The Facade

I have been pondering this entry for several days now. I'm not sure I can get this message across how I would like, but I'm gonna give it a shot.
Again, I must say, I am not writing this to offend anyone, that is not my intention here, I'm just explaining my position.
Last week, my neighbor and I were talking. She told me that Dillon had gone over to her house to ask if her daughter was home from school yet. She wasn't. When he was told this he said, "I wish I went to school." Well, this started her on a whole long explanation of the fact that she knows she would abuse her daughter if she homeschooled because she gets frustrated just doing her homework with her. She then went on to say that of the 3 homeschooling families in our little area, only R seems like she is ok to homeschool. Why? Because she has never heard R yell at her kids, so therefore she must be good to teach! I told her that R is never ever outside to yell at her kids, and that that makes no difference whatsoever. She didn't get it.
At any rate, it got me thinking. Homeschooling is so foreign to some people. I think when a lot of people think of homeschoolers, they think of this nice quiet atmosphere where everyone gets along all day and no one squabbles or gets irritated with anyone else. I think it is the same with parenting, no one wants to show the true side, but that's another post.
That's the facade. You can go online and read about homschoolers, and you will, inevitably, hear almost nothing but the good. No one wants to talk about that bad. Which is fine, I personally don't want to talk about the bad either. But the point is, there is bad.
Homeschoolers are human. We squabble. We lose our tempers. We raise our voices in front of other people.
I think that to tell me that because you have heard me yell at my kids, I should send them to someone else for most of the day is absurd.
God has called us to raise our children. We don't feel the need to send them away for 7-8 hours a day for someone else to influence them. They are our responsibility to protect. We have seen the influence the neighborhood kids have on ours, we can't fathom what a whole day at school would do.
Even for families who don't believe God has called them to homeschool, the advantage of keeping them home far outweigh the disadvantages. My best friend homeschools. She has a 15 year old daughter. I have a friend with a 15 year old daughter, also. The difference in the two is amazing. The one is public school is sexually active. The homeschooled one doesn't really have a huge interest in boys. The homeschooled girl spends time with her family and enjoys doing so. The public schooled girl spends most of her time "hanging out with friends". Now of course, this could be due to family dynamics and the way they were raised. But it could also be due to peer pressure issues.
I don't care if my children are "too sheltered" why in the world would I want them to be exposed to everything kids are exposed to these days? Yikes!
This post is getting off track I think. My original thought was that we aren't perfect. But still able to homeschool. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be patient. You don't have to be organized. "I'm not patient enough" and "I'm not organized enough" are the two main reasons you will hear people say they don't want to homeschool. The funny thing about that is that I don't even have to ask. I simply say, "oh, we homeschool" and the response if one of the above statements.
I'm not saying that I think you should homeschool. Everyone has to do what is right for their family. I am simply saying, I don't judge you for sending your kids to school, please don't assume that we must not be doing a good job if you hear my raise my voice. Of course my kids annoy me. Anyone would annoy me if I spent 24 hours a day with them. But we have such a great relationship, regardless.
We are a family. And we enjoy being together.
We don't plan on changing anything anytime soon.

~*~*~*~*~*
I'm disappointed, that whole thing was worded badly, and didn't really say what I wanted it to. More of a tangent. Oh well.

I've created little monsters!!

We are cleaning the house. We usually do this to some upbeat music. The boys discovered that we have a cd of music from Disneyland. They've been listening to it all morning.
Of course, this puts a hankering in us all to go to the magic kingdom!! I was even trying to figure out how old Zachy would need to be so that we could all go on all the rides this time! He's a pretty tall kid, so it could be sooner rather than later! Now to figure out how much we would have to save to be able to go sometime!
OK, so it's all a pipe dream because I'm sure Matt doesn't really want to go, maybe we could leave him here! LOL I'm kidding of course!
Anyone want to donate to the cause? We accept checks, cash, money orders, winning lottery tickets, Las Vegas winnings, valuable antiques, expensive cars...anything worth value! LOL
OK, gotta go back to cleaning, I just can't help but be in a happy mood listening to sounds of the park! HAPPY TIMES!!

*smile*

I love my kids. They make my heart swell to one hundred times it's normal size.
*sigh* Is there anything better than a housefull of kids? True bliss indeed. :-)

How long??

How long does it take for birds to find birdfeeders?
Ours have been up for a week and a half and so far, no feathered visitors.

Not lookin good

This is the second week with no weight loss. True, I'm not working as hard as I was, and I need to. Need to get back to the exercise routine, but all the good shows are on now, so it makes it tough! ;-)
So, if you look at my ticker it says I have 37.5 pounds to go to hit my goal for my trip this summer. I have like 17 weeks, give or take, before we go. At 2 pounds a week, that would be 34 pounds. I can get close, but not at this rate.
Send me lose weight vibes!!

Random non-kid photos

The three eldest boys made birdhouses at Adventurers last night. I decided they needed a home in my kitchen. They would go much better in my mil's kitchen, but alas, I put them in mine. Dillons is on the left, Matthew's in the middle, and Collin's on the right.



After pulling all my stuff downstairs, I decided to scrap a layout. Imagine that! I'm not sure I'm diggin on it too much, but I've decided to just leave it be.
It reads How can I tell if he loves me so, it's in his kiss


Closeup of the first page



Closeup of second page

How quickly we forget

I asked Matt today when he would be home from work. I told him we had a couple of errands to run. He said, "why don't you just go before I get home?"
Well, I'll tell you why. Because I have grown accustomed to running errands with him. It is totally wierd because for the last 6 years, I've done this parenting thing virtually alone. I wouldn't think twice about just going without him. But in the last 6 months I have totalyl grown to love having him around and doing the normal errands with him.

We've raised them well!

When I told my kids about their new cousin, Matthew asked me how old the baby's big sister was. I told him she was a month younger than Zachy.
He looked at me totally confused and said, "then why don't we have a new baby yet?"
God just hasn't decided that for us.....yet.

While we were playing Life the other night, the kids all wanted "my car full of kids!" It was cute because they always tell us that they want lots of kids.
Makes my heart happy!

I'm an auntie!!

My sister's baby girl was born this morning. She's got all 10 fingers and all 10 toes and is doing great. YAY!

What is it???

Oh my goodness!!
At around 4 o'clock I went outside to get the mail and take out the trash and my nose immediately started burning.
It has been on fire ever since then and I am stuffy and sneezy.
I checked weather.com for the allergens that might be high and nothing is! Zach and Dillon are having a terrible time today too, and once Matt got home he started up.
It feels like some sort of sneeze bomb has been set off in my house!!!

The happy medium

I'm feeling all creative these days. Today has been a really good day. I've not gotten an ounce of housework done, but that's ok. I'll work on it tonight when the kids are at adventurers and it's just me and Zachy poo.
I have been quite upset with myself for not focusing more on Collin and Zachy while Matthew and Dillon are doing school. It's almost been an impossibility. But now Matthew is a good reader and Dillon is well on his way. So last night, we went to the education store and picked up some things. We got a set of pegs which Zach and Collin can stack and sort and string and count etc. And we picked up these stringing beads with pattern cards . We also picked up a workbook for Collin.
So this morning while Matthew and Dillon worked on their own work, I was able to sit down with Collin and Zachy and do "work" with them. Collin kept saying, "mommy, this is awesome" talking about his worksheets. He cannot wait to show daddy when he gets home.
Eventually, Matthew and Dillon moved out the school room and into the dining room with us. They had questions and what not. While they were in there, they were both helping the little ones do different things.
Around that time, Dillon was working on the sound 'wh' and had a coloring sheet where he was supposed to color the 'w's black and the 'h's blue. Well, we couldn't find a black crayon, so I decided to throw in an art lesson. We discussed different mediums and he did his black with charcoal and the blue with oil pastels. He thought it was so great.
Everyone got all their work done in a very timely fashion too. I love days like these.
Then the occupational therapist came and all the kids stayed downstairs with us today, and it was so wonderful. They were all pitching in to help Zachy do the things he needed to do, and Zach was in a good mood the whole time.
After she left, Z took a nap and I gave Matthew and Dillon a piano lesson. We tried this last year, but they just didn't have it in them. So we're trying again this year.
We are about to start a big unit study. I never thought I would do a unit study, but here we are. Sea World is opening March 4, the kids are excited. So I decided we are going to learn about the animals first. Matthew will do killer whales, Dillon will do dolphins, and Collin is doing penguins.
The oportunity for teaching computer and library skills has never really arisen yet, so we are going to change that. We will learn about the Dewey Decimal system, and about google. They will have art projects relating to their animal. They will have to research and answer questions about them. The list keeps growing! I was going to take a week and have them do math and the study, but I may even incorporate the math into the study.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what homeschooling is all about, and I absolutely love when it all comes together like this!!

A few other stories

OK, since I'm telling stories, here are two more.

After we got Zachy's epi pens, I decided it was a wise thing to teach the older kids where we were keeping them, and what they needed to do if I said we needed it. I figured that if Zachy couldn't breathe, I would need to stay with him. We also went over them calling 9-1-1 and saying, "my brother was bit by fire ants and he is allergic to them, we gave him the epi pen"
So, not many days went by, and Zachy got bit (on the neck of all places), he was fine and only had a few hives, but Dillon was freaked out. Saying, "do I need to get the pen? Do I need to call 9-1-1? I can tell them that he was bit and we gave him the pen and is allergic!!
It was funny because I figure that someone can fall and crack their head open, and Dillon will call 9-1-1 and say, "my brother was bit by fire ants, he's allergic, we gave him the epi pen" LOL

Last night, while playing Life, Dillon was the police officer. When you are the policeman you get to have speeding people pay you $5000 each time they spin a 10. Well, Dillon is SO literal, we told him he could say, "you're speeding, you owe me $5,000" So all night we heard, "hey, you're speeding, give me $5,000" The funny thing about this is how tongue tied and frustrated he would get and saying, "I can't remember the words!!" Couldn't just say, "pay up!"

Tonight, on the way home from the store, Matthew and Dillon were talking.
Matthew: then the volcano went *poof*
Dillon: I hope grandma and grandpa's volcano doesn't go *poof*

This is funny because my mom lives in a place where there once was a volcano, years ago, the rock may be lava rock for all I know. Anyway, they hiked way up to the top once of what used to be a volcano. So now they are convinced that there is an active volcano that could go *poof* at any minute!

My kids are nutso!

Which is why I love them so much! LOL
This conversation makes me laugh so much, so I thought I'd share it with you, so that you too, may laugh!
This is what I overheard in the van today while we were driving home from the Base.

Matthew: Hey Dillon, that's carbon dioxide. You're breathing out carbon dioxide? Did you know that? You breathe in oxygen and out carbon dioxide. That's why mommy doesn't let us put plastic bags on our heads. Cause it would fill with carbon dioxide and that isn't good, we could die. And did you know that plants are just the opposite? They breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. If there were no plants on the earth, there would be no oxygen. And without oxygen, we couldn't live, we would die.

Dillon: I think I'll just hop like a kangaroo

WHAT?!!! Nut case!!

Today and Tomorrow

Today has been fun. I took Matthew to the orthodontist this morning for an adjustment.
We drove home and picked up Matt and the rest of the kids and headed down to the Riverwalk to eat at The Rainforest Cafe. The kids had a blast there. And the food was pretty good too.
Once we had stuffed ourselves completely, we headed out into the drizzle to walk along the river down to the mall. For no other reason than to just walk after the huge meal. We walked around the mall a bit and then headed back to our car.
We took a detour though, and went through The Alamo. It was kind of eerie I must confess.
We came home and just finished a rousing game of Life. Where Collin made $1,700,000 and was the winner.
Matt is fixing them a light supper now.
A good day indeed.
While at the mall, I noticed that one of Matthew's brackets was missing a band. So tomorrow, we have to go back to the orthodontist to have one put one. What a pain. That appt is at 11. I have to go to our current bank sometime tomorrow too. And Matt and I need to go to our new bank. We are working on closing one account and moving to a different bank, but it is proving to be a huge pain.
Tomorrow is also speech therapy.
How in the world am I ever going to fit this all in. It isn't like any of it is even near the other, geographically speaking. We are literally talking 3 seperate sides of the city.
We'll see how this works out.

Since he asked..

My dad left me a comment, wondering how the appt went for Matthew.
The point of the appt was to measure the thickness of his cornea to be sure the high pressure was normal for the thickness of his cornea.
We had already done all this in the civilian world, but the dr wanted to do it herself.
So the conclusion was made that the high pressure in the right eye is consistent with the thickness of the cornea.
We went on to discuss the pain he frequently has. She wasn't sure what would be causing it, but is sending his info to a glaucoma doc and a cornea specialist. Just to be sure she's not missing something. She did say that pain like he is describing could very well be from a traumatized retina. I think that's what she said! Whatever she said, she said that that would make sense since he has had so many surgeries on that eye and it is obviously traumatized.
So there you have it. Just cornea thickness testing!

I'm so excited...

That I just can't hide it!
I'm about to lose control,
and I think I like it,
I like it!

OK, sorry, sometimes you just have to break into song. Now someone is going to comment and tell me I have the lyrics wrong. Well, if I do, I'll have to relearn the song, because that is how I have always sung it.

ANYWHO...guess what I did last night? I arranged all my scrapbooking stuff! I brought it all downstairs, and fit it all into the buffet! Yippee me!

Normally, all the kids school books go in the buffet, but this year, they are on a bookshelf, so the buffet was full of stuff that really didn't need to be there. It was kind of one of those things where when you move, you put stuff anywhere, just to have it out of a box! Well, it's all out, and the scrapbooking stuff has moved in.

This is thrilling to me. I haven't wanted to scrap since we got here because it was all upstairs, in my closet. Do you know how much of a pain it is to try and scrap downstairs at the table, whilst all your stuff lives upstairs? A pain I tell ya. I did do one layout, but it really was a pain.

Two years ago, I introduced my best friend to scrapbooking. I am ashamed to say that while she has gone on to teach lessons at her local scrap shop, I have tucked my stuff away in a closet upstairs.

NO MORE!

I can't believe I just wrote a whole entry about scrapbooking. I should be cleaning the school room, but am procrastinating. Tsk Tsk.

I am SUCH a dork!

We watched The Dukes of Hazzard tonight and something hit me.
Never, in my 30 years, have I ever figured out that the Dukes were a family that lived in the town of Hazzard. Nevermind the fact that we all know Daisy Dukes got their name from Daisy Duke. I never ever put two and two together.
I don't know what I ever thought the title meant, I never put any thought into it, it was just the title of the show.
Such a dork!

After 9 years, I finally slipped up

Oh dear. I'm in trouble! LOL
Way back in high school, "pooptart" was a term of endearment I would use. Everyone was a pooptart, and my mom was Queen pooptart.
That term has gone by the wayside, you know, with maturity! Anyway, the other day my mil was talking to me and she said, 'what a pooptart' about someone. I about died, it was almost as funny as the slip up she had while playing a certain card game!
So the word has been brought to the surface of my brain, no longer buried.
Zachy was just being a total pill and in an exasperated tone I said, "Zachy, quit being a little pooptart!" Collin IMMEDIATELY pipes up, "poopart, why you hay poopart?" Now he's running around cracking up going "poopart!"
WHAT HAVE I DONE????

Today's Events

OK, so the event of the day is taking Matthew to the opthalmologist. Which is an event in and of itself. Let me tell you how much I hate going to the dr here. Totally not kid friendly..AND..whatever you do takes hours. So, it should be fun with all the kids.
The appt is at 2:20, Matt will be off work at 4:30 so will be able to come get the other kids. Audiology is right next door to opthalmology, so it works out nice.
Zachy woke up at 6:30 this morning. He normally sleeps till at least 9. I'm hoping to use this to my advantage, I'll keep him awake till we go, then he can sleep and maybe sleep for most of the appt. That would be nice.
The only thing is..I HAVE to get to the bank today. And it is a jaunt from here. I'm worried he'll sleep then. Maybe we'll go now instead of waiting till after school is done. We'll see!

Random photos

Totally random photos tonight, not much of an entry.

We got our new FuzziBunz today. I love these. They were great 4 years ago, but now they are even better! They even come in fun colors nowadays!
Here are the four different colors we got.



OK, here are pictures of the door windows. I don't know if you can see anything at all in these pictures, except that you don't see outside clearly, which was the point.
The duller, darker windows are the frost, and the other four are the green.



Here is an upclose look at the design, sort of.



Dillon decided that he is going to collect snowglobes. So Matt brought him home his first one from Florida. It actually says Florida on the bottom. The quality of this picture is so poor.



And I got this cute magnet. We have always collected shot glasses, but now they sit in a box because they have no place to go. So I told Matt we need to switch to magnets. So here's my first one.