February....

A busy month to be sure! Keenan turned 10, so now there is no one in this house in single digits unless you count the kitties! We had a big party for Keenan with some of his classmates. There was lots of sword fighting, eating blue cake and pizza, and NOISE!!!!! We had a group stay over night and it actually went pretty well for that many boys, they were pretty much asleep by 11:00, which was a good thing considering we were woke up with one of the boys having an asthma attack at 5:00!




























































Conner is doing great with school. It is his goal to go to grandma and grandpa Lerwick's for calving the first weekend of May and stay until Antioch time. We have told him he can if he is finished with school by then. It actually looks like he will be finished by the middle of April....oops, guess we will have to fill in some blanks! Actually, he did finish up math so he has the 8th grade math course arriving today and will be working on that when he finishes everything else up.

My boys love to be goofy! I told them to use some elbow grease to clean off the table. So here they go!


















We were lucky and had some special visitors this month! Uncle Grant and Aunt Kelley came with their kids and then Uncle Dean and Aunt Jen and their kids came too! We LOVE having company!





























































I am working more again. Sometimes it just takes a leap of faith to get out of a bad situation (the old job that didn't actually want to pay me for work) and know that better things await. Now I have more time to focus on family and home and the work that I do have is gradually and steadily picking up to where I will be about 3/4 of full time,which is just perfect. The old job had me at about 1 1/2 of full time! It was getting to be too much and I am glad that I jumped when I did.

We are getting more and more settled in the new house...now if we could just get the garage cleaned out so Kevin could park in there all would be well!

Art Contest

Conner spent a lot of his winter break working busily on his art contest entry. Today was the deadline, and after fighting with printers/scanners/computers etc.....mom FINALLY got the artwork submitted. So....here is his art competition entry. And coming soon we will have his sampler for school project. He is studying American Art and the point he is at right now is early 1800s and he gets to make a sampler.

LAZY BLOGGER

Yep, that is me! Wow.....I have done a terrible job of it.

I will try to catch up briefly.

We got back from our trip on Labor Day weekend and got very involved in school for both boys, volunteer time at Keenan's school and just being busy in general. Kevin was working long days since it was the "shutting down" time for irrigation and I was working and teacher and "mommying".

Then in the blink of an eye it was time for Bird City convention. That in itself was an adventure in mud....I found out that somehow, sitting next to Keenan in meeting, it was possible to get mud on my scarf,which was around my neck....Now, I know he wasn't kicking me in the face so that is still a mystery!

We got home from Convention and found out that we were likely going to get to move but nothing was sure until the 16th of October. We started going through the stuff in the storage unit anyway and found out that remarkably, most of it was junk that we were paying to store...that could be thrown or given away! Lesson learned, don't keep things you don't use! On the 16th we found out that we were indeed going to be able to move and we got started with arranging painting and carpet cleaning and packing!

On the first weekend of November we moved in and then had a week to wrap things up at the old house. We were moving things quickly and just piling boxes everywhere...planning on unpacking right away. We did pretty well with all of that and were fairly well settled in when Aunt Pat and Uncle Harold came for Thanksgiving. That was a real treat and we had a nice quiet Thanksgiving in our new home. Then on Saturday of that weekend my friend from home, April, came and gave me decorating ideas (and a whole pile of wonderful goodies!!) There are no pictures on the walls yet but it is getting there. The only boxes are in one half of the 2 car garage so that is not too bad.

I actually ended up quitting one of my practices at the end of November due to some "accounting challenges" on their part (they thought it wasn't necessarily important to pay their vendors and I didn't agree!). So now for the past 2 weeks I have had only part time work. I really thought that would mean I had a lot of time for unpacking etc but it seems like life just gets busier when you don't have work to fill your time! I had a week at Keenan's school volunteering in the Holiday Shoppe, then we had lots of projects for Conner's school, a game day, some other events and field trips, special meeting and special company, and then school is out!

Now we are at Grandma and Grandpa Lerwick's house waiting for a "big storm" but it hasn't hit yet!

School is going relatively well for both kids. Conner still loves COVA and is doing well with it. I believe he is nearly at 50% or greater for all of his classes, and he is required to be at 42% by the end of the semester for advanced so he is well beyond that. He likes math a lot and science is interesting but a bit frustrating. If I have one complaint about the K12 curriculum it is that there is no text book, not online OR hard copy. The information is in each lesson and they have to take notes and then if they need to go back and find information they have to go through the lesson to find it. Conner learns very similar in style to the way I do, which means going back and looking things up several times to remember them. He is very interested in science though and overall is enjoying the class very much. Reading is definitely his challenge class as he really doesn't enjoy it that much, but he did read Tom Sawyer and enjoyed that very much.

Keenan has had some bullying issues in his school this year and I think that coupled with the long drive every day is making all of us eager for him to home school next year. Unfortunately I believe that the public school is rapidly going downhill, even the great charter that our kids have been a part of. The problem we have come up against is that it seems that the trouble makers have more of a right to misbehave than the good kids have a right to a safe environment. Currently the school is taking some measures to deal with the issue but it is frustrating to mom for sure. It is disappointing to see what was an excellent school go down in quality because of behavioral issues. I guess that maybe it has to do with more and more people removing their kids from the environment that is bad so what is left is the ones who make the environment bad!

One really good thing though is that one of Keenan's best friends has also moved north in Colorado Springs so he actually lives only about 5 minutes from our house and it will be easy to get the two of them together! Conner's good friend still lives down south but we have been able to get together regularly with him as well so they will be able to maintain those friendships.

I will attempt to get some pictures posted of the house as we get some things done to make it a home in the next week....(Laura is coming for a week so maybe between the two of us we can figure out how to hang pictures!) And maybe we will have some cousin pics this week too!

I will really attempt to get more into the nuts and bolts of schooling this semester and keep you updated on some of the things we are doing. We have some really exciting field trips coming up and are looking forward to those (I think Keenan may get self declared holidays for the ones in Denver and get to go along with us).

No pictures this time, I have to get some off of my camera and get them into this computer.

Labor Day Weekend

****Shhhhh***** Don't tell the boys, but they were in school the whole weekend!

Actually, Keenan is studying Colorado History and Conner is studying US history and the unit he just finished was on cliff dwellers, so the weekend was very educational and time appropriate! We had a wonderful time and saw lots of history.

We started off by hitting the sand dunes...where mom's camera battery died, so only a few pictures there!
















Then we went on through the beautiful Pagosa Springs area to Cortez where we had a hotel. And all the way the question was "what time does the pool close? Will we make it in time to swim"....





The next day was Mesa Verde and it was beautiful!




























We did the Cliff Palace tour and I strongly recommend that to anyone going to Mesa Verde. It was amazing and interesting, not too strenuous of a hike, but there are ladders to climb, pretty steep ones, so dress appropriately. I wish we would have had much more time since I think I could have hiked around that area for days, but we didn't so we just saw what we could.















Then on to 4 Corners, the kids were pretty fascinated with the whole 4 states at once thing and we spent some time there. Also got a chance to watch and visit with a man (navajo) who was making arrowheads, carving them...then the boys picked out an arrow shaft and a kind of stone and he made them arrows while they watched. So if you hit the 4 Corners area, look for the booth with Edward Begay...he is an interesting guy to visit with and does make beautiful arrows!

My boys are of course too big and too cool to bend down and put a limb in each state....oh well!

























This was a really neat rock formation that we saw on the way back to Cortez. It has a really stark beauty!





And of course, the best part of any vacation!!!! The pool at the hotel.

Art experiences

Art is something that I am not much help with, but fortunately Conner loves it and has a lot of fun following the step by step directions. The lesson plans are very detailed and work out well for someone with no art background (like me!) Fortunately, he has Mrs. J at Soaring Eagles still available for any assistance he may need...and as long as he goes in once in a while to help with the bulletin boards, I think that she will continue to love him!

Tuesday's lesson was to make a mask, then on Thursday he had to paint and decorate the mask. It is an Indian story telling mask, they would put their fingers through the holes on the bottom and use it to act out stories, almost like a puppet. So here are the various stages of this project.

Science days.

What is worse than doing poorly on a science test?

Having mom as your "teacher" so she knows right away?

No...having mom as your "teacher" and she is MEAN and makes you repeat every lesson in the unit because you were hurrying and didn't do it well!

Oops!

Conner likes science but thought he pretty well KNEW this unit so he could rush through it in a couple days and not take notes. Well, after pretty well failing the unit test, mom made him redo the entire unit, not just hitting the high points but doing EVERY SINGLE LESSON (novel idea that!) and taking notes (even more novel idea!)....so here are some pictures of the "redo", which he has been doing at a rate of 3-4 lessons a day and actually finding it to be interesting!



And it is snail and swamp water day in science. Guess what? Snails will leave the area they are in if there is no lid, then they will slime their way across the table we eat on, leaving a shiny little trail, and then they will fall onto the floor, where the cat will watch it move along very slowly until Conner rescues it! I can tell that science is going to be quite an experience! There were also little bugs that moved like tadpoles in the water....I was ready for that one to go outside!





Hmmmmmm.....Don't you wonder what he is thinking about here? There is something going on in there! Science is so much fun, isn't it?













This is the "work space" in our home currently, doing Social Studies (which seems to be the current favorite and no wonder, the books are EXCELLENT!)





So, today's lesson learned is that you cannot neglect the lessons if you want to pass the test. That could apply in many areas of our life! Good counsel indeed for all of us from school to eternity.

FREEDOM!

That is what K woke up saying this morning, after his measly 4 hours of sleep! Today was the day of his neurology follow up! We had to have an EEG done because of some strange "events" he is having so that is the reason for the 4 hours of sleep.














As you can see, sleep deprivation worked! He fell asleep before she even got all the leads attached and she had wake him up to do the "awake" portion of the test.

After the EEG we waited and waited to see the doctor and when he finally came it I didn't have a good feeling since it had taken him so long to read the EEG.

He asked if we wanted to easy part of the hard part first.

Easy part: He appears to have no sequelae from his head injury and is free to have a gradual return to activity as his body allows! YAY, that is the FREEDOM part! He can go out for recess at school, eat in the cafeteria with his friends, hang out outside the door with his classmates, even go to PE class when they are not using basketballs. That is the happy and easy part.

Hard part: He "performed really well" for them on the EEG. His EEG is grossly abnormal with lots of activity. We don't know at this point what the activity is from. It could be post traumatic or it could be something to do with the family history and he is developing a seizure disorder, or maybe it is a non seizure anomaly. There is no real way of knowing, but what he is describing and from what they see on the EEG it appears that he is having simple partial seizures (a seizure where he is aware that something is going on, but would be unable to vocalize it until it is over). The other kinds of seizures are unconscious seizures, where the person would not be aware that there was anything going on, just lost time. K describes this event as "A feeling like a static balloon on my hair but inside my head on my brain. When it happens my ears and eyes are fuzzy and I cannot move my arms or legs". This fits with the simple partial seizure. On a positive note though, no one has noticed any behavior that would indicate any other kinds of seizures. No tonic/clonic motions, no head nods, no drops, no flutters or staring spells. At this point we are "waiting and seeing" what will transpire. He just has to be careful, but most of the "be careful" precautions we were given are already in place because apparently I must be a bit paranoid!

Anyway, that was our exciting day and now I need some sleep pretty badly after that day!

Tomorrow is another day and I am reminded of something Grandpa Lerwick used to say a lot...
"This too shall pass (and we will wonder where the time went)."

And now...a birthday visit....

Friday we had C's friend from Soaring Eagles come for the night and Saturday.

Imagine if you will...One child is home schooled, the other attends a 21st Century Charter School. Both LOVE what they are doing. They were talking so fast about school that neither one heard the other...then the spent the weekend making paper airplanes!

But A was interested in C's school so C saved science to do when his visitor was here. As luck would have it, that science lesson included a lab!


They had a lot of fun with the balloon and yeast lab...and yeah, if you add a LOT of yeast, sugar and water to a bottle then put a balloon over the end, the balloon will expand so much it blows off...do you want to know how I know this? But they learned and had fun and MOST of the mess was outside the door! As you can tell, he is completely thrilled that I am taking his picture here and put on his best "I am interested in what I am doing here look".

Oh, and then he and A made a stuffed crust pizza for lunch and had a lot of fun with that...and apparently, one pizza is not enough when you have 3 hungry boys to feed and a hungry dad! He will have to make 2 next time.

Meet the teacher!

Thursday night we were invited to go to the zoo and meet the teacher with the other local COVA families. I cannot believe how many families have gained the sanity and are "Taking their children back"! The line to get in was all the way around the circular part at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (don't ask me to guess how far it is because I don't estimate distance very well, it was somewhere between 100 feet and half a mile!). We got in line and when we arrived at the front of the line, the line was longer than when we had joined it. I don't know for sure how many people were there but I do know that the main parking lot was full and the overflow had lots of cars in it too.



We were fortunate to get to the teacher area before it was too crowded and got a chance to meet C's teacher. This is a different teacher picture than ever before, since we don't even know how many times we will see the teacher this year but Mrs. W is our contact for everything this year.

The evening was a lot of fun and we did run into a family we had met earlier in the year who is in their first year of COVA as well for their 7th grade daughter. They also have a 4th grade son who is going to continue at a brick and morter school for a couple more years. When we first met S and I were looking at each other with fear in our eyes, wondering if home school was something we could even manage. Tonight when we saw each other we both had the same comment..."can it really be this easy"? She had met C only once, at the tail end of last school year. After being with him only about 20 minutes her comment about him was "I wouldn't have recognized C at all, he is so happy he is almost sparkly"! He even talked to their daughter and had conversations wtih virtual strangers! The change in my quiet little boy is remarkable and other people are noticing it! I couldn't be more happy with the process at this point!

Happy Birthday Conner!!!

C is 12 today! Wonder how that happened? I am not old enough to have a 12 year old am I? Anyway, he worked ahead on school so he could have the day off and now he is happily playing with his birthday Lego set, one he has waited almost 7 months for, since it came out and he saw it in a magazine. If you can imagine, it is a farm set and he REALLY wanted it badly!

The other set is a camper from K. For years they have worked at creating a camper and made all kinds of varieties of them, and now they have a set that is a "real" camper with beds, chairs etc all in the vehicle.

I am delighted that at 12 he would rather play with Legos and use his imagination that play video games. I love that my kids love their toys still. I really think that brains develop so much better when they are playing with things like that than if they are just interacting with a machine.
K is wildly jealous that C gets to have his birthday off...so we may have to create a "holiday" for K when his birthday comes around so he can have the same privilege. The only class C will do today is Spanish, since he needs to do that every day, but that class is like a game. It is amazing, the program is Power Speak. It is really an interesting way to teach language but he is having fun with it so that is great.

Tuesday: Company coming!

Today was a fun school day....C worked ahead so he can have his birthday off! Smart thinking huh? Don't you wish you could do that in the real world?

Science started a new unit about food and nutrition so you KNOW that mom is involved in that one! We had a stack of books all over the table, didn't take a picture of that though, of "supplemental materials" that I just happened to have around! He had to learn the different classifications of food: Protein, lipid, carbohydrate. He then had to make a collage of the different categories with pictures from magazines. That was a fun project!

For reading he read a story called "How the Cat Played Robinson Crusoe". For anyone with kids who like cats, that is a GREAT adventure story that has lots of advanced vocabulary words in it. Well worth reading. It is in "Classics for Young Readers" edition 6 but I am sure it is its own book too. The author is Charles G.D. Roberts.

Then for supper the workers came over, Cheri Fisk and Stephanie Kinney. C wanted to make something different so we did. Thanks to April for the recipe that turned out to be VERY YUMMY! and very pretty too.

It is called Peach Salsa Chicken and preparing it gave a cooking lesson and also a math lesson since the recipe was for 1 4oz serving and we were making 16 oz of chicken!

2 bell peppers (we used yellow and red for color) diced finely












16 ounces of chicken cut into chunks













All the ingredients ready.














The finished product! YUMMY.













Peach Salsa Chicken:

*2 cups of canned peaches (yes, we used our home canned ones!) diced and save the juice off of them.
*16oz boneless skinless chicken breast cut in chunks
*4tsp olive oil
*2 medium bell peppers (any color you choose)
*8T chunky salsa
*4T unsweetened orange juice

In large skillet heat oil and cook chicken till no longer pink
Remove chicken from skillet
Add bell peppers to skillet, reduce heat and saute for 2-3 minutes, stirring, until pepper is tender. Add reserved peach juice, salsa and orange juice to skillet and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Add peaches and stir until hot. Add chicken, stirring to coat with sauce.

We served this with zucchini and summer squash with tomatoes, one of our favorite summer veggie dishes.

Saute onions and garlic together and then add sliced zucchini and summer squash and cook till tender, then toss in tomatoes and warm.
















Dinner was delicious and C did most of the work by himself! I might not be needed anymore!

Tomorrow is C's birthday and he is very excited to have the day off! We had cake and ice cream and sang happy birthday with the workers so that was his "party" at least the most formal one he has.

Monday: Grocery Game WINNER!

We are doing a lot of discussions about finances, money, making the most of your money etc. I do the Grocery Game and normally save about 40-50% off our grocery bill. Well, this week was a much bigger winner. C helped with coupons, helped with shopping and learned that with just a little inconvenience you can save a LOT of money! General Mills was running a special, with a limit of 2 per shopping trip, where if you buy 10 of their items you got 5 dollars off. We coupled that with LOTS of coupons, and basically ended up getting 300$ of groceries for 80$! This supplies us with cereal, granola bars, fruit snacks etc for a year! And the kids get a lot of things that their cheap mother would not typically buy for them! Wanna see what we got for 80 dollars?

4 boxes of Capt'n Crunch
16 boxes of granola bars
12 boxes of fruit snacks
2 packages of bacon
1 20 roll package of toilet paper
2 (50 oz) bottles of Tide with bleach (we like to make home made laundry soap but for whites I use this)
6 rolls of dental floss
2 bottles of lysterine for kids
2 "Reach" toothbrushes
2 tubes of crest pro health tooth paste
2 packages of 10 pens
1 package of 10 mechanical pencils (an absolute must for homework!)
2 jars of pickle relish
4 boxes of Romano Macaroni Grill meals
6 boxes of Hamburger Helper
4 packages of Knorr Pasta sides
1 box of Uncle Bens long grain wild rice
2 Betty Crocker potato sides
10 bottles of Diet Mountain Dew (yes, we all drink it except for Kevin)
4 boxes of Pillsbury Toaster Pastries
6 cans of Grand's Biscuits
1 package of Sargento String cheese

Any doubters left about coupons? :) We had to do 3 different orders to get a total of 30 dollars off then on top of that there were 2 general mills coupons that printed at the checkout for 3.50 off your next order.

C had so much fun that now he wants to go grocery shopping with me each time! It is like a scavenger hunt!

We are going through the Dave Ramsey book with our kids and we talk a lot about managing money, making your money go as far as it possibly can and being not spending more than you have.

Much of that stuff we make from scratch 95% of the time, but with the sales like that, we throw a little convenience stuff into our fridge to make life a bit easier.

School was pretty standard today. All subjects covered but only "Project" was science. He had a test and had to classify living things by their 7 steps of classification by putting the little slips of paper in order and had to research on the internet to come up with the information. I really think they learn more by doing it that way than by reading in a book then regurgitating on a test.

Thanks to Mrs. R!!!!!

Last year C had an amazing writing teacher and she made them work VERY hard! There were times he was so frustrated he cried but he wanted her to be proud of him so he kept working, hopefully living up to her expectations. Anyway, today's literature block assignment was to write a riddle poem about an animal, at least 2, 4 line stanzas.

C literally *skipped* into the office while I was working and said "Because of Mrs. R this assignment is going to be a piece of cake!" and he went back to work, coming back with his finished poem in no time! So all her hard work paid off! And he wrote 3 stanzas, not just 2.

Here is his poem:

Who Am I?

Four legs and a tail,
Claws like a nail.
I have a triangle face,
And I often look into space.

Brown, black and tan hair,
I'm not all that rare.
I chase mice on the floor,
When I lose one I want more.

When I am mad I hiss and GRRRR,
But when I am happy I purr.
Sometimes I am shy,
Who Am I?


He loves to write and read poetry and that was something that came from last year. I am sure you can tell that I am proud of him but more than that I cannot get over how excited he is to be learning and doing well! And it is coming easily instead of with so many battles like the past.

By the way, the answer to his question?