Izzy Saves a Deer?

Yup, I did figure out how to record Grey's while we watched the Office. It required another cable (which I had to pull out of the wall in our bedroom - the last people who owned this house had as many tvs as Jessica!). But I was staying up late watching the long awaited new season thinking "this is the weirdest episode I have ever seen." There were a few sub-plots that were pretty good, and I almost fell out of my seat when George showed up at Izzy's door - but what is up with Izzy and the deer?????? Did anyone else think that last nights episode was kind of weird?

Updates

Well, I know you've (all 2 of you) been wondering how the whole toilet thing worked out so here is an update from my bathroom: We spent three hours sawing the bolts off the base of the toilet in a bathroom that is maybe 8' by 4' (and is our only bathroom) on a night that was at least 85 degrees and about 99 percent humidity. We put took out the old seal, stuck in the new one and put the toilet back. After we flushed (and were feeling pretty good), the water leaked right back out in the same spot that it did before. So Todd tried to tighten the bolts in the floor a little more - then CRACK! The base of the toilet cracked. At that point we didn't know what to do and it was 11:00 at night, so we went to bed with a leaking toilet. The next morning on the advice of a friend, we got an extra thick wax seal and tried the whole thing over again. Of course, the bolts didn't require 3 hours of sawing this time. And - the toilet is now working - yeah us!!! If we had payed someone to replace the toilet (which we were thinking about after the crack) it would have cost us close to $300, but we got away for about $30.

In other news, the adoption papers are no closer to being signed than they were the day David agreed to sign them - he wants it to be an open adoption and so his lawyer is drawing up new papers.

School is going great, but I'm thinking we are still in the honeymoon phase. Jacob rarely complains, and he is doing so well. The one thing he complains about is Latin. I can't say I blame him as I hated Latin during my junior high years at Faith Heritage. But then as I got I older I discovered that my Latin studies were more useful than I originally realized. And I must admit that I think teaching Latin is kind of fun.

I called the district's superintendent about the special ed situation, and the lady called me a few hours later - it's like magic! Of course she was very surprised that I hadn't heard anything from anyone and she was doing this and that to make sure that Jacob gets taken care of before we get too far into the school year. But then she added "You know you can't get services in your house..." which I did know, so I told her "My understanding was that he can receive regular services if I bring him to the school, right?" And then she was sweet as pie again. But she almost seemed like she was trying to lead me to believe that all I could get as a homeschooler was a consult or something.

And yes, I think I did figure out how to record one show and watch another. We're watching the Office now (Todd's show) and we'll see if Grey's (Kelly's show)came out ok in a little while.

Date Night

Last night I was feeling desperate to get out of the house, and Todd agreed to take me out on a date!!!! We went to dinner at TGIFridays in Shoppingtown so that I could return a pair of holey jeans. While were enjoy our dinner conversation, Todd suddenly looked distracted and said "Is that Heather?" Heather was the girl right before me, and they were pretty serious. Todd met her working in a restaurant about 10 years ago. And yup, she is still working in a restaurant as a server.

When I saw her it brought back the memory of Todd sharing a poem with me. Early in our relationship he was talking about Heather and he said "I wrote her a poem - want to hear it?"
"Not really"
"But it's really good, just listen"
"I don't want to hear it"
"Please, it's important to me" (or some line like that)
"Ok, fine"
Then he proceeded to quote this poem:
Your eyes are blue as the sea,
Your hair looks like rays of sun,
Your face is soft as a babies butt,
How come your ass looks like a truck?
Enough of the bread already!

Todd didn't really write it, he heard it from Jeff Ross on Comedy Central. Around the 3rd line I wanted to kill him, but then at the end I was crying from laughing so hard. He insists that I point out that she gained weight at the the end of their relationship, and then gained a whole lot more immediately after he broke up with her. From that day until this, we refer to her as "Truck butt".

Back to our date night...she has either continued to gain lots of weight (at a far greater speed than I have) or she is slightly overweight and very pregnant - but I don't think she's pregnant. She walked near us several times, always pretending not to see us - once she had to walk a few feet from our table, but I guess we were invisible! Why did that make my night? Maybe 'cause I got the man, I've had three kids (I think she's had 1), and comparatively, I've got the body! Am I being petty and ridiculous? Yes!

Anyhow, after dinner we went to Sears where for the very first time I took advantage of the Kidvantage guarantee. If your kids put a hole in their jeans (or similarly ruin any other piece of clothing from Sears) Sears will replace it with the same thing, same size for free. It really is true! I'm tempted to exchange the jeans when Jacob puts holes in them and then put the new ones directly into storage for Gabriel.

Tonight we take out the toilet so we can replace the wax seal! Wish us luck - maybe I'll post pics later...

Idiot Box

I was just reading an article on crosswalk on de-stressing the home school house. I came across a few things that were interesting, and I couldn't pass this part up...

By limiting or eliminating your TV time, your home life finds more stress-free hours in the day. Because your child is not subject to ads (which exist solely to tell you that you are not content with what you have), you have less-stress shopping. Your children are also more receptive of others' gifts to them. As Urie Bronfenbrenner, a professor at Cornell University puts it:The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents. ... Turning on the television set can turn off the process that transforms children into adults.

I have been fantasizing about putting the television out to the curb nearly our entire marriage, but the idea causes Todd to break out in hives (slight exaggeration - he has once or twice intentionally gone a week without tv, and didn't kill him, but it did hurt him). Now, he will be quick to point out that I spend my share of time worshiping at the shinny black idol in the living room, and he is right. That is why I would just assume not have it in my house. The only thing I would really miss is NY Giants football (did you see that they finally won yesterday?)

Any hope I had of becoming one of those crazy one income homeschool fundamentalist families without a television died last February when the above pictured 32" LCD flat screen found its way into our house, complete with 5.1 surround sound. But, you can see that the NY Giants have eyes, noses and mouths with such a television. I hate it because it has a tendency to draw you into hour after hour of mindlessness. Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes you need mindlessness. But tv wastes so many hours of life (and countless brain cells, no doubt). Not to mention the effects of tv on "ADHD" - somewhere I read that when children labeled ADHD went a week or two without any screen time, their symptoms disappeared and when the screen was reintroduced, so were the symptoms. And I give credence to this because we have noticed a strong correlation with Jacob. Not to say that a half-hour of tv (or even a full length movie) here and there will cause him to bounce uncontrollably around the room. But if he watches a half-hour or hour every day, he quickly becomes dependant on the tv to entertain him, and his behavior becomes noticeably more unruly.

That's all for now, I need to go figure how to watch one show while recording another since The Office and Grey's Anatomy are on at the same time this week. :)

Time Out

There is a change of the guard coming in the worship leadership of our church, and we aren't sure how we feel about it. We have also been wanting to take a break from playing on Sunday mornings but hesitated because we didn't want it to look like we were taking time off as a response to the coming changes. We (at least one of us) usually end up playing 3 Sundays out of the month, and with one car that means we have to have all 3 kids dressed and ready to go at 7:40 on Sunday morning. Then, the kids have to entertain themselves (unless one of us has the morning off) for almost 2 hours. We usually spend about an hour Saturday night getting their breakfast and clothes and toys ready to go. The kids actually enjoy the whole ordeal, as long it is not all the time. But that is the problem, we were starting to feel like it is all the time. When we do have a Sunday off, we are like "WOW, we don't have to be to church until 10:00, this is so relaxing!!!" I almost feel guilty that I am so happy about having the morning off.

Like I said, we have been wanting time off for a while-about 3 months probably. When we first decided that we needed a break, we felt like there was some weird tension going on with some of the other worship people. We decided to stick around and try to help resolve tensions. Then we found out that the tensions had something to do with the fact that our worship pastor (Bryon) had decided to leave our church. So once that became public knowledge, it would look like we were taking a break because Bryon was leaving - and that would look bad to lots of people. So, in October Bryon will be gone. We were still hesitant to take time off because we know that it could still like we don't want to play if Bryon is gone (we were close to him). But we really feel like we need a break, and we aren't sure about the direction that worship is going in, so Todd decided we will take off October, November and December, then re asses things for January.

Now, Todd is calling this a sabbatical. And the reaction from the interim worship leader was "I thought you were just going to take a break - like a month." We decided to take more time because last time we took a month it didn't feel long enough. But here is where the problem lies - the interim guy then asked us if we would be willing to play for the church's birthday celebration at the beginning of October "before" we start our break. My initial reaction is - No. The birthday thing falls in the time we asked to have off, you have other musicians - use them. But then that leads into the pride filled we are the best musicians and they don't want the music to suck for their birthday thing. This leads to the irritated - they "value" me, and want to "use" me, but won't let me lead worship ("there is a stylistic problem" - I'm a little too modern and edgy) and really grow in my gifting. After that egocentric tirade, I come to - I don't want to be arrogant, so I guess I should play. But, it still bothers me that my boundaries aren't being respected...we asked for Oct-Dec off, and they are already asking us to make an exception. How many more times in the next three months will there be exceptions? So to play or not to play - that is the question. I want to have a good attitude, but don't want to be taken advantage of. What do I do?

During our time out, we will be exploring the idea of a "college and careers" group. There are not a lot of people in that age group in our church, but there are some, and we're thinking that could be a good ministry for us to head up. If we meet in our house, the kids won't suffer, and we will have a chance to build some good relationships. So maybe this is the beginning of a new season for us.

Settling In

Well, here we are near the end of "Week 3" in the official school year! Overall, things have been going smoothly. Cadence has not been feeling well, but she went to visit the doctor Tuesday, and they couldn't find a thing wrong with her...I guess it is all allergies - I know my have been acting up this week.

Jacob was struggling with his behavior in the mornings (by about 10:00 he would be settled in and doing fine). It was every morning, usually before we had started school work, and it was making me crazy. He didn't act like this all summer, but then I remembered that last year getting him to school every day was a nightmare for this same reason. So what is the trigger? I don't know - I don't think that school work is stressing him out, on the contrary he seems to enjoy it. Today he has actually been good all day - and now that I have said that, some horrible thing will happen.

Academically, things couldn't be better. I was a little worried about math because when I gave him the placement test (which I didn't do until after I bought the curriculum) he didn't even come close to placing in Saxon math 3. This threw me for a loop, because math is one of his strongest subjects. Last year the teacher went on about how good he was at math - that he would have a concept figured out as soon as she introduced it and the rest of the class would need to be walked through the stuff to figure it out. He is incredibly good with patterns and memorizing facts and stuff like that. All of that to say, he is kicking butt in math. I didn't realize he was supposed to have a test today until (during our lesson) I got to the part of the teacher's manual that says "give students Assessment #2". And don't you know, Jacob went and got a 100 on it. He had scored in the high 90's on the first test.

Of course, I have already managed to get a little behind on our Read A Louds, but that's nothing a little weekend reading can't fix. Spelling always worries me, but I started him in a 2nd grade book this year, and he is moving quickly through it. My hope is that by doing well for the first 10-12 weeks it will build his confidence and then I will either move on to the 3rd grade level "Spelling Workout" or switch to "Spelling Power" which is expensive, but will serve as spelling curriculum all the way through 12th grade. And frankly, I still can't spell - that is what spell check is for!

I'm beginning to get ticked at the director of Special Education, since she will not return my call. Homeschoolers are entitled to special ed services (it is NYS law!) and last year they labeled him visually impaired and he got services from the special ed teacher and the teacher for the visually impaired. I really want at least the vision teacher to work with him again this year, but I have no idea what procedure I need to follow to make that happen. I've called her twice, and if the lady doesn't call me back soon, heads are going to roll.

I have abandoned a formal reading curriculum with Gabriel, and he is much happier now. We work with some cute little letter books (mostly pre-reading skills) and then do sight words and phonics stuff on the dry erase board. The other night he willingly read a "Bob Book" to Todd and did the whole book without help. So maybe he will start to really enjoy reading again!

Life is BUSY

All right, this post is WAY, WAY overdue! I meant to post before we went on vacation, thought about posting while we were on vacation and then resolved to post as soon as we got unpacked (Labor Day).Obviously, that didn't happen! We went camping in Ohio, and it was wonderful. The weather was great, the kids had a blast, and the time with Todd's family (Aunt Ellen and crew) was most enjoyable. The above picture is of Gabriel and Cadence playing on the swing set at Aunt Ellen's house. Todd spent our last night chasing raccoons out of our garbage - they came back 3 or 4 times. Aunt Ellen and S'mores were the favorite parts of all 3 kids!

But then, on Monday - Tasha came to live with us. She is my new jogging partner and she is like a little shadow. This is Tasha...

Tasha is a really good dog, but she was having a skin problem and of course I think she was a little depressed and getting used to her new home. The kids love her, and she is super gentle with them.

Then, on Tuesday, we jumped head first into homeschooling. Jacob is in third grade and doing world history with Sonlight. The curriculum is heavily based in literature, and we (Jacob and I) really enjoy all the reading. Gabriel (3 years old) is reading just about on a 1st grade level, but is at a point where I don't think he has the maturity to sit and read the 1st grade reading book - so we are experimenting with other things. And Gabe joins Jacob for poems, calender time and things like that. We haven't quite found our groove yet - so school is taking all day right now - and I'm usually correcting papers at dinner and setting out tomorrows work after the kids get to bed. But I think in another week or two we should have it down to the point where we are almost done by lunch.

On Thursday, I started coaching Jacob's Under 8 soccer team. Yes, I am nuts... The first practice went really well and we won our first game by a couple of goals. Last night's practice didn't go so well - I don't have an assistant and I felt like I had lost all control by the end of the practice.

Sunday was the start of football season, and that is all I have to say about that- except curse the Cowboys for hurting half my team. (See Jessica's blog for more on that)

And lastly, the boys started AWANA tonight. This is Jacob's 3rd year, and Gabriel has been waiting a very long time to be old enough to go with Jake. So Gabe started tonight as a Cubby - he seemed so big! And Jacob moved up into Clubbers, he's one of the big kids now. AWANA has been great for him, and some of his goals are to finish every book (it goes all the way through high school) and be an AWANA leader when he is a teenager.