergy medicine I was taking. LOL Anyway, we took out ALL of the playdoh items we had - 13 containers of misc colors of playdoh, all of our playdoh molds and cutters, and Josh's Crayola Dough Car Factory set. Joshua wanted to make a purple car, and naturally that was the only color we did not have. So, I told him we would have to mix some of the colors together to get purple for him to use. We took out the red and blue and I told him he would have to squish them together lots and lots to get it to turn purple. I demonstrated what he would need to do and handed it to him to finish. I fully expected the normal crocodile tears and heartwrenching cries when he touched it, but he didn't do it this time! Instead, he took it right out of my hands and began squishing it together and asking if it looked purple enough yet. I couldn't believe it! Woohoo! It was good to see improvements in this area as well. :)

Blah

2006-03-22T13:24:00.000-05:00

Well, I went to the doctor on Monday. I figured 14 weeks of on and off sickness was more than enough. I am sick of almost coughing up a lung every night and getting no relief. Plus, this weekend had me feeling like death warmed over. So, I went in and saw the PA of my new primary care doctor. He was not too happy about me having waited so long to come in, but oh well. They did a peak flow meter and then did the pulse ox monitor on me. The second one worried me a little at first because it registered as me only getting 90% oxygen. So the nurse played with the cord a minute, making sure it was actually plugged in all of the way and it steadily went up to 100%. Whew!

It was so odd. The PA took very little history. There were no forms to fill out about medical history, family history, specific diseases, etc. Every doctor I have ever been to in the past has had papers to fill out on those types of things - geez, even the ER asks you specific questions about things in your medical history. No specific questions were asked really...just if my mom and dad had any major medical issues and if I had any medications I was currently taking. He asked about any surgeries and I went through the medical issues I had with each of my pregnancies on my own. I volunteered about my past history with my thyroid. Being sick though, I totally did not think about telling him about my tonsillectomy as a kid or the ulcer I had at 12 years old. I am assuming he could tell that the tonsills were gone when he looked at my throat, but who knows how well his quick glance was?

He looked at my ears, throat, nose, and then listened briefly to my chest. He said he'd get me some meds and be right back. He came back with samples of Biaxin XL and told me get some Mucinex DM OTC. He also commented that I "had this cough long enough to warrant a chest x-ray". Then he told me to be sure to make an appointment with my GYN since I am overdue for the yearly check and make another appointment to get established with my regular doctor. As we were leaving, he asked if there was a history of asthma in my family, and I told him yes, my brother has it pretty severe and my mother has it as well. So, he says if this doesn't help then we may need to talk about getting me an inhaler. Yippee.

So, what is wrong with me? I have no earthly idea. He never gave me a diagnosis. Nice, huh? I have felt so washed out since going in though. In some ways I feel worse than before I went and saw him. My cough is not near as bad, but I now am having stomach issues, I'm guessing from the antibiotic. I also am plain worn out I feel wimpy, as my aunt would say. I couldn't even take Josh to therapy today, so my mother had to do it. That's a first, so that just goes to show how crappy I feel.

In the meantime, I have taken up digital scrapbooking. What fun! Here is my first layout:

Credits: Patterned background papers and elements by Cheryl Whitesel ~ Spring RAK

Guess what this is

2006-03-11T23:15:00.000-05:00

This is post number 100! I can't believe I have typed that many posts, yet at the same time wonder what post number I would be at if I had not taken so many long breaks lately. LOL

I have tried thinking about something nifty to post here, but didn't really succeed in doing so. Instead, I thought I would share some new pics of Elena. I tried getting some of the other kids, but none of them were in a photo mood. Elena is a ham when the camera is out though. :)

Another funny Josh story

2006-03-08T17:05:00.000-05:00

Joshua is such a funny kid. I think what makes it even funnier is that he hasn't a clue how funny some of the things he says come out.

At the end of speech today, his therapist wanted to quickly get him to try something. She's been working each week to get him to name items in a category in one minute, but he just seems to not understand what she means.

So, today's topic was food - his greatest motivator according to the psych. LOL This should have been a cinch for Josh, but he just stood there. After several times of rephrasing the question, he named Cheerios and pretzels. The rest of the conversation:

Therapist - "What do you like to eat for breakfast?"
Joshua - "Cereal".
Therapist - "How about for lunch?"
Joshua - "Sandwich".
Therapist - "What about dinner? What do you eat then?"
Joshua, with a serious frown - "Yucky stuff". LOL

(laughter from both the therapist and me)

Therapist - "Well, what is something that Mommy makes that you like to eat?"
Joshua - "TV Dinners".

I had no idea my cooking was that bad! ROFL

Funny conversation

2006-03-06T21:18:00.000-05:00

This is one of many conversations the boys had during the trip home yesterday:

Jacob: "When I grow up I want to visit Egypt."
Me: "That would be cool."
Josh: "I don't want to grow up!"
Jacob: "Egypt has deserts, so I think it would be really cool to see them!"
Joshua: "I just want to go to Target."

Joshua is so easy to please. LOL

I'm a slacker

2006-03-06T20:15:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know. I have slacked once again. It's been a heck of a couple of weeks. I have a major dentist phobia thanks to a jerk pediatric dentist I had as a child. I won't go into everything that happened, but I will say it was enough to scare me enough to have NO desire to return and have someone poke around in my mouth. So, it has been 14 or 15 years since I have been in a dentist office. Before the past couple of years, I never even had a cavity, so there was no big deal...or so it seemed.

Two weeks ago, I had to bite the bullet and call a few people to have a dentist recommended to me. My back right molar had an obvious cavity for a while now, but now there was an additional little hole on the top of the tooth. It wasn't hurting at all, but it was annoying anytime my tongue would accidentally hit that area. I was shaking when I called to make the appointment, but I got it set for last Monday.

I had a full set of x-rays taken. I felt like an idiot. I cried during the x-rays because all of the horrifying memories came back to me and I was worried I was going to be fussed at big time for lack of care of my teeth (my pediatric dentist used to yell at me each time I would come in as well as pull a tooth or two each visit with little numbing involved). I honestly had convinced myself that I would go in and be told all of my teeth need to be removed. I brush my teeth, honest! Twice a day in fact. However, apparently those routine check-ups are a must for me and I didn't do that.

Well, the news was not that bad, but it wasn't great either. I have 8 cavities...well, 9 if you count the one wisdom tooth that popped through while I was pregnant with Cassidy. The one I was worried about and that forced me to make the appointment was the worst of them all. The majority are tiny. He also said that he was unable to tell from the x-ray whether or not the root was effected, and that he could tell more once he got in there and worked on it. He also recommended I see an oral surgeon and have the top left and bottom right wisdom teeth removed. So, the appointment was set for today to fix two cavities on the bottom right side.

I have been scared out of my mind seeing as all experiences with my first dentist were painful. This dentist seemed nice and I had heard he was very patient. All I had to do was raise my hand and he would stop then and there no matter what. Having never had a cavity filled before, I had no real idea what to expect.

I got in there and had to have 2 sets of shots to numb me. The first set was ok, the second set was a little uncomfortable, but not horrible. After I was all numb, the decay was removed. That back molar does have the decay very close to the nerve and when he hit the nerve, OH MY GOODNESS I about jumped out of the chair. It was very sharp pain that radiated through my jaw. He did it two more times, and then stopped and filled the two teeth - one with a composite and the other with a temp filling.

When we were done, he told me if I want to save the tooth I will need a root canal and if I'm not worried about it then it will need to be extracted. He did not give any pros or cons for either scenario, so I have no idea what I will do. He said we will talk about it once we get the rest of the cavities taken care of.

Jacob is currently studying Ancient Egypt. We are reading "Mummies in the Morning" from the Magic Treehouse series. He is really loving it! We discussed pyramids, reviewed a little about what we learned about King Tut, talked about mummies, and went over some vocabulary with various exercises. My favorite part so far was taking a virtual tour of Kufu's pyramid. Turns out it is the same pyramid my father visited many years ago when he was in the navy. Here's a link:
Explore a pyramid

Another thing Jacob is really excited about is the hieroglyphs generator we found. He translated his name and we printed it out. Here's the link we used:
Hieroglyph Generator

I am trying to arrange a time for us to visit a museum with an exhibit on Ancient Egypt.

Joshua has been doing pretty well with socialization classes. We finally got someone from our insurance company to answer the phone and agree to look into doing a single case agreement with our psychologist. They decided it won't be a problem so they are drawing up the contract. I am so happy to hear it!

We took a day trip to see some relatives on Silas' side of the family, Sally and Mike. We had a nice time despite my being under the weather. Jacob had fun playing Legos with their 13 yo son. Joshua took a few minutes to adjust and was fine soon after. He loved playing with their daughter, Melissa. Elena was the same way. Cassie took the longest to adjust, but by the end of our time there, she was fine and seemed to be enjoying herself. The funniest thing though was when Sally said Josh seemed to be the most social out of the bunch. I laughed and told her how ironic it was that she would say that seeing as he is the one that is autistic. LOL So I guess those socialization classes are working better than I even realized they were!

Contest

2006-02-20T00:52:00.000-05:00

For anyone who likes Coke products,this contest is for you! No purchase is necessary at all. Just go to Coca-Cola Olympics Contest and register. After registering, click on "Enter code". On the bottom of the page is a picture of a box of Coke...click that and request your courtesy code. You can request up to 3 codes per day.

You will be assigned a random Olympic event for each code you enter. Each time the US scores any medal (gold, silver OR bronze), you win! Both Silas and I have won 5 2-liter bottles each already. I believe the contest ends March 15th or so...plenty of time to get yourself some free Coke and enter to win a trip to the Beijing Olympics in 2008. I think that would be well worth conquering my fear of flying. :)

Vehicular surprise

2006-02-18T22:56:00.000-05:00

About three months ago or so I had gotten all the kids into the van and was on my way to therapy with Josh. I put it in reverse to back out of the driveway and it refused to move...it was as if the emergency brake was on. I tried popping the emergency brake, which I rarely use (and definitely don't use at the house), but nothing happened. I tried turning the van off and back on thinking maybe I just didn't have the key completely turned or something. It wouldn't move. So, after going through all of the options I could think of, dummy me decided to apply a little gas to see if it would go. It went, but it sounded like something fell out of the bottom of the van when I did it. So, I call Silas and he has no idea what it could be. I pulled up and down the drive a few times to be sure it would indeed brake, and it did. So, after talking a little while longer to Silas, I decided to try driving it around the block. When I did this, I heard a noise from the back that sounded like I had a flat tire, but there was no bounce that typically goes along with that flat tire. After only 200 feet or so, the noise stopped. I had my wonderful husband drive it several times before I would get back behind the wheel, and naturally it worked beautifully and did not seem to have a single issue. It's been driving fine with no noise until recently.

Well, for the past couple of weeks I have been saying we needed to get the van brakes looked at because they feel funny to me and they are starting to sound like a bus when I stop. The stupid thing NEVER does this for Silas when he is driving though...only for me.

Silas took the van in today thinking that the front and back brakes would need standard repair. Before he even got home, I got a call from the repair place saying that it was a lot worse. The rear left wheel cylinder is busted, and there is a good possibility that the brake fluid has air in it. I asked what that meant exactly, and Silas said if there is too much air in the brakes, they basically will not work at all.

So basically I have been driving my kids around in a vehicle around whose brakes could have gone out at any minute. God has definitely been watching over us.

Shopping - my frugal habits

2006-02-18T11:54:00.000-05:00

I have been having way too much fun lately. I love a good deal! I live in the land of no regular doubles. We have one fairly new store that doubles 3 days a week, and I have yet to make it over there. They bought out a chain that was known for overpricing everything, so I guess knowing what it used to be has kept me away thus far. I am going to make it a point to go in one of them before February ends.

Anyway, I mentioned in my last post that Cassie and I went shopping this week. I'm a big spender. Spent a total of $1.30. LOL However, for that $1.30 I came home with 2 huge Herbal Essence Conditioners, 2 full size bottles of Herbal Essence Shampoos, and a full sized bottle of Finesse Shampoo. There is a ton of stuff on clearance at CVS right now, and when combined with coupons, it is a bargain!

Then last night my mother and I went shopping. We hit one of the CVS stores and spent about 1 1/2-2 hours in there. BUT, here is what I got - 10 boxes of hair coloring (Herbal Essence, L'Oreal, Garnier, etc), a bottle of Shout stain remover, and a full sized bottle of L'oreal kid's shampoo. Grand total after tax - $1.78!

So, after that, we hit Target. We had a blast there too. My biggest expenses there were two Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus dolls that I had been eyeing for a while for the girls. Even Elena loves Barbie dolls (without accessories, of course), so couldn't pass them up for half price! Using coupons, I also got a trial sized bottle of Tide for 1/2 price, a box of Herbal Essence hair color (like I needed more) for .24, trial sized Edge shaving gel for free, and 2 protein bars for .67. After a few other misc items, my total came up to about $20.

After that we hit another CVS. This one didn't turn out as well for me, but I still did pretty good. The friendly cashier decided to try and help me out by giving me back coupons because it would only use .80 of the $3.00 coupon, so she thought it would be better for me to come back and get it free. The way she worded things confused me - I wanted her to use the coupon because it would make it free as opposed to .80. If I had made two seperate trips it would have been free, so what is the difference if she took it now or later? {shrug} Oh well, 'tis done now. She jipped me $5 off my purchase by handing me back coupons I wanted to use because she thought she was "helping". I came out of there with 4 boxes of various hair color, 2 huge bottles of VO5 Nourishing Oasis conditioner, 2 Dove Styling Mousse, 1 Suave bodywash, 1 Dove shampoo, and 2 L'Oreal Kids shampoos. My total before coupons and clearance savings was $34.43 - my total paid was $16.75. Not as great a deal, but not horrid either.

So, we are set on shampoo and conditioner for a while. And if anyone needs hair color, let me know. ;)

Sick, sick, sick

2006-02-18T11:37:00.000-05:00

Well,once again I have been a slacker. I was really sick before Christmas with some osrt of allergy/sinus thing. I lost my voice and it took me three weeks to get back to normalcy. So, here I am feeling great, and Silas comes home from work with something. He got over it, but in the meantime I have managed to catch it and have been hoarse once again for the past week. No fun for someone who likes to talk. LOL I miss my voice...well, not so much the voice, but the knowledge that my voicebox is going to definitely work when I try to speak.

Jacob has had an off and on cough. Aside from that and his extremely touchy and grouchy attitude, you wouldn't necessarily know that he was ill. Joshua was coughing a lot last night, but he woke up this morning exclaiming, "I feel better, Mommy!", so hopefully that is as bad as it gets for him. Elena has had a VERY runny nose for the past two days, but that's it for her. Cassie, poor dear, has been the worst of them all. She was an angel on Wednesday for my mom, so I asked her if she would like to go with me when I went shopping later that evening (which I will tell you about in my next entry). She was very excited and was a big helper, holding my coupons for me and putting things into the cart. We got home and she wanted to go to bed. We got her ready and she zonked out immediately, but an hour later she woke up with the croup.

All of my kids except for Elena have had the croup at some point. I usually don't get uptight about it. I usually go in the bathroom with them and run the shower with the hottest water I can and steam up the room for a while as I read to them. This didn't work for Cassie this time. So I wrapped her in a blanket and went outside in the chilly air with her. Didn't work. Silas was holding her while I looked to see if there was anything in the medicine cabinet to help her a little bit. While doing that, I got a bit nervous. Every single time she would breathe, both in and out, it sounded horrible. I have never had any of the other kids sound like this. So I grabbed our nebulizer and gave her a breathing treatment, which only upset her more, which led to screaming from her, which led to worse crying and worse coughing, etc. You get the picture. I had Silas put on a movie for her and then go up to the store to grab some Sprite and called my mom to see if she knew of anything else I could do for her. While on the phone, Cassie settled down enough to where her breathing became normal again. Whew! So, for two nights I slept on one couch, and Cassie was on the other. She's fine now, but I am still trying to recoop from the lack of sleep.

Elena pottied!

2006-02-12T00:10:00.000-05:00

Woohoo! I was so excited! I was running her bath water this morning and had just taken off her pull-up when she pointed at her leg. She had a little trickle going down where she had wet herself a little bit just as I was going to put her on the chair. I put her on there anyway so she'd make the connection. We have the Royal Potty that plays music when they actually do anything, but the kids all think it is neat to stick their hands down in the seat to hear it. Anyway, it kept playing music over and over. I was confused as to why it wouldn't stop, because I had never heard it make music that many times in a row. Well, lo and behold, little stinker actually used the potty! Boy, did I ever cheer for her! Hopefully this is the start of a trend!

One reason I was MIA for so long

2006-02-12T00:04:00.000-05:00

I totally forgot to tell you one of the reasons I was MIA for so long. I became a Qwyzzle addict. One of my board buddies, Stef, introduced me to this brain strainer. LOL I finished in about two weeks. Yay me! Here is the link:

Qwyzzle

Enjoy..but be forewarned...some of these are HARD!

Back to class

2006-02-10T15:09:00.000-05:00

Josh's socialization classes have started again, and this time is going to be really cool! I have said it many times before, and I will say it again...our psych is awesome! We were leaving speech Wednesday and I was buckling Joshua into his carseat, when lo and behold, the Ms. G. parked next to us and came over to chat. She told me this time would be a little different in socialization class because it would be a bigger group and the kids were all a little older. She thought Joshua would handle it well though and it would be a nice challenge for him.

So we went back that afternoon for the class. There were 3 other children there and it appears to be a diverse bunch of kids with a variety of different needs. From what I understood while talking to the other moms, Joshua is the youngest out of the group by almost a year (in the other groups he was the oldest by a couple of months).

When they finished group and the kids come out, Ms. G. brought out our little check-out forms and as always started to pass them out to us. She passed me though, and told me she wanted to talk to me for a minute. I was thinking, "Oh no, what did he do?!?!" LOL

She wanted to forewarn me that Joshua is the youngest in the group and the group is much more verbal than the other groups he has been with. She said it is a little harder for him so she just wanted me to beware that he might show some resistance about coming the next couple of weeks because of it. However, she truly feels he can handle the challenge and is more than capable of doing everything she will be asking of him. She said whereas he has always been at the top, he's now on the bottom and has to work harder than the rest,. So it should be interesting to see how he handles the next few weeks.

While she was there, I mentioned that she is not a provider for our insurance so we were paying out of pocket, and I was wondering if there was a way to get her added. She said she'd look into seeing what could be done. I didn't even pull out of the parking lot and she called me on my cell phone to let me know that she talked to the woman who handles the insurance for their group and she thinks I can request a single case agreement for her to be covered for Joshua. She gave me her direct number again as well as the direct number for the woman she spoke to and told me if I need her to call them herself, she is more than happy to do so.

Even if it takes up the majority of our tax return, I really think it will be worth it for her to be the one providing the care. She is so good with Josh and genuinely cares how much he improves. I can't imagine trying to get into a new office and seeing another psych whose name I can not even pronounce, simply because the insurance will cover the cost. He has made such great improvements under her care. Why switch to something when there is a system that is actually working? As long as we can afford to do it, we will continue to have Joshua see her. Hopefully, the insurance company will agree to cover her services for Joshua, because that would only sweeten the deal at this point. :)

Olympics

2006-02-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

We have been studying the Olympics this week. The kids all participated in the craft activities. I have been so bad about taking pictures lately. I really need to be better about it. Each of the kids made their own flag to represent their "country". We made gold and silver medals, which was their favorite activity so far, and we also made the Olympic rings and discussed why those colors were chosen.

Jacob and I took a lot of time this morning on the internet looking up the different sports that are involved in the games. There was a great link that we both enjoyed:
Olympics site for kids

If you click on Slug, there is a great description of each of the games - the rules, equipment necessary, a list of Americans participating, and the country that is favored to win. Jacob decided after reading the descriptions that he would really like to do snowboarding. Kind of hard to do here seeing as we haven't had snow since the 80's, and even then it was nothing to really support that type of sport. I assured him we could watch though. ;)

Opening ceremonies are tonight. I can't wait to see their reactions!

New business

2006-02-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! It's been a while, and I apologize. Life has been busy, as always. :)

As many of you know, for several months I have been trying to find something I could do from home to help with the costs of Josh's therapy while still homeschooling the boys. I stumbled upon Usborne Books during our schooling. I loved the books so much that I have decided to become an independant consultant.

All of the books have illustrations that will catch the attention of kids of any age. Many of the series feature a dual level of reading where the top of the page will have a simple line of text for the younger children who want to turn the pages, and more complete and longer text at the bottom for you to read to the child. For the older kids, the information is broken into chunks, and they retain the information easier.

One of Jacob and Joshua's favorite books is "Puzzle Train". The book has never been read the same way twice. In addition to telling a story, there are several items that the reader can search for throughout the pages, as well as questions and mind-benders to answer on each page.

There are over 1200 books available covering a tremendous amount of topics and age ranges, with the majority costing under $10. You can view them all at my website: My Usborne Bookstore You can see sample pages of many of the books. While you are there, be sure to enter the free drawing to try to win $50 in free books with no cost to enter! You can enter each month. Who knows? You may be the next winner!

If anyone is interested in hosting an e-party where you can earn free books, let me know and I will get the details to you. You can earn double the book allowance during my first 8 weeks. Also, until March 30, I am authorized to sell the complete base kit for only $99.50. Ask me for details if you are interested. All consultants get a lifetime 30% discount.

I am not sure if the shopping cart will allow shipping outside of the US, except in the case of APO boxes. If you live outside of the US and want to place an order at any time, email me your order and I can have it shipped to me and then ship it to you for actual cost. Payment appears to be only by Visa, Discover, Mastercard, or debit card. If you would like to pay by check, email me to place your order instead of going through the shopping cart. :) Most orders take only a week to get to you if you order through the website.

Ok, sales pitch over. :)

Updates

2006-01-23T19:39:00.000-05:00

We got the results of the boys' bloodwork finally. Joshua's Insulin-like Growth Factor is a bit high, and Jacob's is low. I have no idea what this means exactly, but the ped is sending us to an endocronologist for the two of them. We are still waiting for the results on the bone age x-ray. Supposedly the Children's Hospital has no record of our having been there. Yeah, I am so sure that will be the case when the bill gets sent. Needless to say, I will not be paying for something that I will never see the results for, and I may let the insurance company know as well that they supposedly lost the x-ray. We'll see what happens. I for one am very interested to see what the results were and how it relates to the low IGF.

School is going fine. We didn't do anything today. Jacob had to go to the ped's office today because for the past 5 days he has been blinking in an odd way...like really long and hard blinks. If we ask him if they hurt, are itchy, are dry, etc he always says no. So today, since it seems to be never-ending, we went to get him checked. The ped had him go through a vision exam (he has 20/25) and then she examined his eyes and asked him several questions. In the end, she thinks it is allergy related and she gave us a prescription for some drops.

So I got to thinking about what in the world could have suddenly set him off. When Silas came home one day early last week, he brought me my early Valentine's gift - some beautiful yellow tulips. That is the only difference that I have thoguht about, so we are thinking that may be the key. We are going to find a new location for the flowers and see if that helps with the drops.

So that is all to report for now. :)

First dental visit

2006-01-16T21:00:00.000-05:00

I posted a little over a month ago about having concerns about Elena's top front teeth. She has had some yellowish colored spots on them and I had the pediatrician look at them to see what she thought it was. Her thought was that it was either the start of decay or damage to the enamel. So, I made an appointment with my old pediatric dentist, Dr. K. While I was at it, I went ahead and asked to schedule an appointment for Joshua, explaining my concerns and wondering if they were willing to see an autistic child and an infant. Usually they do not see kids until they are 3 years old, but after explaining that Dr. K. was my old dentist and the bad experiences I had prior to going to see him, the woman I was talking to agreed to talk to him and he agreed to try seeing them both. I figured, if they can handle an autistic child and a one-year old, they'd be able to handle Jacob with no problems, and we'd make an appointment for him later. ;)

Well, I prepared Joshua as best I possibly could this weekend. I made little picture cards that went through each step of the appointment that I knew they would be doing today (counting teeth, sitting and laying in the chair, open mouth and say "AH!", etc) and a couple they thought they may try (like x-rays and "polishing" the teeth. Then last night I got out a little dental mirror I bought and some other things and had him lay on my bed with his head on a pillow on my lap. I had our bright top light directly over him and shining on his face, so he would know to expect it. He did great, so I was feeling a little better about how things may go.

So, we get to the dentist office today and Joshua tells me he doesn't want to go and see the duster. LOL I corrected him, and said he would probably like it. We walked in and he found the playroom and made himself at home. Elena also enjoyed this part of the experience. LOL After a while we were called back to the examination room. The hygenist talked to us for a bit and Joshua got into the chair. He was fine until she decided to try and lay it back, and it totally freaked him out. He told her he wanted it to sit up and so she fixed it and he immediately thanked her. That's one thing Joshua definitely has going for him - wonderful manners!

Anyway, eventually Dr. K. came in. Dr. K. is not a tiny man...he is a big guy, but a big teddy bear as my mother likes to say. He has always been relatively quiet when he speaks too, so he took Josh by surprise when he suddenly saw him in the doorway. He started fussing a bit and becoming difficult. Dr. K. had me pick Josh up while he layed the chair back, and then I put Josh back on it. Then he lifted the chair, which Josh again disliked. They also turned on the bright lights and when they did, Dr. K. covered Josh's eyes, which was a tremendous help!

They got Josh's teeth checked and there is NO DECAY!!! Woohoo! I was soooo relieved! He did have a spot on one tooth that looked to me like a little hole, so I mentioned it. He has an enamel defect on that tooth, and there is nothing to do right now. He said he won't attempt a cleaning right now on Josh and that he would likely have to be pout under ansthesia to do so, which he does not recommend, so we will try that again next year I suppose.

Next was Elena. He had Silas hold her on his lap facing him, then lay her back so that her head was on Dr. K's lap. He still had to have someone hold her head still for him because she was fighting him so badly. He saw no decay or enamel defects. I showed him where I was seeing the problems and he told me that it was discoloration of the enamel and that was all. Whew! So no decay! Am I ever happy and relieved!

Elena does, however, have a flap of skin that goes from the lip to the palate and will likely need to be surgically removed at some point or her teeth will not properly grow together as they should. My mother was told something similar about my outh by my quack dentist, but mine was not severe, and I have had no trouble whatsoever...I barely have a gap at all between my teeth now. SO I guess time will tell...maybe it is something that will change in time? Anyone have experience with this?

He recommended that we only give water in the sippy cup and that anything else only be given during meals. This is typically all we do anyway, but I didn't tell him that. Mainly, my kids drink water, and maybe one day a week they will get a can of Sprite each. And at night they have been having milk while Jacob drinks his shake supplement. So, it seems like we are pretty much doing everything right. :)

Dr. K. did tell me that he is not an expert on autistic kids, but he knows it can be difficult to deal with them. He said to not worry about the toothpaste if he won't accept it (another of my concerns) and just worry about cleaning it with water if that is all he will take. He also said Josh has been blessed with nice spacing between his teeth, so that helps tremendously because the food is not getting trapped in between.

So, all in all, I couldn't have been happier with the way things went today. :)

Knights and Castles

2006-01-12T09:32:00.000-05:00

Our lessons right now are on knights and castles. Jacob is currently reading The Knight At Dawn from the Magic Treehouse series. He is really enjoying the series and it has been a lot of fun hearing him reading them.

My mother listened to him read yesterday while I was with Josh in therapy, and she asked him some questions. One of the things the book mentioned was that they ate peacocks, and mom got the feeling he didn't quite get what a peacock was exactly. So today, I asked him if he knew and to describe it. He started out telling me it was a bird, had a beak, a long neck, and he was really convincing that he knew what it was...at least until he told me they were pink. LOL So, I jumped on the internet to find some pics of peacocks and then he remembered seeing them at the zoo. Silly boy.

I found a really neat site to help with visuals of a castle and its different parts. Here is the link: Kids' Castle It allowed Jacob the chance to dress a knight, learn about squires, pages, tournaments, the moat, etc. all with visuals that appeal to him. Here is a screenshot from the Knight in Armor activity that he did:

Before Jacob dressed him:

After Jacob dressed him:

Right now he is building a castle out of Lego blocks. I'll take pics and post them when he is finished. :)

He is such a little boy. Today when he was reading, there was a section where Jack was describing what the people he was seeing were wearing. The boys serving food were "wearing dresses". You can tell he really was paying attention to what he was reading, because he stopped and looked at me with this adorable puzzled look and said "The boys were wearing dresses?" and he burst out with laughter that I thought would never end. It was so funny. He'd get further down the page and then he'd start laughing again and would say "haha The boys were wearing dresses". LOL Luckily once he turned the page there was an illustration that showed what Jack was talking about, and it settled the laughter down a little bit so we could finish the lesson.