May

May, well May happened, I just don't seem to remember much....Other than the most important thing...Autumn and Emma were STILL SEIZURE FREE!!! Actually Mother's Day was in MAy and Dan and th ekid sgot me a new laptop! WOOHOO!

OK, this pic was taken the end of April and just didnt' get downloaded till May...Oops. But its' wicked cute...Piper, the cat that doesn't care for people, lays next to Owen while he works on the couch..Awwwww! He gets alot of "Pet Therapy" at home, lol.

This is Dylan's invention...a absence seizure detecting cap so parent's can see when their chidl has one and not miss them. The lightbulb really works when you use the switch...he borrowed it from Owen's Electricity kit, lol. He got an A+ on it!

Owen watching butterflies hatch from their chrysalis...this was REALLY cool. It was a truly exciting morning...all 10 ended up hatching! Owen won the prediction: D

April

April found us with GORGEOUS weather in NY. Unseasonably warm, it is was very welcome! We built a dog run for the dogs and reclaimed out backyard. They decimated the lawn. And so we planted new grass...ans used child slave labor to break up the hardened sod..bwahhaha..work child work whil eI take pictures of you slaving away!! bwahahaha!

Here's Autumn weilding a pick axe, which she loved doing and showed massive upper body strength!

Here's Owen in front of the Frog Bog habitat for his tadpoles Rex and Yoda...and yes he has dirt on his nose, lol.

Owen doing his work in the tent I set up in the living room as his reading nook. Emma was allowed to come in and supervise because she just laid there. Greta was not allowed because she dug in the blankets and messed them up and Bailey breathed too hot, lol.

Owen in front of the shelf with the caterpillar larva. Another Science unit, turns out Owen is a HUGE Biology/Science buff. For three months now Dan gets a daily, detailed morning update on how the tadpoles and butterflies are doing, lol.

Our only medical mishap was Dylan's mysterious bug bites all over his chest and in a line on his back, to which he had a bad reaction and some serious, persistant hives. Autumn and Emma remained seizure free in April!

March

So March came and Science found us exploring dinosaurs, extinction, and fossils. We made some pretty cool "fossils" of our own with homemade clay, plastic dinosaurs and shells from my bathroom decor, lol. And Owen excavated his own dinosaurs, which he thought was alot of fun.

Dinosaur stuck in ice...

Owen freeing a dinosaur...

The end of March brought an emergency veterinary visit for poor Miss Emma who instigated Big Bad Bailey, who had enough, and a fight ensued. Emma ended up with a couple of stitches under her armpit. She healed fine, and NO she hasn't learned to not mess with Bailey and continually instigates and won't leave well enough alone. But doesn't she look pathetic?

A graphic shot of the two inch slit in her pit from Bailey's teeth...OUCH.

Emma and Autumn remain seizure free in March! WOOHOO!

February

I totally did not write every day. Or weekly. Or even monthly. But I had a good excuse...I was extremely busy with daycare, homeschooling Owen (which is going swimmingly!), and taking four college courses myself (English Comp II and American History I online, and Teaching in the Diverse Classroom and Child Psychology..and I got A's in each class and had a 4.0 GPA that semester!). So I'll update by month and do the highlights in pics (because really I don't remember anything that happened during those months anyway, lol). Autumn and Emma are still seizure free in February.

Here is Owen getting ready to put together our Electric ping pong ball cannon. It was missing treads on the wheels though so it didn't shoot the ball properly: ( Bummer.

And here are Owen, Autumn and Dyl getting ready to eat our Chinese food lunch, an end to Owen's Literature book that week Ping.

First Day of Homeschool

For a first day this went well. It worked out that I didn't have any daycare kids today so Owen had my undivided attention. The first thing we did was drop off our paperwork for our Intent to Homeschool and IHIP. Which means we started at 8:30. We did a Math pre-test first, he got a 89%, his mistakes were careless mistakes. And I realized he needed more practice on his basic math facts so that his 2 digit addition and subtraction went quicker for him...35 problems took him 27 minutes. We did a page of math facts for practice and then played Chocolate Chip math which is more math facts practice. Math took us 2 hours total.

We moved on and did 3 pages of language arts (nouns, and proper nouns), a phonics activity sorting the two different /oo/ sounds (as in book and moon), spelling word practice, 3 pages of writing (complete sentence practice), and read Stone Soup and he did a writing activity that went with Stone Soup. We took a break for lunch. Then we tried to do a listening activity but turns out the library forgot to take the protective case off of the CD that went with the book, so we took a short trip to the library to have them unlock the CD case. Came home and did our listening activity and then a half hour of Hip Hop dance aerobics for gym(OMG I am so tired!LOL I think I need to invest in some kid excercise videos so I don't have a heart attack!LOL). Then he did his chores and now he has free time and is waiting for the computer.

He told Dan I was his favorite; ) He's going to give his Dad a complex, lol.

Owen drawing on the white board....

Our school area.....

Bus Chase

It's the first day back to school after a long break. I was a little worried Autumn would be hard to get up for school (not that she usually is, normally she does a great job) but she'd been sleepign in till 10 and not going to bed till late. But she was dressed, ate breakfast, packed her lunch and was ready to go by quarter of 7. But I run down the checklist because her zarontin hasn't had time to take effect and she's out of it in the morning, spacy and forgetful...Did you brush your teeth? Oops, forgot.

My next question was"Did you take your medicine?" But I didn't get to ask her because then the dog threw me off my game because she had a huge pee accident on the way out to go potty @@ REALLY GRETA??!! Your 3 years odl and have been housebroken FOREVER. I swear it was so cold last night that she went out and came right back in without peeing @@ So Dan and I are moving laundry over so we can toss in the snow pants that had fallen off the hook at the bottom of the stairs that the dog peed on@@ and sopping up and cleanign the little bit that hit the carpet. NOW I'm gonna be late. So I grab my coat, coffee and keys and Autumn and I head out to the bus stop. We made it on time but we no more than pull up to her bus stop and she tells me she forgot to take her medicine. So I drive around the block , back to home , she runs in and takes her medicine, gets back in the car and back to the bus stop we head and I'm praying we haven't missed the bus but it's REAL close. I can see her bus stopped and we are a block away, just as I pull up, the bus leaves @@

That's OK, I'll just follow it to it's next stop Autumn and you can catch it there! So there I am chasing the bus in morning traffic (man I really needed some good chase music!LOL), it turns off the main road and goes up up a wine-dy hill, turns around at the top and starts back down and then stops at a house. So Autumn grabs her stuff and gets out, but before she gets to the door of the bus, it pulls away without having seen her...so she hops back in and I'm yelling at her to hurry up and get in before we lose the bus! Luckily it stops at another stop at the bottom of that wine-dy hill, and another bus is blocking it...Autumn gets out and runs and this time makes it.

I've now lost 25 minutes of my morning chasing a bus down, AND now I have no time for a shower before I take the boys to school and my daycare baby arrives@@ By the time I get back from bringing the boys to school, my daycare baby is already here. Dan was good though and allowed me to take a quick shower before he headed off to bed, lol. Nothing like the first day back to school after a long break!

Birthday Fun

So for Autumn's Birthday I took Autumn and her brothers ice skating. This was only Autumn's second time, and the the boys' first time. Autumn did great only fell a couple of times. She was excited because she saw her teacher from last year, and a friend from school. Dylan picked up on it pretty fast, he fell alot but he did awesome. It was too cute, there were two little girls following Dyl ALL OVER the ice rink. I don't know if they liked him or thought he was a little kid who needed help. I missed a great picture of it because I was laughing too hard...he was practically RUNNING on skates from these girls and the little girl is following behind him, LOL. He hasn't reached that liking girls stage yet, lol. Owen never really got the balance thing down and fell alot but was a trooper, he ended up using a construction cone for support.

The Birthday Girl

Action shot of Dylan

Owen