It keeps going...

About 5:30, I couldn't find Courtney. She had disappeared before this, but didn't think anything of it until I went to get the mail and there was a letter for her. I went up to her room and I thought she was just playing up there by herself. but no, she was curled up in her bed sound asleep!

Odd, very odd. I think she took about a two hour nap, Matt went up there at 7 and she was just waking up. I don't think she is going to go to sleep for awhile tonight.

Oh and Christian broke out in a rash all over his abdomen, but this isn't so unusual, he usually breaks out after he has a fever.

I wonder what will happen tomorrow...

The fun continues...

Once Courtney got better, Megan began to get sick.

About 2:15 pm, she decided to throw up. I thought she was well!

She felt a lot better afterwards and her color came back and she was my cheery old Megan again. Even though she hasn't moved off the chair all day and is still in her pajamas!

Oh and even the dog has to get in on the fun. 5:15 pm, clean up dog puke off the kitchen floor.

This really is my day!

Courtney's problem is solved!

About 10:30-11 am, Courtney perked up. She was laughing again, her stomach felt better, and she was being goofy Courtney again.

This made me think- was this the flu like the rest of us have been experiencing or was this something else? Was it really the bite of hot dog bun from last night?

I called her doctor and asked her if one bite of hot dog bun could cause such bad GI issues and then two hours later, she is just fine. She said absolutely! Since Courtney had such high numbers on wheat and yeast, she is going to get a reaction right away and she sure did!

Obviously if this was the case, she is not ready to get back on wheat or yeast anytime soon!

Then I asked her doctor how Courtney could escape having the flu when everybody around her was having it. She said that since we took everyhing away that was causing her trouble (her foods), her immune system was probably very strong and that's why she fought it off like she did.  She has always been my healthiest kid, so it doesn't surprise me any.

It finally hit Courtney. :(

Courtney came into my room this morning with a very sad look on her face, she said, "Mom, my stomach hurts."

I replied with, "Do you feel like you have to puke?"

Courtney, "No, but I have bad poopies."

Great! That makes us all! But of course she is convinced that it was the bite of hot dog bun she had last night. I'm not thinking that was it.

Fun Germs!

I wish the flu virus would leave our house. We are going on day five of somebody not feeling good.

Matt had it first, he went to the dr. and got the official diagnosis of the flu. They gave him tamiflu and he's great now, just a little back pain yet, no big deal!

Myself- I am just a little light-headed, some stomach pain, little lack of energy, but not too bad.I find that if I keep something in my stomach, I actually feel better. I almost feel worse overnight. I have been taking matt's tamiflu, he saved it for me. :) He says he needs me around here!

Megan- Some light-headed, dizzy, pale-looking, lack of appetite. She's getting over it, I think.

Courtney- She has the best immune system of all of us! She hasn't had one symptom and hasn't been sick at all!!! Wonderful! We told her a couple days ago that if dad and mom are both sick, then Megan is in charge. If dad, mom, and Megan are sick, then she is in charge. She made the comment yesterday that she is in charge of the house!

Christian- Tuesday night- puked 4 times, Wednesday fine, Thursday fine, Friday morning- diahrrea and puking within 5 minutes in the morning, Saturday fine, Sunday- diahrea and puking again within 5 minutes. What is going on? and he acts just fine in the meantime!

What can we do to get rid of this virus?? or two because obviously there are two different viruses going on in our house (one is achy, dizzy, the other is GI issues like Christian)

If there is any time to get sick, then we should get sick during Christmas break!

Much Accomplished!

I was a busy-beaver yesterday.  We had nothing to do and I didn't really want to take the kids anywhere because Christian was still a little sick the night before, so I decided we would clean the upstairs. It has been a disaster for awhile and it was a good day to get it done!

The girls had cleaned their room about a week ago, but it needed another good cleaning. They put in some "Adventures in Odyssey" and got to work. Honestly, it was mostly Courtney! Surprise, surprise!

I set to work in my room.  I started with my bathroom, cleaned all the usual things, vacuumed the floor, scrubbed the toilet, etc, etc. Then I started in my master closet. This is where I had been hiding and wrapping Christmas presents, so I had to get all that stuff put away along with all the Amazon boxes! I also had clothes that needed to be hung up. With a little help from Christian, I got that accomplished!

Then it was onto my bedroom. Now my bedroom was very bad.  For about the last two weeks, whenever I had needed a laundry basket, I would take the clean clothes that were in that needed basket, dump them out onto my floor, and go refill that basket with more clean clothes. Let's say that when you have at least five baskets of clean clothes dumped on the floor, you have a HUGE pile of laundry that needs to be put away. You know it's bad when you say to your kids, " You have clean clothes, just go look on my floor!"  Yes, bad, I know. 

I also had other parts of my floor covered. When I clean downstairs, I usually take all the items that need to go upstairs and again, when I need that basket, I dump the items out onto my floor. I have a bad habit, don't I? So in front of both of our dressers, we had piles of stuff. Stuff that goes in the playroom, the girls' bedroom, Christian's room, our bathroom, just a little bit of everything.  I had to sit down and sort through all this stuff!  I found some things I had been missing, but I got to the bottom of the piles and got everything in new baskets. :)  It is amazing that there was carpet underneath there!  Even Matt said this morning, "wow, I can walk right up my dresser now!" Yes, you can and hopefully it will stay that way for awhile.   After a little vacuuming, the bedroom was clean!

Next up was the hallway. Same story, second verse.  Again, I got out my baskets and by this time, things were going into four main baskets. 1. Girls' bedroom or playroom  2. Open Door Mission 3. Back downstairs  4. Trash can   I can't tell you how many times I filled up our little trash cans yesterday!  There were game and puzzle pieces in the hallway, legos, Christian's cars, etc. After awhile, I got this floor cleared too!

Next up was Christian's room. His room was pretty clean, but I finished cleaning it, vacuumed it, and we were done. I even put away his changing pad and his diaper pail. It kind of made me sad, but he is pretty good at going potty, so I think we are done with those items. I also put his baby gate in the attic.

Finally, I went into the girls' bedroom, where they had been cleaning/ playing all afternoon.  They were about 90% there, so I helped them finish it up.  I pulled out the dressers and had Courtney get everything from behind it. We are missing a library book, so I am hoping that it is stashed under a dresser somewhere. I did pull one out, but not the missing one. Courtney had already cleaned under her bed, so that was done. I vacuumed the room and it looked better!

I then mentioned to the girls if they wanted to take their Dora and Princess stickers off their walls and put their new ones up that we had bought awhile back. They did! Again, it was a little sad to see Dora and Princess go, but they are both past those stages. Megan had bought puppy and kitty stickers and Courtney had bought butterflies, these both fit the girls so much better! Once these were up, I declared my cleaning day done! Plus it was 6 pm and time for supper!

Today we have to get to the library and do a couple of errands.

Maybe Saturday we will get to the playroom and the girls' bathroom. Yikes!

Did I mention that we still haven't cleaned up the mess from opening presents on Christmas Eve?? And we still need to put the tree away and all the other Christmas decorations. Hopefully we can get this all done before we get school started again.

Vacation!

Anybody know how hard it is going to be to get back into the routine of school?

We slept in until 9 am this morning!!!  And I let the kids play all day, we don't really have a care in the world right now! (except I REALLY want to get this house organized before we start back!)

I don't even know when we are going to start up again! Maybe next week, maybe the week after, we will see!

But as for now, let's enjoy vacation...and get rid of the flu!

The flu!

Matt ended up going to the doctor today because he was convinced he had strep throat. Nope, the flu!

They gave him a prescription for tamiflu, which cost an arm and a leg, so it better work. :)

Christian was feeling good all day until about 6 pm, the he took about an hour nap and got warm. We gave him some advil, so hopefully that will help.

Please pray that us girls don't get sick!!!

Continuation throughout the night

....I finally got Christian to bed at 11:50 last night.

About 2:10, I heard some thunking noise.  This was actually Dell down in the bathroom, but while I was somewhat awake, I heard Christian start to cough again. Matt and I were both out of bed pretty quickly.  Sure enough, Christian had thrown up in his bed.  I visited the bathroom quick and by the time I got out, Matt already had Christian in the bathroom and was heading downstairs to see what was going on with Dell.  He said, "I can help you now, I feel much better!" thanks!!

After letting Dell outside, he came back up and we got Christian's sheets and clothes changed.  I went back downstairs to put his clothes in the washer and discovered what Dell had done- like we needed any other troubles at 2 am! Dell had eaten some of our bathroom rug! She had ate the stiching half way around and she put a hole in it- she ate the rubber backing! Stupid dog!! She has slept in our bathroom at night for about the last 2-3 years and has never ate the rugs!  (When she has an upset stomach, she usually eats a whole lot of grass outside and then pukes everything up. I think she couldn't eat any grass because of the snow and decided to eat the rug instead!)

Once I discovered this, I took it upstairs to show Matt. I went back to the bathroom and took out the other rug that she hadn't ate yet. Matt let her back in and put her back in her bathroom without any rugs to sleep on.

We headed back upstairs and got Christian back to bed.  yay! But then we heard Dell pushing around Christian's stool in the bathroom, so Matt visited her again and put the stool and her food bowl up. Now maybe we can sleep in peace!

About 4:40, we hear some more coughing. Yet again, Christian had thrown up in his bed.  I got Christian changed and Matt took care of his bedding.  I think this is his 4th or 5th pair of pajamas!  Got him cleaned up and he didn't want to go back to bed.  I didn't care at this point, I put him in his bed, laid him down, and turned his light off. Too bad!  Matt and I got back to bed...again!

All was fine until Courtney scared me at 8:30 this morning, but all the kids are up and playing great. Christian had some applesauce for breakfast, but is playing like he normally does.  Megan and Courtney were fine all night and made it clear to me that they, "did not throw up" even though I made them sleep on the floor.I told them that they may be sleeping there for a couple of nights!

Now, I really hope I don't get this, I washed my hands over and over yesterday, but my stomach doesn't feel 100% this morning and I don't feel like doing anything- of course I was up half the night with Christian!!

The Flu has hit our house. :(

I thought we were immune this year. HA!

On our way home from Lincoln today, Matt told me that he didn't feel good. He was cold and felt like he had a fever. When we got home, he kind of checked out and went and laid down for the night.

Everybody else was feeling great! We had supper, we opened some new toys, and watched some TV.

It was about 9 and I got Christian ready for bed and we were reading books.  He kind of started coughing right after I picked up a second book, so I asked Megan if she would bring him a cup of water.  About a second later, he pukes all over! Luckily, he was on my lap with his blanket, so the blanket caught most of it. I was totally unprepared for this!

Now remember, Matt is sick himself, so it is up to me to clean up the mess and take care of the boy!
I get him cleaned up, myself cleaned up because of course, it was on my clothes too. I then got the girls into bed and I went and rocked him for awhile.  I put him into bed about 10, but he still wasn't happy.

I figured if I was going to hold him for awhile, I might as well watch TV, so I brought him downstairs and we watched the news together. He had two new blankets at this point.  He coughed a little bit about 10 minutes later, but nothing worth getting worried about, but then about two seconds later, he threw up again!  I was ready this time. I just picked up his blanket and said, "Puke here!" and he did. He still got  a little bit on my clothes again and on the couch, but not bad!

Again, we go back to the bathroom to clean everything up. We are now on our 3rd set of pajamas and all his favorite blankets are dirty. 

It is now 10:35, he is playing with legos because I just let him play while I put all his clothes, my clothes, towels, and blankets in the washer.  He seems to be feeling fine and wide awake! It might be a late night!

On the side note, since us ladies are the only ones left, I made the girls sleep on their sleeping bags on their floor. No stuffed animals!!  I told them that since I am the only parent not sick and if they happen to puke overnight, I am the one that has to clean it up. I would like the easiest clean-up possible, so I told them if they had to puke, then puke on their blankets and sleeping bags. Courtney was actually in tears because I wouldn't let her sleep with her stuffed animals, but tonight, I think she will survive.

Now to see if I can get Christian to bed AGAIN!

Potty Training

I think I can say that Christian has been the easiest one to potty train.

He woke up completely dry last night. I am amazed.

He's only had about one accident a day.

I am really trying to teach him to tell me when he has to go potty and then I will take him, I don't want to take him every couple hours or so without him telling me (get it?). I did this with Courtney and it took her awhile to recognize the need to go herself, we had accidents for a long time.

Hopefully soon we can trust him outside of the house and in his carseat. With almost a week of potty training, I'm not quite there yet. As much as I don't like pull-ups, they will work for those "outside of the house" situations.  At least there's Lightning McQueen on them and he doesn't want to go potty in them. :)

Accomplishments

Megan and Courtney each got a set of legos yesterday from grandma and grandpa.

Courtney's had 415 pieces and Megan's had 416 pieces.

 Both sets were put together by 11:30 this morning!

They worked about 1-2 hours last night and another 3 this morning.

Megan did hers mostly by herself and Courtney did about half by herself. She had a little help from dad towards the end.

What an accomplishment!!

Being a boy!

I was cleaning up the living room today and Christian was running around and screaming.

I asked him what he was doing. He replied, "I'm being a boy!"

I asked him again, "What does a boy do?"

"He runs...and screams!"

I'm up!

One way to get your mother out of bed in the morning when she doesn't really want to get up.

"Mommy, I have to go poopy!!"

Christian, I am very glad you are doing so well at potty training, but please, let me sleep!

I think we are going to turn his bed into a toddler bed today so he can get up whenever he needs to, but of course, he still needs help in the bathroom.But then, he can also go find his dad. :)

Oh Ice cream, how I have missed you!!

During my free time lately, I have been cleaning out a few of our cupboards. Yesterday I found a package of ice cream mix to go with an ice cream maker we have.  I immediately thought that it would contain milk, so I was going to give it to my brother (yes, Shawn, you!), but before I gave it away, I thought I would read the ingredients.  I about fell over- there was no milk in it at all! Just a bunch of sugar!!! I could hardly believe it!  You had to add 4 cups of milk to make the ice cream, but I could easily use rice milk, right??

The girls wanted to know what I was looking at and I said it was an ice cream mix to make in an ice cream machine. I mentioned that we have one downstairs and they took off to go find it! With a little help from Matt, they brought it up and were immediately trying to open it!  Let's just say it was still sealed with tape from when we moved.

We got it open and I thought, "Can I do this? Will this really make good ice cream?" But I put the mix in, poured the milk in, put the machine together, dumped in ice and rock salt, and plugged it in. Yes, it works!

The next mystery was to see if it really made ice cream with the rice milk.  I was pretty sure it would since rice milk works with everything else.  About an hour later, the machine stopped and I opened it up.  I tasted the ice cream and it was WONDERFUL!!! I was thrilled!  I went off dairy at this time last year- Christmas Day- so I have not had ice cream in about a year and if you know me, you know that ice cream is one of my favorite foods!!

I savored every bit of my ice cream, it was so good! Even Matt thought it was good...

I then went online to see if I could buy more packets of Rival Ice Cream mix and you can! How awesome is that??

Christmas Songs

You know your two-year old has been listening to us sing in the morning, I just heard him say," We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy new year!"

Day off for the kids

I think we are done with school for awhile.

We have been doing half days for the last two weeks and it has decreased the Christmas stress around here.  I also have spent most of the mornings learning about Christmas.  We have sang Christmas carols every morning, read a few Christmas books, learned about something, and made some kind of craft. I hope my kids have learned a lot because I sure have!

On Wednesday, we learned the history behind the Christmas tree.  I found some sites that explained that ancient cultures would put green tree boughs in their house starting on the winter solstice (which is today, by the way) to remind them that spring was coming and to ward off anything evil. During the 1500's, Martin Luther in Germany was the first one to put a Christmas tree in his house.  This started the tradition of putting up the Christmas tree.

It's funny though because it never caught on in England.  When the Puritans and Pilgrims came to America, they would actually fine people if they put a tree up or celebrated Christmas in any other way than going to church on Christmas. I can't believe these people- first they killed the Quakers and now they're fining people for decorating their houses! They believed that Christmas was a very sacred event and shouldn't be mocked with decorations.

Then around the middle of the 1800's, Queen Victoria of England posed in front of a Christmas tree in England and then the tradition took off in England and in the new world because everybody wanted to do what the queen did!  Can you imagine life back then? If you were German, you loved the Christmas tree, if you were not, you got fined for it.  Quite the opposites! I guess I never questioned why I put up the tree- must be because of my German heritage!!

Yesterday I took a break from Christmas and we learned about snow, we talked about how scientists discovered that snowflakes had six sides to it without a microscope.  I gave Courtney one of her presents early (magnifying glasses), so we could try to see the six sides and we couldn't, partly because the snow was melting too fast.  We did a cute snowman project where we glued cotton balls onto paper to make a snowman, even Christian got to participate and make a snowman! They turned out really cute!

Today we continued to sing Christmas carols and we probably read about five books about the holidays. I then said, " We are done!" Done for the week and maybe done for awhile.  We finished up all their schoolwork yesterday and they even sat down and did their homework, so that is done!

I am debating about giving them next week off or to keep moving forward, I guess we will see next week! 

Snow Day

Do homeschoolers get snow days???

In this house, no, not today. We have 1/2 a day worth of school and then we are done for the week. I think we are going to work and get it done today.

I think we are going to take next week off or do 1/2 days again (take two weeks to do one week's worth of school work.)

We need to take some time and organize the house (bedrooms, playrooms, kitchen), it is a little bit out of control and with Christmas presents arriving soon, we need to find places for everything. I still have Thanksgiving things that need to be put away!! The girls also want to give some items to the Open Door Mission, so this would be a good time to go through everything. 

But the snow is beautiful and the children already have plans to get outside today!  (after school is done!)

Potty Training!

Snow days = stuck at home= potty training!

Thomas the train and Cars underwear are wonderful! Who knew it would inspire a little boy to go potty in the toilet!

Christian has had on underwear all day with only one accident!

Yay!!

I love Progress!!

today = Progress!!

If anybody knows me, they know that I like lists and I like checking things off my list.

Our daily schedule white board for school has turned into my place to put my list.

It is full. I have many things to do and many things on my mind right now, but today, I got a few of the big ones erased!

1.  After painting my laundry room last Monday and putting my dryer in my kitchen, Matt finally got a chance to get a new dryer vent and put everything back together today! I was thrilled!!! I didn't really mind having the dryer in my kitchen- it actually gave me more counter space. :)  But everybody was starting to run out of clothes, including myself. Christian hasn't had socks for a couple of days (this boy is getting more socks for Christmas!), so I was stealing Courtney's!  We were also on our last towels and I had been out of kitchen towels for a couple of days too. I was using bathroom towels in the kitchen. Let's just say the washer is going now!

2.  Last Tuesday night, we bought a new Christmas tree. If you remember last year, our stand broke on the old one just as we were putting the angel on the top. We gave that one to Goodwill, so we had to buy a new one this year.  We got the new one home and last Wednesday, the girls and I put it up, but we realized that one of the branches was hanging lower than the others, so we thought we were going to have to take it back.  Matt finally decided (yesterday) that he could just fix it, so we decorated it today. It looks wonderful!! Not bad, it's only 10 days before Christmas!

3.  We painted the living room last May and have not gotten the pictures back on the wall yet. Guess what Matt did for me today?? yep, put all my pictures back on the living room walls!

4.  We took a little errand trip today too. I have had money that has been on my fridge for over a month, so that finally got put in the bank and I had to make a quick stop in KMART. I ordered a present for Courtney from there, but they sent me the wrong thing in the mail, so I had to take this wrong item back to the store. I got my money back and was on my way!

5.  I also got a bunch of presents wrapped today.  Well, ones that my children could see anyway. Now that we have our tree up, let's get some gifts under it!! I'm still getting boxes in the mail from Amazon, so hopefully everything will get here before Christmas! I have a few things to get in the store, but that is alright.  I got almost everything online this year and loved it! Now I need to find time to sneak away and wrap my kids' gifts, I have had to keep the door locked to our master closet because the kids know their presents are back there. Courtney is the sneaky one, so we just thought it would be better to lock the door. :)

6. Last, but not least, we paid off my school loans! Thank you Doane College for my wonderful education! ( I really think some of my time at UNO was part of my loans too, but Matt didn't think so.)

What else can I get done today??

Walked out. :(

I don't usually leave field trips in the middle of them, but yesterday I did.

We went to this horse barn and they were going to teach us all about horses and then give the kids rides.
We were also supposed to bring lunch because it was going to go from 10-2.  They said we were going to be in a barn most of the time.

My expectations were wrong.
1.  It was 40 degrees out and the barn was as cold as it was inside.
2.  We were not inside at all!
3. I was expecting a nice, heated barn. HA! It was an old run-down wooden barn.
4. I thought we would actually be learning about horses. HA AGAIN!
    We got there at 10 and had to sign in.  I thought the people who were leading the field trip would start around 10 or shortly after. Yah right!! They didn't even call everybody's attention until 10:30!!
In the meantime, the kids were supposed to look at the horses, all 4 of them!
Once they got started at 10:30, the only thing they did was take 3 kids into a stall AT A TIME to brush a horse.  Let me remind you, there were three other people working there, but they weren't doing anything.
Guess what the other kids did during this time? And there were about 30 kids here...they ran in circles! This head lady had nothing for them to do!

Luckily, my kids were the first ones in the pen to brush the horses and then they were done.
Soon the kids were running all over the lady's haystacks and she was beginning to get mad at them, so she opened up the gate to the pasture and said they could run around in there!

It was now about 11 and Courtney is freezing and bored out of her mind (she didn't want to come in the first place), Christian is bored and I don't want to give him freedom to run in the pasture because there was farm equipment in there, and Megan is actually running around and having fun.  I am bored and cold myself.  I'm starting to think that we are not getting much out of this field trip and start to consider leaving.

I didn't know what else this lady had planned, but if it was anything like brushing horses for half an hour, I was not going to stay.  They were going to ride horses too, but who knows what that would be like. Probably one by one and would take at least two hours!

About 11:15, I pulled Megan away from her running and talked to her. I asked her if she would mind that we left. I told her that her brother and sister were cold and bored and we weren't really learning anything anyway. We had been there for almost an hour and a half and all we have done is brushed a horse for about a minute.

I asked her if it would really bother her if she didn't get to ride a horse and she said no.  Thank you!

I went up to an assistant lady and told her we were going to head out because we had many other things to be doing.  She went and got the head lady and I kind of told her what was going on without making her feel bad.  She gave me the "well, this is my first field trip with so many kids, I need lots of time." ok, ok, but this just isn't working for us. I told her that private horse lessons would probably work a lot better for us and I got her phone number and walked away!

Who knows what happened for the next 3 hours or where everybody ate lunch, I didn't even see any bathrooms around!!

I am very glad we left, I have so many things swirling around in my head that I have to do now, I didn't want to waste my time at this horse farm learning about nothing!! I didn't go there so my kids could run around in a pasture!!

5.  I obviously did not dress my kids warm enough. When we left our house, I thought it was kind of nice out and THINKING we were going to be in a nice warm barn, I had the kids grab their spring jackets and then we all ran back in to get our winter coats.  I didn't bother to grab gloves or scarves! I should have! We were cold.

6.  Another reason I walked out is that during the day is "school time" and I want the kids to be constructively learning or at being productive. While I am not against having some time to run around, this was not part of the plan and I was not happy that these people were wasting my time.

7.  Good thing I didn't pay for this! This field trip was free, but a bunch of moms were going to go together and give her some money.  I didn't even offer. sorry! Improve your field trip and it may be worth some money to me and my kids.

Again, I felt bad that we left only an hour into it, but I was very glad we did!

Word mix up.

Ok, I have to admit I messed up on our Christmas letter and there are only a few people who I think will figure it out.

I wrote "etymologist" instead of "entomologist."

Who knows the difference???

I did print out half my Christmas letters with the right word and half without. I felt terrible, but I didn't want to print them all out again, so I put them in the mail and hopefully nobody will see my mistake. :)

Pick out your pajamas!

Tonight after Christian's bath, I let him pick out what pajamas he wanted to wear to bed.  He sat there for awhile and stared at all of them, but didn't pick anything out.

I said, "I'm going to count to three and then I'm going to pick them out. 1.....2.....3," and I reached down and picked out a pair and shut his drawer.

His first words out of his mouth, "No mom, I wanted 4!"

Apparently he wasn't mad about the pajamas, but that I didn't count to 4!

Christmas Decorations

Yep, we're totally skipping school today to put Christmas decorations up!

Do I feel bad? Nope!

The girls did a great job cleaning and they helped put things up. 

We also put up a new tree we bought last night, but I am not sure if it is good enough, so we left it for Matt's approval before we put the ornaments on. Instead, the children have chose to play with the ornaments until the time comes to put them on the tree. :)

I also realized the other day that the only Christmas exposure my kids are getting are what I will be teaching them! Wow! I made some new plans and now we are doing an advent calendar, singing Christmas songs, reading Christmas stories, and doing Christmas crafts everyday!

Megan is so funny, she doesn't want to do anything that doesn't have to do with Jesus!

School?

I had planned on taking the two weeks around Christmas and New Year's off of school, but I'm beginning to think differently now!

I think we need to take the two weeks BEFORE Christmas off!!

I have so much to do around here. Put up the Christmas tree, decorate, take down thanksgiving items and put those away. Shop and wrap presents, etc, etc. etc!!!

It is already Wednesday and we only have one day's worth of school done this week!!

I think we are going to take these two weeks and do one week's worth of school and then do the same for the following two weeks.  Then we won't lose all that we have been learning.

Did I mention that I got my laundry room painted the other day, so I have baskets of dirty laundry in my dining room and my dryer in my kitchen? I haven't had time to mop that disgusting laundry room floor yet, I want to get that done before putting everything back.

Plus we are having some friends over tomorrow that we are just getting to know, so of course we want a clean house!

UGH! Anybody want to come and help me???

Wrong Subject

We are in the process of changing the way Christian asks for things.

When he wants something, he says, "My would like..."  We need to change that to, "I would like..."

Sounds very much the same, but when you are teaching your 3rd grader proper subjects, I need my two year old to follow propor grammatical rules!!

Cookies

On Saturday, Megan had made cookies for her and Matt.

When Megan makes cookies, Courtney usually wants to make cookies too because we need to use special butter, egg replacement, special chocolate chips, and oatmeal flour. And if one gets something, the other does too, right?

I didn't have any butter on Saturday, so after getting groceries this weekend, we made cookies today.

Christian made me laugh though.  Before we even got the batter mixed up, he was at the silverware drawer getting a spoon to eat the batter! He knew we were making cookies because we were getting the mixer out.

He sure has learned young! (the best part about this cookie dough is that there are no real eggs in it, so I don't feel bad eating it at all! Or even letting my children eat it!)

New Schedule

I have been thinking of a new school schedule to start after Christmas.  We are running into a few problems that are causing school to take longer than usual.

1.  My lack of being able to get up in the morning and get started before 9:15 or even 9:30.
2.  Too many breaks.
3.  Too many interruptions.
4. Kids don't have time to do homework at night.
5.  I am not getting all the subjects covered that I want to cover.
6.  We are spending too much time on subjects.

My proposal is that I am going to make it more like a school day. We will do certain subjects from one time to another and if we don't get done, we will have to move on anyway.

If I limit my time on certain subjects, then I can add subjects in that I want to cover, but haven't been able to get to this semester very well (art, health, German, music).

I am going to work with Megan in the morning instead of the afternoon, then she has the afternoon to do her homework while I work with Courtney.

I am just going to be more strict about the breaks. :)  Maybe not allow the kids to leave the kitchen while we switch books between subjects and when the new books are on the table, they need to be back in their chairs and ready to go.

Speaking of ready to go, no getting water, no getting ice, and no bathroom breaks in the middle of class, no running upstairs to get something. Drives me nuts!!

I think I may need to do something to entertain Christian more. When I am working with both kids, he interrupts quite often because he has nobody to play with! maybe Thomas the Train would help. :)

Megan and I both love her read-aloud, but this takes a huge amount of time. I think that once school is done and Megan has her homework done, we can read her book. I want this to be an incentive. Leave this for the end of the day instead of in the middle.

Oh yes, really try to get out of bed earlier and get the kids up earlier! (But isn't that the joy of homeschooling- you can start whenever you want...)

I am going to put an excel spreadsheet together later with the new schedule.  I really hope it works.

Christmas shopping

I have changed my ways around here.

I am no longer going to the stores to buy Christmas presents- I have rediscoverd amazon.com!!!

Why I loved this so much:

1. I did not have to go to the store with three kids in tow and face the crowds.
2.  I could buy things and not have three children with me.
3.  I could put things in my "cart" and then think about them awhile and either keep them or buy them later.
4.  There was much more variety of gifts online. I found things I didn't even know some things existed!  I found gifts that I would've never found in a store!
6.  Shipping was free!!!
7.  Things have already started coming in the mail and the girls aren't even asking what is in the packages.
8.  If I didn't find something on amazon, I went to walmart, if I didn't find it there, I went to another store.  I actually did this for a gift for Courtney this year, I ended up getting it from Kmart.
9.  I can price compare and know where I am getting it the cheapest.
10.  I can shop after everybody goes to bed and not have to take time away from the family or school to go to the stores!

Any other year, I would get a list of what I needed and where I was going to buy it. I would head out about December 23rd (yes, seriously) and shop as fast as I could and get everything bought within a couple of hours.  I am actually going to get shopping done early this year.

Maybe I will have the presents wrapped and under the tree before Christmas Eve this year...

John Hancock

Thanks to our study of the American Revolution and reading Johnny Tremain, Megan and I have been learning a lot about the founders of America and this includes John Hancock.

This is funny because everyday when we do math, there is a place for Courtney to put her name and I always say, "Put your John Hancock on your paper," never really knowing what it meant, I just know that it means to put your signature on your paper.

Today Courtney thought she was funny and actually wrote "John Hancock" on her paper.  Megan helped her spell it as they both laughed hysterically!

Christian Quotes of the day

Christian kind of redeemed some of his bad behavior this morning by making me laugh tonight.

1.  I was putting a turkey in the oven for supper and he said, "Mom, turkey died."  I just had to laugh.
But we have to be careful around here when we say things like this, it brings tears to Courtney's eyes!

(Yes, I know Thanksgiving is over, but I got a turkey for pretty cheap and it was really easy to make at Thanksgiving, so I bought another one! I think this one I made today was better than the one we had at Thanksgiving.)

2.  At supper, he refused to eat his supper. "Mom, turkey gross."  Then Megan reminded him that the turkey died, so he continued "potatoes died too."  Where does he get this stuff??

3.  Tonight at bedtime, he didn't want me to read him books, he wanted Megan! So Megan sat down and read him three books, he was mad when it was time to go to bed. We told him that Megan will read to him again in the morning, but he still didn't want to go to bed. He already had another book in his hand. I love this bond they are building over books!

Oh Sunday...

I have been thinking about this blog all morning, so I thought I would write it out.

It is really entitled, "How to get to church on Time".

Here is the story.  We decided to go to early service yesterday and church, but we didn't quite make it on time.  Here are the lessons I learned.

1.  Set your alarm clock.  Waking up with 50 minutes until you have to leave does not work well. Especially when 3 children wake up at the same time.

2. Do laundry the day before.
A. Megan had no church clothes to wear, all of her dresses were in the washer.  I tried to get them washed and dried the night before, but I failed.  She does not like to wear anything but dresses to church, so that took about ten minutes to convince her to wear jeans, which were actually clean. Then we had to find a shirt to go with the jeans, then we could FINALLY get dressed.

She also needs to put her shoes where they go, we couldn't find her shoes when we were rushing out the door.  Courtney is usually the one looking for her shoes at the last minute, not Megan.

B. Courtney was actually ready on time. She likes to wear jeans and she didn't have a problem wearing jeans to church. She found her shoes and got ready! Yay, Courtney!

C. Christian knows what his "church clothes" are and which clothes are not "church clothes." Of course, none of his church clothes were clean, so I had no option but to put some different pants and a shirt on him. This was trouble! I had to fight him to get dressed and he was crying and saying no the entire time. I felt terrible!  He also had mud on his shoes from the zoo the day before, so those just went in the car.

3.  No TV, video games, computer,or  anything electronic should be on while we are trying to get out the door. I need all the help I can get, especially with only 50 minutes to get out the door.

In the end, we made it with five minutes to spare!

Oh Monday!

I don't usually have trouble having school and dealing with the kids that are not "in school" at the time, but today it has been a little bit of a challenge.

The kids have discovered legos and they are all over my living room floor, which is great, but when you have three kids together trying to play with something, it doesn't go well. Two kids goes well, but I can't do that around here.

And plus the fact that Christian is a boy and is Mr. Destructo- he throws the legos, tears instruction manuals, throws the lego box, breaks the girls' creations, etc. If I hear "Christian, stop that!" one more time, I am going to scream.  He is also putting legos in his mouth, which has earned him three trips to time-out already this morning, which of course, interupts our learning and school takes only longer!

Ugh!

Christmas Ideas

I keep getting questions about what to get my family for Christmas, so here is a quick list.

Megan: anything to do with horses, ballet, American Girl Doll books, sewing kits, science kits, size 8-10 shirts, kids cooking books, legos, sewing kits

Courtney: anything to do with bugs or penguins, legos, art supplies, size 7 shirts, chapter books or easy reader books, sewing kits

Christian: anything to do with trains, trucks, or tractors, 3T shirts, 2T pants

Charla- I would really like some new cupcake pans! (hint, hint!), non-slip cutting boards, history books, historical fiction books, gift cards to bookstores or Kohl's

Matt- anything, he isn't picky at all, but he does need some new jeans. (34 X 32) , giftcards to Menards, Best Buy, XBox points