While I was out.

Nothing happened. I was a bit disappointed too. I was hoping that some TV decorating crew would stop by and paint my house and decorate things nicely.
It didn't happen.
Now I am forced to do it myself. When we first moved in the house, we so hated the flat, beige wall paint that I quickly painted the living room.
Then I burned out fast.

Two years later, I painted the older boys' room. It's a very dark blue. Very. Dark. Too dark. I'm going to have to paint it again. However, my husband has laid down the law and stated that the all rooms must be painted one before I can re-paint a room.

sigh

So I did the little boys' room to prepare for the new baby.
Burned out again.

I finally got motivated to attack the pink dining room. It was very pink and flowery. We are not pink flowery people. It is now a lovely pea green with a Jungle print valance. I know the jungle print sounds odd but it suits us. It has a black background with jungle trees, peacocks, jaguars, an little brown monkeys with parasols. The boys picked it out.
I love it. It is wild and it gives me an excuse to buy monkey accessories.

The rest of the house is painted with an awful dark beige builders grade paint. (Translated: it takes three coats of anything to coat it.)

I have now started the kitchen. The old blue wallpaper is gone and the lower part of the wall is a lighter pea green. The top on two walls is a pretty light yellow. I now have to paint around the cabinets. (arg!!!!!!) and if I am feeling brave, I will pain my 1980's cabinets because they are ugly and new cabinets are way too expensive for us right now.

So this is a long way of saying that I have added three new colors to my favorite panting pants. (which are maternity pants since that is when I do most of my painting...Not I'm not pregnant.)
My painting pants are a great memory keeper for me. J's nursery walls, the kitchen of our first house, our purple bedroom. A memory of rooms that I won't ever get to see again are preserved on a pair of old navy blue stretched out pants.

Thank you Blogger

You fixed my stuff. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you. My links aren't bright blue. My Blogger bar is now stretched out over my blog instead of little stunted rectangle in the corner.
I am happy.

It's odd that I would find happiness in such a tiny little thing but I have been feeling very put out and unappreciated lately. I feel as though I do for others but receive little in return and I hate even *thinking* that way. (how "what have you done for me lately" of me)

Just having someone do a little something nice for me...It makes me feel really nice. Especially since the Blogger-folks most likely have a lot bigger fish to fry than my tiny issues.

Thanks!

Trying to get settled in

I'm still trying to get used to this format. When I first switched to this blog, I dressed it a bit and then lost interest because I couldn't seem to get rid of the bright BLUE links. (what a trade off...bright blue for spell check capabilities. But if you could see how poorly I type, you would understand the choice made.) Needless to say, I have not yet figured out where to stick the code to make the bright blue links become some other calming, muted tone.
I know you are wondering why it even matters to me...It does. Bright blue is my equivalent or red ink. It upsets my delicate psyche.

Then once I got my pictures all in place...My photo host fell through. At that point I just said, The heck with it! I have enough stuff going on right now." My problem is that I only have a little bit of webpage knowledge. We all know that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. ;)
The sad part is that I am webmistress (I don't really like that word.) to two websites. One is a business site. The other is my homeschool support group site. If anything, I should know how to change to color of some words. But not here. My magic here is seriously limited.

Today's activities include making a giant pine cone wreath. I have some large cones already so the boys are supposed to be outside collecting smaller ones. I say supposed to be because I hear them and they don't seem to be discussing how attractive or how prickly the pine comes are. They had direct orders to fill the bucket with nicely shaped pine cones that had not been stepped on nor eaten. Since we have rather prolific "Pine Cone" trees, they should have any trouble finding enough cones. But I'm afraid that they have lost interest in the cones and become interested in one of the large numbers of Daddy Long Legs spiders that have been around out house lately. (I just heard, "Wow, look at the legs" so I'm making assumptions.)

Once we have enough pine cones, we will all don heavy gloves so I can wire them together into a large wreath that the boys wile decorate with fall leaves, acorns, nuts and whatever else they feel is "fallish." Of course along the way we will talk about why leaves change color, what nuts are, where the seeds are in pine cones, why squirrels each pine cones, nuts, and acorns, why pine trees don't' change color (evergreen versus deciduous) and anything else that might come up.

Science and art day. Plus I end up with some holiday decorations.

So the "email your post" thing doesn't work that well.

I guess there are still some issues to work out. I should just go ahead and manually publish all my old posts but now it's old news. There's no fun in posting old news.

So what's going on at "The Zoo?" Lots, little...It depends on how you look at it. The things that should be going on, aren't and there all kinds of extra things going on.
I am neighborhood captain for our neighborhood food drive. I'm trying to round up volunteers to make this thing work out this year. Scouts are going smoothly though homeschooling is still a little rough. With all of our other stuff, I just haven't gotten into a groove yet. Work is getting done and the boys are learning but it's not the fun kind of learning that I want for them. They aren't complaining. They just enjoy learning and they know that it would be a whole lot less fun if they were in a durational school.
As much as they hate grammar workbooks, they don't hate them enough to miss out on all the other fun stuff.

Soccer is winding down. Yeehaw!!!! Just in time for basketball sign-ups. At least they practice at night and have Saturday games. This is highly preferable to afternoon games and practices.

The lack of sunlight is getting me also. On sunny days, we do 'school" out on the deck so I can relish what little light I can.
Thank goodness we don't' live in Alaska. I would go crazy the first season.

We Did It!!!!!

We had a miracle!

Yesterday, my Bear Cub Scout den of 14 managed to actually do all the requirements for “Chips and Shavings” achievement, including carving something with a real knife!

Even more amazing….no one got hurt.

We also practiced the flag ceremony that we have to do at Thursday night’s pack meeting and did a few more parts of the “Tying things up” achievement.

It was a fun and productive day.

There’s no way I could have done it without the parents’ help. We have awesome parents. I also have some awesome Den Chiefs. And the Bear Cubs are pretty cool too.

My biggest complement came from the mom of 10 (yes 10) children. She said that she was amazed by how smooth things had been at the den meetings and said that the boys really enjoyed themselves.

Hey, when you can amaze a mother of 10….well that is amazing in itself.

What a big day!

haven't felt much like posting

On September 9, 2004, my wonderful father lost his five year battle to cancer. He had esophageal cancer that returned and spread to his lungs. My mom, sister, and I were with him when he passed.

I’m still just devastated. I think about my little elf Daddy every day. But I’m getting better, I’m only crying a half dozen times a day now.

But I just feel pretty empty.

I sleep but I don’t rest.

I’m just walking around going through the motions.

The older boys went to the funeral and I am amazed at how well they did.

Last week “Granddaddy” was M’s proper noun of choice during last week’s First language Lessons.

We listen to a lot of Johnny Cash, Pasty Cline, and Blue Grass Gospel. We call it Granddaddy’s music.

Just trying this out

So can you rally email your posts to blogger? That would be a God-send. I might actually post if I didn’t have to log on and be tempted to “fix up” the place. After all, I can hyperlink in email anything of interest and I seldom have pictures, though I have posted a few.

And the kicker, since I use word for email, I have a kicking spelling a grammar check and The Lord Above knows that neither grammar no spelling are my strong point. If it weren’t for those little red and green squiggles under my words to let me know how “off I am, I would be unintelligible. (Wow, I spelled that one right on my own.)

A novel to write and no time to do it.

So where did I go once again?
1.
Well, the computer died. It just gave up the ghost. It is now glorified door stop. Alas, all is not lost. My hard drive in no installed but inaccessible in my hubby's monstrous computer creation. So I have files, somewhere.

2.
We started back to school. That part is pretty much all consuming. Plus Scouts started and soccer will start soon. Way too much running around these days but I like to be busy because it takes my mind off...

3. my father's cancer is back. I'll have to post that whole epic later. Let's just say he's putting up a better fight than my old computer. The Elf Dad is what one call a "real trooper." Stay Strong Daddy!

This is not really a political blog

But I have to speak out about Ron Reagan Jr. speaking at the DNC on stem cell research.

I am all for Stem cell research, especially in the area of Alzheimer's research and cancer treatments. My father is dealing with both. I think that an amazing amount good can come out of using stem cells to help heal people. I don't think the Democratic party has a monopoly on this train of thought. I am sure that the current administration agrees.

BUT
where I think we both split off from the Democrats is where these stem cells should come from.
See the Dems want to use the remains of aborted fetuses. After all they are just going to be thrown away. Why not use them? Why not clone those cells and make more stem cells? (let's not tell people that by cloning the cells, we are actually cloning people.) Then we could help people. As a benefit, it gives some righteous purpose for the women who chose to have these abortions. Now instead of just making the hardest, most heart wrenching decisions of their lives they actually could get some good out of it. Hey..Maybe to go along with their Planned parenthood T-shirt they could get "I saved an old fogey's memory" card to frame as a memento since we are on this slippery slope of degrading one of the most personal and devastated decision that any woman has had to make.
I'm sorry but an abortion is a terrible loss of life. It is a horrible thing for a woman to have to physically endure and have to chose to do. There is no "good' that can come out it except a woman who has not been emotionally and physically damaged.


However, you don't need discarded babies for stem cell research. A richer source of stem cells is thrown away by the thousands every day but the press doesn't report on it. Stem cells are found in the umbilical cord blood of healthy, born babies and thrown away at your local hospital where those researchers are clamoring for fetus cells.


God has provided a miracle within a miracle. It's ours for the taking but we throw it away. Instead our politicians would rather take God's miracle though a tragedy and try to make another miracle in it's stead.


Stem cell research and non-cloning of human fetus cells are not mutually exclusive but the Democrats don't won't you know that.

FYI: three out of four of the ZooBoys stem cells have been banked for future use or donation. 6 years ago, ZooDad and I realized that it was a very cheap insurance policy for our boys.

One week to go

There's one week until school starts. Our county starts back very early. I know what you're thinking. Aren't you a homeschooler? Why do you care when school starts back? You can start whenever you like."


Yes, I know all that. But, we still try to start when the schools start. That way we are done by the end of April. Plus cub scouts start back next week and our therapy schedule will change to accommodate all the schooling families that really, really, really want our early afternoon spots. (Which doesn't annoy me as much as it probably should. We are flexible.)


So I'm running about trying to finish planning, fix up the "schoolroom" and type up my chem lessons. And plan for cub scouts since I'm bear cub co-leader. It is a busy beaver time of year. Unfortunately I don't feel much like being a busy beaver.


Crack that whip... and get to work girl

For Liz

This is an old picture. Let's see, when was this taken? September last year maybe. Matthew was fishing at the farm pond. The pond had been dangerously low for a couple of years and we really didn't think any fish could have survived. But Grammie took them fishing. He caught this fish the first time his hook hit the water. Cane pole and a worm on the bank of a little pond.


Darn big fish for such a little guy. Last week he caught a smaller bass. that one was only about 14 inches long. He also caught a dozen brim.
Imagine what he could do if he knew something.

Here's recent shots of the younger two.






I made that Nemo cake by the way. Tootin' my own horn.

Moving


I actually do have things to do.  I have my Chem lessons to write.  Laundry is screaming at me.  I could use the sleep.  The kitchen needs mopping.  I have an order to place by noon tomorrow.  there are countless little things to catch up on. 
So what am I doing?
Moving my blog back to Blogger.
Why
They have a spell check and new features. ( at least to me they are.)  The spell check thin is important.  I have typing issues.
But it is a whole lot of trouble for something no one ever reads. 
oh well. 
cue music...
     It's been too long since we took the time
     No-one's to blame, I know time flies so quickly
     But when I see you darling
     It's like we both are falling in love again
     It'll be just like starting over, starting over.

By the way my old stuff can be found at Zoo full of Boys if you are curious.  I won't delete and start new if I ever go back again.  You better be worth it Blogger.

Happy Birthday to Me

What a stinky birthday! I turned 34 today which in itself is not that bad. But my darling helpmate, husband and father of my children...had to leave today for a business trip to Tampa. Of course, I had less than 48 hours notice and no time to take dress shirts to the cleaners. So iIspent my birthday morning washing and ironing shirts....and the rest of the day as a single mom.

Oh well.

The part that really reeks is that my darling man will be home late Friday evening....very late. Friday marks our tenth anniversary.

Then to keep myslef entertained, I visit one of my favorite education blogs, and the writer and guests are bashing my son's disability. Unbeknownst to me, my son apparently has a made up, "fad" disorder that would go away if we just taught him some "maths." I should let our Department of Social Services know. Curently they are paying $2000.00 a month for his therapy under the Medicaid Deeming Waiver for Disabled and Special Needs Children.

Where can I learn more about these curing "maths" because I'd rather have him functioning like a normal kids and not have to wrangle insurance and spend 4 hours a week heading to therapy.

Welcome to my party! Woohoo!

Nothing to Say

I've been a busy little beaver here. No time for my poor neglected blog. I've been running around doing all the stuff I had to do. A to therapy, van to the body shop for estimates, grocery shopping, laundry.

Oh, I took my Dad in to get new glasses. They should be ready today and I'll pick them and drive those over to him so the little gnome can see again.

I'm busy working on my chemistry program and planning the school year. Two friends have brought their used books over for me to take to the book sale 2 weeks from now. The place looks like a book store. Well, more than it normally does. LOL I cleaned out my under-the-stairs closet that stores part of our school stuff. I sent the stuff not being use this year upstair to the holding bookshelf and then cleaned out the Zooboys' personal bookshelves. I still need to cull through and see what is good and what I can get rid of. (like Franklin books that ZooDad bought.) I'm debating on transforming out dining room into a school room of sorts. Part of me says "woo hoo go for it." Part of me however knows that we won't use it that much as aschool room anyway. I think the happy medium is to redecorate the way I plan to anyway and then make it homeschool friendly. I'd love to put a couple of dry erase boards and a few posters. I think I can do tha and still keep my dining room. (Well, the fact that the mahogany high boy, buffet, and dining table will stay will have to stay will force that a bit.) i just hope my table and chair will hold up to daily use. if not, oh well. It's only furniture.

Crabs Don't Have Tails

My oldest two Zooboys are down on the farm spending a week with Grammie and their Great Uncles. I'll have to share their stories later.

That leaves me with the two youngest Zooboys. A (3) has a major speech diisorder called apraxia. It make conversation very hard for him. He was over 2 before he first said "daddy" and almost 2 and a half before saying "Momma." However, he had a huge language bloom a few months ago. He started putting words together and then making 4 and 5 word sentences. Pronunciation is still way out there but *we* understand a good bit of what he says.

One of the first ways he learned to communicate was by telling Knock-knock jokes. His oldest brother was into bad Boys' Life jokes and shared them with us each new monthly edition. Andrew just picked up on it. Even now, to get your attention he will say "knock-knock."

I say all that to tell you this little story. Yesterday we were out and about. We happened to stop at a red light in front of Red Lobster. Here's the conversation that took place. Please understand that I am translating for him so I am not typing how he actually pronounces things.

A: Momma, What’s that?

M: That’s a lobster.

A: No…that’s not a lobster. That’s a crab.

M: No, it’s not a crab. It’s a lobster.

A: It IS a crab. See! (holds up hands making pincher movements.)

M: lobsters have claws just like crabs do. But lobsters have a tail. Crabs don’t have a tail.

A: Ooooooooh. That’s a lobster. It has a tail.

M: That’s right

A: Crabs don’t have tails.

M: Nope… crabs have no tails.

A: Knock knock

M: Who’s there?

A: Crab

M: Crab who?

A: Crabs got no tails. Ha ha ha ha ha ha


This continued on for quite some time. We went over various animals and even people who did and did not have tails. (Monkeys, fish, gorillas, lobsters, Daddy) The whole time I kept thinking, "What an amazing little guy. He is so smart!" I'm just so thankful that he can finally tell us about all the things he knows. It reminded me of a post I saw on my apraxia group board.

"Being mute is like having your brain gouged out. Autism/apraxia took away my voice, and a world that equates muteness with stupidity took everything else."




I think about my little guy when I read that. And I am ashamed because I once doubted his intellect.

Congratulations! It's a Deck!

Darling ZooDad finished the deck yesterday. Woohoo! Just in time for the 30 guests that came over for A and S's birthday party. (More on that soon)

9 months after removing the old deck, the new deck was done. My sister congratulated on the proud moment and told him he gave birth to a deck.

We thought about having a ribbon cutting ceremony.

All the guests toured the new deck and each proclaimed it a masterpiece. This really puffed ZooDad up since the man is not a woodworker. He just can not handle the irregularities of working with wood. At one point he was threatening to go "whittle" up some lumber since the stuff from the lumberyard was not *exactly* the same size.

It was quite entertaining for me.

It is a nice deck and extremely sturdy. I don't think our house is as well built.

For the next tornado warning, I think I'll hide out under there instead of in my stair closet.

A new method of discipline

A little back info…yesterday while waiting for my 3 year old to finish his marathon Speech/OT session, I read an article in Parenting on “How to raise children that want to behave.” It was quite a humourous article. I can’t see implementing any of their suggestions.

Fast forward to last evening. My eight year old has 2 big family chores. He takes out the trash and he unloads the dishwasher. After he unloaded the dishwasher last night, I opened the cabinet to discover that dishes were just stuffed in the cabinet. After rearranging them all I told said eight year old that he was no longer allowed to put up dishes. (I don’t know how that would be considered punishment but I really wasn’t thinking.)


This morning I hear the sound of clanking dishes. Well, quietly clanking dishes. I peeked in the kitchen to find said eight year old unloading the dishwasher and quietly putting the dishes away. Now I’m not sure if I should be angry that he is defying my order that he leave the dishes alone or proud that he wants to keep that family job. I think I’ll wait until he either tells me what he did or I “discover” the empty dishwasher at lunch. Funny kid.

These kids are busy

I have very busy children. I didn't realize just how busy until I sat down and looked at the schedule. Boy, I will be so glad when we start back to school. I just need the continuity. I know we could just start back any old time but I have planning I really need to get done and don’t have time too. Plus I’m still working on my chemistry curriculum that I’m writing. And the two oldest are heading down to Grammie’s farm next week so they can go to her church’s vacation bible school. She wants to show them off.


A has a new speech therapist and I am amazed at how well the transition went. I fully expected at least a month of trials and tribulation…and temper tantrums. But….he likes her. He goes happily. He’s making better progress even. His newest cuteness is telling me what things he likes. “Me wike daddy food. Me wike chicken. Me wike schooooos.” I’m so glad he can tell us how he “wikes” things. Before now, we’ve just had to assume. OT is still going along. He’s still lagging in most skills especially fine motor but his coloring has improved some. And he draws the most hilarious pictures. Mostly spiders with many, many legs.


Baseball season is finally over. Thank God for small miracles. We ended up at the ball field every single weeknight…all of them…for eight weeks. That is entirely too much baseball. The two oldest ZooBoys enjoyed it though, so that made it somewhat worth it. M (5) wants to play soccer this fall, so I enrolled him. I thought it only fair since J gets to be a Bear Cub Scout this year.


Swim lessons are over though the boys don’t swim any better now than they did. Oh well, swimmers they are not, neither am I.


Deck repairs are still ongoing. My darling computer geek of a husband has nearly lost his mind over it, but the deck is over half finished. He has to finish it by Sunday since about 30 people are coming over for A’s 3rd birthday and S’s 1st birthday party. Poor Guy. He goes “Monk” quite easily and the unequal nature of wood products is just more than he can bear. When he started measuring where to but decking screws so they were all even, I had to put my foot down and just start putting them in myself.

Oh Tuesday, how I love you

We have no plans on Tuesdays. No where to go, nothing to do but what we want to do. No OT, no Speech, no scouts, no errands, no library. We just stay home. When ZooDad is home, we send him off to work and spend the day just doing fun things. Tuesday is art day. Tuesday is fun project day. Tuesday is Nature Study day. Tuesday is the day I read lots of stories and play games. Tuesday is read what ever interests you day. Tuesday is a no workbook day. None...at all. The only writing is writing done by choice. (And remarkably a lot of writing gets done.) Tuesday is no TV day. Well, the TV is on but thanks to Comcast cable, we listen to music all day...all different kinds of music. No computer games, not even educational ones. Tuesday is not a school day according to J8.

Tueday is no chore day. Except to take out the trash and load and unload the dishwasher. We have Pop-tarts for breaskfast, sandwiches for lunch and ZooDad picks up "cheap pizza", which leaves few dishes to wash. We don't even make the beds.

Tuesday is play outside day. Tuesday is basketball day and sidewalk chalk day and pull your brother around in his wagon day. If it is raining, Tueday is built forts in the house day and make cookies day.

It amazes me how much all of the kids look forward to Tuesday. They enjoy the scheduled unstructure. It gives them a day to just learn about what they want to learn about. It's a fun free feeling.

It also shows me how hard successful unschooling must be. I can do it one day a week, but seven would kill me. I am literally run ragged by the end of the day by all of our "non-school" stuff. Plus there is the general "what if they don't learn what the need' worry that comes to us fledgling unschoolers. I would worry about covering what was needed to know. I would stress about the fact that my 5 year old was still not reading well or that my 8 year old didn[t test as highly as I wanted on last year's ITBS. I would worry myself to sickness and give up.

I just can't release all of that "school must be done" feeling. But I can do it once a week.

~Happy Tuesday!~



Adding***

The boys are currently drawing their own zoo animals for their Zoo ala' Zootycoon. (Which I always read as Zooty Coon for some reason.) Beanie babies of all sorts are placed in various habitats and terrains made out of paper, fabric, and my couch cushions. A2 has 2 large blue jay beanie and 3 teeny beanie blue jays in a nest. My little Apraxic child is telling me to "Sssssssssss, mum" since the "babies seepin."

14 more days

Fourteen days down and 14 more to go.

My darling hubby and the father of the ZooBoys is away from home on business in Arizona where they aparently do not observe daylight saving time. I'm used to him traveling. He's gone about a quarter of the year every year. The ZooBoys are also used to daddy being gone. It's the only life they have ever known. It doesn't make it any easier though.

So we VTC, email, IM, and call every three hours or so.

He still misses out on stuff. 8 month old SamBoy has started crawling in Daddy's absence. A2 has started drawing pictures of people. J8 and M5 have had some growing boy/sibling rivalry issues that I really need his guidance on.



only 14 more days.