'Tis the Season....

We enjoyed our first ever (that we can remember) Thanksgiving weekend at home. On Thanksgiving Day, I cooked and we had Papaw and Uncle Kerry over for dinner. The kids were excited to have company. Sean was worried if no one came that he would not be allowed to eat the strawberry jello I made.

On Friday, we put the tree up. We got it new on clearance last year. It is pre-lit with 800 lights and Jeff was very happy to not have to string the lights this year. This is probably the first time in a long time we've been able to put the tree up and get it decorated all in the same day. :)

Here are some pics of the tree and the kids.

We managed to escape the nebulizer during the last round of colds, but the irritating cough that Sean has had since last week finally got a grip on him yesterday and this morning the doctor heard wheezing in both sides and pneumonia in one lower lung. Poor little guy feels pretty bad but at least his fever has not went up real high. He's now on a regimen of antibiotics and four breathing treatments a day with a steroid on standby if he doesn't improve in 24 hours. I don't think we'll need to get that one filled because the breathing treatments are really helping his cough. The doctor said that it could slow down the effects of the antibiotic so we're hoping to not have to go to that. Callie isn't feeling too well either but hers seems to be a bit of a sore throat lack of appetite virus.

I went to Wal-mart (or Always as Callie used call it) while Callie ice skated last night. I grabbed a cart in the parking lot as I usually do. This gives me a chance to test drive it on the way in the store so I can decide if it is a good one or if I need to trade it in when I get inside. This one had a major alignment problem and was pulling to the left so I dropped it off and picked up another one. I later noticed that the new one was loud and made a KAHLUNK KAHLUNK noise as I drove. What is it that people do to these carts to make them so messed up?

I like the carts at Aldi. They are newer. You pay a quarter to unlock it and use it and then when you are done, you put it back and get your quarter back. It seems to keep the carts in better condition since they aren't getting run over in the parking lot.

I was searching for a replacement lead-free Curious George for Sean. 5-year olds do not understand "refunds" when their toys are recalled. He was more upset about losing Curious George than he was about the Aqua Dots. I got lucky and there was one Curious George that was plush and did not have any paintable surfaces. His head weighs about 5 lbs. it seems because he is a Tumbling Curious George. Sean loves him.

I also had to pick up some guinea pig supplies for Callie. Here are Kinjie and Binkie thanking me for their fresh bedding and Timothy Hay. Does anyone know why they call it Timothy Hay? Who's Timothy?

Sean's Curious George recalled. That's 2 of his favorite toys 2 days in a row. Isn't this ridiculous? They ought to refund more than the cost of the toy for having to take away kids' favorite toys because they are not safe.

http://curiousgeorge.regcen2.com/default.asp

Bad news for Aqua Dots

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08074.html

Sean was upset to find out that one of his favorite gifts ever has been recalled. I'm glad he doesn't have a tendency to put things in his mouth.

5:25 am: "Mommy.... I'm hungry."

Where's his button?

Tonight we roll back our clocks. We just started doing this last year here in Indiana. After many years of being different (except for Arizona), our government finally caved in and put us on Daylight Savings Time.
At least in the fall, moving the clocks back an hour is much easier than moving them forward an hour. We should get an extra hour of sleep. Problem is that we do not have a time set button on the kids so we can roll their internal clocks back. I just have a feeling Sean will appear at the side of my bed at about 5:30am saying, "Mommy, I'm hungry".

We went to the doctor yesterday. Three weeks ago we all had a nasty cold virus but everyone had gotten over it except Callie so off to the doctor we went. She has a sinus infection and is now taking antibiotics. While we were there, I decided to go ahead and do flu shots for Sean and Sierra as well as Sean's 5-year shots. While discussing with the nurse and the doctor, we were very careful not to say "shot". Instead, we used the words "vaccine" and "immunization".
Once the doctor was done with Callie and discussing the "vaccines" with me, he said he was going to run and out he went. Finally, the nurse comes in and Sean sees the syringes on her tray and he starts to get tears in his eyes and says "Poor Callie". Little did he know. Sierra got hers first since she was just getting one. She didn't do too bad. I didn't realize just how strong Sean was until I had to wrestle him on to the table. The good news was that they had the combo shot for two of the vaccines so he only got 4 shots instead of 5. He got 2 in each leg. He thought he had only gotten one shot in each leg. I guess he didn't notice the second ones in the legs because he was screaming so loud. He walked like a penguin out to the van, still crying. He cries more afterward from thinking about it than from the actual shots.

Treats and more Treats

What a nice day we had to end October. Back to reality in November with cooler temps in the forecast. We started the day out with Bible Study Fellowship. Afterward, in the van we ate the picnic lunch of ham, celery and grapes. Then we dropped Sean off at preschool. They made persimmon pudding today while wearing their baker's aprons.

We went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. Callie did not solicit candy but a couple of people insisted on giving her some which was nice. It appeared that about one-third or a half of the kids trick-or-treating were her age or older. Sean was like a hunter... out for the big kill. We ran into an old preschool buddy of his from last year and they were excited to see each other. We probably heard "Hi Sean! Hi T.J.!" about 20 times as we kept passing them along the way. Sean was glad to see him since they do not go to school together this year.

Sierra was good at remembering her manners so Sean started letting her go first so he would remember to say thank you when she did. When she would get her candy, she would turn around, eyes real big and walk to me holding her open sack so I could see. It was like she was in disbelief that these people would give her all this candy. We ended the day at Mamaw's. Her tootsie rolls were a big hit with the kids. And the bananas and apples - not that she spoils them or anything.

Sean's not as into sweets and does not like tart candy but Sierra hasn't found any candy she doesn't like yet. I think Sierra has her mommy's sweet tooth. When I was a kid, we would get a dollar for our allowance each week and I would go next door and spend it on candy. I always nickeled and dimed it away (literally back in those days) on things like ring pops, jolly ranchers, candy cigarettes (because they were sweet and only 10 cents a box), sweettarts, etc. I never blew it all in one place like on a candy bar. I wanted to make it last. I'm probably one of the few who still had Halloween candy left by the time Easter rolled around.

Enjoy the pics.

CHRISTIAN PUMPKIN

Sean made this pumpkin at preschool. They do not celebrate Halloween but tomorrow they will be dressing as bakers to do some baking. Ma made him and Sierra baker aprons and hats so that is what they will be trick-or-treating as this year. I think Callie has retired from trick-or-treating but she plans to dress up to hand out candy.

Sierra and Cedarmont Kids Video

Body Electric

Sierra enjoyed (well not totally) some exercise with the PBS workout channel this week. She prefers marching and dancing to the Cedarmont Kids videos.

Sudoku Anyone?

Here our two math brains are enjoying game of Sudoku for Kids.

Kids had school pictures made the other day so I took some more of them when we got home. Enjoy!

So much for going to sleep early....

I'm on an email list for weather alerts and we got this email today.

This is a heads up for tonight's weather. We don't want to alarm anyone but this
storm system has some real potential to do damage.
Spotters - you will be activated tonight.
For businesses/industries that run 2nd and 3rd shifts, pay
close attention to your weather alert radios/devices. Make certain your
employees know what to do in severe weather events.

Alrighty then! No sleep for us moms. Additional notices gave us some good news: Storms are fast moving (possible up to a mile per minute). Flash flooding is not likely to be a problem if the speed of the storm continues.
Well, that is a relief - at least they don't expect flash floods. Just possible tornadoes that might be long lived and possible 70-80 mph winds and storms that are moving up to 1 mile in a minute..

I want to know what a spotter is. Is that a paid job? Running around looking at the sky for tornadoes? Could that be safer than sitting at home unable to hear the tornado sirens or see the tornadoes through the trees? Might be a good job to be on-call for if it doesn't require any previous experience. :)

Picasso?

Sean helped Daddy with a bookcase that Mommy found at a garage sale for $8. Here is his depiction of their project.

What happens when mom and dad are sick and the kids dress themselves.

While mom and dad and big sister were down with the nasty cold virus, the young ones, who were feeling much better, entertained themselves as you can see.

Sean's birthday is today. We celebrated on Sunday by letting him pick out something at Toys R Us and then having cake and ice cream at home. I could not get the video to publish on here so here is the link if you want to watch it.

http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f333/schneisa/?action=view&current=MVI_4291.flv

Sean has been wanting Aquadots ever since he saw a commercial for them a few months ago. So that is what he picked out without any hesitation. Much to my surprise, it works like the commercials show on tv. He has made a hot air balloon and a girl so far. See the pictures.

I have two complaints. One is that there are not 500 dots in the set as it says. Also, it says it is for ages 4 and up. After some practice, Sean is able to drop the dots in the tray to make the pictures but most four year olds probably cannot do that. Loading the dispenser from the small plastic pouches of tiny dots is not something for a 4-year old either. Sean loves this and asks often to get it out. So I guess my review ultimately is a thumbs almost up.

Callie normally has good days with school now that we are doing it at home. But yesterday she was really struggling with Social Studies on Japan. She kept whining how hard it was and then when she got to one section of her vocabulary page, she went ballistic. She said "These words don't make any sense!! They don't even look like real words!!! " So, I took a look at the words.... snmooons, maroigi, ufot, etc.... I looked at the directions next. "Write the correct word for each definition. Use the scrambled letters to help you." I asked her to read the directions. Boy, was she embarrassed. :)

Looking at Sierra in today's pictures, I kept thinking she looks so tall, so I went back to last November and found this picture for comparison. When she went for her 3 year well child visit recently, the doctor said she has grown 5 1/2 inches in the past year. Wow. She is a little above average in height at the 62nd percentile. Sean has finally climbed his way up to average at around the 52nd percentile (which makes him look even skinnier since he's at the 9th percentile for weight). Last time Callie was charted she was at 80th percentile for height. I think she's grown some too.

More Field Trip pics

The Apple Works had a neat barn with a slide coming out of the loft. Sean thought it was great once he got brave enough to go down it. Callie was a bit tall for it and hit her head at the bend. Sierra thought it was too big for her.

They had a gravel road course for the tricycles. It was complete with stop signs and streets named after apples.
The end of a fun day!

Another Field Trip!

Little Seeds Preschool arranged for a Family Field Trip for late this afternoon and early evening at The Apple Works. It is an apple orchard that has a nice lake or pond, a petting zoo, a maze, a cool playground. We also got to take a wagon ride around the orchard and learn about their operation. It was quite warm but we had a very enjoyable time. It had some great places for taking pictures so enjoy.

Field Trip Week.

Sean and Jeff went with the pre-K kids on a field trip on Wednesday. We have some great pictures courtesy of Samuel's mom. For some reason, Samuel and Sean are often next to each other which is a great benefit for us since we keep having camera troubles at times like these. We didn't get any of them on their horses but they did get to ride and had a great time.

In Memory of Greg

12/9/55-9/27/07

Greg is on the right in these three pictures.

The kids wanted to watch a Care Bears video tonight which I thought at first was a great idea - keep 'em busy while I clean up in the kitchen. After a while, Sean appears in the kitchen requesting a "Banana Milkshake". Then I realized that the video I had agreed to let them watch is called "Rainy Day Activities" and is just full of wonderful craft and cooking ideas for kids! Oh brother. Every time Sean watches this video he comes to me with a memorized list of materials he needs to make something he saw on the video. We've made "flutes" which didn't work very well, kazoos that worked a little better, but I always refuse to punch the hole in the two metal cans and tie a string between them to make a phone. Tonight, it was Banana Milkshakes. Thanks, Care Bears!

At first I told him that our bananas weren't ripe enough yet but then he found the one on the counter that was so ripe it was almost sliding out of the skin. I then told him we don't have any ice cream and he informed me we don't need ice cream, we just need bananas and yogurt. He described the process for making them which sounded kind of complicated so I got out our little food processor and began cutting up the banana. He told me they will just drink them from a jar (like the Care Bears, I suppose). I told him he would need a spoon for these because they were kind of thick with bananas. So, he told me I must not have done it like they said. Well, I wasn't the one watching the video, but the kids ate them anyway. Callie wasn't too fond of them. Sierra dropped hers and it went all over the wall in the dining room. Sean thought it was delicious and the greatest idea, especially since he thought of it. Ha.

Below is Callie teaching Sean and Sierra how to play Candy Land.

You know how math story problems can be a problem if you do not read them carefully? Well this week we had a problem that went something like this:
"Each square dance circle has 4 couples. There are 6 circles of square dancers. How many square dancers are there? (BE CAREFUL)!"

When I checked the problem and realized it was wrong (she put 24), I asked her if she noticed the "BE CAREFUL" in the problem. She said that she thought they meant for the dancers to be careful since there were so many of them. I'm not kidding.

I think God knows how important humor is for me to maintain my sanity (what little there is left) especially in this first year of homeschooling.

During poetry today, our conversation went kind of like this: "Is Edgar Allan Poe dead?" "Well, when was he born?" She looks it up and says "1809". So, thinking 'math', I ask, "How old would he be today?" After some impressive, in-her-head calculation, she answers, "198". Then I reply, "So, do you think he is dead?" :D
Just for the record, he died in 1849.

At Sean's preschool today, it was his turn for "Me" day. So they sang his favorite song "Little Rabbit Foo Foo", read his favorite story "Jonah and the Whale" and had his favorite snack of carrots and celery. His teacher said he was surprised that everyone did not like celery as much as he does. (Anticipating that, I did send Ritz crackers for those kids). I'm not sure how we managed that, but Sean and Sierra both love celery, carrots and even lettuce (esp. shredded lettuce). Callie will eat carrots, green beans and broccoli but isn't big on anything else that is green.

On the way home, Sean asked, "Mommy, is Jonah and the whale a true story or was God just joking?" Of course, I explained to him that everything in the Bible is God's true word.

Brrrr! It's a bit chilly here. We had 40s last night and supposed to again tonight. I cleaned some windows and screens today and thought I was going to freeze. The wind was so cold. I had to dig out winter jammies for the kids for tonight and scrounged around for some sweats for myself. Sierra thought her sleeper was really funny. I guess she doesn't remember wearing sleepers. It's actually Sean's sleeper from last year. Thankfully, she doesn't care if she wears jammies with dinosaurs, cars or sports balls on them. At least not yet anyway. I have learned that if Sierra is toasty warm, she will sleep longer in the morning. It's always good to make those kind of observations. :) The only way Sean will sleep longer in the morning is if he winds up in our bed sometime during the night.

Earlier today I overheard this conversation: Sean: "I want to be King." Sierra: "No, I want to be King". This went on a couple of minutes, then Sean said, "We can both be King." Then Sierra said, "No, I want to be King!" (I think Callie must have claimed the Queen position).

Jeff went back to work last night at 8pm and got home about 4:30 this afternoon. He was walking pretty slow. Well, time to put everyone to bed. I'm in the middle of cleaning out a junk room so I am hoping for a couple more hours of awake time.

Hi there. I thought I'd try something different and blog by journaling rather than just with pictures. This has been a hectic couple of weeks. Inventory at Jeff's work has pretty much consumed his time. As if doing it once every few months isn't enough, this time they are doing it two weekends in a row! Woo hoo! Last week, Jeff worked 75 hours in 6 days. I think about 27 of those hours were in the last two days. But inventory did not go well, thanks to a recent computer system change that messed up the way things worked. Those programmers! Can't trust them! (for those who don't know - my past career was as an analyst/programmer so I would normally be more sympathetic - ha).

Last week, Sierra "called" daddy on her "cell phone" and asked him to come over a few times. This week she is focused on trying to outbehave (is that a word?) her brother. As Sean has been in trouble, on probation, etc., she keeps reminding me that she is "obeying" me. She said today, "I'm not saying bad words. I'm not saying poop. I'm not saying boogers. I'm not saying pee". Hmm, I wonder where she got all that vocabulary? Could it be from her big brother?? What is it that makes those words so funny anyway?

Callie started band last week. She plays the flute. This is her second year on flute but her first year with the homeschool band. She really likes it. Her crisis of the week is her injured guinea pig. It seems gp's are not as agile as cats and they do not land on all fours when they fall. Anyway, we are hoping for a full recovery but in the meantime, Charlie is recuperating slowly.

In case you can't tell from the picture, Charlie is just a little bit spoiled.

Sean is challenged in the behavior department lately but he very much wants to have some Moon Sand. So, we cut a deal today. Good behavior for 7 days straight and he can have Moon Sand. At the rate he's been going, maybe by Easter he can accomplish that. He's not a bad kid, he just doesn't always deal well with change. In the past few weeks, we've had several changes - he has started preschool, Bible Study and we've been doing some homeschooling. He would do homeschooling all day I think. He loves to work on math. He is learning to recognize and write numbers in the hundreds. We've discovered a couple of new reading-oriented shows on PBS and he loves to go online and play the games. His favorite site I think is pbskids.org. He prints out coloring pages, plays the game, etc.

Well, since I had a tough time dragging out of bed this morning, I better quit and get some rest.