Science

Again, I am posting here some websites I will be using for science tomorrow.

We have started a new unit- how things work!

Tomorrow we will be learning how telephones work.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/telephone.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc-kBiWsMik

Figured it out!

I figured out what my problem is lately, I think it's the magnesium supplements I have been taking!

confusion
dizziness
weak muscles
just to name a few...

these are the same symptoms as "adverse reactions to magnesium."

time to call the doctor again!

What is happening??

I'm not sure what it is with me and grocery stores lately. I keep losing things!

1.  I was in Walmart getting groceries last Thursday.  Whenever I get groceries, I go through the ads beforehand at home and write down my grocery list and my price matches in a little notebook. I then use my notebook when I get groceries. I always have it out when I check out, but last Thursday, I must've left it at Walmart. I got home and it was not in my purse or in any of the grocery sacks.

I went back to Walmart last night and asked if somebody turned it into the lost and found and it wasn't there.

What happened to it??

2.  Wednesday I was in Sam's.  I remember picking up a sack of plastic cups to use here at home.  We got to check out and they were not in my cart. 

What happened to them??

3.  Last night while I was back in Walmart getting a few more groceries, I remember picking up a dozen eggs. We are going to decorate eggs today and I needed some extra. I remember telling the cashier they were 88 cents and paying for them.

I get home and they are not anywhere to be found.

What happened to them??


Talk about frustrating!!!

Ear infection?

I ended up heading to my doctor the other day (my chiropractic physicians, of course!) to check out why I have been so dizzy lately.

Their conclusion- ear infection!  But they couldn't see in my ear because there was so much wax, but by looking at all my other symptoms, this was their conclusion.

Yesterday, I had someone come over and help me use a candle to get all the wax out of my ear.  It helped right away!

Now today, my ears feel like they are constantly plugged again. Ugh. At least all the wax is out!

I wonder if I can put garlic in my ears. I am allergic to garlic, so I'm not sure how I would react to it.

Hopefully this will get better soon!

Carpets Cleaned!

To add to the chaos of homeschooling and keeping up with the house, we got our carpets cleaned today.  This meant taking everything out of the rooms we wanted clean and piling them into other rooms. 

This means I must find some time to put everything back!

HAHA! It may just have to wait until tomorrow. :)

I think I kind of like the recliner in the kitchen!!

What a Weekend!

You know you were really busy over the weekend when:

a. the house is still a complete mess on Monday morning.
b. dishes are still on the counter from last Thursday (got those taken care of today!)
c. the breakfast dishes are still on the table from breakfast Sunday morning. I had to clean off those breakfast dishes to put new ones on today!
d. homework is not done yet. :(
e. you want to use the mixer to make some mashed potatoes for lunch and you find that it is still soaking in the sink from when Megan made cookies on Friday.
f. items that Matt bought at Menards on Friday are still on the counter and not in the basement yet where they belong.

But we had a fun weekend. We went to Disney on Ice on Saturday and we had an Easter get-together yesterday.

We have another busy weekend next weekend! Bring on Easter! And spring, please!!

What did you eat??

I must've ate something I shouldn't have yesterday.

About an hour after lunch, I started to get really sleepy and my brain was in a fog. Literally. I could barely function.  Matt was asking me questions and I couldn't give him a straight answer.
Wierd. But this used to happy ALL THE TIME before I went off all my foods.

Of course, Megan says, "What did you eat mom?" Smarty pants. :)

And then I got to thinking.  I took two allergy tests in July. One was an IGE and one was an IGG.  My doctor told me to concentrate on the foods that were shown to be intolerant on the IGG test, so I have. This has included chicken, garlic, milk, soy, peanuts, yeast, almonds, blueberries, black pepper. A lot of these same foods were on the IGE test, but pork and peaches were also listed. Guess what I ate yesterday for lunch AND the night before for supper? Pork. I usually seem to be fine with it, but I think I may have overdone it. Usually, the more of the intolerant food equals a bigger reaction.

I also had some chocolate chips right after lunch. :)  These are chocolate chips that are made from real chocolate and cocoa, not milk, and I double checked and I do not have a sensitivity to cocoa.

So honestly, I think it was too much pork that caused my brain to go haywire. The sugar in the chocolate chips probably made my low blood sugar plummet even more and that's why it got so bad.

The bad thing about it is that if I could've went and took a nap for about 30 minutes, I would've snapped out of it, but we were leaving to go to Nebraska Furniture Mart to pick out a fridge and a dishwasher for out basement. This is not a good thing to do when you can barely keep your eyes open and are very weak!  Even today, I am a little shaky yet.  No wonder I had so much trouble with anxiety for such a long time! Imagine this compounding day after day!

On a side note- I can usually tell if I eat something I should not have because I will fall asleep within an hour. It will make my blood sugar crash!!  It has been so nice being able to stay awake ALL DAY the last six months and function like I should.  I can't tell you how thankful I am for my doctor!!!

Now to take these things out of my diet and keep them out for awhile! It's SOOOOO hard!

She's always one step ahead of me!

Megan, I love her dearly because she is "always one step ahead of me."

1. We were at the grocery store last night and we were picking up cereal. I had a box of "Honey Comb" and she said, "Mom, we should get two boxes." I said no and kept on going.

This morning, the box is already half gone. Maybe she was right. :)

2.  The other day we were taking communion in church and the girls joined us. We let them take communion and Courtney had the communion wafer in her hand. I didn't even think to ask somebody what was in it! Megan looked at me and said, "Can she have that?"  I don't know! (She ate it and did not get sick, so apparently she was fine.)

3. Megan is often the one that catches food that we might be allergic to before I do. There has been many times when she has said, "Mom (or Courtney), you're allergic to _________. You probably shouldn't eat it" Oh, that's right Megan!

4. There are more examples, but I'm out of them at this moment. :)  But she definitely keeps me on my toes!

Items around the house

I love the stage that Christian is in right now. He is pretend playing and it is so much fun to see him put his cars in "time-out." Lately, he has been playing with his cars or trains while I am working with the girls in school. It will keep him quiet all morning! How great is that!  I love listening in on his conversations if I can, they are so creative!

Another thing I like is how everything is either a mommy/ daddy or a baby.

For example:

1. We have baby muffins and daddy muffins.
2. We have baby combines and daddy combines.
3. We have a baby frog and a daddy frog.

Pretty much anything that we have two of AND one is bigger than the other, Christian will probably label one as "baby" and one as "daddy." It's great because all of us know his system and usually know exactly what he is talking about!

Breath of Fresh Air!

I thought it was supposed to be 41 degrees today, but when the UPS man brought a package for Matt and I had to step outside to get it, I realized it was way warmer than 41!

Within a half an hour, everybody had shoes, socks, and jackets on and we were all outside!!

Bikes, trikes, chalk, basketball, soccer balls, bubbles- they all came out! My girls (and boy) drew over the entire driveway. I have mom, dad, Christian, Megan, Courtney, aliens, sentences, race tracks, etc.  I have a dad who stretches from the street all the way to the house and he has over 100 arms (I made Courtney count by two as she was putting them on him!).

Last fall when we were writing on the sidewalk, Courtney was just learning how to read and write. Today, she was out writing sentences like it was no big deal. It shows me that she really HAS learned something over the school year!

Because we were playing outside, we didn't get out read-aloud for school done.

Was it worth it? Totally!!!

Napoleon?

This afternoon, Megan was telling me her favorite kind of ice cream.

"Mom, do you remember when you made strawberry ice cream out of rice milk? That was better than regular ice cream.  It was even better than cookies and cream ice cream, but I think my favorite kind is french vanilla. No, it's really Napoleon."

Napoleon?? Like the leader of France in the early 1800's who sold the Louisiana Purchase to America?? Really Megan?? Don't you mean "Neopolitan?"

You know you've been studying too much history when you start naming your ice cream after it!!

Full Night's Sleep!

Last night was the first time all weekend that Christian and I got a full night's sleep.

Christian's bronchitis was terrible on Friday, so we brought his mattress into our bedroom and he slept right beside our bed. Kind of reminded me of those newborn days. :)  He was up quite a bit Friday night coughing.

Saturday he was a lot better, but I still wanted to keep an eye on him, so he slept in our bedroom again.  He was still up during the night, but only once or twice.

Yesterday he barely coughed at all, so I put his mattress back in his bedroom and he slept in there last night.  He slept all night! And so did I! Why am I so tired this morning??

A Little Mario Brothers!

One way to get my girls to clean up the house...tell them they can play Mario Brothers on the Wii for 1/2 an hour!

Seriously, you could not see the living floor or their bedroom floor and within no time, it was all cleaned up.

Who needs money to bribe children? Just some video games work for my kids!

Dessert

You know dessert was good when the pan is empty, but it is still hot from being in the oven!

Apple crisp. Yummy!!

What we have learned...

These "people" who broke into our camper are not our favorite people right now.

1.  We learned that anything INSIDE the camper is covered under household insurance.  That deductible is much higher than our camper deductible, so our TV, DVD player, air compressor, and extension cord will have to be replaced out of pocket.

2.  In addition to prying open the main door and wrecking that, these "people" first tried to get in through a window right by the bunk beds.  The window is pulled off and cracked. This means our door and the window will need to be replaced. There is our deductible.

We called around to camper dealerships this morning and the earliest we can get it in to get fixed is about a week and a half.  But since the door and the window are broke, we need to leave it indoors until then because of the elements.

 Last night when Matt saw the camper for the first time, the door was open and he couldn't get it shut.  (Dead bolt was still in position, so they pried it open). Luckily he was able to get it shut before we left last night.  Hopefully these "people" will leave it alone. Matt did take his truck out there today and pulled the jetskis out of the shed and put them somewhere else.  He also cleaned out anything else out of the camper that would be worth any value. He was tempted to just leave the door on the camper unlocked and put a sign that read, "Please go on in, don't bust the door again, and there is nothing of value left in there."

3.  We thought the couch was broken, but now Matt thinks it is fine. These "people" pulled the extension cord and air compressor out from under the couch. They tried to get Matt's big ladder out too, but failed. :)  The reason they couldn't get this out because the slide out was pulled in and the couch wouldn't open all the way for the ladder to fit out. They seemed to get the air compressor out somehow! Some of the cupboards didn't shut right last night either, but that could be because it is so cold out.

4.  Other than that, the camper is fine. Everything is scattered and ransacked, but able to be put back where it goes. Every compartment from the inside was opened. The sheets and pillows were all on the floor and there was mud on the mattress pad in the master bedroom. We also found a big 10 inch screwdriver within all these sheets that did not belong to Matt. You know, they had to put down their big screwdriver to carry our TV and DVD player out! The TV and DVD player were both in the bedroom.

Courtney was crying today when we were talking about it, she thought these men, or whoever they were, were pretty mean.  She was super sad because her movie, "Mr. Popper's Penguins" was still in the DVD player from the last time we camped.  We were always meaning to stop and get the movie, but now it is gone. :(    We will definitely have to get her a new movie! I hope they are enjoying it!!! (insert sarcasm!)

Courtney was also scared today that we would never be able to go camping again, but we told her we would get it fixed and it would be just like new.  At least we found this now and not right before a camping trip.

On the up side and the main reason we stopped to check on it last night was to see if the mice had gotten to it, but no, they hadn't. No mice holes anywhere and all the mouse poison was gone.

I am sure the saga will continue!

What a Friday!

My Friday:

Teach girls school from 9-3
 But WHILE teaching girls school, deal with bronchitis boy. (He has had this at least four times this winter.)

Have you ever had one kid coughing his lungs out on your lap while he's crying, another kid crying over her English assignment, and one waiting patiently to teach her math because she's the one you're actually supposed to be paying attention to???  Yah, it made me want to run away for the moment too.

Take girls to grandma's house for sleepover.

On way back home, stop at storage shed to check on camper and it HAS BEEN BROKEN INTO!!!!

Call 911, file police report (oh, and still dealing with bronchitis boy!), figure out what was stolen and how much damage there is to our camper. Thank you very much stupid teenagers!!

Thanks for leaving the tools you used to break into our camper and thank you for not taking as much as you could've! We can deal with a missing TV, DVD player, air compressor, and extension cord. Thank you for leaving our jetskis and tube alone, plus our new lawn chairs and tools, etc.  You worked so hard to bust into our camper and caused thousands of dollars worth of damage, you sure didn't take very much- but we are not complaining!

Drive through Walgreens to get the boy more Albuteral, pay much more than we expected (but still cheaper than a trip to Urgent Care).

Get home. Get supper. Hope to sleep tonight.

The end.

Any Friends?

I was at AWANA tonight working with the two students that showed up that were in my group. We were done with verses and these two girls were discussing spring break, which starts tomorrow and goes until Wednesday for Millard Schools.  These girls know I homeschool and they asked me when our spring break was going to be. I didn't quite know how to answer- I told them that I hadn't really planned a spring break because if I did, we would have to go to school past Memorial Day, but it would be also nice to take some time off.  I'm kind of still debating about it.

After this conversation, I started getting more questions about homeschooling.
- Do your kids have their own desks?
- How long do your kids go to school every day?
- How long do your kids get for recess? ( I let them have about 1 1/2 hours off at lunch time, this includes lunch and recess and the hour recess is mostly for me.) My students' jaws dropped, "We only get 20 minutes for recess!" Yes, I know!
- Are your kids learning as much as we are?

And then my favorite of all time- "DO YOUR KIDS HAVE ANY FRIENDS???"
I just wanted to roll my eyes!!!

Courtney's prayer

Do you think she's heard about Jesus, the cross, and grace quite a bit in her life???

Part of Courtney's prayer tonight:

"Dear Jesus....thank you for dying on the cross for us, even though we don't deserve it....."

A little humbling when your 6 year old is thanking God for dying on the cross for HER! And even aknowledging the grace he gives us! Wow!

PS For AWANA tomorrow night, she has to say the books of the Old Testament and she's almost there! It has really helped that Megan said it so many times that Courtney's knows all but the last 10 or so!

No school today...for public/ private schools!

School got cancelled today for the private and public schools around town. I could've guessed it and I'm not sure why they just didn't call it off last night.  The streets are slick, snow is 9 inches deep, and nobody has had a chance to get out and clean off sidewalks and driveways- unless you count my neighbor who was out there at 10:00 last night.

Our kids are still going to have school!

Now who is going to get out of school first, us or them? As of now it looks like we are going to be done right before Memorial Day. It looks like Millard will be going three days past Memorial Day- they are adding days onto the school year now as make up snow days. Reminds me of Megan's kindergarten year!

What happened to spring and our 50 degree weather? Oh yah, it will be back on Thursday!

Clean...and then dirty!

Why is it that whenever I get the kitchen spotless, I feel the need to bake something??

Like today, I had all the dishes washed, all the counters cleaned off, and everything put away.

Then I made some tortilla chips (a new recipe that I can't eat), Megan made banana bread, and I made banana muffins for us allergic people.

Now my kitchen is a mess again! Why do I do this?? Why can't I just let it be clean for at least an hour??

The very crowded zoo!

Note to self:

Do not...

1. Go to the zoo on the very first nice day after a very long winter.
2. Go to the zoo when a major school district is out!!

I exited the interstate yesterday on the way to the zoo and I saw cars parked along 13th street by where Rosenblatt Stadium stood. I then assumed that these people were going to the zoo, I could hardly believe it- I have never seen cars parked out there!

After searching for a parking spot for awhile, I eventually found one (not way out by 13th street though) and headed into the zoo. Talk about a zoo!!! It was crazy! When we checked in, the cashier said they were up to 3,000 people already!

We bought some IMAX tickets and headed over the desert dome. Again, there were always people around and we always seemed to be in the way of someone with the wagon.  We then headed to the cat complex to see the new baby lion cubs, Megan got a first row advantage point, but I was too busy trying to keep track of Christian. He kept sneaking out of the wagon and wondering off! Luckily he never wondered too far, but it was concerning because there were so many people there.

Our next stop was the aquarium, but here, Christian was not the problem, but Courtney and her friend! These two are really "two peas in a pond" and are hilarious together. They would get into their own little world and not keep up with the moms.  I had to take ten steps back multiple times to tell them to come along!

After watching an IMAX at four, we got to sit down in a very full theatre and enjoy a dinosaur movie. 

After that, it seemed like the zoo emptied out! Yes, just like I like it! Our friends left and we headed down to see the giraffes.  Courtney and I have had this discussion lately about whether giraffes are yellow our orange, so we wanted to see who was right. Neither one of us was right, they were white! (I think because they were articulated giraffes.)

We stopped for supper at King Kong and then headed over the Rose Theatre to watch "George and Martha." What a great show!

Now is is Saturday and we get to be lazy!!!

Monster trucks

I must not know the difference between a tow truck and a monster truck. :)

Christian always brings a handful of cars into my room every morning and today it was Towmater from Cars and two other hothwheel cars.  I thought he said, "Towmater goes on cars," so I took Towmater and drove over the other two cars. He said, "No, monster trucks go over cars!"  Oh, I see- I must not have known that!

Right now!

Have you seen my house lately?? Let's just say the dirty clothes from church last Sunday are still in the hamper? Oh and the kitchen, I can't find an empty spot on my counters if I tried!

Hopefully I have happy kids because I have been teaching them all week!!!

And guess what I will be doing this weekend. :)

Heading to the zoo today!

We are not going to let 53 degrees pass by without enjoying it!

We worked hard this week and after finishing a few things up this morning, we are heading off to the zoo with some friends. My kids can't wait to see the lion pups again!

Plus they have a new IMAX on Lewis and Clark- guess who we are going to be studying for the next four weeks in history? You guessed it, Lewis and Clark!

Come on spring!

MATH CLASS!

I would like to take the time to THANK Horizons math for putting my 3rd grader into tears again during math class!!

We are switching to Saxon next year!

No more:
1. Giving no explanations for a brand new concept
2. Giving no examples for a brand new concept
3.  Teaching a shortcut first and then a couple lessons later, you teach how to REALLY do the problem
4. Mommy trying to teach this concept and after many attemps, still failing on getting the idea across to the 3rd grader.  Hence, my child is in tears!

I am actually borrowing a 4th grade Saxon mathbook from a friend, so I pulled that out and opened it up to the concept that we were learning and taught her from there!

I might just find myself a 4th grade Saxon mathbook, so I can have it around and use it if I need to! They have very clear explanations and examples...what a sigh of relief.

I think it's funny that Horizons math is teaching many concepts in 3rd grade that 4th graders are learning in Saxon math.  Megan is also learning some concepts that 5th graders learn in Saxon.

I think it is a good decision to switch Megan now. Saxon is very well-known for it's homeschool math program and if we decide to homeschool all the way through high school, the curriculum goes all the way to Calculus. 

Proud of the Girls!

Each girl did something this week that they worked extra hard on and made Matt and I proud!

1.  Megan had gotten a paint-by-number a couple of weeks ago and it was HARD! It was a picture of a horse and a foal and there were little spaces to paint and big spaces and you had to combine paints and everything! She finished it this week and it looks great! I think she spent 5-6 hours on it.  I gave her some time during school to finish it because I wanted her to perservere and she did! I knew if I didn't give her time, it would never get done.  Even the last day she worked on it, she said, "Mom, I'm just going to stop here and finish it tomorrow." I encouraged her to finish it and she did!

2.  Courtney memorized Psalm 23:1-6.  This is a lot for a kindergartener, but after quite a lot of time dedicated to these verses, she got it!! (And I have it completely memorized too!)

This section is part of her first grade Sparky book for AWANA.  Another challenge she has coming up is to memorize all the books of the Old Testament.  I think this is funny because she only has trouble with the last 10 or so. She has heard Megan say them so many times that she already has the entire song memorized! I haven't worked with her once on her Old Testament books.

We are going to perservere and try to finish her first grade Sparky book in the next six weeks.

New Foods!

I thought I would post something not about my children or school for once.:)

Since three of us in my family are on this "crazy, we can't eat anything" diet, I am always on a search to try some new foods. Now that I am feeling better and have some energy again, I feel a little ambitious sometimes.

Because of this, I told Megan that we were going to try a new thing every week.  One day, we were at the grocery store and I told her to find one thing in the produce section that we have never bought. We ended up buying fresh green beans.  I have always bought canned and about 6 months ago, I started buying frozen, but fresh? I have not bought them once! So we got some and we love them!  Somewhere in my childhood I remember eating fresh green beans because the taste came back to me, but I thought they were great and so did Megan!  I think they are on our grocery list every time now!

That same day, I also bought grapefruit. Again, I never bought it and have never tried it. I didn't think it was so good and nobody else did either, so we will probably not do that again, unless someone can tell us how to make it taste better.

Along with new foods, I am trying to get away from the colored dyes in foods. Our only downfall is cereal.  Since we are off all wheat-based cereals, there are very few we can buy for Christian, Courtney, and I.  One cereal that my kids love and is filled with dyes is Captain Crunch (the store brand.) At this moment there are about 8 boxes of cereal in my pantry and none have food dyes in them. Guess what Megan said this morning? "There's nothing to eat!"  (She can have wheat, so I guess I could buy some cereal specifically for her.)

The other day, I tried a new flour recipe.  Oat flour doesn't work for everything, especially banan bread, so I wanted to find an alternative. I have a gluten-free cookbook and it had a flour recipe in it. You combine rice flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, and sorghum flour. It was also supposed to have coconut flour, but that stuff is expensive! I combined all these and made muffins the other day, they were pretty good, but not "great" yet.

One thing we do use oat flour in is cookies. I just take a regular chocolate cookie recipe and replace everything with what we can have.  wheat flour = oat flour, eggs= egg replacement, dairy butter= non-dairy butter, milk chocolate chips= real chocolate chips.  I make these quite a bit and they are always kind of dry and they are crunchy, somebody the other day mentioned that I should add applesauce to put some more moisture in them.  I should try that!  I really think the best thing about these cookies is that since they don't have real eggs in them, I don't feel bad about eating the cookie dough!

Yesterday, I tried out another new recipe.  I have seen "banana ice cream" around and I had about 3 batches on bananas that were starting to turn brown, so I searched around and found a recipe.  After reading a couple, I came up with my own. I put as many bananas as I wanted in the blender, added some lemon juice, added quite a bit of rice milk and I blended this all together.  (I froze the bananas first, but that made it worse.)  After I had this mixture, I put it in a bowl and put it in the freezer.  Tada, banana ice cream!

I have also noticed that we have some tortillas in the fridge that nobody is eating. I found a recipe where you can fry cut-up tortillas and then you dip them in sugar and cinnamon and make chips.  Sounds good, right? I was going to try these sometime, but only Matt and Megan can eat them.

Our new sloppy joes recipe is also a big hit, I use ketchup or BBQ sauce as the base instead of tomato soup.  Yummy! (Then I take corn chips and use the sloppy joes as dip since I can't eat bread).

Rice krispies are always good too! And I saw some new popsicles at Sam's this week, the first four ingredients are berries, sugar isn't until #5! I bought those right up!

Another Week

It seems like I want to start counting down until the end of school. I think we are on week 24, 12 to go!  I see spring is right around the corner and that means beautiful weather and being outside. It also means summer time is coming and vacation time.

But because I am a law-abiding citizen and there is a law that kids must go to school, we will keep plugging away!! This week we are going to be studying energy and force in science. We are going to go around the house today and find examples of kinetic and potential energy. We will try to keep it pretty simple! Tomorrow we learn about force, these topics are a lot different than mammals and reptiles!

We are also still plugging away on our AWANA verses. There are six weeks left and Courtney is convinced she is going to finish the first grade book. (She already finished the kindergarten book and since they are not having AWANA next year at our church, they are letting them do the next books too, if they want.)  Courtney is currently memorizing Psalm 23, she has to learn Psalm 23:1-6 this week. She did the first 3 verses last week, so she is halfway done. It is amazing what these kids can learn.  Megan is working on her T & T book and she will get it done, hers is a bit harder and longer to get through.

We are still getting through our English, math, handwriting, history, reading, phonics, and read aloud on a daily basis.  Courtney's reading ability has astonished me lately and Megan's love of history is pretty cool too!

Peace!

Since we don't have school today, I am purposefully letting the kids sleep in.

Not for their enjoyment, but for mine. Can you hear the silence in my house???

I love them dearly, but the silence is refreshing. :)