Last day in my 30's!

Another decade has come to an end. I officially turn 40 years old tomorrow. 

I should probably make a bigger deal about this all, but I am not. I am not one who likes the center of attention. I would rather this day would just come and go like any other. (That's probably wrong of me to say that!)

People have offered to do things for me tomorrow and it has been hard for me to say "yes." I am not used to deciding what "I" get to do. I eventually came around because I don't want to regret anything. I also don't want to take this opportunity away from people who want to do something nice for me on my birthday. Why shouldn't I let them? Seriously?? Somebody do something for me once? Why am I not jumping on the chance?? I would be crazy not to!

Then there are my children who say things like  "Come on, mom, you're turning FORTY!! That's a BIG deal!" (These are also the same children who want me to leave tomorrow for awhile because they are plotting something. I am not sure what, but I figure I will just let them do their plotting!)

I have heard this many times this week. "Come on, mom. You are turning FORTY. It's a BIG deal!!"

Thanks, children. Thanks a lot!

Trying something new!

After homeschooling for six years, it is hard to break some habits. One habit I have developed over the years is sitting down with the kids when it is their time and going over their previous assignment, fixing everything until it is 100%, putting a star on their paper, and going over the next assignment.  This has worked great for many years. I can go over with them what they did wrong and make sure they understood everything. As much as I would love to continue doing this with each one of them with each assignment, I am just running out of time in my day.

Matt and I talked one night how I could manage to get through more schoolwork in a day. I said one solution would be to start correcting papers outside of class. Sometimes it doesn't take long to correct papers in class, but other days it takes awhile. If I could correct them at night and then hand it back to the kids to go correct on their own, it might save me some time. He says this is what teachers at a public school would do. I said, "Yes, they would, but then the students just throw their papers away after they see their grade and don't learn from their mistakes." I really want the kids to correct their mistakes. Matt says I should give it back to them and they need to try again. If they are still having trouble, then I can sit down with them and help, but he thinks this should be done outside of class time.

Matt also wants me to start giving them grades. He said this is something that they should probably get used to. The only grades I would previous give them was on tests, which we only had in spelling, English, and math. He wants me to give daily grades.  I found an online gradebook and just set it up for both girls for math and English. I thought we would start there!

Let's see if we can teach this old dog new tricks. :)

Not a fun day!!

Before I got braces, I knew I had three cavities that were located in my front top teeth. I cringed when I found this one. I had one there a few years ago and I still remember getting it fixed. Those top teeth are SOOO sensitive! I did not want to do it again! But now I had three! UGH!

Since they were discovered before I had braces, my dentist recommended me getting braces and moving my teeth a little bit. If not, he would have to drill through the front of my teeth to get to them and then everybody could see my lovely cavities for the rest of my life. (They would fill them in white, but he said they still stain pretty easily and you can never match color 100%).  He recommended that I get braces, move my teeth, and then he could go in through the back of my teeth and nobody would ever know!

Now that I have had my braces awhile, I figured now was as good as time as ever to get them fixed. But it was such a hassle! First, I had to go to my orthodontist and have him take off my rubber bands and wires. Then I had to go to my dentist and have the cavities filled. Finally, I had to go back to my orthodontist and have them put my rubber bands and wires back on. Making these appointments was very challenging, but I made it work!

My first orthodontist appointment was at 10:20 am and I had to be at my dentist by 11:20 am. I had my cavities filled by 1 pm, and I needed to be back at the orthodontist by 2 to get my wires put back on.  My mouth was not back to normal until about 4 pm.  It was really an all day ordeal!! My kids were thrilled that they got out of school all day!

On the bright side, my dentist said my orthodontist is doing a great job with my teeth. He says they have rounded out quite well and look so much better!  I get my bottom brackets on in two weeks, and I am anxious to see how those will straighten out!

Hopefully this is the end of cavities! They are NO fun! ( They are no fun to get fixed AND to pay for!!)

You going to take a nap?

Micah is all over the place when it comes to his naps. Most of the time, he needs one. It just depends on when he gets tired. Last week, he was in bed one morning by 10 am. Sometimes he is not tired until 3:30 pm. There has been days when he has gone all day without a nap and has been asleep by 8:00 pm for the night.  He has never been on a consistent nap schedule, and I am sure he will never be at this point!  (As you can tell, I don't schedule my life around his naps like I did the other three children!)

Yesterday we were home all day. Matt has surgery in two weeks, so he is still restricted on what he can do.  I got some cleaning done yesterday, and we just relaxed. Courtney and Matt played a LOT of Minecraft. Anyway, Micah was fine all day. He never got crabby or yawned, so I didn't put him down. About 7 pm last night, Matt was grilling and Micah really wanted to go outside and slide! It was pretty cool and rainy out, so nobody wanted to take him. He was not taking "no" for an answer and proceeded to have a fit about it! I scooped him up and started rocking him. Within two minutes, the boy was asleep! The bad thing was that I was in the middle of getting dinner ready!

Since it was 7 pm, I didn't know if he was just going to take a nap or if he would be out for the night. He usually sleeps a 1 1/2 hours, so if it was a nap, he would be up at 8:30 pm, and then I thought I would surely be up until at least 11 pm with him!!

I laid him on a pillow on the living floor, and he continued to sleep all the way through dinner.  We were eating cherry pie and homemade ice cream about 8:30 pm when he woke up. Just as predicted. :)  He had some ice cream and some other food for dinner and went back to playing awhile.

About 10 pm, he started to yawn and get sleepy! YES!! I asked him if he wanted to go to bed and he said, "Yes," so I put his pajamas on him and put him to bed. He was asleep by 10:30!

Now, if I am only up until 10:30 pm with a boy who takes a nap at 7 pm, I don't mind at all!

New Recipes?

We are kind of in a meal rut around here. Many of us are tired of the same meals we have been making the last few years, and the kids have been begging for some new recipes.

Here is how the last two nights went with new recipes.

On Thursday night, I made lasagna, which I haven't made in YEARS! I made one pan of regular wheat noodles, plus I added the eggs with the ricotta cheese mixture.  In addition, I made a pan of gluten free noodles and instead of eggs, I used egg replacement because Micah is allergic to eggs. I had two 9x13 pans of lasagna. This was a lot of work, but it turned out GREAT and we may see lasagna again in our future. Everybody loved it!

Last night, I made a chicken and rice casserole, but I also added a bag of frozen broccoli, so it was really a chicken-rice-broccoli casserole. Well, I thought it was great! One certain child of mine told me it looked like puke, and after saying it two to three times, I asked her to please go to the other room until she could talk nicely.  She ate a little bit, and said she was done. Matt also didn't like it because I used rice milk for the creamy base. I don't used canned soups at all anymore, and I usually don't use cow's milk at home to cook.  Four of us ate it and didn't complain.  Not as much as a "win" as I would have hoped.

Off to find the next new recipe!

PS I have even stopped buying the ingredients to meals that I am personally "done" with, such as chili. The kids keep asking for it, and I keep saying, "Sorry, we don't have the ingredients. I must have missed that at the store!" :)

Service Project

For the last few years, I have been part of a homeschool PE coop that met every Thursday afternoon.  There were about six families that were a part of it. We scheduled each mom to lead PE games one to two times throughout the semester, and things worked out well for the first year or two.  Last spring, things didn't work out so well anymore. We had moms not show up, moms not let us know they weren't planning on leading their assigned day, moms were sick, kids were sick, and most of the time, it was myself and two other moms.  We couldn't play a game of t-ball or soccer with so little kids.

During this summer, I did some thinking about how we could change things up a bit.   My first thought was to take the pressure off the moms by not having them lead a PE class anymore. Obviously some moms didn't want to take their turn in leading PE, and that was frustrating because it always fell back on me.  I also wanted to change it to mornings. We have many babies and toddlers in the group, and I thought many of the kids would be taking an afternoon nap.  My other thought was to schedule it to meet every other week instead of every week. I know some moms were pretty busy with their kids in other activities, and that was one reason why they couldn't make it every week.

After talking it over with a couple of moms, we decided to change it to a service project/ field trip group.  Everybody always showed up for field trips, and service projects were also a great hit last year, so why not concentrate on those for the year? I threw this idea out to the group, and everybody was on board. Apparently everybody was up for a change! We are now meeting twice a month on a Friday morning. One morning will be a service project and the other will be a field trip.

Today was our first meeting for the year, and we helped bag lunches at the Open Door Mission downtown.  We had to be there by 9 am, which was a challenge for me! But I was the first one there by 20 minutes! I think the kids had a great time. Even Micah helped; he threw trash away!

After we were done there, we went downtown and had a sack lunch, played on the slides, and fed the geese at a local park.  I could have stayed there and walked around all day. It was so nice to take some time and just relax!!

Our next field trip is in two weeks and we are going to a local pumpkin patch. We are going to take a short class on apples and get to pick our own apples from the orchard. We then get to play there all day. It should be fun! I am glad for a change of pace!

INTERRUPTIONS!

When people ask how school is going so far in our house, I respond with, "Well, we are getting there."  The first few weeks, we just did math and English to get going. I thought things went great. Micah played well by himself and I didn't have much trouble.

The last week or so, I added back ALL the subjects. Guess who does not want to cooperate anymore?? Micah!! He is the great interrupter!! Hold me, get me a drink, put my trucks back together, snack, diaper change, etc, etc, etc. It is always something!! And of course, I don't really want to stop teaching to help him, so the girls will usually pop up and help.  (I do help him occasionally.) But these last two days have been pretty bad. :( 

This morning, he was fussy and whiny, so I decided to put him down for a nap. I thought if I took the time to read him stories and the whole bit, then he would sleep at least 1 1/2 hours for me while I could work on school. (Lately, I have just been rocking him to sleep as I read to the kids.) WRONG! I started to put him to bed at 9:45 am and I was still in his room at 10:30 and he STILL wasn't sleeping. I got him back up and brought him back downstairs. I knew he was tired though.  From 10:30-12, he just whined and whined and bothered us and just couldn't play on his own. I got him a drink, I gave him snacks, I picked him up, but nothing worked. Around 12, we were finishing schoolwork and he just couldn't control himself anymore.  I decided that he really needed a nap! I put him in his bed and let him have a fit for about 30 minutes. Eventually he went to sleep and has been sleeping the last 1 1/2 hours. Unfortunately, we are on our lunch/ recess break, so this doesn't really help me!

If Micah isn't giving me trouble, then Christian is. We brought all the trains downstairs for both boys to play with, but they just can't seem to play well together. I have to keep breaking up fights and figuring out who was playing with what.  I kind of want to split all the train stuff  into two piles and put each boy and a pile in their separate corners!! GET Along!!! 

9-11 Memorial in New York City

When we were in New York City, we were very fortunate that we were able to take the kids to the 9-11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan. As we watched old footage today, we were able to place ourselves there and talk about things.  We learned more things about that day today as we read and put it all together. I really hope the kids appreciate the time we had at the memorial.

Things were a little different than when we were there four years ago, such as that we didn't have to go through three rounds of security to get in! They had taken down the six foot gates that surrounded the whole complex. The Freedom Tower was done along with the 9-11 Museum, which we did not have a chance to go in because we were there too late in the day.

Freedom Tower

One of the reflecting pools. I could sit here for hours and watch the waterfalls and read the names of the people on the sides.

So touching.

Megan and Christian.

The other reflecting pool.

We could look through the windows to the museum. I wish we could have gone in! These were pieces from the actual buildings that collapsed.  There is also a huge display of flags.  Some of these flags were hanging in the World Trade Center when it collapsed.  (We weren't the only people looking through the windows!)

Matt, Micah, and I in front of a reflecting pool. It was about 9 at night, so Micah was getting tired. He fell asleep shortly after this picture. We headed to the Brooklyn Bridge after this, and I carried him the WHOLE way there and back to the subway station!

 If anybody has a chance, they need to go see this memorial!!  Even if it is all you see in NYC. Ok, along with the Statue of Liberty. :)

The Space Shuttle Discovery (Another Trip Post)

One place that we wanted to see again when we got to Washington, DC was the Air and Space Museum in Virginia. We stopped there four years ago and saw the space shuttle Discovery, which was AMAZING, but since we got there so late, we only saw the shuttle and then we had to leave. Matt wanted to see the rest of the museum this time, so we went back. He said this was really the only thing he wanted to see in the DC area!  I thought we should go to this museum the first day we were in DC. 

The space shuttle was just as amazing as it was four years ago!

(As a side note, Matt accidently deleted five days worth of pictures from my camera, and this was one of the days he deleted. Luckily, Megan was also taking pictures with her camera, so these are Megan's pictures. )


The Smithsonian Museum! You can see people walking up to it.  This museum is located about an hour outside of Washington DC in Virginia.  It is near the Washington Dulles airport.

 And of course, Megan has no pictures of us running into the museum in the pouring rain! And Matt couldn't figure out the parking machines, so he had to run back out with a "free parking pass." He was completely soaked!

Space Shuttle Discovery! This is what you see as you walk into the museum.

The front of the space shuttle. I love that you can see all the wear and tear on the heat tiles on the bottom of the aircraft.

I guess when you are not taking pictures, you might actually get IN a picture!

They had a video of the last Discovery launch from Kennedy Space Center.

A view of the space shuttle. Pictures just don't do this justice. It is huge!

The back of the space shuttle. See the little people down below?

A space suit that was used when walking on the moon.

And of course, Megan likes to pose people and take pictures. I thought these were cute!! Such serious poses of my kids!

 Don't mind the German swastika in the background!

Summer is over!

Yesterday Matt and I declared the end of summer. We finally realized that we are not going to have a chance to get the jetskiis out this summer. :(  We headed out to his parents' house to drain the old gas out of them, and then we brought them back to Omaha to store them for the winter.

We have had literally no time to get them out this summer. We were busy every weekend before we left on our trip, and then we left for six weeks.  Once we got back, Matt developed his hernia and he says there is NO WAY he is going to get on a jetski with that!  I said he could just put them in the water and I could drive them. :)  But he had 30 gallons to burn between the two., and he said I wouldn't be able to burn that all in one afternoon. Haha!!

Once he drained the gas out yesterday, he said it was pretty bad anyway and the jetskiis would not have run very well.  He refilled them with new gas yesterday, and they will go back into storage until next year.

Hopefully next year, we will get them out! We didn't even get out to the lakes this year to camp!

What? No surgery today??

Today we "thought" Matt was scheduled to have hernia surgery. He didn't eat anything this morning, we had a babysitter lined up for the day, and he was prepared to lay low the next five days or so. He even told work he would not be in for the next three days.

At the end of his doctor's appointment last week where they determined he had a hernia, he was told to be at a clinic at 11:15 am on Thursday. I had received a automated call to tell me about his appointment.  A nurse never called and talked to him about surgery or had anyone given us any surgery instructions, which we thought was kind of odd. We just thought they forgot or something. As for today, we thought we were going to meet the surgeon right before the surgery and the surgery would be done in this building. I know surgeries can be done in outpatient facilities, so it all made sense to me.

He checked in and filled out some paperwork and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Matt was taken back to a room and we chatted with the nurse a little bit. Again, we thought we were just meeting the doctor before the surgery.

Soon the doctor came in and introduced himself. He wanted to see where Matt's hernia was and said, "Yep, that's a hernia." He then went on to explain how he was going to fix it. Again, nothing out of the ordinary!  He then said "You are going to need about five days off for recovery." So I said out loud, "Ok, he has today, Thursday, Friday, and then the weekend. He should be ready to go back to work on Monday, right?" The doctor just looked at me. I said, "He is scheduled for surgery today, right?" The doctor said, "He's not having surgery today! You need to see me, we need to reserve the operating room, reserve the anesthesiologist, etc. Who told you that you were having surgery today??"

Matt and I were kind of stunned. So now he wasn't having surgery today?? It was kind of hard to wrap our heads around for about ten minutes. We were all ready for surgery!!

The more we thought about it, nobody really informed us of what was going on today. Matt said when he saw the family doctor last week, the doctor said, "You have a hernia and you will need surgery. We will go ahead and set it up for you." Shortly after that, a nurse brought Matt a piece of paper with an address and a time on it. He assumed that this was surgery since they were just talking about it. He said he never heard anything about a consultation.  We then heard from his mom (retired nurse) that sometimes you meet the surgeon right before surgery, so that made sense to us.

So in the end, we saw the doctor, he verified that Matt had a hernia, and we set up surgery for October. It is for real this time!! We followed all the steps like we were supposed to! We were in that office not even 30 minutes!

The bummer part of it all was that Matt was looking forward to getting this fixed today, and now he has to wait another whole month. He said the hernia doesn't really hurt, but it is fairly uncomfortable.  He says it starts to hurt if he does too much, so he has been laying low lately. He is not looking forward to another whole month of restriction and being uncomfortable!!! I guess he is just going to have to grin and bear it until October 5th!

A Very Productive Labor Day!

I am going to take a break for the day from vacation photos. I need to throw some blogs up about our regular life around here! That is half the point of my blog!

Today was Labor Day and since we didn't go camping anywhere for the weekend, we stayed home and relaxed. Well, kind of.  I insisted that we do some schoolwork. (How dare I??)  I told the girls that they were getting Wednesday off and today would make up for Wednesday.  After telling one certain 11 year old to stop complaining about going to school on Labor Day, we sat down and got a math lesson done.  She was done in about ten minutes! Rough!! I then turned to the 13 year old old and got her pre-algebra done; that took a little bit longer! I am relearning pre-algebra all over again! Unfortunately, I ran out of time to get to Christian!

I also knew that there would be some great sales today that I wanted to take advantage of. I am in dire need of a new food processor! I didn't use one the first 15 years of our marriage and now I use mine almost daily.  Megan dropped a piece one day and started a crack in the bowl and since then, it has just gotten worse, but always kept working. I took it along on our trip and one day while it was out, Christian decided to see how "it worked." Well, he finished it off and it didn't "work" the last part of our trip. I was not happy. :(  The base works just fine, it is just the bowl and other top plastic parts that broke. It would have cost $60 to get replacement parts, so I bought a brand new one at Kohl's today for $77. I am thankful for their 20% off plus $10 off when you spend over $25!!!

After I laid Micah down for a nap, the girls and I headed out to pick it up. We were also on a mission to find Courtney some new shoes. She has had a pair of tennis shoes since April, and she already has a hole in each shoe. This child wears them nonstop! She did not wear sandals all summer.  With basketball coming up, she really needed a new pair. We ended up at the mall today and found her a pair of Under Armour basketball shoes on the clearance for $16!! I told her that since these would be for basketball, she really needed another pair of everyday shoes. We went to Penney's and found her another pair of tennis shoes for $25. Not bad!

Matt and I also are not very good when it comes to getting our kids birthday presents, so she saw an emoji pillow and I bought it for her. :) She was pretty happy!

Tomorrow we are back to school. We have math and English going, so I think we might add spelling and writing in tomorrow. Matt is having surgery on Wednesday, so that day is gone, but then we will be back at it on Thursday and Friday. Hopefully next week, we will be going 100%. I have a lot of preparing to do yet. It's sometimes hard to teach each subject for three different grades!!

Beach Day!!

One thing we really wanted to do on this trip was to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. We got that opportunity in Kennebunkport, Maine! (I blogged about our fun campground a couple entries back- Red Apple Campground.)

The girls and Matt actually got up at 5:10 am that morning to go see the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, but it didn't go as well as they planned. They didn't quite know where to go to watch the sun rise over the ocean.

After they got back, we thought it would be fun to do some hiking and other touristy stuff in the morning and then spend the afternoon in the beach. Everything that looked fun or exciting cost money or was too far away, so we just headed to the beach in the morning. We didn't take our swimsuits or anything, but just let the kids wade in the water in their clothes.

Christian on our way to the beach in the morning.

All four kids with their feet in the Atlantic Ocean!!

After we played in the water awhile, we decided to get lunch. A man at our campground recommended a place called "Ramp Up," so we headed over there. Unfortunately, meals were about $15 a person, so we headed to Subway instead. It looks like it would have been a fun place to eat!

Now we were ready to swim in the ocean!! Matt said this was his favorite day of the entire trip!
Matt and Megan playing in the waves.

Courtney's turn. I didn't want more than one kid out there at a time.  I wanted him to be able to keep an eye on them.

Micah LOVED chasing the seagulls!

Christian heading out to the water. He stayed near the shore more.

Matt and Courtney built a sandcastle in the afternoon.

All four kids at the ocean.

Micah by the sandcastle. It was so much fun watching the tide come up over the afternoon. We knew it would soon wreck the sand castle!

The water was coming up, so Christian and Micah started to wreck it.

And that is the end of the sand castle...

Matt and Micah walking around on the beach.

Of course, we had to stop at a local establishment for ice cream after our afternoon at the beach. Kennebunkport was famous for their many ice cream places.

After ice cream, we walked around the town a bit. Here is Christian in front of a ship. There was actually a restaurant on the ship.

What a cute little town!

We had a fun day!! This was the furthest east we got on our trip. It was time to start moving west!