The Accident, the Aftermath and Reality

Ben was in a car accident on November 16th.  It was really scary and, when I first got to the hospital, we were not sure what would happen.

He spent 4 days in the ICU and now, 3 weeks later, he is back to work with no serious lasting injuries.  Truly a miracle!

As you can imagine, the first couple of weeks after the accident were crazy.  The kids were in Tampa for most of that first week and Ben was still largely out of commission for the second week so we were in crisis and survival mode for a while.

Last week we were finally able to get back into our normal routine.  Ben returned to work and we picked up where we left off with school.  We have been doubling up on a lot of our lessons so we don't get too far behind and Lily is doing really well keeping up.  It is nice to have the flexibility that we do!

We are all much happier and more relaxed now that "reality" has sunk in, everything is OK and we are able to move on.

In addition to getting back to our school work, we are also celebrating Advent with stories and activities through the month.  Each day, we read from the Advent Book and the girls pull a tag from our Advent Calendar that gives us an activity to complete that day.  So far, we have baked cookies, made Christmas crafts, read books and made gifts for grandparents.  

On Saturday, we hosted a family party.  The girls had a great time getting ready and especially loved all the sweets.  We baked 5 different kinds of cookies before the party.

Everett helped in the best way he knew how!

 In addition to all the cookies they baked, they decorated gingerbread men with Kyleigh while she was here.

Everett and Natalie aren't old enough to be trusted with icing so they ate some animal crackers instead!

We finished off the weekend by going to see Santa.  The girls all wanted to go and Ruthie was the most excited.  We went to Bass Pro and everyone was excited right up until we got up to Santa.  Then, they all seemed to lose interest.  It was really pretty amazing how they all transformed at once!

They did have fun in all other areas of the store and at the pirate ship playground.  Santa was just a bit too much, I guess!

Looking forward to a couple more weeks of "normal" before Christmas!

Finally Back to "Normal"

This week has me thankful for the little things.  I am happy that we are all healthy.  I am happy to have had several uninterrupted hours of school time.  I am happy that it has been relatively boring around here for the past few days!

We took a camping trip up to Fort DeSoto for the weekend and it was a lot of fun and also pretty relaxing.  It was the perfect way to get us back in our groove here at home.

This week we have had time to focus on the "fun" stuff, the stuff the girls really enjoy.  For instance, Lily loves to be in charge of snack.  On Monday, she chose Ants On A Log (with carrots instead of celery) and helped her sisters make it.

They have also been able to spend more time outside.  The weather has cooled down a little bit so they have been spending a lot of time playing outside and adding some more fun things to their discovery journals.  Lizards were a hot topic this week.

Back in the school room, the routine is back in place and it feels so good.  Ruthie has a set of shapes in her busy box this week with no instructions.  She took them out and first sorted them by color.  When I looked back over after a few minutes, I noticed that she had re-sorted them by shape.

Also during busy box time, Josie taught Everett how to stick the straws in the can.  He does not put them in the right color, which irritates her, but he does try to get them in the can which is way better than in his mouth!

We are still reading Farmer Boy.  I think this is the one thing that got completely ignored over the past few crazy weeks!  Anyhow, Lily enjoys using her Literature Response Journal after we read.  She draws a picture of a scene that we read about that day and adds a short caption.  I always love seeing what she chooses to include.

Ruthie is working hard and making great strides with her handwriting.  She has done great with letter recognition and sounds and I think we may be starting some phonics work soon.  I am really amazed at this because she technically wouldn't even be in VPK this year if they were in public school due to her October birthday.

Josie loves to spend time working one-on-one with me but seems to love working with Lily even more!  Today, Lily used the shape blocks and had Josie sorting by color and shape similar to the way that Ruthie was using them.  Lily is so patient with her and it makes me so happy that they get to work together like this!

While Ruthie does enjoy working as a group and working with me, she is really most comfortable working alone.  When she has worked through the activities in her busy box, she goes through the storage bin to find more things to work on.  This afternoon, she decided on patterning.  She worked through AB, ABB and was on ABC when we wrapped up our day.

Since the girls really love to cook, we decided to bake a cake this afternoon.  We went with pineapple upside-down cake and it was yummy.  A can of sliced pineapple only has 10 rings, though!

A Crazy Few Weeks!

So, the past few weeks have been anything but average and the "fun" parts of school life have suffered as a result.

First, all of the kids and I got a head cold.  We each took turns suffering through headaches and other assorted yuckiness for a few days each over the course of about a week and a half.  During that time, we just did the really "necessary" school things.  No crafts, no baking, nothing really exciting.

The next week, I was scheduled to leave town for four days so we crammed a lot of work into the first two days of the week and spent the third day getting the girls packed to go stay with Pappaw and me packed for Kansas City.  Everyone had a good time away but nothing exciting was going on in school, still.

This week, we have all gotten sick again.  This time it was a stomach virus which included some vomiting but mostly lethargy and nausea.  It hit Lily first, then Josie got it REALLY bad.  Poor thing laid on the couch for an entire day without eating, drinking or really moving.

I even ended up taking her in to the pediatrician because her left eye started to swell up and I was freaking out a little.  Turns out she had an eye infection and a completely unrelated virus that was making her so sick.

Then Everett started to feel yucky.  He napped for four hours on Wednesday afternoon, beginning in the dining room chair!

Later that night, it hit me.  I was so sick that Ben had to take a sick day on Thursday to take care of the kids who, by this point, were all feeling much better. 

Needless to say, we are all relaxing today.  We will catch up on some more of the "boring" school stuff so that we can try not to be too far behind and we will look forward to getting back to "normal" next week.  Right now, we are just enjoying feeling well!  Lily is dancing, Ruthie is letting in the cool "fall" breezes we have finally gotten and Everett is back to being playful.  Josie is still tired but definitely feeling much better!

Happy Birthday, Johnny Appleseed!

I love to eat and I love to celebrate so today was particularly fun for me (and the girls, of course)!

In honor of Johnny Appleseed's birthday, we spent the day immersed in all things apple.  We started off at the library with the Hemmers where we picked up some great books about apples and Johnny Appleseed.  Back home, we read Apples to Oregon, a great story about how the first fruit orchards were transported from Indiana to Oregon in covered wagons!

We then pulled out the apple peeler/corer/slicer and got to work on some homemade applesauce.

Red, yellow and green apples along with a little water, cinnamon and sugar went into the crock pot and made the house smell great all day!

Later in the afternoon, we read Stephen Kellog's retelling of the Johnny Appleseed tall tale.  We learned about John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed, and how his legend became so well known.  The girls made hats in the spirit of the pot it is said that Johnny wore.

For our math lesson, we discussed patterns and used Apple Jacks to make necklaces.  Lily used the AB pattern, Ruthie chose no pattern at all and Josie just ate hers!

For afternoon snack, we ate the applesauce we made and the girls loved it!

To top off the day, we made foil packets filled with apples, cinnamon and brown sugar and baked them for dessert.  mmmmmmmmmmmm.......

"Life Skills" and a Baking FAIL

I have been keeping a list of chores that need to be done daily beyond the repeated sweeping of the dining room floor and loading/unloading of the dishwasher.  It's time the girls start doing more to earn their keep around here so I have incorporated "life skills" into our homeschool curriculum.

So far, they are enjoying it.  Vacuuming seems to be the most popular and they argue over who gets to vacuum first or more or in the living room or whatever.  Predictably, cleaning the bathrooms lost its luster after week one!

Today we also decided to bake some sesame seed cookies.  We found the recipe in a book that contained ideas for activities, crafts and recipes to go along with our studies of ancient Egypt.  Evidently the Egyptians had a lot of nuts and seeds in their diets so there is a chance they ate something similar to these cookies.

The recipes instructed us to mix the dough with our hands and the girls were agreeable.

Once we achieved the desired consistency, it was time to roll it out.  Notice Ruthie pouting in the background because she was not chosen to go first.

We slathered up the dough with honey and sesame seeds, cut out the cookies and put them into the oven where the girls sat and waited for about 12 minutes.

They smelled good while baking and looked pretty good, though a bit flat, when we took them out.

For some reason, they just did not taste "good."  They weren't bad or off-tasting but just not good.  Not like you would expect something sweetened with and then slathered with honey to taste.  Maybe my shortening was too old?  I don't use shortening that often and was a bit surprised to find it in the pantry but figured it was one of those things that just lasted.  Could have also been the whole wheat flour.  I know it can go rancid after a while but, a: it is younger than the shortening and, b: I store it in the freezer.  Regardless, the girls did not finish theirs and neither did I.

Since Everett is a baby and a male, he devoured his and would have eaten as many as I would have given him!  Again, ignorance is bliss!

Just before I was to click "publish" I researched the shortening issue.  Seems as though everything about the cookies would be normal but they would taste "off" and possibly have an aftertaste.  It says the shelf life should be 2.5 years and I am positive I have not had it for that long but it seems it went bad nonetheless.  Guess we found our culprit.