My language girl!

While Courtney makes me laugh and loves her penguins and bugs, Megan also has certain things she loves. One of them is languages.  She is always asking me words in German and is always eager to learn new things about other languages and people. She is also very interested in sign language.

This came into play last night.  We have been reading a book about the Native Americans for school. In the back of the book, there was a page on sign language that the Native Americans would use to communicate with each other.  We were done reading the book for the day and I saw Megan come into the kitchen and grab it off the counter. Next thing I know, she comes back into the kitchen and starts signing to me! I have no idea what any of this means, but she was pretty proud of herself!

Conversation with Courtney!

The girls were getting dressed today and the following conversation happened.

C:  Mom, I don't have any underwear.
Me: Why not? All the laundry is caught up. Are you sure?  Did you look in your drawer?
C: Yes, I only have dirty underwear.
Me: What do you mean, only dirty underwear?
C: I only have dirty underwear in my drawer.
Me: Courtney!
C: Do you want me to put them in the laundry basket?
Me: Yes, that is why you don't have any clean underwear!!!

School, school, school!

I have had many thoughts about how to get school started. We have been doing English and Math for a couple of weeks to get it going a little bit and to get in the habit of homework, but we were gone for a week and I have been struggling of how to get started again and how to gradually add everything.

My first thought was to continue with math and English this week and add everything but our Sonlight materials (history, reading, and science.) This would include our school intro (pledge of allegiance, calendar work) and bible class.  But then I thought that I should really add our Sonlight stuff first and then the other stuff.

So then I completely changed my mind!  I had Matt help me make a checklist of everything we have to cover in a day and I just dove in! I started on Monday and did a little bit and then yesterday we did a little bit more. By noon today, we had everything done from day 1, this included our school intro, bible class, and all our Sonlight material.  In the end, I just made one days worth of work into two days (or three in this case). 

I will probably do this for this week and next week.  We are having a visitor tomorrow afternoon and we are going camping on Friday, this only leaves the mornings for school.  I will either have to spread the first week out over two weeks or do a crash course next week and get done with week two along with finishing week one.

I am definitely figuring this out, it is very different teaching two children this year instead of one, but after looking and figuring curriculum out all summer, I am very anxious to get going!

Firsts!

I had a couple firsts at the grocery store today.

1.  First time the cashier said,"Well, it looks like you bought out the produce section today." What can I say, it's all we can eat!  I later told him that we were dairy-free, egg-free, peanut-free, gluten-free, citrus-free and 99% of my groceries fit in those categories. He was amazed and then looked over my groceries to see if he could spot something. Ok, so I had a gallon of cow's milk for Matt, but that was about it!

2.  First time I spent over a certain amount of money, which I will not divulge, but let's just say I wanted to stock up so I don't have to go back for awhile!

3.  First time that I stood there with two carts of groceries and children and the people behind me did NOT leave to go find another checkout.  I wanted to tell them, "Seriously, go find another one, I will be here for awhile!" But I didn't. I'll let them learn. :)

Out of Gas!

Tonight Courtney, Christian, and I went for a walk to hunt for bugs.  We had just put Courtney's new dead bugs in her shadow box from last week and she wanted more.

So Courtney got a couple of plastic cups, Christian grabbed his lawn mower to push, and we took off around the block. On the way we found a cricket and a rolly-polly, not much, but something.

When we were almost home, Christian stops and says, "more gas."  I asked him to say it again, he looked at his lawn mower and said, "more gas" as he pointed to his gas cap.  He is trying to tell me that his PLASTIC lawn mower has ran out of gas! So Courtney, the compassionate one, picks up some grass and stuffs it into the little gas cap (I guess this is how you fill it up with gas?). "There Christian, now you have more gas, come on now," and he moved right along!

Back from Vacation

I took a week-long break from blogging because I took a week long vacation from home life.

We went camping for a week and had a great time.

I think the best part was catching bugs for Courtney. :) And we brought them all home with us!

I have a couple of blogs in mind about vacation.  One especially titled "Do my children really need to be "in a school building" to be learning??" I had someone give me grief that my children were not "in school" all week, but I tend to differ!

Another blog would be "Things I appreciate about my house." I know, not very enlightening, but when you live out of a camper for a week, there are certain things you would appreciate too!

But as for now, it is off to get my children up and start life up again, which will include school today!

So Confused!!!

So I went to another orthodontist yesterday and got yet ANOTHER opinion on my teeth and jaw, this is just crazy!!

1. Doctor #1, my general dentist, thinks Invsalign will solve all my problems.

2. Doctor #2. an advanced tmj doctor, recommended physical therapy, medical injections, splints, prescriptions, grinding down my teeth,  etc. He said this would fix ALL my health problems. Sorry, I don't buy it.

3. Doctor #3, first orthodontist, she recommended breaking my bottom jaw (surgery) to pull my jaw forward to match up with my top jaw. I would wear braces for nine months before surgery, during surgery so they could use the wires to wire my jaw together to heal, and then about 6 months after surgery to finish straightening all my teeth.

4. Doctor #4, second orthodontist, he recommended breaking my top jaw (surgery) to tilt it a little bit to meet my bottom jaw!! He also recommended to split the front between my teeth so I could expand my palate.  This would also include the same braces regiment as doctor #3.

Honestly doctor #1 has the cheapest solution, but it doesn't sound like the best solution after talking to orthodontist #1 and #2.  Maybe I should see an oral surgeon and see what he says...

Flip-Flops

We have had a hard time keeping track of flip-flops this summer.

1.  Back in June, Courtney (with a friend) buried her flip flops at a park and we never did find it!

2.  We went jet-skiing one night in Fremont and couldn't find Courtney's flip-flops on the beach and she went home without shoes.

3.  Yesterday, we went swimming and Megan could only find one flip-flop at the end of our time at the pool.

I am thankful that we are at the end of summer!

Teaching Certificate

I got the renewal of my state teaching certificate over email today.

It is good until 2017! Yay!!!

Should I do laundry??

You should do laundry when:

1.  Your daughter has asked you for about four days in a row where there are some clean underwear. Everyday you respond, "In the dryer."

2.  There are three baskets of folded clothes on the floor, waiting to be put away. These have been on my bedroom floor since last Saturday.

3.  The girls are starting to say, "But I have nothing to wear!" and they are probably right.

4.  There is a huge pile of dirty clothes in my bathroom, probably the biggest I have ever seen.

5.  We decided to go swimming yesterday and we couldn't find the swimming suits.  They were still in the dirty clothes basket from last Friday when we went swimming at the Fremont lakes.  Oh well, they are going to get dirty again, right??

6.  The last three times that the children have taken showers, I have had to go get towels out of my bathroom because all of their towels are in the laundry.

Maybe a priority today should be laundry!

First Day of School?

If my children were going to public school, they would have started today. Megan would start 3rd grade and Courtney would be off to kindergarten.

The first day celebrations are something that I miss because we have chosen to home educate our children.

Going back to school is always so exciting.  The kids are seeing each other again after a long summer, meeting new kids, meeting your teachers, getting into new routines, new classrooms, new school supplies, forms to fill out, school physicals, new shoes and clothes, etc.

At the first day at Aldrich, they always have a band playing and everybody meets on the blacktop to walk in class by class. The band always played, "As the saints go marching in" and it was always a very happy occasion. Every parent was busy taking pictures and wishing their kids a good first day of school.  The dads would be videotaping while the moms stood by and cried. (that was us :)

Would I trade our homeschool experience for these "fun" days?? No way!!!  As much as I miss the first day festivities, I wouldn't trade having my children home for the world! (Even though it is hard at times) Matt and I believe home is the best place for our children.  We can teach them the things that we want them to learn and we can raise them with our morals and values.  I am in control of their education.  I can design the curriculum to fit their needs and can pursue their interests.  I love the flexibility with home education and I love it that they have time to be a kid and not just get one twenty minute recess a day and only twenty minutes to eat their lunch out of an eight hour schoolday. I love the bonds that my children are building and I love it that I get to know each of my kids deeper and deeper each day. I am glad I am the one that gets to deal with 8 year old attitude and 6 year old silliness.  I love learning with my children and seeing them get excited about what they are learning. (like Courtney's "easy peasy Math" right now and Megan's little game about learning the different kids of sentences.)

So with this being said, sleep, homeschoolers, sleep!!!

BTW- Life would be so different if two of my kids were at school. It would only be me and Christian here during the day! Wow! I've never thought of that before.

Update on Animal Friends from Bug Camp

1. Grasshopper- still alive in his little plastic pop bottle. Courtney and I feed him grass everyday and he seems to be doing well.  We have noticed that this little insect poops a lot, so we may need to let him go "back to nature" pretty soon.

2. Two Goldfish- died.  We went to the petstore to get some new ones, but learned that we need to let the water in our tank circulate for about a week before we add fish.  Ok, we can do that.

3.  Worm- Well, he died too.  He was doing well in his styrofoam cup and then Megan gave him some water.  A little bit too much and I think she drowned him.  Matt saw the mishap about half an hour after she did it, but I think it was too late.  A couple hours later, we put him outside on the grass and he moved, so we thought he was still alive.  Today, he is definitely dead, he didn't move at all and now there are ants all over him. Yummy! I am surprised our birds didn't come find him.

What is our next pet adventure?

Party was a Success!

I got my house cleaned in time.

With some help, I got food prepared.

Sent Matt out on one last mission to pick up items. (cupcakes, ice cream, buns, and chairs)

Courtney's penguin cake turned out super-cute.

Bounce house arrived and my kids got to enjoy it for a few hours before their friends came over.

Christian got a nap before the festivities.

Friends, friends, and more friends arrived!!! Hopefully they all had a great time! I love having a house full of kids, especially when they run around in their little groups.  I think had about six 5-6 year olds! I had about 4-5 eight to nine year olds! And a whole bunch of two year olds!

Adults arrived and everybody was here!

We ate because everybody was starving, even if we forgot about the hot dogs and had to cook them fast.

We had meant to pray before we ate, but by the time I had gotten everybody in from outside, people were already through the line and eating.

Food was devoured. We had one hot dog and a little bit of sloppy joes left.  Chips were gone and so was most of the pop of which we had 6 2-liters.

I specifically asked my mom to make her famous macaroni salad, but couldn't eat any of it due to food intolerances.  :(  I was kind of bummed when I realized that.

For the first time in Ruwe party history, we opened presents outside. Thanks to some other moms, we got them all outside, opened, and brought back in.  Courtney is going to have a blast with all her new craft supplies and books about bugs. She even got a little shadow box from a friend that she can pin in dead bugs,  we were adding bugs to it last night! She got some money, which is a good hit with her too. Ever since bug camp last week, she wants to buy more fish. (Hers died already!)

We managed to get get six candles on the top of her penguin cake.  We had to blow them out quickly though because of the slight wind. Next time, let me get the video started before we start singing. Everybody sang so fast, I think I only got the last half of the song recorded.  Her cake was made out of rice krispies and covered in frosting, which was milk free, but not soy free.  Courtney and one of her friends had fun eating  the two wings I really hope she doesn't get sick later! It was sure fun seeing her with black frosting all over her mouth.  And who would've thought I should have gotten the wet wipes out for everybody before we started eating rice krispy treats! I think we ate about half of the penguin cake, but only had two cupcakes left out of thirty by the end of the night. Oh and I really wish we would have finished the ice cream off. I really wanted it gone because three of us in our house cannot eat it! Somebody we will be able to again...hopefully!

As for the bounce house, it is definitely something I would invest money in again. I bet all the kid slept great last night! We had about twenty kids here and I really liked it that they were all outside. I let the kids in the playroom with instruction, "No glue, no scissors, no fingernail polish, no fingernail polish remover, no body spray." and I think they all listened well. I didn't have any trouble with these items, this time. :)

There are a few people who I wish I would've had more time to talk to. If you were one of these people, I am very sorry! I always enjoy saying good bye to people too, I came outside at one point and realized a bunch of people had left and I didn't get to thank them for coming! I am very grateful for everybody who came and helped celebrate Courtney.  We invited some new people to our party and hopefully they had a good time.  We are very blessed with great family and friends around us!!!

We are so thankful that God gave us Courtney! She really lights up our life, I guess you can say! She is super-excited to be turning six tomorrow.  I am super-blessed that I have the ability to homeschool and I can enjoy her everyday. I feel privileged as her mom that I can help take her unique characteristic traits and encourage her learning in those specific areas.

I love that she is so compassionate for animals! Let's see, she cried over the bunnies that Dell was digging out of their nest and then again when they died, she encouraged ants to live in our house by feeding them, she has spider friends, she has named our flies, she cried over a dog that had to be put down even though she really didn't like him, etc.  She loves to serve and loves to make others happy.  She is a huge messmaker and is proud of it.  She says the craziest things sometimes and she cannot keep a secret to save her life! You never know what this child may say! If you come to my house and are ready to leave, Courtney is the one that will take your shoes and run off with them or actually crawl into your car and act like she is going home with you!  She is my only child with curly hair and brown eyes!

August 14, 2006 was a great day.  Born at 4:19 pm weighing 8 lbs. 3 oz and being 20 inches long,  Courtney Grace Ruwe became part of our family. She was the scariest delivery of my children with the cord wrapped around her neck four times, we were very thankful that our midwives was experienced and knew what to do with her.  She has been a blessing every since!!

Birthday Weekend!!

We are now three days before Courtney's birthday and she can hardly wait!

We are having her party tomorrow which includes a bounce house, so the girls are super-excited!

Today is cleaning day.  We have bribed the children with movie and pop tonight, so hopefully they will cooperate and help out.

Tomorrow is party day and Monday is recovery and clean up from the party day. We also have Courtney's kindergarten physical on Monday and this does include shots! Yikes!

Tuesday is Courtney's birthday!!  We're going to Valentino's to celebrate!

Wednesday they should technically be starting school at Aldrich Elementary, but they aren't. :)  I think we are going to go swimming at Zorinsky Water park with some of our homeschooling freinds instead! Hmmm...school or swimming? You decide!! (And yes, we will do school here at home that day!)

I better get started on party preparations!

Jumping!!

Matt had gotten the tube out yesterday to make sure there wasn't any holds in it and put it in the living room overnight.

Guess who found it today?? the children!  So being the good mom that I am, I let them jump on it and jump and jump and jump some more! Actually I let them jump until somebody got hurt.  Megan thought Christian was in her way, so she pushed him over and he hit the bottom part of the couch. He got a big knot on his head and was even bleeding a little bit.  I sent Megan to time out right away and took care of Christian.

He was fine and when I was talking to Megan about what she did, Christian kept saying, "sorry sissy."  I told him that Megan should be apologizing to him!

When it was all done, I took the tube away and said no more jumping. Of course, Courtney says, "Well, we will go jump on our beds then!"

Now Gold Fish!

Today was the last day of Bug and Nature Camp and guess what she got to bring home today? 2 goldfish!!

Where are we going to put all these new pets??

The earthworm and his hearts

I found an article answering my question about how many hearts an earthworm has and it is very interesting.

This article says that technically they don't have any hearts, but they have an organ that acts similar to a heart, it is called an aortic arch and yes, they have five of these arches.  They are often called hearts for simplicity's sake.

http://www.ehow.com/about_4597386_many-hearts-earthworm-have_.html

Speaking of the worm, I better go check if he is still in his cup and did not get out overnight!

Another pet!

In addition to the grasshopper Courtney brought home on Tuesday from bug camp, today she brought home a real, live worm!!! They actually went outside and dug up these worms during camp this morning.
Tomorrow they are studying fish, anybody think they will send a fish home with the kids tomorrow??

Tonight Courtney was telling her worm not to crawl out of his little styrofoam cup overnight. She said, "Now don't you worry your little heart out, I know you have five of them, but don't even worry from one." Is that true? Do worms really have five hearts??

She told Matt tonight, "I really love bug camp!"

(She has actually been thinking about releasing her grasshopper "back into nature" today. I'm not sure how long it will live in her little pop bottle.)

Need to fix that!

I just had a little conversation with Christian.

Him: I want to ride tractor.

Me: What tractor?

Him: Ride green tractor.

Me: Green tractor? You have the wrong color. Red tractor.

Him: Ride green tractor.

Me: No, you want to ride a red tractor.

Him: Red Tractor.

Me: Yes, red tractor!

Him: Ride green tractor.

Me: Red tractor

Him: Green tractor


Someday he will understand that we are red tractor kind of people!!!

Bug and Nature Camp

While looking for fun things to do this summer, I ran across a bug and nature camp at Saddlebrook Community Center. I knew Courtney would love this, so we signed her up.

Camp is this week and Courtney loves it! On Monday, they studied ants. They went outside and observed them and even fed them. They did some ant crafts and made "on a stick" for snacks.

Tuesday they studied grasshoppers. The teacher took them outside again and actually caught each student a grasshopper and put it in a plastic bottle. Courtney loves feeding her grasshopper! They also made a grasshopper hat with antenna and had a snack.

Today was all about spiders. They went outside and found spider webs, but no spiders. The teacher had caught some earlier, so they had some in class they could look at. They made a couple of crafts and read some books about spiders.

Tomorrow they are going to learn about worms. They are going to have pudding for a snack, so I bet they are going to make "dirt and worms."

I think this has  been a great thing for Courtney! The only trouble is that with all her food sensitivities, I have to send her own snack and she can't eat the fun thing that they are making. :(  I told her to make it anyway and bring it to me. :)

While Courtney is at camp, I get some time with the other two. Today we went to Parable Bookstore and bought Courtney a Bible for her birthday. We then headed over to Dollar Tree and got black and white dishes/ silverware for her party. I thought black and white would go perfect with her penguin theme!

Homework is fun?

I just heard Courtney say, "Mom, homework is fun!"

I'm glad!!

Are you going to have the same attitude in about 2-3 months??

We Have Started School!

Ok, I have heard enough of the girls begging to start school, so we did today!

We started English and Math. I am using Rod and Staff Curriculum for English (Phonics for Courtney) and Horizons Math for both kids.

I think it went well!  Megan got her math homework done right away and she was begging to do two lessons.  I didn't even have to explain the first lesson to her.

Courtney has a little bit of homework too, she will get it done later. I don't mean to give her homework, I said we could do it together, but she said she wanted to do it as homework. We'll see how this works out.  I am amazed at how much she recalls from last spring. She remembered all her letters and even how to make them. Now to get her to take school seriously and not be so funny all the time. 

My plan is to just do math and English for the next three weeks and then start the rest on Labor Day. I may add in another subject next week, we will see.  I want to ease in slowly, especially since there are two of them and Courtney is new to this! (kind of anyway, but this year, I can't let her out of her lessons because "she's not really in school yet." Now she really is in school and she needs to take it seriously!)

Busy Week- Part 2

Thursday was another eventful day.  We decided to go swimming all afternoon with three other homeschooling families. Somebody here in Omah donated a huge sum of money, so it was only $1.75 to get all four of us into the pool.

We met there at noon and we stayed until four! (Yes, we skipped Christian's nap again!)  Megan is pretty much free to go wherever she wants, so her and the three other older girls went off by themselves the whole time.  Courtney and her two friends hung out in three foot and us four moms hung out in the zero-entry part with the boys. We each have boys from 1-3 years old, so it really works out perfect for everyone!!

By the time 4 rolled around, Courtney and her friend (the third one had already left) were running and jumping into the pool and having a great time! I think Megan was pretty much done swimming and so was Christian, so we all got dressed and headed over to McDonalds for ice cream/ icee drinks. 

After this, we all headed home (around 5), but then us and another family decided to meet up for supper.  We met up at Paradise Bakery for kids eat free night and then ended the day by riding the ferris wheel at Scheel's.

What a great day!

Busy Week- Part 1

This last week was very busy, but in a fun kind of busy. :)
We did not have camps or anything, so we did what we wanted.

It started on Wednesday. It was zoo member appreciation day, so we spent 7 1/2 hours at the zoo!
We went with some fellow friends/ homeschoolers and we purposely went at 9:30 to beat the 102 degree heat by 1 pm.  We started out with some free train rides, visited the petting zoo, ate lunch, dug in the archaeological dig, saw "Sharks" on the IMAX (which I had to take Christian out of because he was not getting his way PLUS it was naptime.) After the IMAX, we visited the gift shop and since everything was 30% off, I let the kids get one thing each. 

After this our friends left because it was 3:30 and I fully intended to leave to, but then I remembered that from 2-7 pm, they were going to have certain buildings open, so we could see "behind the scenes."  We walked out of the gift shop and right back in through the main gates of the zoo!  We went down to the aquarium and went "behind the scenes." We got to touch the artifical coral and see the scuba diving equipment. We also got to see the top of the main aquarium in that building, there was even a turtle swimming on the top.

After the aquarium, I had told the girls I would buy them concessions (again 30% off), but then I saw that the veterinarian clinic was open. Knowing my girls like animals, I decided to take them through this building too. We saw where they decided what to feed the animals, saw an experiment freezing grapes and raisins, saw plants from around the world growing in a little nursery, saw the same plants under a microscope, saw the surgery room, guns that they use to tranquilize the animals, and the final room was the most fascinating. This was the room where they take xrays and they were showing xrays of various animals from the zoo. Megan was very interested! We stood there awhile and talked with the vet tech and saw images from an armadillo, turtle, penguin with a quarter in his stomach, snake with eggs, and many more. We had a good time guessing which animal it was, sometimes we were right, sometimes we were not. 

After this we headed to the concessions.  We purchased some strawberry frozen ice and sat down to enjoy them!  When the girls were done, they went and went down a huge bounce house slide they had set up in the main dome plaza.

We wanted to go see one more "behind the scenes" building. This was the giraffes, but on the way to the giraffes, we got stopped by a magic show put on by a clown! This really interested the kids, so we stopped and participated.  By the time the magic show was done, the girls were pretty red and sweaty and it was almost 5 pm.  I looked at them and said, "I know I said we could go see the giraffes, but I think it would be a good idea to head home. You girls look pretty hot and it would be quite a walk to the giraffes yet." After a little convincing, we got in our car and headed home! What a great day at the zoo!!

Courtney and money

Today I took the kids out to do some errands. We had to go to the mall, to Target, and to the library. 

Courtney's mission this morning was to find money on the ground. She is doing much better on her chores this week, but she is convinced that she can find money laying around and then she can claim it as her own and spend it!

She found two whole pennies today.  Better luck next time Courtney!

What in the world?

I am laying peacefully in my bed this morning and I soon start to hear what sounds like a chain saw coming from the neighbor's yard outside my bedroom window.  It's 7:30, so it's not too early, but I am still sleeping!

I put up with it for awhile and then I look out my window. There are people over there trimming trees!

This house has been empty for the last 7 months and we have enjoyed peace. (They had 2-3 dogs over there before). Now somebody has bought it and there are all kinds of people over there fixing it up.  I don't quite know who the owners are yet though!

Anyway, thanks to the tree trimming guys, I am up for the day. Ugh!