I don't think waiting is all that hard for me. I usually find ways to fill my time, even if it is just a good book to read. But these past two weeks have redefined waiting. After my last post, I did have to go to the ER, and was diagnosed with a kidney stone which was lodged in the ureter. I followed up with my urologist, the only one in the area, and scheduled a lithotripsy (sound waves blast the stone into tiny gravel that are easier to pass). Since I had come down with a bad cold and had lost my voice, he also prescribed an antibiotic to make sure I didn't develop any other nasty bugs before the procedure. Unfortunately, I had a severe reaction to the medication and ended up hospitalized. Since then, my heart has been racing. And racing, and racing. While I was in the hospital, the doctor placed a stint to make sure my kidney could continue to function. Lithotripsy was rescheduled, and home I went. The tachycardia did not go away, though, and a subsequent EKG proved abnormal (inverted T waves), so lithotripsy was cancelled again.
So here I am. Two weeks and I still have a stone. Thankfully, oh so thankfully, I have no pain. My pulse seems to be returning to normal after 1 1/2 weeks of racing. Hopefully, I will find out soon what the new plan is. And hopefully, we can wait until after thanksgiving.
As to our Thanksgiving study--we finished Leif the Lucky and started Columbus today. We should finish Columbus tomorrow and next week we will read Pocahontus and If You Sailed on the Mayflower. We are also using a globe to trace the routes that Leif and Columbus took and a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words. And The Usborne Book of World History has been a great resource with this unit study.
When December comes, we will begin our Christmas study, which always includes reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
More drama in our family. I have a genetic defect called medullary sponge kidney disease. It's not as ominous as it sounds, although some people do seem to have a terrible time with it. People with MSK have deformed kidneys. The drainage tubes in the kidneys have small pockets where urine collects and turns to stones. I have hundreds of these pockets in both my kidneys and hundreds of stones. I know; it sounds like I'm exaggerating. But my doctor said there were too many stones to count. I used to joke that my x-rays looked like I had been hunting with Dick Cheney. (An x-ray of my kidneys shows tw oval areas of what looks like buckshot!) Some people have chronic kidney infections, constant pain, and other problems. I am truly blessed with sporatic pain, and so far only one kidney infection when I was 11 years old. (I wasn't diagnosed until I was 38 y.o. Most people aren't diagnosed until their first kidney stone. I probably had my first stone when I was 18, but they didn't do any x-rays or extensive testing, just sent me home with an "I don't know what's wrong with her, probably in her head" look.)
Thursday I had another kidney stone, large enough to cause severe pain. The only reason I even want to write about it, though, is that I have to tell you about my sweet children. Around 8 p.m. that night after about 3 hours of unrelenting pain, I lay down on our bed. Before that I had a heating pad and rice sock (tube sock full of dry rice heated in the microwave) and sat in a chair or paced the house. By this time, I had reached the point of wanting to go to the ER. I made calls to arrange that, knowing I would probably be there HOURS if not days. Then I just lay there. Praying. Oh, how I prayed.
Then my sweet children came in to ask if I needed anything. They re-heated my rice sock, brought me water, and then began to sing the most beautiful songs. Noah sang "Good night, sweet Mommy, flush that stone right down the drain." Jonah sat on the bed and held my hand, and Gracie sang "Silent Night". What an amazing prayer meeting we had. They got ready for bed, and we had our evening prayers. Again, they prayed for my healing, and as they prayed the pain subsided GREATLY. Within an hour, I passed the stone!
I love my children and my dear husband. You're probably wondering what he was doing?! He so hates to see me in pain and feels completely helpless. He's really good, though. He makes sure I have what I need, reheats the rice sock, brings me water, stays close enough that I can tell him if I need anything, but doesn't hover. He prays for me, and reaches out to our friends and family to ask for prayer. I had prayers going up all over this country. (Just before Mark's heart attack, we joined Facebook at the urging of one of his brothers. We thought it would be a good way to stay in touch with family and share pictures. It has turned into a blessed prayer ministry. When we need prayer, we share our requests--our "friends" are limited to family and friends, no strangers--and friends post their prayer requests. So many people we have been able to pray with, so many old friends we've found, and so many relationships built with family that we saw only at reunions and so briefly, then.)
So today I am just resting. We will be celebrating Jonah's 11th birthday with my parents this afternoon. His birthday isn't until the 16th Nov., but my parents will be out of town. He's kind of excited. He gets an early birthday and then we will celebrate his birthday at home on the day.
And I'm counting my blessings!!
We are taking an extended break from our History of the World unit study. We have worked our way to Noah and will take up the history of Noah and his sons, the Tower of Babel, and Sumer when we resume our studies in January. In the meantime, we will NOT be idle. (Aren't idle hands the devil's workshop?) This week we have been doing a fun unit study around the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
I found a unit study using this book here. We will be using some of these ideas as well as our own. We added a Bible study reading the story of Moses and the children of Israel who were fed manna and quail from the heavens by the Lord. Egermeier's Story Book Bible is a great resource. We have two weather books to use: The Magic School Bus: Kicks up a Storm and How It Works: The World's Weather. We continue to discuss healthy eating. And, of course, we will be eating spaghetti and meatballs.
I wanted to post this link again. We made our second batch of laundry soap. The first lasted about 6 months. (We do about 10 loads of laundry each week.) On my second batch, I was less exact. I didn't measure the water exactly, just added what I thought was about right. I really, really like this recipe. It's easy to make and works well.
Here's the link to my first post: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/JoyfulMomma/676876/
And here's the link to the recipe: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm
I never really went away, but I have definitely neglected my blog. I have been a bit frustrated by my lack of direction here. I post school plans, family updates, health news, and miscellaneous thoughts. And I guess this will continue to be a hodge podge of my scattered thoughts.
School Update--Plugging away! We finished The Magician's Nephew within two days and we've also read Archaeologists Dig for Clues. And we're about half way through each of the other books listed in my previous post. We have also added a few other books and movies. Biblically and historically we have reached the time of Noah. One thing different this time around is that I have given myself permission to not finish a particular book or to just read excerpts from it. We will most likely not be reading all of Genesis: Finding our Roots, but we will likely finish Adam and HIs Kin.
We have added: The Magic School Bus: Inside the Earth, The Magic School Bus: In the Time of the Dinosaurs, and Dinosaurs, a nature series by Dalmation Kids. (All completed.) We have read several chapters of a biography of Charles Darwin by David C. King and will continue to read it. We have used an Usborne Flip Flap book for reference and will use it as we study other historical periods (Homes and Houses: Then and Now). I found a book, We're Sailing to the Galapagos: A Week in the Pacific, which we will be reading and reviewing this week. I also have a book that we will be reading called The Case for Creation by Wayne Frair and P. William Davis. This was published in 1967 and I believe belonged to my dad. This is NOT an exhaustive list of what we have read, but it does include most of the books we have used for this particular study.
We have enjoyed AVKO Sequential Spelling and Edward Brook's Mental Arithmetic, although I have had to modify their use to fit our family.
During these last few months we have had to take time off for illness, the death of my grandmother, work and vacation. Currently, we are battling the H1N1 Flu (no complications) so we haven't been doing the basics (spelling and math) but have instead been listening to books on tape and reading aloud. We have also, these last few days, been watching Al Gore's An Incovenient Truth. We have watched about an hour so far, and we are watching only a few minutes at a time then discussing what has been presented and examining the facts and the conclusions he draws compared against facts and science presented on other websites.
The children have also had individual projects that they have worked on. Noah is busy creating stories, comic book heroes, and comic book drawings. Jonah has tried his hand at gardening and has quite a pepper patch. Grace has been sewing clothes for her stuffed animals and a nightgown for herself.
So...that is our semester. I'm glad we started early so that I haven't had to worry about taking our time. We will likely finish what we can this month, then take a break to do a Thanksgiving unit study and then a Christmas unit study. (If we can get to Abraham, then we will begin incorporating the Weaver curriculum into our studies in January.)
I. Adam
A. History
1. Adam and His Kin by Ruth Beechick (already own)
2. Story of the World--Vol. 1, by Susan Wise Bauer, just part of this and only maybe (borrow CD's from library)
3. Dinosaurs by Design by Duane Gish (own)
4. Archaeologists Dig for Clues by Kate Duke (own)
5. Egermeier's Story Book Bible (own) and the Bible Genesis 1-5 (I want them to KNOW that the Bible is not a book of stories but a history--a true account--of God's people.)
B. Bible
1. Genesis 1-5
2. Calvary Chapel printouts (There are 5 sets of lesson sheets for the story of Creation, Adam, and the Fall. Each free print out includes a coloring page for younger children, word finds and crossword puzzles for middle children, and more difficult word finds and crossword puzzles and questions for older children. You can choose which worksheet is most appropriate for your child and print those. Again, free resource!)
3.Memory Verse--John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
C. Music--find a creation hymn and learn together (I haven't looked yet, but I'm sure there is something good.)
D. Nature Study--Rocks
Collect and label a variety of rocks. We have a Magic School Bus book which has an excellent (but simple) chart to help categorize types of rocks. I think it's called Magic School Bus: Inside the Earth, but I have to find it. It's not with the other Magic School Bus books.
E. Art
Create a mosaic with rocks, pebbles, stones, or shells.
F. Copy Work--John 1:1, poem, other literature we are reading. Also, rec'd this tidbit in email, so we will be using it for copy work: "I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in." ~ George Washington Carver. And the verse from Romans 1:20.
G. Poetry--Find creation poem, hopefully by Robert Frost or Robert Louis Stevenson, poets I wanted to concentrate on.
H. Literature--The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. We have this on CD, so we will listen to it together and they will narrate back to me.
Then we will do math and science as discussed in the previous post.
Obviously, this is a bare bones outline and I still have some work to do for this first unit. But it's getting there. We actually started on this unit yesterday. I don't plan ahead on which book we will read which day, or how much of that book we will read. I just kind of go with the flow. We listened to 6 chapters in the Narnia book yesterday, then stopped, not because they asked to, but because we hit a point where we were having to pause too often for someone to get a drink or run to the bathroom. (We had already been working about 2 1/2 hours by then, including other readings, so it was time to stop.)
I also want to look for appropriate videos, but haven't gotten that far yet.
We will have 3 periods of work: 10-12 noon, 1-3 p.m., and 8-9 p.m. (Again, this is approximate.) The evening time we already use for family prayers and worship and will just add some related reading, a hymn, practice the memory verse. If we find that we are going later than 9 p.m., we will just begin a little earlier. We may need to add an hour in the morning for the 3 R's, but we'll see how this works next week. I don't know, looks like this may take us months to complete and I was hoping to finish in a few weeks.
We are all really excited to get started.
I have been using several resources to pull this together, including Ussher's Annals of the World, Reading Your Way Through History, and www.amblesideonline.com. So the broad outline:
I. Adam (4004 BC) Ancient Civilizations
II. Noah (2948 BC)
III. Nimrod (2234 BC) Sumer
IV. Abram/Abraham (1996 BC)
V. Jacob
VI. Joseph (1745 BC) Ancient Egypt
VII. Job (1635 BC)
(That's as far as I've gotten so far, in writing everything down. Dates are based on Ussher's work and are approximate.)
I think several months back I promised to tell you more about how we homeschool, and more of why we do "school" like we do. If you would like to read that post about our Homeschool Goals and Mission Statement, you can find it here.
I used to never call what we did school. But that turned into a problem because when the boys were asked, "What did you do for school today?" they would answer, "Nothing. We didn't do school." Of course, they were learning and learning a lot, but it was "fun" and not school like at all. I still dislike calling what we do "school". I would like them to realize that we can learn anytime and all the time. We don't just learn between 8 and 3 Monday thru Friday. We are learning at the grocery store, when we watch a particular show on tv, on a drive, in the kitchen, in the garden. Life is learning.
Curriculum Choices--
I've never met a used bookstore I didn't like. And my library card is the greatest homeschool tool I have, next to the internet. In August 2007 I wrote this as part of a homeschool open house. It still applies today, although some of the activities have changed slightly since the children are older.
This year we will be studying world history from the begining of time and continue chronologically until present day. (How's that for a plan. May be over-reaching a bit here, so this may take more than a year--or two, or three! And given our tendency to chase very interesting rabbits, who knows...) My goal is to make this into a real unit study that incorporates all subjects, except math.
For Language Arts, we will use Copy Work. We will copy (and progress to dictation for some) Bible passages and passages from the literature we are reading. I also have AVKO's Sequential Spelling (Vol. 1) and am considering working through this book as well.
For science, we will do nature studies related to the area of history we are working on. For example, when we get to the story of Noah we will study floods, weather, clouds. (When we begin a particular study, I will post more information. I haven't made plans other than to note a few ideas for study.) We will also take one day a week to read a chapter from Apologia's Exploring God through Creation: Astronomy and complete some sort of project with each chapter. I'm not sure if that will be notebooking (most likely) or lapbooks.
For math we will do several activities. I firmly believe math is best learned in context. Although I recognize some drill is necessary, it's not something I want to focus on. All the children know their basic math facts and understand the operations. They all can use money and easily add and subtract money in their heads. We also keep a dry erase board with their names and the amount of money they have earned by reading (1 cent a page for approved--challenging--books.) They are in charge of keeping track of how much they have read and adding it to the board. Occasionally, one of the children will sell one of their possessions (Jonah sold his guitar to Grace for $10), and they may use money in their "dry erase board account" to make the transaction, so they will have to subtract a portion from one child's account and add it to the other's. We also use several websites to practice our math, including this wonderful site called Mad Math Minutes. I also discovered a great book through www.oldfashionededucation.com. I followed their link to Mental Arithmetic by Edward Brooks, originally published in 1858. We will be working through this (free) book together.
And then history, Bible, Bible memory work, literature, music, and art will revolve around the topic of our unit study. I will post that next.
It's been a while since I've written anything, let alone posted our menu for the week, but here are the evening meals for the next few days.
My parents have been out-of-town for several days and are coming back through Brownwood and they are bringing us Underwoods. If you live anywhere in Central Texas or maybe in Texas in general, you've heard of Underwoods and know how excited we are for this special delivery. (Underwoods has been featured in Texas Monthly's list of best restaurants in Texas.)
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Underwoods !! :D
Crab and Avocado Salad--This recipe is by Emeril and I found it at here yesterday evening.
Beans and Rice w/ pico de gallo, cheese, avocados, and tortillas
Shrimp Fajitas w/ green peppers and onions, left over beans, Spanish rice, and corn, and guacamole. (I'll marinate the shriimp in Fat Free Italian Dressing, then cook in a skillet with the green pepper and onion slices.)
Lemon Basil Tilapia with sauted zucchini and squash and green salad.
Stir-fried rice with chicken
Curried Shrimp Salad--One of my favorites. From a beautiful cookbook, Irish Country Cooking, by Helen Walsh. Very easy to make, too!
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Curried Shrimp Salad
8 oz. frozen shrimp, peeled and completely defrosted.
2 tsps. tomato paste (freeze the rest for another recipe)
a few drops of lemon juice
1 tsp. curry powder
4 heaping tbsps mayonnaise (I use low fat or fat free)
3/4 cup cooked rice (I've used white and brown both.)
Lettuce leaves, hard boiled eggs, cucumber and tomato for garnish
Defrost and drain shrimp well. Mix tomato paste, lemon juice and curry powder into the mayonnaise. Fold in rice and shrimp. Serve on lettuce leaves. Garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs, cucumber and tomato.
My washing machine, along with the dishwasher, broke down this month. The dishwasher is a goner. Last month, when the sink stopped up, the Liquid Plummer backed up into the dishwasher and rotted some mechanism or other. I'm not sure it's fixable. But I have found washing dishes to be relaxing. (Let's look on the bright side, right?)
Well, the washer has been making an awful noise whenever the basket moves (agitates or spins). Mark asked me not to use it until we could get it fixed (or fix it ourselves, which is what we always do), so I've been washing clothes at my mom's house. And my mom has been very kindly washing and folding some of those loads for me. I think twice now she has picked up dirty clothes and delivered clean ones. (Thanks Mom!)
Yes, I've been spoiled.
Recently, Mark's parents found a used washer for us, cheaper than fixing ours, but the storms prevented them from getting it to us. So yesterday and then today I used our old washer. (If using it made it worse, it didn't matter, since we were getting a new-to-us one.)
Wow, the noise was something.
Then today it suddely made a terrible clunking noise. I thought for sure it was a goner. It really sounded like something broke loose inside. And then the strangest thing.
The washer began washing normally and QUIETLY. No more terrible wailing or screeching.
It has been healed.
Seriously, I had thought about laying hands on it a few days before, but that seemed too weird. And really, does God heal washers? This is not to say I hadn't prayed about it, but a washer in the scheme of things is so unnecessary and trivial. Especially given the real and serious prayer needs (Jessica Hulcy, Noah Estes, Susanna Hall, Samuel Lockwood).
But one of the things He has been teaching me, is to trust in Him. Trust in Him completely, totally and without trying to figure it out myself. (That last part is really hard. Especially since I like to make lists and plans. And I think I have a real problem with trusting in my intellect, in my ability to figure things out and fix them.)
But I'm learning.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart; Lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. ~ Proverbs 3:5-6
...trying to lose weight, that is. I am going to put the scale away, for the umpteenth time, and just focus on eating healthy and getting plenty of exercise/activity.
According to my BMI, I am only slightly overweight. However, because I have a history of gestational diabetes and a parent with diabetes, I know that keeping my weight under control is very important for my health.
But today I read here that slightly overweight adults live longer. This is the second study to find this same result. (The study did not look at quality of life, but they did find that very underweight people were the most likely to die, followed by the extremely obese, Normal weight people and those who were mildly obese had similar chances of dying.)
Maybe our waist lines are just meant to expand as we age.
So here's to throwing out the scale and just being healthy!
We live in a small town (pop. 5000, more or less). Our small-town values really hit home today. The police blocked our 5 lane highway and gave a complete police escort to a gaggle of geese (a mother goose and her 8 goslings) who were being lead across the road and back to their home at the park. I wonder if they had been to the library for children's reading time. Wouldn't real ducklings or even goslings make a great illustration for Robert McCloskey's book, Make Way for Ducklings?! Even preschoolers might sit still for that.
Update--The librarians deny inviting the geese to the library. They just showed up on the front porch this morning.
Edited (6/19, 5 p.m., after talking with our library ladies.)
"Where's Grace?" I asked.
"She's in the back, counting how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop.'
A few minutes later, here comes Grace. So how many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop?
She forgot!
We survived yesterday's storm. I'm really not sure how hard the wind blew or how much rain we got, but several large trees in town were up-rooted. Roofs were damaged, and signs blown down. Our very old, 60 foot oak tree split down the middle and half fell over. The tree grazed the house, took out our tv antenna and pole, which actually saved the roof and the boys' room. The limbs from the tree were within inches of the bedroom window. Limbs were on our porch so that we couldn't get out the back door. The tree is laying across the dog run and over another tree. The dog house may or may not be smashed. I don't know because I haven't been able to see it because it is under the tree. Only a small portion of the house was damaged. A 20 foot long 2 x 6 from the eves of the house fell down. Otherwise, our house is in great shape.
We spent the morning and a small portion of the afternoon, until it was too hot to work, cutting branches and hauling them to the curb. We have worked so hard but there is still so much to do. We still can't get into the dog's run, although they have had no trouble getting out. They are spending time on the back porch. I found them in the front yard this afternoon and enticed them into the back with promises of treats. When I tried to put them in the run, Miracle climbed a fallen tree limb and was sitting in the tree just above my head. I think I know how they are getting out!
Grace and I were at church when the storm began. We herded the children into hallways. Everyone was very calm and the storm passed. Only then did I find out that portons of the roof on the church and the roof on the Family Life Center had been peeled back. (We were in the FLC.) There were pieces of the roof, large sections of metal, blown down the street.
Now another powerful storm appears to be moving toward us.
I have pictures of the damage and will post those ASAP.
Last night in an interview with a French television station, President Obama declared the U.S. "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world" based on the number of practicing Muslims living in the U.S. You can read the full story here. Actually, based on the numbers, we are 42nd in the number of Muslims living in the U.S. We are the largest Jewish country, behind Israel, and the largest Christian nation in the world, based on the number of people espousing those religions.
I do understand the point he is trying to make. That the U.S. has a very large Muslim population, approximately 8 million Muslims. However, it is easy to misunderstand his point, and even to use his words to change our understanding of our nation, its culture, and its heritage. Words are powerful. I guess the part that bothers me most is that this will be repeated as fact and used to justify new laws and policies while marginalizing the Christian and Jewish population of our country.