Merry Christmas!

I just had to pop on here today to wish all of my family, friends, and blog buddies a very Merry Christmas!!!



blinnkie from:

Make your own snowflake

I have had so much fun doing this. Jacob even made a couple today and did a great job. :)

http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/

I warn you though...it is addicting!

Well, progress has definitely been made

Joshua was officially released from OT yesterday, though I am a bit confused as to why. We weren't there for two weeks, and then Mindy cancelled last week due to being ill. So, three weeks of being out of therapy - you can imagine the shock I was in when she told me she was going to release him because he is so much better than he was when he started.

I'm not real sure what to do now. I personally am not convinced that he is ready to be out of OT. He still has a ton to work on. Mindy assured me I have been doing a great job and that he has come a long way. I have a good grasp on the sensory diet, the need for a schedule, and am homeschooling him. She said also that the things she would be working on are all things that I am working on at home during school, so there is no point in coming in. Can you sense the dazed and confused look I must have had on my face the entire time?

Next was speech and it went pretty well. The schedule is helping Josh a lot. He is much more focussed, though he does have a moment or two each week that he seems to go off task. We are currently working on directional words - he is having a little trouble still with over, between, through and behind. I think if we continue working on it as much as we have, he will get it in the next week. He's a smart kid.

In the afternoon we went to socialization class. The other little boy, L, was out for a family emergency, so it was just Josh and Ms. G. They played a board game, and a few other things, had snack, and then she came out to get me so she could go over the session and how Josh did. He did well. The match between kids wasn't as good of one as in the past in terms of verbal exchange because L isn't as verbal as Josh is these days. However, they both have strong areas of interest that the other does not share. Josh's being cars and L's being puzzles. This forced both of them to do an activity someone else enjoyed and pay attention when it was the other person's turn.

Our next step is for Josh to work on continuing a conversation. He has gotten very good at going up to strangers and saying "Hi. What's your name?" He's so stinking cute that he always gets an answer from adults and children. Most of the time now, he will tell them his name as well, either by answering them when they ask or by simply offering the name. The problem is that this is where it usually ends. He either gets really goofy or he walks off. So, now he needs to realize that there is an exchange that needs to happen after this.

She asked if I had any questions or concerns about anything, so I took the opportunity to let he know about the morning's events. She was as shocked as I am that Josh was released from OT already. She tols me that Josh has made tons of improvements socially, but he still has a lot of work to do. She wanted to know if there was any sort of evaluation or if we got any sort of results given to us saying he is at such and such level. When I told her that Mindy simply went into her office to check something and then came back and again said she thought he could be released, she was again surprised. I should have been given something, but then again, I was never given a copy of our goals in the first place. Anyway, Ms. G agrees with me completely that Josh needs more OT. She said his muscle tone is still weak and that is some of what the OT is supposed to work on, so she doesn't understand it any better than I do. There is more than sensory issues at stake here, and that is what confuses me the most. She said she would go ahead and take this time as a break and then call them up to tell them I want him back in. I don't know what I will do. I think I will give it a couple of months, see where Josh is myself, and then re-evaluate the situation. The new insurance we will have starting in January will actually give us 40 total speech and OT visits, so it is a matter of weighing out what we can afford against what he needs.

Ms. G. asked me at the end if I am still going to continue homeschooling him. She said that if I had any doubts at all about whether or not I am doing right, she totally feels I am giving him more this way than any school in the area could offer. I told her I always question and have doubts, but I am very glad that she said it. It is so nice to have her support in this decision as well as someone to go to if I ever have any concerns about Joshua's care and our plan of action with him.

3 Things...

I was tagged by Sarah at The Sellers Homeschool Blog. This should be fun!

3 names you answer to:

1. Melissa
2. Mooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy
3. MaMa

3 parts of your heritage:
1. Italian
2. Cajun
3. German - a little bit!

3 things that scare me:
1. Anything bad happening to my family, especially my children
2. Spiders
3. Dentists

3 of your everyday essentials:
1. Diet Cherry Coke
2. Hug from the kids
3. Music

3 things you are wearing right now:
1. green T-shirt
2. black pants
3. white socks

3 of your favorite songs:
1. In My Daughter's Eyes - Martina McBride
2. Breathe - Faith Hill
3. Held - Natalie Grant

3 things you want in a relationship (other than real love):
1. Understanding
2. Honesty
3. Patience

2 truths and 1 lie (in any order):
1. Have a bachelor's degree in Music Education
2. Have played handbells in Disney World
3. I love doing the dishes

3 things about the opposite sex that appeal to you:
1. Eyes
2. Smile
3. Confidence

3 of your favorite hobbies:
1. Scrapbooking
2. Sewing
3. Soapmaking

3 places you want to go:
1. DisneyWorld (been many times, but I LOVE that place!)
2. Disneyland in CA (sense a theme?)
3. New York (to see a Broadway show!)

3 things you want to do before you die:
1. See a real Broadway play
2. Live life to the fullest
3. Muster up the courage to get myself onto a plane. (And maybe even fly somewhere!)

3 ways that you are sterotypically a male/female:
1. I love shopping
2. I do not like to have my hair short
3. Enjoy crafts

3 people you would like to take this survey:
1. Silas (Strawberry Skies)
2. Lyndsay (C'est La Vie)
3. David (GracieLand)

Doctors, Doctors, Doctors

A few of you knew I was going to be going to the ped today. Here's what happened...

Jacob- We went for him to have a growth check. I don't know if you remember my telling you way back in May, but the ped was having us supplement his diet with Carnation GoodStart Shakes in hopes that he would gain weight. He has been steadily dropping from the 90th% on the growth charts in both height and weight, to now being in the 25th% for weight and the 2-3% for height now. :( So we now are going to be having his thyroid tested, an x-ray to determine his bone age, and some other tests, including testing for Celiac Disease. I personally feel this may be what we are looking at, because he has a lot of symptoms. Time will tell. Regardless, he will be seeing an endocronologist. It could very well be thyroid given we have a strong family history of problems, including myself. She said she feels it is definitely something familial going on and that she may be jumping the gun a bit, but would rather catch it now than later.

Funny story about his check-up...Dr. V asked Jacob how school was going and if he liked it. He said yes. Then she asked if he likes his teacher and he said yes, so then she asked what her name is and he replied "Mommy". She forgot I homeschool, so she asked him again, thinking he misunderstood the question, and he told her again. So she rephrased the question. This time he said, "Her name is Melissa". LOL She looked at me a little strangely and I reminded her I homeschool him. She started laughing and said she finally understood why he was so confused about her questions. LOL

Joshua - He did so well! Not a single tear during the check-up, and the ped was excited to see how social he is now compared to how he was last year. I made a picture schedule so he would know exactly what to expect during the check-up. It could not have gone more perfectly! He had to get three shots - one in each leg and one in the arm. It was funny, because he thought they were tickling him when they were doing the ones in his leg, so he laughed the entire time - no tears at all! The one in the arm did hurt though (the MMR), so he did scream....plus he saw it coming. LOL He is having his thyroid tested as well, because he too has dropped a little more than 2 curves on the growth chart. Ugh. So, the children's clinic should set up a room with our name, seeing as we are there literally all day once a week for therapy and socialization classes...and now an endo. :P

Elena - She is now 27 pounds and leveling off in her growth. Thank goodness, because my back can't take much more. LOL We are going to be taking her to a dentist. She has two small spots on her two top front teeth, and the ped thinks there is either some damage to the enamel or the start of cavities. I have no idea what it is since we have never seen anything like it with the other kids.

So, apparently no break for me in the near future as far as appointments go. I am sooo tired! I have been thinking that my own thyroid is in need of being tested, so after our new insurance kicks in, I will likely be meeting my new primary physician (I actually know him personally already, just not as my doctor) and then get a referral to an endo myself. The fun never ends. :)

Update on all the happenings

Well, the website is as updated with pictures as I have time to do for now. Maybe during the kids' Christmas break we can add some more. :)

Silas' car - we finally heard from the insurance company today. Well, more like Silas finally managed to track someone down and find out what the estimates were. Supposedly the car was worth $3400, and though we don't know how much they estimated the damages to be, they said they exceeded that cost by a good bit, so they are going to total the thing. Scary to think Silas was going only 20MPH or so and it caused this much damage. Can you imagine what would have happened had Silas been going the speed limit of 40MPH on that road? He actually is saying that he doesn't think he will get another Saturn right now. I had one myself a few years back and I hate them, but that is a story for another day. ;) Once Silas uploads the pictures from his phone, I will post them so you can see just how bad his 20MPH hit was.

Silas' new job - he starts tomorrow. We knew he was going to have some training soon after starting. It was supposed to be a week long trip a few hours away, but it has now truned into a 2 week trip with Silas driving every day back and forth. Not a bad trip - an hour to an hour and a half one way, but still...that's a lot of driving. He'll be tired and we won't be doing much as far as finding a replacement car anytime soon!

Therapy - due to all of the craziness this week, my lack of a vehicle, and several other factors, we cancelled therapy and group socialization classes. We'll resume next week. I have to admit, I have kind of enjoyed the two week break. But it is time to get back into our routine.

School - We finished our thankful tree. I have pictures that I need to post. I enjoyed it and I think the kids did as well. :) I also decided to take part of our living room wall and turn it into a timeline. I have so much trouble with figuring out when things happened in relation to other things, so it will be a good visual for me if nothing else. I'll post pictures of it as well once I get the latest batch of photos uploaded. We also began our Christmas unit. We are studying "Christmas Around the World". Today we started our Christmas countdown (24 days 'til Christmas!) and we talked about the traditions in America. We talked about what we as a family do, why we celebrate Christmas, the reason we hang stockings, and then talked about Alaska and some of their traditions. Afterwards the kids made wreaths out of their handprints. Joshua and Cassidy had little patience for the activity, so we didn't get to make as many hands for theirs. All Josh wanted to do was fan everyone with them, and Cassie wanted to glue everything to her handprints. And then of course, Elena wanted to eat the glue. Never a dull moment!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photos:

Our Completed Thankful Tree:


Our Wall Timeline: (no events added to it yet!)


Our Christmas Countdown:


Oh, and I forgot to take pics of the hand wreaths. Need to do that later. :)

Now I remember

....why I took such a long break from our webpage. One little quote mark was missing out of my code on Elena's page and it totally screwed up the entire thing. I sat there for 20 minutes trying to figure out why all of a sudden the thing was going wacky on me. I finally had to get Silas to look at it and after another 10 minutes or so, he finally spotted my missing quotes. Lovely. Lesson learned. Elena's page is somewhat updated now. I didn't bother with the thumbnails that link to the larger pictures as I have done on the older kids pages previously. It's a pain in the tush to do and I am running out of space on the free site. So I think may change the others as well now.

Our family webpage

Wow! I had not realized that it had been so long since I updated our family webpage. Silas happened to go looking at it the other night and when I glanced over and saw that the pictures on the front page were from last October, I was actually upset with myself for letting it slip like it has. What a slacker I have been! So, I have started getting it updated today. The front page now has some new and updated pictures (from the last month or two tops). I will get the names repaired soon, but for now it will do (they look icky right now!). :) I also need a link to this blog added.

Next on my list is Elena's page. Poor baby, the last pictures of her posted there were from when she was only about 2 months old. How awful am I? So, her page is first on my "to update" list.

After that will be Cassidy, Joshua, and Jacob's pages. And if I find any photos of Jacob's art, that page could use a major update as well.

Anyway, for anyone who is interested, slowly but surely the page will have some new photos up in the coming weeks, and hopefully I will have it more or less done by the time 2006 arrives so that all I have to do is add photos occasionally.

Thanksgiving weekend

Well, our Thanksgiving holiday started with a "bang". Silas was on his way to Walmart to grab a few things we needed on his way home Wednesday. Long story short, somehow he didn't see the car in front of him stopped due to some glare hitting the brake lights just right and he slammed into the vehicle...this was all directly in front of a Highway Patrol station.

The car was towed and other than knowing it is now about a mile down the road waiting for someone to inspect and estimate the damage, we know nothing. I personally think they may total the car, but I guess time will tell. It is going to really stink having only one vehicle for a while, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving day, was nice. I'm pretty tired. All went well and we even played Scene It - Disney version. That was a lot of fun. 14 people in my little house - it still amazes me. LOL

And finally today, Black Friday. It has become a tradition the past few years that my mother, MIL, and I all head out to the Black Friday sales. We always start with JoAnn's. LOL Unbelievably, I found nothing that really jumped out at me. No material was sitting there saying "buy me" even with the fact that by combining coupons and sales we could have gottne Christmas fabrics at 90% off. How nutty am I? I did manage to spend a whopping $3.44 total there though. I bought some items for a Christmas card I am making and then bought 5 pieces of Disney Princess scrapbook paper. Cassidy is extremely into the princess stage right now, so I plan on cutting the princesses out of the paper and making them into paper dolls for her.

We went to tons of stores, but the $3.44 is all I spent. I was proud of myself. Of course, I didn't really think I would spend even that much considering that I didn't see any really outstanding deals this year.

While I was gone the boys got up earlier than Silas. Joshua was playing with a table cloth and Jacob got mad about it so he stepped on it. Joshua in turn pulled and Jacob decided to be cute and let go. When he did, Joshua fell into our table and he now has a black eye. Poor baby.

And just think - we're only halfway through the weekend!

Falling into place

Slowly all of the pieces are starting to come together in regards to Silas' new job. He will start on December 2nd. The info we were given stating the premium for the health insurance was incorrect, so it is looking like we have a good chance of having all of us covered after all. Whew! And we also will be able to keep Medicaid for Joshua, thank goodness!

Other than that we are preparing for Thanksgiving. We rearranged the living room in a way that makes it appear to have more room than it actually has. That's always nice! We are expecting 15 people including ourselves, so we have to figure some way of squeezing everyone in. Our next house will have more room for doing the family entertaining, that's for sure. I certainly have learned what we need to look for once we are finally able to be in a position to move in the future.

I am once again trying to get all of this homeschooling stuff organized. I can not believe how much we have accumulated lately. We have a two drawer file cabinet for the paperwork (past, present, and future) and it is quite a bit fuller than I anticipated. I guess that is a good thing, right?

Ok, enough rambling from me. I need to get back to organizing and cleaning.

Mommy knows best

This is the lesson that we learned yesterday. :)

I mentioned how much trouble we have been having with the OT and speech therpaies lately. It's really been bad and I leave feeling as if we just need to stop wasting the time, money, and energy by continuing.

OT was about typical yesterday. I'm not real sure what Mindy was thinking yesterday during the second half when she took Josh into a small room for less distractions, and yet there was a disco ball turning in the corner. Umm, yeah, less distraction for sure. LOL But we made it through and Josh demonstrated his tracing skills for her with much hesitation. At the end we talked for a while. She thinks he is doing pretty well, but is stubborn and said that she knows it must get frustrating sometimes dealing with him. Yep, some days more than others, and some days he does great. But from what I can tell all kids are like that, right?

Speech went much better. I reminded Jessica that we were going to try the weighted vest and she brought him to get it. From there Josh led us to the ST room and she finally managed to get his attention to show him the picture schedule that she had made for him. It had 6 pictures - chair, book, questions, snack, play, and sticker - all attached nicely to a file folder. Other than one little part where she wanted him to use a marker to circle the answers and he refused very angrily, it went great! And the only reason that was so horrible is because he just spent the last half of OT doing the markers and you can't do that much of the same activity that close together. She seemed happy that it actually did work and she is planning to use it with him from now on in hopes that it will continue to help.

Of course, socialization class went horrible to make up for the good therapy. LOL I talked to the psych afterwards, and she told me if I ever want her to walk over and talk to the therapists she would be happy to do so. I love how much she cares and is always going the extra mile for Josh. :) She totally backed me on his needing the schedule. Joshua needs to know what to expect, and it isn't exactly easy for me to prepare him when I haven't a clue what to expect myself each week!

So, we have next week off from everything. It feels like Christmas vacation is coming since we have a three day school week. Geez, I can't believe how fast this school year is flying!

Jacob is doing so well with his reading and I am so proud of him. We are a little behind in math but have been concentrating on it a lot the past two weeks to try and catch up. Our thankful tree is going well. We also have a poem we read each day about Thanksgiving where they can change some of the words each day, and all of the kids think that is fun.

Cassidy is on and off potty training. I'm not pushing her, but on days that she wants to skip diapers I try and encourage her as much as possible.

Elena is running lately...and talking up a storm. We have no idea what she is saying the majority of the time now, but there are some definite things that we have deciphered. Here are some of the things she is saying now:

Jacob - "Jay-jaw"
Joshua - "jaw-jaw" - soooo close to Jacob..you have to really look at who she is talking to at the time
Peek-a-boo - "pee-boo"
Bye-Bye
Cookie - something similar LOL
Daddy - she has never said dada - she has always said daddy...so odd!
Mama
cup
Hey there!
Thank you

...along with a host of other things that I'm not thinking of right now. She tries saying the blessing with the other kids at mealtime, which is too sweet! She also gives us five or ten when she does something good. Oh! And can this child dance! The slightest hint of music and those hips of hers start going from side to side. She cracks me up! Sometimes they go so far from side to side that she knocks herself over. It always makes me smile. :)

New job for Silas

Silas had an interview yesterday and was offered the job on the spot. Great news for him, as he will be getting a great opportunity and advance quite a bit in his field. This will give him lots of experience to hopefully one day move on to bigger things. In the meantime things will be tighter around here than they already are, which is not something we were counting on with a higher paying job. The insurance plan they offer is an HMO and the current employees are extremely happy with compared to what they had last year. However, it stinks for those of us with a special needs child. Because it is an HMO, we will lose Medicaid for Joshua, so we are back to square one as far as getting his therapies covered unless I can reasearch all of the options again with new coverage and find some sort of program that can help with those costs. This insurance will cover only 60 visits combined of speech and OT...we will meet that by July. I could go on and on about the pros and cons to this offer, but I will spare you. :)

Regardless, Silas is taking the job. We are trusting that God is leading us and that we are making the right decision. He hasn't let us down so far, and we are trusting that He won't start now.

One of those weeks - Yeeeeehaw

The week started with my mother calling on Sunday night to tell me that the family dog, Flower, had passed on. She loved the kids and would watch them as they played. If one of them fell, she would always get up and check to be sure they were ok. She was just a beautiful and loving dog, and she is sorely missed already.

Wednesday was therapy overload day. We started with OT. Joshua told me in the waiting area that he was wanting to do the spinning circle. I mentioned it to Mindy and that I was unsure what he was talking about. After a few minutes she was able to get his attention long enough to ask him if he felt he needed to spin and in true Joshua fashion he answered yes. Now, Joshua is not a spinner by nature. It just isn't one of the things he craves or even cares for really. But, I kept my mouth shut because she is the professional.

So, we head over to a different area of the large therapy area, and she has him lay on the scooter board. She wanted him to hold a plastic stretchy rope while she pulled him around the room in circles. Joshua had no interest in it. He was already higly distracted (hence why he said yes to her questioning his need for spinning), and this seemed to make it even worse.

So, after trying to do this for a good 5 minutes, Mindy finally gets out a giant therapy ball and has him lay on his tummy on top of it. She has him do this directly in front of a mirror. While he is lying on the ball he was to take a marker, take off the lid, then draw a picture on the mirror. If it were Jacob or Cassie, they would have been extremely happy to write on something new. Joshua hesitantly scribbled a bit, but he refused to cooperate with her. After scribbling about 3 things, he looked at her and said he was done. She made him get back on the ball and sit up on top of it and mentioned . I asked if this was one of those days where he would benefit from using a weighted vest and she nodded yes, but did not get it.

Anyway, his feet were nowhere near the floor when he was sitting on top of the giant ball, so she was able to roll it back and forth to test his ability to stay balanced. After several minutes of this she had him bounce up and down, and then he was allowed to choose a toy to play with. Mindy mentioned his body awareness has improved a lot and she was happy to see progress in this area.

Next was speech. Joshua does not cooperate for Jessica 3 out of 5 sessions. I don't know why this is. However, I have noticed that the past two weeks, she let him choose a large truck and he was willing to cooperate and do his "work" because of it. This week she skipped the extra step and went straight to the room, and he was far from willing to do anything. Eventually she asked me if I have thought about giving him fish oil supplements in order to help increase his concentration levels. She is supposed to give me more info next week on this. I asked her about the weighted vest and she said she thought it would probably work well for him but she would need to use it at the beginning of the session and not try it halfway through. {sigh} I also mentioned that he is in socialization classes and that the psych has him for 45 minutes plus and never has a problem with him because he knows what to expect when he goes to her. I mentioned that she uses the color coding chart and it seems to work well at home, so maybe that is all he'd need there too. She said we could try it.

Sometimes I really think I am either talking to myself or they think I am in denial or something about Joshua. I'm not. I know what seems to be working for him though, and they aren't using it. The psych uses cars and trucks to help teach Joshua what she wants to teach...I do the same at home...AND IT WORKS!!! It stinks that the "pros", people who went through training and supposedly deal with many children "just like Josh", don't seem to get what Josh needs. And it is frustrating and disappointing to deal with every week.

Socialization class the same day went extremely well. Mrs. G. had nothing but good things to say, so I was happy. :) And guess what? She had them for 45 minutes. Interesting that the same child on the same day could do "great", isn't it? grrr

Needless to say, since we don't have socialization class the week of Thanksgiving, I decided to cancel his other therapy appointments that week as well. I need a break and I think he does too.

Today, Friday, is Veteran's Day. Silas was off and so I decided to use the opportunity to take a little field trip. I was originally going to drive out to the beach and have the kids pick up shells for a project this week, but it was chilly compared to earlier this week, so I tried coming up with something new. Lucky for me, about a month ago our local news mentioned a website that has local events for kids listed. I bookmarked it and have often refered to it. So, in hopes of finding something to do, I headed to the site and found out there was a free barrel racing event in town all weekend. So that is where we went.

We missed the horse that held the day's fastest time. I was a little disappointed, but it was ok. There were tractors that were used between each set of horses and Joshua was extremely thrilled. He could have cared less about the horses. We just so happened to sit right by the parking area for them as well. :)

In the middle of everything, they called over the loud speaker that any child under the age of 10 that wanted to be a part of the corn run could enter the arena. Josh and Jacob both got very excited. Turns out Josh thought he was going to get a ride on the tractor. LOL Jacob had no clue what to expect. We handed them over the rail to one of the cowboys, and I left to find where to pick them up when they were done. I missed the entire thing, but Silas saw it. They were to run from one end of the arena, pick up a toy, and then run back. Jacob started out running and I guess he didn't hear the instructions so he stopped in the middle of the arena, and eventually figured out what was going on and finished the task. joshua never made it into the arena from the sounds of it, but they were nice and gave him a prize too. LOL He was just happy to walk out there and kick up dirt.

We watched until the end of the morning session was over. The boys said they wanted to go back to the evening set, so I took them and Cassie while Silas stayed home with the baby. One of the guys running the tractors remembered us from the morning and was talking to us when he'd park near us. He got a kick out of talking to Josh and had several conversations with him. Joshua even asked him what his name is. He replied, "My name is Vince. What's your name?". Joshua never gave his name, but he continued his conversation about how cool his tractor is. Silly boy.

Jacob enjoyed the horses. Vince and I were talking about the horses to him and we finally got to see someone beat the morning's fastest time, so that was really cool. Cassie was in awe of the horses and never took her eyes off of them while they were making their runs. The kids want to go back tomorrow...guess we will see what happens. :)

First day with the Thankful tree and Halloween recap

Well, today was our first day with our thankful tree. I sat down and thoroughly described what it means to be thankful for something. Afterwards, the kids each chose a leaf. Jacob wrote that he was thankful for his rabbit. Cassidy told me she was thankful for mommy and daddy. (awwww) And dear little Joshua, always silly, thought for a minute and said he was thankful for chocolate. LOL All three are very excited about this little project. We also have a Thanksgiving day countdown poem that they will be reciting each day. Each day they will get to change the countdown, and then they will choose a new food to stick in the poem.

Halloween went well. We went over to my mom and dad's house for "trick-or-treat" and so dad could take some photos. We then headed over to Mrs. Howard's house for her to also see the kids. After that, we drove over to my grandfather's apartment so that he and my mom could see them in costume as well. Gramps had eye surgery last week so he can't be around crowds yet. With the time change this weekend it was enough for the kids, especially the girls, so we headed home.

My sewing for Cassie's costume didn't work out, so we had to improvise. So, she was a Hawaiian hula girl - of course, she had to still be called a princess, so we told her she was a Hawaiian princess. Eventually she decided she was a Hawaiian Cinderella princess. LOL

Here are some pictures of the kids in costume:

Almost November

I decided to take part of today and do a little prep for November. I made a thankful tree, which you will see below - try not to laugh too hard at my lack of artistic skills. Trees have never been an easy task for me to draw for some reason. Anyway, each day in November, the kids will choose a leaf in a fall color and label it with something they are thankful for. By the end of the month the tree will no longer be bare and hopefully the kids will have a little more insight to just how much they really do have just in time for December and the commercialism of Christmas. I will be sure to post pictures of the tree again at the end of the month.

I also have a unit study on Thanksgiving that I picked up at Chamblain's Bookmine. I love that place! Their website does not even begin to touch what they have in their store, which now includes two buildings. There is always a treasure to be found there. It's really a homeschooler's second best find (after the library of course!).

So, without any further rambling from me, here is our thankful tree:

Homeschooling - an educational experience for the kids AND me

All that know me know that I have mentioned before how I received little to no history education in my years in the public school system. The only history class where I learned about history was my Western Civ class during college. I have never been so lost in my entire life! Everyone else in the class had some form of history in their past. Not only did I have to try and learn all of the new info, I many times had to try and find some sort of knowledge everyone else was taught in high school to catch me up to what we were learning in high school. How I walked away with a C in that class, I have no idea. I think that my professor had mercy on me and wanted to just get me out of the class and not repeat it. LOL

Well, here I am homeschooling my children, and where elementary math and reading are a breeze to teach Jacob, history is a challenge since I don't have the background I should have. However, I am learning so much by teaching him recently that I am enjoying it as much as he is! It seriously is becoming one of my favorite subjects to teach each day. We are currently studying the discovery of America and I have learned quite a bit this week. I feel so smart! LOL

I think we are going to do a unit study next week on Indian tribes. Jacob is interested and I have developed an interest as well. Should be fun! So, off to prepare. LOL I love it when I come up with something that was not in my original plans for the year. :)

We also did our first pumpkin carving. Jacob helped me choose a face to use and then I had all of the kids help scoop out the insides. Cassie was the only one that truly seemed to enjoy it. Jacob didn't like the icky feeling (I think I need to start doing the sensory activities with him again) and Joshua wanted absolutely nothing to do with scooping it. Elena enjoyed pretending to help. Mainly she held the spoon and looked cute. :) Here are some pics of the kids with our creation.

Great therapy and Halloween prep

Today's therapy was a total success! We decided to again try putting the OT before the ST, though for most kids it seems to work better the other way around. joshua is an exception though, just as I thought a month ago when I suggested it may be the case. There was a really positive buzz around the OT area...just a feeling of happiness and excitement, though I have no idea why really. Mindy set up an obstacle course...Josh had to go up the steps, down the slide like a snake, get on the scooter board and sccot over to the tunnel, go through the tunnel, over the bridge that was three very thin boards, then while on those boards and without falling, bend down to get a puzzle piece off the floor (this was the most challenging), jump across 3 steps, up the ramp, back up the steps and put the puzzle piece in place. Whew! Then he's start all over again. It was bustling with activity today and he had some trouble concentrating which at times caused him to totally get off his path, but Mindy was patient and got him right back on track in no time.

After OT, we went to speech. Jessica let Josh pick a truck out from the storage room. He wanted a "scooper truck" and after finding one we were off to the room. Jessica had several activities planned for today. For the past few weeks, Joshua has been quite aggitated when we get in the room, but today was great. He sat on his chair with no trouble and did all of the work he was told to do. They began with a book about pumpkins and the goal was to be able to identify emotions - one of his big challenges that we have been working on outside of therapy sessions. He did fantastic! We then moved onto a 3 piece puzzle game where he would choose an outfit for the bear and tell Jessica what the bear was dressed as. Next came a card game that went over opposites. This is something they have worked on in therapy, but we have been working on at home as well. He did wonderful, getting all but one correct. I was impressed, and I think Jessica was as well. She mentioned again that she wants to re-evaluate him because he is not nearly as bad as the first therapist seemed to have decided he is, and then we can get a better idea of what to work on. She plans on doing this on about 2 weeks. I am so relieved that we will finally have a true estimation of where he is and what he really needs help on. I really love our speech therapist!

In other news, we have been preparing for Halloween. We never have really done much on Halloween, other than dressing the kids up and going to my grandparents house to let them see the kids in their costumes and then go to some of their neighbor's houses so the kids get some sort of trick-or-treat experience. Well, this year that is obviously out, so I haven't decided what we will be doing. There are plenty of activities around town, so we're bound to find something. Anyway, Elena will be Sleeping Beauty, and Cassidy is wanting to be a princess. I am going to be working on her costume the remainder of the week. Jacob can't seem to make up his mind. He wants to be a Transformer, but I am not feeling all that creative right now, so we'll see what we come up with. And my dear little Joshua informed me yesterday that he wants to be Pocahontas. LOL I'm not sure what we are going to do about that one...maybe he'll choose something else by the weekend. LOL

Sharing more pictures

Ok, I received an email from Sarah letting me know I need to share some more pics. Geez, I can't please you people! LOL Since it has been requested, and I love sharing pics of the kiddos, I thought I'd go ahead and make a second post today. :D Enjoy!

The kids and Silas with my parents:


JACOB:




JOSHUA:


Also see the post below for another. ;)

CASSIDY:




ELENA:

What's the latest?

Ok, so I was informed last nnight that I have been a slacker. LOL Not really, but it was hinted at by April that I needed to update this thing. LOL So, here is what we have been up to.

Joshua turned 5 years old on the 13th. I did slack off there and have not yet posted his birthday pic like I did with the other kids. Here it is though!



The kids attended their first Circus a couple of weekends ago. My mom got free tickets to see the Shriner's Circus, so all of us, my parents, Willie, Glenn and his grilfriend, Mel, and my grandfather all went and had a great time. The kids loved it. Joshua was very distracted by all of the flashing lights. I tried very hard to get him to notice something other than the lights...he couldn't focus on the trapeeze artists because they were too far away from us compared to the lights, but I tried anyhow. Most of the acts were that way. He did like the horses and they caught his attention because they came out to the rings directly in front of us. We had to sit off to the side a good bit, basically the end of the aufitorium, but where we were turned out to be a pretty cool spot for Joshua. We were the closest people to the act where a motorcycle was attached to a highwire. A man drove it up to where we were sitting, and below the cycle was a long swing hanging down and a young woman was sitting on it. Eventually she stood up and he did as well, and they turned the bike completely upside down. Ugh, my stomach churned watching it, but Joshua was so excited. LOL And in true Joshua form, he later informed me that it was his favorite part of the show. :)

School is going well. Jacob is way too smart sometimes. We have been finishing school pretty early these days. Right now we are going through common fairy tales. It's amazing how many of the details of some of these I totally forgot through the years. For instance, the story of Rapunzel. I honestly did not remember the witch trapping the prince into climbing the braid and then knocking him into thorns and causing him to go blind. Maybe I had the non-violent, rated G version growing up. :P Who knows? I know it has been quite interesting though.

We also have just started talking about the discovery of North and South America. I was trying really hard to hold out until Novemeber to do this, but Jacob has really been enjoying the history and geography lessons. So, we started that today. He was a bit upset about hearing how the Spaniards took over the land that the Indians had been on for so long.

I've been taking a break from science the past 2 weeks. We had such a focus on it so far, that I wanted to sort of sit it out a bit. Shame on me. But he hasn't seemed to mind it too much.

We had a field trip to an art museum since I last posted. Jacob and I will be going back again alone to really be able to focus. Joshua didn't want to be there, Jacob was grouchy and fighting with everyone including me, and the girls did ok. They have a very nice hands-on area for the kids and they really enjoyed it...It made it a bit difficult to do the other "no-touch" parts of the museum afterwards though! LOL Unfortunately, I had never been to the museum before, so I happened upon the wrong area first. I know for any future excursions now though!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Silas, the kids, and I all drove out to Downtown Disney to meet up with a couple of my August board buddies. Hard to believe, but we have been posting on a mom's board since we found out we were pregnant with our August 2004 babies. So that means it has been a year and 9 months! Wow! Anyhow, one of the moms lives all the way in England, and her family was visiting Disney World and staying in FL for 2 weeks. So, another mom from GA had her family come down to meet up on the same day and we had a really nice time! The kids did great and it was so much fun getting to actually meet some people I have been talking to for ages. And all of the kids were wonderful and they seemed to enjoy the meetup as much as we did! The mom from GA and I live so close that we are planning to get together again soon. :) Her oldest is 3 years old, and Jacob said he really enjoyed getting to ride on the train ride with her. LOL Here is a group photo from our adventure...(the men were all behind the cameras.)

Newest addition to the family

Yes, our family has expanded and we now have a rabbit living in our home. His name is Thumper, and I have to say he is one of the sweetest rabbits I have been around. He is a black and white Mini Rex with blue eyes. I was a bit nervous about this because we had two rabbits before having kids. One was sweet and the other was mean as could be. Thumper, however, was raised by a homeschooling family that includes 4 year old triplet boys and he is litter trained and leash trained. He is going to be not only the family pet, but also Jacob's 4H project.

He did not appear to have any issues with the change in environment. When Jacob and I first brought him home, we cleaned his cage while he nosed around outside in a puppy pen. Jacob learned how to clean the cage properly, helped fill it with bedding and refill the food dish and add hay. We then decided to put the cage down in the pen and see if he'd climb in. At first he wouldn't, but I then told him to go to his cage and amazingly he did it. LOL We then carried him into the house where the kids proceeded to stare at him as if he were the star attraction of the zoo. Even Elena was amazed by him.

After a few hours of him hearing us bustling about the house, we decided to let him out of the cage to explore a bit. He had a blast hiding behind the couches and then bounding between the two of them. And the kids had a blast watching him do it. Every so often, Thumper would decide to come over to someone who was being quiet and check them out. He hopped toward Elena soon after getting out of his cage and she freaked out. She couldn't figure out what this "toy" was coming after her for. She jumped back and cried. After about a half an hour though, she was fine. :)

By the end of the night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Thumper allowed me to pet him. Then yesterday he allowed everyone, including Elena, pet him. Elena tends to not notice him until he is sniffing her leg, and it upsets her a bit that he takes her by surprise, but she usually just reaches out to touch him once she notices and he bounces off. Such little teases. ;)

Here are some pics: