I got back yesterday evening from a really nice visit with my sister and her family. While there, none of us got nearly enough sleep, but we really enjoyed the time together. My kids got to come too, but dad had to stay home alone.

I began to notice the acidophilus I've been giving my kids for the last month appears to be helping my son with his emotional self-control. It was especially obvious with our travel yesterday. Because of storms near DC, we had to sit on the tarmac for 30-40 minutes before takeoff, and later because of storms near Denver, we were almost diverted to Colorado Springs. The hardest part of that whole delay was that we were planning to spend about an hour in the airport with my husband before he had to leave for a business trip. Fortunately, we were able to get in to Denver after all (and then my hubby's plane was delayed too) so we had some nice time with him. Through all this, my daughter had a really hard time accepting the things she couldn't change, but my son was really good about it all. He is the child who is not generally flexible and does not deal well with changes in the plans!

Yes, we had about a pint of milk spilled on the kitchen floor (the child whose clumsiness was responsible has asked not to be identified publicly, and I'll respect that). And we had a great deal of anger and frustration that resulted. And we had the other child feeling upset because their attempts at comfort were not accepted. But it also led to conversations with both children about their true enemy.

They are not each other's enemies. Yet they do have an enemy of their souls who would love nothing more than to destroy their relationship with each other. An enemy who would love them to learn to treat each other and their parents with utter disrespect. An enemy who is working to undermine everything their father and I are building into their lives. And he is my enemy as well - and I am determined to fight against everything he is trying to do in my family.

I don't often look for the spiritual battle that I know is raging in the world around me because I don't want to get distracted from following what God wants to accomplish in and through me. But maybe sometimes I'm a little late in recognizing spiritual sources for disruptions in my family, attributing them to sleep deprivation or the wrong food consumption. But with all that I've seen going on lately in our church, and my husband having sudden weird breathing problems last night., it seems there's more going on right now.

So I'm praying desperately for God to give me wisdom to help my children battle their true enemy, for me to keep walking in faith and the truth, and for Jesus to soften their hearts.

Please join me in praying for my husband's lungs and for our friend who broke his back on Monday. I learned yesterday that he has 4 broken vertebrae in addition to the one that is crushed. He has surgery this afternoon - pray that it goes well!

Yesterday was a perfect example of my son's interaction with carbyhydrates. He had a large bowl of cereal for breakfast, and then at lunch pretty much ignored his chicken nuggets in favor of a large plate of nachos he had made (with a lot more tortilla chips than cheese). Even before he finished eating, he was acting really crazy. He was so nutty that his buddy who was with us even wanted him to settle down. There was no calming him down.

Fortunately, some boys from the neighborhood came over and invited him and his buddy to join them in a water fight. A couple of hours outside running around at least kept me from losing patience with him, but even later in the day he was having a hard time controlling his emotions.

It seems that we have a love/hate relationship with carbs - he loves them, but I hate what they do to him!

Our family is adjusting to not having Spooner around, but I seem to notice her absence most at odd times. We used to always have to kick her out of the room when we were eating meals so she wouldn't annoy us trying to get every crumb out from under the table (and getting under our feet in the proces). I got to the point where I was actually saying (yes, I know the dog didn't understand me, but I said it anyway), "We promise not to lick up the floor before you can get over here!" But it's not then that I notice her absence most. It's actually when I'm preparing meals. Spooner used to decide she needed to go out as soon as I arrived in the kitchen to start making dinner. So I'd let her out and start cooking. The other day I actually looked up at the back door about 2 or 3 minutes into making dinner, expecting to see her at the back door ready to come in. And now if I drop something on the floor, I have to pick/wipe it up myself because there's no one racing me to snarf it up.

This morning my kitchen floor is covered with bread & cracker crumbs (and yesterday I had to sweep up a half box of cereal that got spilled). I told my husband I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up without a dog. It seems like a silly reason to get a new puppy, but it has to be better than mice and ants in the house!

Actual conversation at my house yesterday:

Daughter: Mom, Mom! Will you get us some ice cream? [Meaning from the ice cream truck coming through our neighborhood]

Mom: Ummm, no.

Daughter: Why?!

Mom: Well, you all just had a snack. Remember those crackers you took upstairs?

Daughter: But we can put it in a bowl and save it for later. Like after dinner.

Son: I don't really want ice cream anyway.

Daughter: (noticing the ice cream truck coming closer) Please, Mom. Please hurry and make your decision!

Mom: I already told you my decision, sweetheart.

Daughter dissolves into tears.

Now, last time I checked, I thought the word "why" in this context meant something like "I'd like to know your reason" or "I'm curious about what's behind that answer." It appears that in my daughter's world, the word "why" means "I didn't like that answer, so let's see if I can get a different one." This is far from the first time we have had a conversation like this, and I can think of only once in 7+ years when I actually gave in to her - and she knew that it was an anomaly.

My mom has said to me, "The qualities that drive you crazy when they are children will make them excellent adults." I have no doubt that my daughter will be a fantastic mother - her children will not be able to get a thing past her! And her verbal and debate skills could make her a great missionary and evangelist. But right now they really are driving me crazy.

This morning my daughter and I made the muffins I mentioned yesterday. They were quite yummy, but would you believe my son (the one I'm especially trying to steer away from carbs) decided he didn't like them. Probably too much peanut butter flavor for his tastes. I know, what kid doesn't like peanut butter? Well, one who never tasted it before 3 years old because we had no information on family history of allergies and didn't want to take any chances. Now he doesn't exactly hate it, but he's not a big PB&J fan either.

We also finished off the loaf of bread I bought at the grocery store last weekend. I have a bread machine and actually love making fresh bread, but the bread machine has a problem where the loaf pan pops out while mixing and kneading the dough. So I have to babysit the machine for the first 20 minutes or so - meaning I can't dump the ingredients in the pan before bed and have a nice fresh loaf of bread ready in the morning. Perhaps tomorrow morning I'll be able to get a loaf started and have bread for sandwiches at lunch. And I'm sure to save some money over store-bought bread, too.

I know it's early, but we started back to school today. This schedule helps us to finish in very early May when all of us are really ready to be done. (I recently heard from another mom that she tries to finish by Easter because she has found that little to no learning gets done after Easter anyway.) But we just finished a 9-week break, and my children were excited to get back to school - although, to be honest, I think they're more excited about earning rewards for doing their school work than actually doing the work.

We always have attitude issues to deal with when we start back after a break of any length, so I tried hard to incorporate foods in the day that would help with energy levels. I especially wanted to get a lot of protein and minimal carbs into my son. So I took the time to make him eggs for breakfast (an "egg burrito" as we call it - I'll have to share that recipe/technique later). They both got ham sandwiches and yogurt smoothies with extra acidophilus stirred in for lunch, and I managed to keep my son away from all crackers at snack time. Now, that's an accomplishment! I wouldn't say we had a perfect day - they both had their moments (well, my daughter's "moment" lasted close to an hour) - but much of that was probably attributable to the fact that they didn't get quite enough sleep last night and then ran track this morning.

I hope I can keep up this kind of diet regularly. I have a recipe from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook for Peanut Butter-Banana muffins that sound like a good high fiber, protein-packed breakfast or snack option (especially if I substitute a little soy flour for some of the flour in the recipe). So if I get the time to make them this week, we'll give them a try.

We decided to take Spooner to the vet and let her go today. It wasn't an easy decision, but I know I would have lost sleep over scheduling it a few days off. She was a great dog, and we all miss her a lot. I'm finding that grieving is difficult enough - it's even harder to walk through with my children. But I am glad that my husband and I can help them through their first real experience of grief.

Spooner came into our lives at a particularly difficult time. My husband was losing his position as pastor of a small church, and she was a great comfort to us during that time. My mom often said that we should have named her "Aloe" because she was so soothing for us. She helped my husband and I welcome two children into our family and loved them just as she loved us.She even welcomed a cat into our family for a short time. (It was always fun to watch the two of them play and wrestle.)

It's oddly appropriate that I'm writing this tribute in a month when I'm blogging around the theme of "food." I often told people, "I know that animal looks like a dog, but she's really a pig." Spooner never saw a crumb of food that she wouldn't snarf up! I often had to make sure someone stayed at the table if we had food on it so that she wouldn't jump up and finish someone's meal for them. She did a great job of keeping my kitchen floor clean - now who's going to clean up all the food that gets dropped on the floor?

My children went to bed hungry tonight. They simply didn't get enough to eat at dinner. My husband decided that mealtime when we were all together would be the best time to break some bad news to them. Our dog has been suffering from Cushing's Disease caused by a tumor on her pituitary gland for about 2 years. We have managed to keep the disease under control, but she has been not well for the last couple of months. One recent test showed that the Cushing's was still in check, but she has been drinking too much water, urinating in the house, and trembling quite a bit. A urinalysis yesterday showed that she now has kidney damage, and it's also likely that the tumor has grown to the point where it is impacting her brain.

We believe that it would be better to let our dog die peacefully than to wait until she is suffering terribly, so we made the difficult decision to let her go this week instead of waiting any longer. Our children didn't take this news well. In my husband's defense, I don't think he could have found any better time to tell them. If you think of it, pray for our family this week for peace and acceptance.

At my state Homeschool conference last month, I attended a few seminars with Dianne Craft (also check here on the HSLDA site for more). She addressed 2 specific problems that I see in my kids, so I'm hopeful that over the course of the next few months I'll see results using her recommendations.

My daughter is a very strong left-brain thinker/learner. (Funny thing, the "handedness" part doesn't work like it's supposed to for my kids - the left-handed child is left-brain, and the right-handed child is right-brain!) Anyway, the left side of the brain is the short-term memory side, and she has a REALLY hard time getting anything into long-term memory. Dianne mentioned that pre-term babies and babies who are not breast fed (couldn't do that with 48 hours notice for an adopted child!) often don't get the essential fatty acids needed to properly develop the corpus callosum - the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain. AHA! Fortunately, fish oil supplements can make up for what has been missed.

My son is a carbohydrate nut, and we've called him "Captain Blood Sugar" because of the way the carbs affect him - when his blood sugar is up, he can be hyper, and when it's down, he goes way down. As Dianne talked about problems related to yeast overgrowth in the digestive system, I had another Aha!moment. Yeast overgrowth is also easily combatted with supplements.

Now both of my kids are taking acidophilous and Essential Fatty Acid supplements with breakfast and dinner. My son also takes grapefruit seed extract tablets, and I'm trying hard to get him away from the high-carb breakfasts he loves way too much. Fortunately, he loves eggs as much as Honey Nut Cheerios - it's just more work for me.

We'll see if these things help over the next couple of months. I think I'm starting to see some improvements in my daughter's attention and memory, and my son has had moments of cooperation lately when I expected arguments. If the supplements don't help as expected, then we may have to take other steps. But to begin with, making changes to their diet and nutrition is easier (and less expensive) than professional help.

My kids have been very "into" the Spiderwick Chronicles lately. We read the books months ago before seeing the movie, and it was a good exercise in comparing the stories, evaluating how the movie changed things to simplify the story. The end of the movie was also quite a bit less scary for them than for friends who weren't familiar with the story in advance!

Last weekend we rented the movie for them, and today they were out in the back yard acting out the story. My son had built a small "fort" of rocks yesterday and was playing with plastic baggies filled with water. Before long, they were adding ketchup to the baggies to make tomato juice bombs to fend off goblin attacks.

No, I didn't let them have oatmeal, vinegar and salt, though!

I'm watching my friend's son this afternoon, and the kids just decided they'd make lunch for themselves. My daughter thinks she's able to do things she really can't do - she has always been like this, though, so what happened next was really no surprise.

She decided to make juice. I had no idea what she was doing, or I would have gone to help! I realized something was not right when I heard her ask they boys to give her a napkin, and they were just laughing at her. When I realized that they weren't helping, I went in to help ...

... And found my daughter in a dress covered with grape juice concentrate, with more grape juice concentrate all over the cooktop, cabinets, and floors. She was trying to clean her dress with one paper towel.

Now, I tend to lose it over unnecessary messes because I have a hard enough time keeping on top of my regular cleaning. But this time I was able to keep my reaction under control. (Although I nearly lost it again over my son traipsing through the juice on the floor and tracking it all around the kitchen!) So I finished making the juice, told the kids they were not allowed to have any because they hadn't asked permission (and no one needed more sugar at that moment), sent my daughter to change with instructions to put the dress in a sink full of cold water and kicked the boys out of the kitchen so I could clean up. And all of this without getting angry!

But my daughter must be having a clumsy day because she dumped over a cup of water in the middle of lunch, too.

I think I need chocolate....

I enrolled my kids in track for the summer, and their first day was yesterday. The coach gave us parents a good oreintation to the program as well as a pep talk encouraging us to make sure we're exercising to stay healthy (you can imagine, the whole "You need to be around for these kids!" spiel). So I got inspired to get back into walking and jogging - it's been a while, but I found a good "Couch to 5K" training workout program online and decided to give it a shot. Since I tend to wake up before most of my family on most mornings, that seemed like an ideal time to go out, and yesterday I did the first day of the workout.

The workouts start easy - 60 seconds of jogging alternated with 90 seconds of walking. No big deal, I thought.

OUCH!

By the end of the day yesterday, my leg muscles were starting to feel tight, and by this morning, my thighs and shins were in full-blown pain. Both sitting down and getting back up are hard enough, but it was torture to carry baskets full of laundry downstairs this afternoon!

But I'm doing it for my own good ... and for my kids, right? And sitting down with the laptop on my lap feels pretty good (until I have to get up to put laundry in the dryer.)

We finished school on May 5 and will break until July 7 - 9 weeks off for Summer Break! I know a lot of homeschoolers try to keep their kids in math & reading during the summer, but I always let our break from school be a break from school. I do have both kids signed up for summer reading programs, mainly because I want them to see reading as something to do for pleasure, not just for school. My son is still in vision therapy, so he has to do his exercises every day, too. If it weren't for the fact that our insurance agreed to pay only through mid-August, I would happily take him out of that until we're "back in school."

My son did agree to do math, reading, and vision exercises daily if I would agree to rent him a Nintedo DS game from Blockbuster after he kept it up for 5 days. It was his idea, but so far he hasn't asked for a math worksheet.

My daughter is happily keeping up with piano almost daily without being asked. Yesterday she figured out how to play "Yankee Doodle" in C Minor. (She already knew how to play it in C Major.) I need to make sure she has the rest of her music handy so she can play around with whatever else she wants.

And I am using the down time really productively to launch my new business: 3Rs Travel Club. I have planned a trip to Washington, DC, and am signing up families to join us in October. Next on my agenda is to plan a trip to London in February/March 2009 - I'm having a great time reading Take Your Kids to Europe: How to travel safely (and sanely) in Europe with your children, as well as talking to friends who have been to (or lived in) London and perusing the guide books. Click on the button on my sidebar to find out more. I would love to meet and travel with my blogging buddies some day!

Of course, even though we take a break from schoolwork, there's still plenty of work to do around the house. Both kids are being super helpful, pulling weeds and keeping their rooms (mostly) cleaned and helping wherever else needed. I finished planting my gardens yesterday, getting the last seeds sown just in time for a nice day of soaking rain. My son is out (literally) running around in that rain right now, and I need to keep alert for when he comes in so that he doesn't drip all over the house!

Later this summer (actually a few weeks after I plan to start school again), we'll have visits from my brother and his family as well as my college roommate with her kids. We'll plan to take a couple of weeks off around that time - and also spend a long weekend in San Diego after my husband has a conference out there.

So what are you doing this summer?

My daughter doesn't get the same attention for her activities that her brother gets all the time. He plays sports and has games one to three times a week, but she took music and dance classes - a year of work leading up to one big performance. Last weekend she had her music program on Saturday and a dance recital on Sunday - it was her turn to shine, and she did a great job!

She has been taking music lessons at Children's Music Academy for the last couple of years - if you have CMA in your area, I highly recommend it for a great training in music. At the program, the children played group piano pieces, solos (including a song that they each composed for the old rhyme "Pease Porridge Hot"), and ensemble pieces with piano, glockenspiel, and triangle or tambourine. They also sang a few songs. Here are a couple of pictures of her performing - one on piano and one with the glock:

Then at her dance recital, she did a really nice job, too. Here she is with her best friend who came to watch the performance with us:

Finally, her ballet dance - which was her favorite, and she did so well. She is so graceful, and I love her positions in this. (She's the second from the left.)

The huge tornado that hit north of Denver yesterday was surprisingly close to us. Tornadoes are very rare close to the mountains because of the nature of air flow, and while I heard of a couple of very small ones more than 10 years ago, something like what hit yesterday was - well, kind of a shock. We got  some slightly larger than usual hail in our town, but I'm not sure it even hailed much in my neighborhood. (I was out for lunch with the kids at the time - we saw some small hail, but my friend told me they had some about golf-ball to baseball sized at her house.)

One thing that came close to rattling me when I read the newspaper this morning was realizing that I would not be prepared for a tornado like that to hit our house. I rarely have the TV on during the day and never listen to the radio, so unless a warning popped up on my computer, I'd have no clue if one was coming. And I wouldn't expect it either - even when I noticed an email yesterday about a tornado watch in my county, I dismissed it because "tornadoes never form this close to the mountains." (To be fair, we are slightly closer to the mountains than where that one hit, but that one still "shouldn't" have formed according to what we hear all the time.) Now, however, I at least know that if the sky is dark and ominous and hail starts to fall followed by a period of quiet, I should grab the kids and dog and head for the basement for safety.

Another really weird thing that was realizing that my parents were considering several years ago moving to the very town that took the most damage from the tornado. Funny, they ended up in Oklahoma, and they would have been more at risk had they moved here instead!

I have to share one other funny thing. When I was talking with the kids this morning about yesterday's tornado, they (of course) wanted to know what we would do if we knew a tornado was coming. I told them we'd go in the basement, and my son replied that he wouldn't want to go down there. It seems he's uncomfortable with being in the basement since he saw a mouse in the window well outside the house when he was in the basement a few weeks ago! But given the choice between seeing a mouse from the basement and risking having a house collapse on top of him, I sure hope he'd be willing to go to safety!

Today I was responding to my friend Valerie's question (posed to members of a Yahoo! group she started called Just4HomeschoolFamilies) about our feelings on "socialization." My final thought was that we can't confuse socialization with activities. I said, "Busy-ness doesn’t make for properly 'socialized' people – it just makes for busy people who have to explain to their friends why they’re never available. Socialization should involve things like friendship, compassion, service and love – the ability to build and maintain relationships."

Last Saturday I talked to one of my best friends for a while on the phone and later ran into her at our Town Fair later. While I was able to give her most of my attention while on the phone, by the time I saw her in person, I was so wrapped up in what our family was doing and making sure we got our son to his baseball game on time (and fed) that I practically blew her off. She was very gracious and understanding when I saw her on Sunday morning. But I've realized that I'm not doing a good job of keeping up with my friends since I got home from vacation. I guess it's time to re-socialize myself again!

Thanks to all who left such sweet comments regarding my Hawaii getaway with my most amazing husband. It was a delightful and magical time, and we are looking forward to finding an opportunity to return - next time with our kids and some other families! I wish I could have taken you all with me - maybe in the future I can? Until then, we'll have to share lives through our blogs.

I captured a picture of these alien kids in my bathroom this morning:

In the light, they look normal, but in the dark they GLOW! These are not normal children!

OK, so it's my kids who were allowed to play with glow stick bracelets this morning. They found a leak in one (and caused a leak in the other) and got to decorating themselves. The two big green splotches are my daughter's hands, the blue to the left of her hands is her brother's hand, and the blue & green stuff in the middle is all over one of her old nightgowns. (Before she changed into that, though, I had to throw 2 of her favorite dresses in the laundry!)

And, would you believe they have some cleaning to do in my bathroom, too?!

In the last couple of weeks, we've had a ton going on. My son has baseball games or practices 3-4 times a week; my daughter has music/piano, dance and sewing classes (and wouldn't you know, my son has baseball games every week at the same time as she has music, so I miss all those games ). We had friends over for dinner on Saturday, my daughter & I attended a baby shower on Sunday afternoon, and then our church celebrated Passover Sunday evening. Plus I started painting a wall in my Living Room purple.

We have 12 days of school left! Next month we'll head out for vacation which will include leaving the kids with grandma & grandpa while hubby & I head to Maui for an early 20th anniversary getaway. And on top of everything else, I'm getting ready to launch my new business, 3Rs Travel Club (check it out at www.3rstravelclub.com).

The only way I seem to be able to get everything done is that I've been waking up by 6:00 every morning lately. Not by choice! But if I try to get back to sleep, I always end up more tired for the rest of the day than if I just get up. So I've been getting up early, feeding the dog, spending time reading my Bible and praying, and getting about an hour to work on business things before anyone else stirs. Even though I crash hard after we get the kids to bed, I feel good about life and how much I'm accomplishing each day!

We have just 3 weeks of school left. Oh, it's getting hard to hang in there, especially with the weather warming up so that everyone wants to be outside all the time! I do love to encourage my kids' creative play, and right now they're outside playing in one of my garden beds with the neighbor's grandson. My son just told me they're building the Rocky Mountains - how can I make them come inside for schoolwork now? But the history and math still need to get done, too!

I have also been working on setting up a new business: a family travel club oriented towards homeschoolers. Wouldn't it be great to travel the world with other families?! For a sneak peek at what I'm planning, check out my new website at www.3rstravelclub.com. And feel free to leave me a comment or send me an email with feedback on this business.