Lawn Mowing!

I give piano lesson every Tuesday night and Matt is responsible for the kids during the half hour.

Tonight as I was giving piano lessons I heard him start the mower.  Now this is usually fine, but who is watching the kids?? He cannot hear anything over the mower and doesn't usually watch them during this time.

Megan was inside listening to lessons and I sent her outside to find Christian. She went and I didn't hear anything from them.

After lessons was over, I saw why they were being so good and how Matt was able to mow while he was responsible for the kids. They were all playing in the van!

That is a great way to keep them occupied!!  Do you know how much fun it is to play in the cars? Our kids love it! Great idea!

My floors!

My kitchen floor has been extremely messy lately and I couldn't figure out why.

I did today.  Dell used to keep it clean! She would clean up all the food that fell on the floor and anything else that tasted good.

Now I have to clean up all the fallen crumbs and anything else that is on the floor.

Ugh!

Satellites in space

Have you ever wondered how many different satellites are orbiting our earth right now??
I didn't until tonight!

We are going to be learning about satellite and space probes tomorrow!

http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112188/satellites.htm

1.  Communication
http://www.siriusxm.com/whatissiriusxm

2.  Resource
https://maps.google.com/

3.  Navigation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

4.  Scientific
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope

5.  Weather satellites
http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive/USNE0363:1

6.  Military
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_satellite

Summer Clothes

It's that time of year again. Time when it gets a little warmer and all the sudden my children have "nothing to wear!"

I thought I would solve the problem before it even started, so I went into the attic today and pulled out the containers of their summer clothes.  Matt put an attic door from our bedroom into the attic about a year ago, so it is super easy to get these containers out now!

Three boxes for the girls- Sizes 8-10, 7, and 6

One box for the boy- "clothes to grow into"  I will also need to dig out the 24 month/ 2T box to put all his  winter clothes away.

Do you knowwhat half the fun is when I get these containers out? Going through the clothes and trying everything on again!

My girls definitely went through their clothes, they didn't try so much on, but my room has turned into a disaster zone!

I have rubbermaid containers everywhere, clothes strewn across my bed, etc.  Add this to four baskets of clean laundry that need to be put away plus all the other "stuff" on my floor.

I really wish I had time to deal with the mess. Seriously, I don't think we can see my bedroom floor tonight and I have a lot of floor space!

I know this mess will not wait four weeks until school is out, but it will have to wait until the weekend.

(wait, we're busy all weekend again! Yikes!)

Cleaning fairy anyone??

ISS

We are studying the International Space Station tomorrow as we continue our study of astronomy.

http://www.esa.int/esaKIDSen/SEMZXJWJD1E_LifeinSpace_0.html

http://iss.jaxa.jp/kids/en/station/01.html

http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=the+international+space+station+for+kids

Break for mommy!

Right now I am hiding out in my office. Yes, I am. I need a break from my children.

Wednesdays are always harder than usual.

We have a class at the homeschool learning center at 12, so we have school from 9-11 am, then we eat lunch and go to class. After class, we usually go to the library, so we don't get home until around 2 pm.

Since we only had school for about two hours in the morning, we have to finish school after we get home.

Do you know how hard it is to get three kids back on track after being off for about three hours??

It's like pulling teeth sometimes.

Today was the same. I have found that the later in the afternoon we have school, the harder it is to keep them focused.  Megan has her lessons first in the day, so we only two subjects left to do with her when we got home. I then had to go over Courtney's lessons.

And it's not usually my girls who are the problem, it's my two year old son who is usually getting tired and cranky by this time in the afternoon.  All he wants at this time to sit on my lap or get into things he is not supposed to get into, but all I want is for him to go play by himself so I can finish teaching.  This usually ends up with lots of interruptions (either from him or me stopping teaching to discipline him), lots of time outs, and lots of crying, and lots of waiting on Courtney's part.

This is what happened today.  Ugh. I just wanted to teach Courtney!!

Hence, the reason I am hiding out!

Space Suits

http://sln.org/pieces/hiley/history.htm

http://www.spacekids.co.uk/spacesuits/

We are talking about space suits tomorrow, we are going to look at these websites and then the kids are going to design their own spacesuits.

We will see how that goes!

Space ships

We are going to watch space ships as they launch into space tomorrow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnoNITE-CLc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FROxZ5i67k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s9r9Y9uWTI

And who can forget the Challenger distaster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s9r9Y9uWTI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWnV1V5tYUw

Christian is sick...again

This is the winter of the "never-ending cold turns into bronchitis every 3 weeks." Christian has been sick almost non-stop for the last six months.

We don't put away his vaporizer. albuteral, or advil anymore, it happens so often.

I'm getting tired of dealing with this, so I am taking him to the doctor today and we are going to get him tested for food allergies. (Like literally tired, he didn't get to sleep until 3 am Saturday night!)

He has been off a lot of foods because of his GI problems, but I never had him tested. I am going to today.

The theory is that he has such a low immune system because his body has been busy fighting off bad foods.  We are going to start there. 

It's funny because he's always had a low immune system from day one.  He has had reactions to two shots (flu and chicken pox) and has just been sickly.  Maybe we can get some answers today.

Sunday Night!

It's Sunday night again and that means I hang out in my office and work on lesson plans for the week.
We are on week 31, which means 5 more weeks of school!!!

We are starting a new unt in science this week- astronomy!! I have looked forward to this all year!

Tomorrow we are going to learn some basic definitions of space words and we are going to learn about some important astronomers.

http://www.astronomy-for-kids-online.com/nicolaus-copernicus-biography.html

http://www.astronomy-for-kids-online.com/galileo-galilei-biography.html

http://www.astronomy-for-kids-online.com/johannes-kepler-biography.html

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/scientists/johanneskepler.html

She's back!

Matt went over to the vet today and picked up Dell's ashes. She is now back home again, in a pretty wooden box on the mantel.

We are not quite sure what we are going to do with them yet. We have talked about a variety of things- burying them, throwing them across the yard, etc- but we haven't settled on one yet.

Until then, I guess she will just hang out on the mantel!

Christian is so cute, when you ask him, "What happened to Dell?" He will reply, "She died," in a sad sort of tone.  He probably won't even remember her when he gets older.

Life is getting back to normal.

The week is coming to an end.

We had a really sad day on Monday, but we are all getting used to Dell not being here.

It is very wierd. 

Every time I come in the door from the garage, I want to say, "Dell! Where are you?" and then watch her come over to us.  Or yesterday I heard someone trying to get in our front door (it was Courtney) and Dell was not going crazy!  The trash men came by yesterday and nobody was there to bark at them!

It is wierd not letting a dog outside at night or letting her out in the morning. I just want to open the back door in the morning anyway!

It is wierd not tripping over all rugs that she has put in a pile to use as a pillow.  I can put my bathroom rugs back now! She would sleep in the bathroom and every morning they were a mess, so I just picked them up because I was tired of fixing them!

It is wierd knowing that we can be out as long as we want and not worry about getting home to let Dell out.  We can take a long vacation that we have been talking about doing. We were thinking about being gone for longer than a week and Matt really didn't want to take Dell along and I really didn't want to kennel her, so we hadn't made any plans. Maybe we can make plans now!

It is just very quiet around here.

This was one of her favorite places to lay - underneath the desk in the kitchen.
Septenber 2012

.
Megan watned me to post this one! It is Megan when she was 3 days old and Dell. November 2003

Dell Pictures!

Dell, September 2002. Matt had just cut the grass and she had been out there and her white paws had turned green!

We used to tie her up to the patio door and she would relax on a shelf in our kitchen. This is in our old house.  September 2002

We used to flip her ears back because we thought it was cute! How different she looks without her big tumor underneath her front shoulder. November 2002

Vet's final thoughts

I called our veterinarian yesterday to get her final thoughts on Dell.  When Matt came home Monday, he had said that our vet said Dell's eyes were really yellow and that she had something going on with her liver.  After he said that, I remember seeing Dell's skin had a yellow-tinge to it too in some places. I just wanted to talk with our vet about it.

Her final conclusion was that Dell had lymphoma. The cancer had started in her lymph nodes and then spread to her liver and probably other parts of her body.  Matt and I thought that it had something to do with the spot on her neck that we had been treating for the last couple of years, but our vet thought that her cancer had nothing to do with the spot on her neck. It was her lymph nodes in her neck that were so enlarged!  (And you could tell by just looking at her this last week how big they were!)

The vet said that when Matt brought her in that not only was her eyes yellow, but her entire skin was yellow too.  Dell also had some swelling in her leg.  I asked her if she could tell if her tumors were any bigger and she thought they were because there were probably lumph nodes underneath them.  Plus Dell was losing weight, so the tumors looked bigger because she was getting skinnier. Speaking of weight, Dell had lost 10 pounds in two weeks. 

She said this is very typical of lymphoma.  It is a very aggressive form of cancer and within about two weeks, the dogs need to be put down. Dogs quit eating and go downhill very quicly. Even though we had Dell in a month ago, she said there was no way they could've detected it beforehand, not even if we would have done her senior wellness profile that we declined.  She said there was nothing they could do, so we made the right decision by putting her down. (She said we could have done 19 weeks of chemotherapy for the cancer, but that would've maybe added a year to her life.)

After Dell had passed and Matt had left, she said that her and the other veterinarian examined Dell a little bit closer.  She felt her liver and said that it was very hard and irregular, this was another sign that she had cancer in her liver.  She thought that maybe it had spread elsewhere, but they didn't know exactly.  She said she could've taken a sample, but always likes the owners permission first.  I kind of wanted her to!

Because Dell was just in a month ago and quit eating two weeks ago, we have almost a full bottle of proin (we gave this to her for urinary incontinence).  They could not buy the medicine back, but we could donate it to some one who needs it.  We also have about half a bag of dogfood that we can donate to the Humane Society. 

School again.

Tomorrow is our last day on "how things work" and the pages we are reading are over submersibles and submarines.

http://www.myschoolhouse.com/courses/O/1/109.asp

Next week we start on astronomy!!

Dell

We put Dell down today.

She was born July 27, 2002 and died April 15, 2013.

We are all a very sad bunch.

She had not eaten for about two weeks, she was throwing up about every day, her eyes were not looking right, and she was losing weight. Her lump in her throat had also grown quite a bit in the last month.

I called the vet this morning and talked to her about it and she said, "It is time, unless you want to do a bunch of testing and spend quite a bit of money, but in the end, we may still not know what is going on. Honestly, it sounds like she has cancer."

Matt and I thought it was time too. I made an appointment for 5 pm. This was at 8:15 this morning.

To avoid crying all day, we got right to school.  I thought about taking the day off of school, but then I thought, what else would we do? Sit around and cry all day? At least with school, we could take our mind off of what was going to happen at 5 pm.

We finished school about 3 and Matt got home from work about 3:30. We spent the next hour as a family crying and sharing memories of Dell.  She didn't want to be around us at all! I think she knew her time was coming and while we were making a big deal out of her, she was hanging out outside!

About 4:30, Matt thought it was time to head out. We all gave her a last hug good bye and followed Matt to the truck and watched him drive off. We all continued to cry!!!

It was nice out, so I thought some fresh air would help us all. I forced the kids to get their shoes and socks on and get outside and they did! We played, rode bikes, walked, and then we all felt better.  Eventually we ended up back inside playing Mario on the Wii. The kids were laughing and being themselves again.

Matt soon came home and said he never wanted to do that again! He said it was one of the saddest things he had ever done in his life!  I told the girls to give dad a few extra hugs because he had the hardest part of all of this!

We ended up going out to eat to drown out our sorrows and now it is time to go to bed.  This is the first time in almost 11 years that Dell has not been in our house overnight. 

It will definitely take some time to get used to her being gone.  We can clean our carpets good now and not worry about her throwing up on them again. We can clean up the dog food that is all over our house in all our attempts to get her to eat.  We can scrub the bathroom floor from her throwing up every night for the last week. 

It is really a transition time for us.  Matt will need to fix the doorbell now since Dell will not be around to alert me when somebody is at the door. I don't have anybody to tell me the UPS, FEDEX, mailman, trashman, snowplow or any other loud vehicle is going by our house. I will no longer need to ask Matt at night, "Did you let Dell out? Did you let her back in?"  We don't need to remind Megan to feed Dell. 

I will also have nobody to chase the birds out of the backyard before we can go out there. If you would mention the word "outside," she thought she had to be the first one out. She would knock a kid out of the way to get out there first! I can picture her at the door, fighting with one of the kids to get outside first. While outside, she would always sit under the slide and chew on sticks while we played on the swingset.  She would also bark anytime somebody was on the slide- it was so annoying! So tonight after Matt had left, Courtney was on the slide and I pretended I was Dell. It made her cry! No more picking up dog poop or being scared you are going to step on some. No more worrying that she is going to wonder out of the yard and we won't find her again.

We had just had her at the vet a month ago (the vet remembered us) and gotten her all her shots and her pet license.  Her lump on her throat was not there at that time. Today, she was down 10 pounds from a month ago when she was in there.  We have an almost full bottle of proin and about 20 pounds of dog food left.

Matt said that the vet did a quick exam on her today and noticed that her eyes were yellow, this is a sign that her liver was not functioning well.  She also thought that she had cancer somewhere because her lump had grown so much in the last month. We wanted to know that this was the right decision to make and we think it was.  It was not fun at all, but we knew it was right for her. We didn't see her getting any better and the vet didn't think so either.

Megan and I really wanted to bury her somewhere, but we ended up cremating her and we will go back in a couple of days to get her ashes. We will probably bury them in the backyard, where she loved to be!!!

Poor Dell :(

It's not looking good for Dell...

In addition to her cantaloupe size fat-tumor under her left shoulder and her golf ball size blood-tumor on her chest, she has now developed a lump on her throat. We have actually been fighting this for a couple of years, but lately, it has grown and grown fast. In the past, the vet has always thought it was connected to a drain line from somewhere else in her body. Now it is about the size of a ping pong ball.

She has stopped eating (but still drinking), she has been throwing up at least every other day and now she is throwing up every night, she is losing weight, she is getting more lethargic, her eyes are getting really goopy and she's squinting. She is just not being herself.

It's kind of sad for us all. :(

Gang at the Zoo last week!

We had a chance last week to go to the zoo with some of our friends that attend public school. It was a great day together and I thought I would post some of my favorite pictures!!

Here was the whole gang! 9 kids!! (We are missing one little boy in the picture.)

 

First stop- the Aquarium! Gotta love those jellyfish! (And the penguins of course!)

 

Some of the kids ON the zoo map!! Yes, one of those is mine!

 

Hanging out on some mammoth bones!

 

Feeding the goats hay! I wish I had sound along with the picture, these boys thought it was hilarious!

 



 

Megan and her friend posing on the cat!

Just a super cute picture of Christian! 

 

The best part of the day was that these three girls pushed/ pulled the wagon up one of the huge hills at the zoo! They thought it was great and so did I!!

New Day!

It wasn't only me, but quite a few people I know had "bad" days yesterday.  Like not just crabby bad, but bad things happened to them.

I don't know if something was in the air or what, but I really hope today is much better!

I am reminded of the Christian song that is played on the radio all the time.

"He gives new mercy's to me every day, your love never fails!"

Hail!!

Wow, did everybody see the hail storm in Omaha last night?? It was obnoxiously loud and crazy!

The bad part is it damaged our camper. The same camper that we just got back from the shop because it had been broken into.  We no longer have it in indoor storage, but now it is stored in an outside storage facility about six blocks from our house.

As of last night, we now have dents on our siding, two broken skylights in the bathroom, outside lights broke, and our tire cover on the back is all dented up!

So we called insurance.  Another $500 deductible.  Matt wasn't sure if we had that much in damage, but he wanted to see what they would say.

They said that if we filed another claim, our rates might go up.

Matt is not worried about the dents in the siding, but everything else needs to be fixed and he thinks he could easily do some of it himself.  He said he might just call around tomorrow and get prices.  He thinks everything will be pretty easy to fix except the skylights, especially one of them in the bathroom. 

This poor camper!!

Airplanes.

Again, I'm finding webpages to use for science class tomorrow. We are learning how planes work, but why don't we dig a little bit deeper and learn about Amelia Earhart and the Wright brothers??

http://acepilots.com/earhart.html

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/wrightbrothers1.htm

My girls :)

Today I ate something (some marshmallows) after lunch and of course my blood sugar plummeted. I felt like doing nothing else, but laying down and taking a nap for about 20 minutes.

We were technically supposed to be getting back to school, but this comes first. Sorry girls. I don't function well when I can't keep my eyes open. :( 

So I saw a pillow on the floor and laid down. Before I knew it, I had two girls pampering me! They were rubbing my back, singing to me, reading me books, encouraging me to sleep, covering me up with a blanket, etc. They also encouraged me not to look at the clock.

Do you know what these two children of mine were up to??

They wanted me to keep sleeping so they didn't have to go back to school!!!

Still sick..

We had plans to go to small group this afternoon from 4-6.

We noticed Christian getting hotter and more lethargic as the afternoon went on.

I took his temperature at 3:30, it was 101.3. (We should add a degree because it was in his armpit, so really 102.3)

Cancel our plans- AGAIN!!

Saturday

I don't know why, but Saturday is becoming a favorite day of the week for me.

We don't have any school to do.
We usually go out with friends.
I do not like to make any commitments to anything before 3 pm.
The kids can play.
Matt doesn't have to work.
I usually get a lot of housework done.

I wish I could do something different on Saturday, but this is just how it is working out lately. I kind of like cleaning all day because it gives me a sense of accomplishment that I don't get during the week!

And there was plenty to be done today- I got 3 loads of dishes through the dishwasher plus I handwashed two sinkfuls.

I am on my 3rd load of laundry. The amazing part of laundry is that I had at least two basketfuls in my room that needed to be put away. Mission accomplished.

We thought we were going to have friends over tonight, so I got all our Easter stuff put away, the rooms cleaned and vacuumed!  Then Christian decided to come down with a 102.6 temp and plans had to be cancelled. :(

I got banana muffins make for Christian. Rice Krispies were the next thing on my list until we cancelled our evening plans. I made some yummy tacos for dinner and now we have plenty of time to get showers done and get the kids to bed.

On a side note- I got a package in the mail today of Courtney's English for next year.  I am very tempted to start it, but I need to put it on the shelf until next year.  I also saw her math book and her math teacher's manual on ebay for super cheap, so hopefully I can get those bought in the next couple of days.

Exhasuted!

I'm not used to playing so much. :) I am exhausted from the last two days!

Honestly, half of my exhaustion is from playing and the other half is from the allergies I developed while being outside so much these last two days!

Thursday
9 am to 12 pm School at the Ruwe house.
 1:00 Tour Wildlife Safari with two other families. Stop and play at playground for about an hour before it was time to head to dance class.
4:15 Megan's dance class
5:15 stop at Target for a few errands. (We wanted to make spaghetti for supper and I picked up some tomato sauce. When I went to check out, I realized it had garlic in it! That ruined that idea!!)
Matt is gone in the evening, so it is up to me to feed children, make them shower, and get them to bed. Plus start to sniff, blow nose, sore throat- I love allergies!

Friday
10 am Arrive at Zoo! Walk around all day, watch IMAX, take pictures, see lots of cute animals, chased Christian all over! We left at 4 pm!
Stop at bookstore on way home to look at homeschooling books.
5:15 Arrive home, make supper quick.
6:00 Depart to head back downtown to a play at the Rose Theatre
8:30 Arrive back home and crash. Christian fell asleep in the car, so he went right to bed- clothes and all!  The girls stayed up a watched a movie with dad, so I went to bed. This never happens.
Allergies still bothing me.

2:30 am Wake up for no good reason. :(
4:15 am Still trying to get back to sleep and I heard Christian say, "I need to go potty." So I get up and take the little boy potty.
Back to bed and back to sleep.
7:15 am My little man decides to visit me to tell me he is up for the day.
I think he woke himself up by coughing, he is also suffering with alleriges.

Plan for the day- clean the house! It's funny how I don't do much during the week and then it's super- bad on Saturday. Dishes, countertops, laundry, floors, they are just a mess. Plus we still have to get all the Easter stuff put away. We are having friends over tonight, so it is a good excuse to clean it all up, but I would rather sleep all day! These allergies are really wearing me down. I haven't had seasonal allergies in years!

Do you think if I just hid out in my room all day and magic fairy would come and do everything for me??

Time to Play!

We have some public school friends who are on spring break this week and asked us to do some fun things with them today and tomorrow.

We got done with school today by noon, so we joined them. (ok, so the girls have to finish their homework yet, but all the teaching is done!)

We are all done with school for the week, so we are going to join them again tomorrow!

Yay for a 3 1/2 day weekend!

I love homeschooling!!!

Random Thoughts

1.  We have two official bike-riders in our house. Matt worked with Courtney quite a bit last fall on riding her bike and now she's doing awesome! She can get started and stopped all by herself and does great. I am not even scared to watch her like I was with Megan! (That is probably because she ran into a stop sign at one point!)

I'm so glad we can get outside lately and practice our bike-riding skills! Especially around lunch time when there are NO cars going by our house!

2.  Courtney finished her 2nd Sparks book of the year today.  She has learned her last two verses for AWANA tomorrow night AND she is even ready to review her entire book! She can say the Old and New Testament books of the Bible plus Psalm 23:1-6. These were her biggest challenges this year and she says them flawlessly.

Megan also finished her 3rd grade book.  It was quite a challenge in itself, but I am very proud that she is finishing it as AWANA is coming to an end. (Literally, they are not doing AWANA at our church next year.)

3.  Note to self- never buy store brand dish detergent again. Ugh!

4. I should really just let Matt take over science lately! Monday he took apart an old phone we had so we could see the different parts, last night he spent time trying to explain to me how a refrigerator works, so I could then explain it to the girls this morning, and tomorrow, we are supposed to learn about engines! Seriously!

Next week our topics are diggers and tractors, trains, and planes! 

In a couple of weeks, we are going to be on astronomy, now that sounds interesting!!

5.  You know you plan on homeschooling again when you start buying next year's curriculum off of ebay in April!

Fridge and Microwave

These are our topics for science tomorrow.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/features/science/innovations/great-inventions/the-refrigerator.html

http://www.ehow.com/info_8031806_microwaves-work.html

Next school year

Just like any other school, I am already getting things ready for school for next fall!
(I guess we're homeschooling again!!

Things have worked out really well for us this year and I am going to be using almost the identical curriculum next year.

1.  Language Arts
I am going to be using Rod and Staff English with Courtney next year (2nd grade) and I think we are going to be using Spelling Workout B for her too. We will also continue to work out of her 1st grade Rod and Staff Phonics book, we should finish this about Christmas. Then we will start the 2nd grade Phonics program.  I may also pull out the Sonlight Grade 1 Language Arts. I started her on this last fall, but it was too hard, so I may try it again.

Megan will continue onto 4th grade Rod and Staff English and continue in her Spelling Workout Book, we didn't start this until after Christmas this year, so we are only on lesson 12 or so! We will also use Sonlight Language Arts, they have great writing assignments and I already have the program, so we will use it.

2.  Math
I am going to switch Megan to Saxon math 54 next year and Courtney is going to do Horizons math for 1st grade.

3. Science
I am going to continue to use Sonlight Science. We did the kindergarten curriculum this year (which really seemed like a 2nd or 3rd grade curriculum), so we are going to move up to the 1st grade curriculum next year.

4.  History
Megan is going to do Sonlight Core E next year, this is the 2nd half of American history. We are going to study up until 1850 this year in Core D, so we want to finish!

I may have to change things around the following year (Courtney 2nd and Megan 5th), but we will see.

5.  Bible
We will continue to work through our Bob Jones 3rd grade Bible Curriculum for both girls. We are not even half done with it, so it should last us all next year too. We will also be doing our program at church, so Bible is covered a couple of times. :)

This is where we stand unless I change my mind...